My then best friend, when we were both 8 years old, and I asked him not to tell anybody. Altogether, he was okay with it but sometimes he teased me that I was not a real boy, e. g. when we had to take a pee in the fields. However, I could play the "who pees further" game with him when I squatted down because my urine stream goes somewhat upwards in a curve then and I peed almost as far as him. Ha. 

Over the next weeks, his teasings about me not being a real boy made me so angry that I became very nasty to him. One day, I even insulted him badly in the courtyard in front of everybody out of the blue. He took revenge and told me to "shut up, you feel like you're a boy anyway" which made everybody laugh out loud and brought me some teasing for a couple of weeks. Thanks God not for longer.

Oh wait, I also told my two best friends in the kindergarten at age 5. As far as I remenber, I had this wild tomboy friend and was convinced she was a boy inside. I asked her one day, she said no she was a girl inside, and I was absolutely astonished and told her I felt like a boy.  Then I also asked my other good friend, a girly girl I was fond of, as I thought the tomboy girl was not normal for feeling like a girl. But she also said she was a girl inside too, and I said I'm a boy inside. Wow that was quite revealing, not everyone was like me. Not even the tomboy. But I got no problems with these girls for telling that.

A psychiatrist. That was 22ish years ago. He told me I was mentaly ill, told me I should stop all transvettite activities. He told me I was going to ruin my life if I didnt give it up. He told me to get married to a 'nice girl' and have children. I got married, more than one time and it never helped. I am and was sterile so I never had any children but that is besides the point.
I was told very bad information in my 20's and I took it to heart and believed what the doctor told me. I tried to live up to his standards. I feel like I have been victimized by that doctor. I really have a level of resentment for him that is epic.
<This is why sites like this are so important. Maintaining good information and peer suport is so vital.>

Luckily I got my head out of my ass last year so things are looking up.

That's an interesting question for me to try to answer because, as a child in the 1950's, I thought I WAS a girl and kept correcting adults - so I guess that was the first time I "told" anyone. Most adults just thought it was "cute", some probably thought it was strange and I guess most everybody thought I had "a mental problem".

About age 8, I knew I had a PROBLEM and by the onset of puberty I was pushing the issue with my parents, that I was or needed to be a girl. The first shrink (age 15, 1964) just pronounced me homosexual (because I was attracted to boys). It wasn't until Dr. Benjamin's book in 1966 that there was even a term for this and there wasn't any treatment so I spent years living part time en femme (quite happily) and part time at my parents in boy mode (quite miserable). En femme the issue was telling a guy I had been going with - in those days you DIDN'T and you didn't get intimate. In boy mode it was pretty damned obvious that I wasn't what I seemed to be and by 20 I couldn't pass for a guy at all.

For some reason I never seemed to have to "tell" - people already knew or were just confused .... "Are you a girl?"  .... "I don't know"

Quote from: cynthialee on August 19, 2010, 09:56:12 AM
A psychiatrist. That was 22ish years ago. He told me I was mentaly ill, told me I should stop all transvettite activities. He told me I was going to ruin my life if I didnt give it up. He told me to get married to a 'nice girl' and have children. I got married, more than one time and it never helped. I am and was sterile so I never had any children but that is besides the point.
I was told very bad information in my 20's and I took it to heart and believed what the doctor told me. I tried to live up to his standards. I feel like I have been victimized by that doctor. I really have a level of resentment for him that is epic.
<This is why sites like this are so important. Maintaining good information and peer suport is so vital.>

Luckily I got my head out of my ass last year so things are looking up.

That was an awful psychiatrist. I feel very sorry for you.

It took me a few times to really come out to anybody.  The first time I tried to tell someone was with my best friend.  He and I have been friends for almost 20 years (since kindergarten) and I asked him if he's ever felt like he was in the wrong body.  He said no, but if I felt that way he would still love me just the same.  I didn't come out to him for a few years but he was so happy for me.  The first person I actually came out to was one of my closest friends from college, when I was actually going to start my transition.

My ex fiancee. She more figured it out herself. Her reaction kind of varied from day to day. She would always call me her boyfriend and her husband, always stuck up for me, and was very good at educating others about it though. She had a nasty habit of cheating on me and before she left me told me she cheated because I didn't have the parts to make her happy. Some days she'd tell me that she didn't want to be with me because she was a lesbian though so I think often her reaction was more of an excuse to justify her behavior.

