(I posted this elswhere too.... btw, I was born in 1954 - it was a different world then.
Of course, I articulate my thoughts in the language I now have, but they were there)I've mentioned this in the past but I thought I'd expand on it.
I have no doubt that I am transsexual and am glad to be post op and who I now am, though I functioned well as a non-macho heterosexual male and used my male genitalia without the revulsion and extreme hatred of it that some feel - I just accepted that this was how-I-was, in the same way as fair hair and blue eyes.
However, looking back to my infancy it is clear to me in hindsight that I knew something was not right.
I can clearly remember early baths alone which were probably the first time that I had been totally naked for a reasonable amount of time whilst alone.
I looked at my body and was struck by my genitals. They seemed odd, out of place and not in-keeping with the rest of me.
All the other parts on my body were smooth and streamlined, but this thing stuck out. It seemed very odd that it should do so. The only other part of me that projected in any way was the nose and the nose seemed to make sense - it was obviously necessary to have the holes in my face so that I could smell and if they were just holes then things would catch in them and fall into them so it made sense that they were arranged to face downwards.
But the way the willie stuck out was odd and so was the foreskin. It also had that strange skin bag hung underneath and the skin on the bag was really odd and not like any other skin I had. There were also things inside the bag which were loose and moved about - I could feel them. There was nowhere else on my body that was like that, everywhere else was firm and fixed and you could not tell what was inside by feeling it from the outside.
It all seemed totally bizarre and strange and alien, like it didn't belong and as if it had all been tacked on as an afterthought.
I inspected it closely and was intrigued when I discover The Seam.
Clear as day, there was a seam which ran up the skin-bag as if it had been made in two halves and stuck together. The seam ran all the way up my willie too, right up to the foreskin which also seemed strange skin and a bit like the skin-sack.
There were no other seams anywhere on my body. I know that I checked and I have a clear memory of wriggling around in the bath so that I could check the soles of my feet.
My legs kind of joined onto my body at that point. That was different to my arms which were clearly separated and one each side, but the legs sort of met there so perhaps it made some sort of sense that there might be a join but it still seemed an odd place to leave the only join on my body. And there was also the skin bag etc.
I know that I puzzled over that seam often for the next 4 years or so, up to about age seven and a half.
I still knew nothing of the difference down there between boys and girls. I had never thought to question it and assumed that we were all the same. I had already swallowed the disappointment that I would not have breasts when I grew up because it had been explained to me that girls had them to feed babies and boys didn't. Boys grew beards instead, which seemed like a pretty bad deal to me even then.
My Mum got pregnant. She told me that I was going to have a little brother or sister and about how the baby was growing in her stomach. I asked her how it was going to get out and she declined to explain and said she didn't really know. I said "Well you had me, so you must know how I got out?" and she said that she couldn't really tell because the doctor covered her up with blankets etc so she couldn't really see.
I said "Well you must be able to feel it?" and she said No because they gave her gas, like when I went to the dentist.
I wondered about that, about how the baby was going to get out for few days and one day in the bath a possibility dawned on me. I shouted my Mum into the bathroom and pointed out my Seam and asked her if THAT was perhaps how the baby got out?
She was non-committal, said maybe and fobbed me off again, but I knew that I was on to something and continued to wonder about how it could all possibly work out.
I know that I told my Mum to pay attention this time so that she could tell me the answer to this mystery
( kids eh!)
In due course, the baby was born and turned out to be my sister.
At first nappy change my Mum showed me the difference and explained in reasonable detail how the baby got out, adding that stretching that little hole so wide hurt a lot.
I looked at my sister's tiny pussy and knew that I should have been born like that and I cursed the fact that mine had healed up and become what it had.
But the mystery of the Seam was solved at last.
I remember going out to play the next day and staring in disbelief at every person I saw. ALL of these people had arrived into the world that way? It made my little mind reel, but a lot of other things were dropping into place as well now. Things that I had just accepted and never thought about - puppies and kittens and cows udders and milk.
My innocence was disintegrating - thank God I didn't find out about sex and sperm and stuff for another 4 years! :-/
Of course, I look back on that now and wonder about my fascination with The Seam - was I just a highly intelligent (if remarkably naive) young child, slowly learning and trying to work the world out or was that an early sign of my gender dysphoria, my mind looking down at my body and shouting "Something is not right here...." ?
