I started transitioning on my own back in late 90's for last time and then got online to get some extra help. I only got online because of transitioning. However, i started on my own..

yes. youtube was the beginning point of me learning about transgender stuff. i discovered it and spent countless nights staying up all night, watching and crying. if it hadn't been for the internet, i don't know how i would have ever learned about it, all i knew before was about drag queens. well i also saw one of those sex change operation shows, i didn't know about hormones, and i didn't know that ftms were possible i thought it was all mtfs. in one way i'm beyond grateful for the internet, in another way it might have been easier if i had never learned.

@Sam, what do you mean by in another way it might have been better not have learned?

I've heard of sex change operations before, but I thought transsexual meant crossdresser until I learned what a mtf transition was.

Quote from: jainie marlena on September 22, 2011, 11:08:43 PM
@Sam, what do you mean by in another way it might have been better not have learned?

if i had never figured out i had a choice of what i can do in the matter of gender. like if i had just continued wishing i was a boy instead of learning that, oh it's not just about your genitals, i can identify however i please and i can even change my outside to make others agree. i just think it might've been easier to continue my life oblivious, does that make sense? if not i'll try to explain better later, i've got to get to work in a minute

Yeah, I understand when I frist started I was hell bent on getting a VJ until I learn to express from the inside out and not outside in.

if i had never figured out i had a choice of what i can do in the matter of gender

The internet might have helped you get to that point quicker, but the matter of choice springs first from doubt.  As long as you would have have the doubt sooner or later you would start to think about other possibilities, and hence, choices.

And, no doubt, a lot of this has been made possible during the same time as the rise of the internet - but, at least in the beginning - it was being driven by different factors than the internet.  Widespread hormone treatment, RLE, therapy specializing in these issues, surgery outside of one or two in the world all come about in the 80s and hit a kind of critical mass in the early 90s, just as the net was beginning to form.  But people were transitioning before the net.  It was just rare - in that only a very few people were doing it and it was fantastically expensive.  But a few in the 70s turned into a mini-movement in the 80s, and by the end of the 90s a lot of stuff had been put into place, and enough people processed through that it became widely (but not universally) available.

And there was some information back in the dark ages, pretty much all clinical psychology, Dear Abby columns and Myra Breckenridge.  By the time I started to check out information in the early 70s' there was stuff to find, and unlike the net, most of the information was good, verified, and simply stated - as opposed to being crusaded.

The net helps, for sure, but every tool is a weapon if you hold it right, and it's one of the strangest and most far reaching social experiments ever undertaken - and it's pretty much been undertaken by chaos, no rules, no laws, all information appearing equally and very hard to check, information from sources that, though it sounds good, is more than likely not going to be possible from other lives.  Knowing what options were open to other people, does not insure your ability to obtain those options.  And that can be very hard.

@jainie marlena, what's a VJ?

I lived in small towns in western Oklahoma for the start of my life and the libraries here are quite biased on many fronts.  Those that try to stock a library with oddball topics are generally seen as people wasting the libraries time, money, etc.  Heck, finding a book on puberty that wasn't full of christian bull->-bleeped-<- on the evils of masturbating was hard enough.  So finding one about us?  Ya... those just didn't exist and anything such as -the gay- was seen in a very negative light.  Today is is slightly better about -the gay- as they put it years ago however still quite poor in schools and over all tolerance in rural areas or smaller cities.  Anyways that is another topic...

So ya, without the aid of the net?  I'd never have found the resources to figure out who or what I was and finally have words to express how I felt.  It allowed me to come to terms but sadly I came out to my mother and lost my path due to that bitch for years.  However.. thanks to the net I was able to find out still more about myself and how to get hormones outside a still very broken system designed by old biggots from the 1950's way of thinking.  That in turn let doctors aid me without going through all the steps of a broken system and then to find support groups that nudged me further on the right path sorta speak.  I still often stand alone as they only had X to offer me as a person however... it is only thanks to the net that I am now the legally passing Korlee!  And have the credit cards that can at least make an 8k Canadian surgeon happen if I find a trustworthy one.

The net is a tool that should never be controlled because it allows people like us to exist despite a broken system and the biggotry of humanity.

@kim 526, a VJ is a vagina. Lol. Just something we call it here.

So the 10 that said no are all pre-internet? I don't know there seems to be a big boom coming. What do you think?

The net is a tool that should never be controlled

It's already highly controlled, and will only become more so.

Quote from: jainie marlena on September 30, 2011, 10:28:34 AM
So the 10 that said no are all pre-internet? I don't know there seems to be a big boom coming. What do you think?

I'm one of the 10 that pre-dates the internet. But I'm wondering if some may have been influenced far too much by the internet who may not otherwise have felt the need to transition.

I'm FTM but oh well I'll intrude on this thread... without the Internet I would never have inadvertently discovered transsexualism and the options available. The conservative Christian environment would have kept me sheltered long past age 16.

Quote from: Ciarán on October 01, 2011, 01:37:19 AM
I'm FTM but oh well I'll intrude on this thread... without the Internet I would never have inadvertently discovered transsexualism and the options available. The conservative Christian environment would have kept me sheltered long past age 16.

This is what happened to me. I was 28 before I really began exploring the internet. Your not intruding you are just as much a part of this as I am. Christianity kept me blind to a lot of things for years. They jugde by what they see but God looks on heart and knows the true me just as he knows the true you.

It was the opposite for me.  I always had gender issues and expected to transition, but I didn't bother to look it up online until a year or two ago.  When I did, it only caused me to realize that transitioning probably isn't for me.

Reading about trans people's experiences online showed me how different my own experiences are, and have been.  It seems like most people who transition are intensely uncomfortable with the bodies they were born with.  That seems to be a primary concern.  I'm not uncomfortable with my body, at least not enough to want to go through the pain of surgery.  And after reading about people's experiences with hormones, that doesn't sound like something I want to do either.  For me, it's just that I think like a guy, and it's hard to live as female when you think more like a guy.  And I don't think transitioning is the only way to deal with that.  I'm actually pretty comfortable with the male brain / female body situation.  Sometimes it even seems like the best of both worlds.

I can't say it's "because of the Internet" that I decided not to transition.  I think it was more that I went through a time of closely examining the option, and that included therapy and meeting people in person as well as reading about it online.

Being from SF, I knew what ts's were. I knew of all the different varieties and stuff. I had met them at comic cons, in bars, etc.

I had no idea there were so many varying degrees of it. I think I had the most help from knowing a few of them at MACY's and other department stores. Macys has like 10 of them there. I got to know them.

The internet certainly gave me a different perspective on the people I sometimes see on the streets and what they might be going through. It was interesting and I got out of my perspective.

As for experiences, I can say my experience is completely unique. I never thought when I was a 14 yr old gay boy in high school, I'd be a ts now.

Quote from: jainie marlena on September 30, 2011, 10:28:34 AM
So the 10 that said no are all pre-internet? I don't know there seems to be a big boom coming. What do you think?

No. I first looked up transsexualism online in 2004. I really, really wish I hadn't. I should have just taken the referral to a GT from my regular therapist and stayed away from the net. Instead I got a blast of toxic, depressing stories; misinformation; and a conformity of experience that seemed suffocating. It's a big part of why I spent another six years trying to figure out a way of surviving without transitioning, because transitioning seemed so awful. Turns out it was all bull->-bleeped-<- and my transition has been easier than any that I've heard of.

Now I find useful resources on the net, but back then it was the worst possible thing for me.

thanks for the votes keep them comin. If you haven't voted please do if you think it is relevant to you.