This is really addressed to middle and late transitioners because our history grows more complicated as we go through life.

In a social situation (including socially at work), how do you deal with your past?

I have a daughter but I was never her mother.  I am a widow but the spouse who died was a woman.  Some of my work history is very male.  I was drafted into the Army during the Viet Nam war. 

Mostly I don't talk about a lot of it, but I was at a baby shower yesterday and of course dealing with a newborn came up.  I still don't know how to refer to my daughter's mother other than as "my daughter's mother".

How do you deal with these subjects?

- Kate

I started transitioning in my beginning 30ies and am not through with it yet.

In social situations? Once I lied and switched my boyfriend and me, and I felt bad about lying. Otherwise, I avoided anything gendered in my past, which is not that difficuolt as I always led a kind of neutral life if you go by clichés. However, there's a lot of things I cannot talk about with people who don't know that I was not always male.

It's not easy though to socialize with people and leave deliberate blanks because you do't want to out yourself. In fact, it's a pain in the ass, as your past shouldn't matter but well it does.

I avoid all gendered pronouns and refer to ex wives as exes.  All things when I was a child are "when I was younger" or "when I was little".

My life history is not only androgynous, but pretty damn male-sounding: baseball, hockey, science/tech magnet school, volunteer firefighter, aircraft mechanic in the Navy, math/geophysics major in college.  I have yet to think of anything I'd have to change from my childhood other than not mentioning that I wasn't allowed to play football. And I can't talk about getting married in Vegas, or about being married in the military, or about sleeping around a lot when I first joined (unless I change the genders of my partners). And of course I can't talk about being pregnant, but that's an easy one since I don't have a kid to show for it. I think that's really about it.

I refer to myself in the past as 'she', and as Beverly.  Same now, same then.  About my children?  My partner had our children.  Any more information than that about our children is really prying, and I don't allow it.  With people who knew me then, I refer to myself in the past as she, and Beverly.  After all......I was Beverly then, really.  It's easy, and much simpler.  The people hearing this, who knew me then, simply accept it.

I am only young so this has never been an issue, it is now I'm pregnant though. Not quite sure how I'm going to talk about that.

K8

I hope you don't mind another contribution from someone who isn't in your position.

During my brief time living normally, I was in my late teens. I did make references to being a little girl, and going to an all girl's school. I regreted that as soon as I said it. Not because I regreted conceiling my genetic background, but because I realised I didn't have the knowledge to back it up.

I spend quite a lot of time on the net as female. Any references to my own life I either use the female gender or think of my wife in those situation.

When I eventually do change and present in public, I honestly don't know. I would like to think I can relax and just avoid conversations where gender might be significant. Equally, it would be great if I simply didn't need to worry. That people would accept me and what I had to do.

But, in reality, I have to say, this is something I have thought about and just don't know for certain.

Sorry to have such a negative reply. But your qustion has made me think about this. For that I thank you.

As a younger transitioner thankfully this is not an issue that I have really had to deal with - beyond sometimes tactfully failing to mention that the person that my ex fellowship encouraged me to briefly marry, in the hope of straightening me out, was a woman... That obviously failed! 

Often I just don't mention that I was ever "married" before anyway as it didn't last very long.

More seriously though, the way I would talk about my past would depend entirely on whom I was talking to and how much they knew, although the difference is quite subtle.

As my schools, subject choices and childhood activities and lifestyle present no real issues:

with someone who knows nothing "when I was a girl"

with someone who knows that I was trans/intersex "when I was an almost-girl"

I'm still young so I don't have this problem as much as the older folks here do. I've had boyfriends and girlfriends I've never been married my childhood is mostly a blur to me already I don't know if that's by choice or just because as a kid I was very very heavily medicated so I couldn't remember what I was doing half the time until I was around fifteen and stopped taking the medication despite what everyone else wanted and low and behold I've yet to fall over and die like everyone expected I'm actually much healthier then I was before because I'm not in a stupor 24/7. I can remember a few things I suppose my first computer, watching anime, accidentally hitting my brother in the crotch with a metal pipe. (Funny at the time for me probably not him and I feel terrible about it now. XD) But nothing distinctly female hobby wise. I did play with dolls with my sister because I got yelled at if I didn't. After a while I didn't mind it too much because she always let me play as Ken or one of my brother's action figures. I also like most kids enjoyed sticking her dolls in the microwave, cutting their hair off, and flushing them down the toilet. [Or at least trying. ] Other then that my childhood from what I can remember anyway is pretty gender neutral.

I lie. A lot.

The longer I'm on T, the more my childhood, happy as it was, seems like a movie I watched. It's as if I only began to exist two years ago.

I don't get very close to many people, so it's easy to perpetuate or at least initiate a big, heaping lie about my past. I don't see any problem with it.

My family, God love them, goes along with it; particularly my brothers, who much prefer having a baby brother now.

So, yeah. Lying, I'm all for it.