A trans woman in chicago, about 5 minutes after meeting her.  She ended up becoming one of my closest friends. I was at a gallery opening with some friends (and had zero intention of comming out at all, even though I was  binding for one of the first times) when she comes over, motions to me and says "Whats his name?".  Everything got really awkward for a minute, before my friend told her I was a girl.  After being told she was trans (I would have never guessed, and didn't believe my friends at first) I went to talk to her and was like "You were actually right before, and I've been thinking of the name Kyle".  She just kind of grinned at me and said "I can always tell. And I refuse to ever call you Miranda. You're Kyle now."

Eventually, she went over and referred to me as Kyle in front of the same friends who had previously said I was a girl, so I ended up comming out to the rest of the group, like 6 more people, and no one really cared or seemed too surprised about it. Came out to a handfull more people over the next couple months, started dating a different trans woman, and from then on met new people as a guy.

Being outed like that ended up being the best thing that could have happened.

the first person i told was my ex (she didn't believe me and called me a lier) 16 months and a lot of heart ache later I meet the woman I plan on spending the rest of my life with and she incouraged me to be who I really am. (guess she saw the scared little lesbian inside me)

Technically, the first person I ever told was my father. When I was about sixteen, I said something about feeling like a teenage boy...nothing ever came of it, but I wonder if he remembered that day when he came by my job years later (I always refused to see him) and found out that I had changed my name. I also wonder if he ever told my mother about any of this. I never breathed a word to her about it when I was a kid, but we struggled a lot over my tomboy habits, especially the year my father was in Vietnam. I never realized how much of a buffer he was until that year. He became less and less of a buffer as time went by.

The first person I told was my ex girlfriend, we had dated on and off for a couple years and always remained close.  She was really supportive and not that surprised.  We actually ended up dating again when I was just starting to physically transition and she was there for me all through the beginning stages.

Quote from: kyle_lawrence on August 19, 2010, 02:29:09 PM
A trans woman in chicago, about 5 minutes after meeting her.  She ended up becoming one of my closest friends. I was at a gallery opening with some friends (and had zero intention of comming out at all, even though I was  binding for one of the first times) when she comes over, motions to me and says "Whats his name?".  Everything got really awkward for a minute, before my friend told her I was a girl.  After being told she was trans (I would have never guessed, and didn't believe my friends at first) I went to talk to her and was like "You were actually right before, and I've been thinking of the name Kyle".  She just kind of grinned at me and said "I can always tell. And I refuse to ever call you Miranda. You're Kyle now."

Eventually, she went over and referred to me as Kyle in front of the same friends who had previously said I was a girl, so I ended up comming out to the rest of the group, like 6 more people, and no one really cared or seemed too surprised about it. Came out to a handfull more people over the next couple months, started dating a different trans woman, and from then on met new people as a guy.

Being outed like that ended up being the best thing that could have happened.

Aww, god bless that woman. I kinda wish somebody would do that to me! That's what it would take at this point.. lol!

The first person I told was one ex boyfriend at my 15th birthday party. He thought I was joking and said I could have just told him I didn't like the shirt he bought me.

The first person I told directly was one of my male friends. He had recently got back from his military deployment, and my front personality was full of holes by this point and I was trying to act more masculine to attempt to cover for myself. This didn't work very well and he confronted me as to what my problem was.

It must have took him several hours of prying as to what my problem was, and probably a hundred promises that it wouldn't change our friendship, and when I told him, he was just like ¨Damn, we always said you were a girl in a guys body, but I never seriously thought it was actually true like that¨. Ever since we have been close friends just like before, he even promised that when I did come out more openly he would do what he could to defend me. Honestly, I could not have been more pleased with the result.

When I was a child I didn't understand entirely that I wasn't a girl, but my fathers words on those who were gender variant or sexually variant from his perceived normality made me far too afraid to say anything more as soon as I understood that indeed biologically I wasn't a girl, So I don't really count that stuff. To this day he doesn't know exactly what my ¨problem¨ is, but now it isn't out of fear, but rather hate, I haven't spoken a word to him in over 12 years now.

I chose my sister for a few reasons....

   We were always very close... Although there's quite an age difference, we've always gone to one another when the going got rough. I knew that, even if she didn't completely understand, she wouldn't reject me.
   She's a nurse, an R.N.  I thought that she'd understand the medical aspects.

   I was also going to need moral support in telling the rest of my family.

   I'll always remember the voice in my head saying, "Once you say this out loud, you can't un-say it." Her reaction was what I would eventually learn is typical.... "You're what? You mean you're Gay?........... Oh..... how is that different from being Gay?" She had lots of questions and I had an answer for every one. I think that's probably the one bit of advice I'd give to anyone planning on coming out.... to arm yourself with information so you have concrete, credible answers and evidence when the questions start.

Hikari;
I have a past of bad blood between my mother and I that I will not even venture to go into other than to say there was some serious issues between us.
I had no contact with her for 17 years. My coming out was the catalist to get me to make contact with her. We have both been able to look past those issues that we visited on each other many years ago and have been able to forgive and move on. Now I have a good relationship with my mother again. It took many years for the bitterness to wear off and for us both to grow up but when it did we were able to reconect. Don't give up on family, sometimes they grow up and mature when we are gone from their lives.

I told a female friend - cuz she likes hanging around her gay male friends a lot and she always treated me in a demasculating way, so I figured she knew something was up...but turns out tone quite a suprise to her haha
oh well, told my sister a few days later and am planning to tell my parents tomorrow!!

Quote from: cynthialee on August 22, 2010, 09:32:45 PM
Hikari;
Don't give up on family, sometimes they grow up and mature when we are gone from their lives.

Thank you for your hopeful words, even though it is very hard for me to conceive of a reconciliation. Though, I must admit it is at least in theory possible. After all I stopped living with my mother around the age of 13 and got her to give up custody (To my at the time 18 year old brother), eventually we did start to speak again.

She does call me from time to time, and I suppose it is nice not to outright hate her, but I can't honestly say that I love her either (and I can't honestly say that this was ever the case). I do at least pity her, which is far better than it was 10 years ago. Her substance abuse problems will likely be the death of her (Within the next 5 years I would think) and I don't know if I will even show up to the funeral, I warned her by not showing up to my aunts funeral, that death by overdose will not be forgiven by me...

In any case, my hate for my father is very difficult to shake. Not only did I never love him, I don't think he ever loved me (My mother on the other hand, to this day absolutely adores me, even when I tell her she is worthless). The most ironic part about that, is that on paper it would seem if he were better, as he only abandoned me* and my brother twice, and his violence and drug abuse were never on par with my mothers, but as immature as it sounds, the fact he always chided me for being myself making me feel worthless, and always made me live in fear as a child makes me hate him with a passion that honestly is irrational.

I'd like to think that I am at least a somewhat reasonable person, and my feelings towards my family come off as rather unreasonable to most people, but I just never formed an attachment to them. Perhaps the oxytocin in my brain didn't work right when I was a child, I don't know, but I know my brother still has this unconditional love towards our parents regardless of the torment that we were subjected to.

FWIW, I hope you are right, it would be nice to see people change for the better, but I am not holding my breath.

*The quality of abandonment was better as well, my mother would leave us somewhere and just disappear, to be seen several months to a year later, my father at least, tell the family member he dumped us with that he was leaving, rather than leaving a note explaining it was all too much like my mother did.

My SO. He at that point was wondering about my persistent depressed behavior (I got pretty bad, but I couldn't really help it.) It was a sort of downhilll slope that ended about when I ended up telling him. Then I told others.

Quote from: cynthialee on August 19, 2010, 09:56:12 AM
A psychiatrist. That was 22ish years ago. He told me I was mentaly ill, told me I should stop all transvettite activities. He told me I was going to ruin my life if I didnt give it up. He told me to get married to a 'nice girl' and have children. I got married, more than one time and it never helped. I am and was sterile so I never had any children but that is besides the point.
I was told very bad information in my 20's and I took it to heart and believed what the doctor told me. I tried to live up to his standards. I feel like I have been victimized by that doctor. I really have a level of resentment for him that is epic.
<This is why sites like this are so important. Maintaining good information and peer suport is so vital.>

Luckily I got my head out of my ass last year so things are looking up.

There was a newspaper Dr in Australia called Dr Wright (or White?) who had a help column.; a person wrote in describing classic MtF and what to do, who to see. His reply was to have a cold shower and take up manly pursuits.

Ah so glad the dark ages have passed.

Cindy

Quote from: Daszuber on August 22, 2010, 10:01:08 PM
I told a female friend - cuz she likes hanging around her gay male friends a lot and she always treated me in a demasculating way, so I figured she knew something was up...but turns out tone quite a suprise to her haha
oh well, told my sister a few days later and am planning to tell my parents tomorrow!!

good luck!