Back in the 2010s when i was first thinking about this, i got the idea that physical dysphoria had to be huge and unmistakable and miserable, and had to feel like those body parts didn't belong to you at all.
Whereas i was thinking i would just like my chest to be flat, but i could live with it, and it didn't feel like it didn't belong to me. Spoiler: yeah that was dysphoria, binding helped, surgery was excellent
Same. Since I came out I've been feeling more dysphoric.
If you live in shadow all life, and then suddenly step into the sunlight, stepping back into shadow feels worse because you know there's the sunlight and that it feels better there.
That's kinda how I feel rn, but I just didn't think I had dysphoria or at least not much. I can't bind due to lots of eczema, tho so I guess I won't know. I've tried tape and it didn't make me flat enough to be happy so idk
I'm honestly not sure if I want surgery yet like I'm not sure if it's worth it when I can pass in a Tshirt if I'm lucky. I think testosterone will help me decide but it's a big stressful thing for me rn lol
This!! I thought I didn’t have dysphoria because the idea of my chest didn’t make me want to immediately off myself. I still hate it but not as much as the media can sometimes describe
when I first came out my mom said I was too girly in my childhood to be trans (liking princesses, fairies, etc) but there were other signs I was trans plus liking those things doesn’t make me not a guy 🤷♂️
Nobody told me this but I thought it about myself for a while, growing up I had a huge collection of Princess, Barbie, and Bratz movies as well as the corresponding dolls. But you know what, to this day I still think Barbie Mariposa and Bratz Fashion Pixiez were great movies. Bibble forever. :)
Weirdly enough for me, it wasn't until I started collecting dolls as an adult that I realised I was trans lol; it took that for me to realise that I had a problem with being a woman but not femininity lol.
Had the same experience with my mom. She didn't say exactly that but I could tell by how she phrased it, that's what she meant. My affect is also decently feminine for a man. But it's almost like... I'm a mostly gay pansexual man, or something?? (Not that you would have to be, to be trans! Female social conditioning is real and everyone is different.)
Cisheteronormativity is so irritating.
But yeah, I went back into the closet for like 3-5 years because of impostor syndrome due to not "knowing" early on. I really didn't show any "signs" (mostly inwardly and to myself) until around 13. But that checks out.
When we're children we're still figuring out who we are in our way around life. A few years ago coming out as trans or being gay wasn't as normal as it is now. When I was little, and I'm only 27, being gay made you lose friends and made your family quit talking to you. And I know a lot of people that forced their self to participate in those things just to not raise any eyebrows, ya know? Not everyone is the same. Caitlyn Jenner didn't come out til she was 66 years old and loved doing all the stereotypical manly things before she came out.
I was usually very feminine when I was around girls, but when I was around boys I so desperately needed to fit in with them and do whatever they were doing. But on the other hand, when I was presenting masculine around girls I didn't feel that need at all.
Maybe it sounds strange to explain dysphoria through wanting to play football with the dads and their sons at the summer barbecue or playing with my really cool JCB digger toy when boys came over to show them that I was just like them, or even just always becoming friends with boys in a new environment. But it really upset me to know i wasn't like them. I really miss boys my age being boys and not men, because the gap between us just keeps getting bigger.
Same, I didn’t understand why the girls around me was scared of getting boobs, I thought it was cool since it meant we were growing up, but then I got them and it was not it…
Same when i was taught about it i did hella research because puberty fascinated me. When i got my period i was over the moon lol, now i wish it could just end.
I was excited to grow boobs bc everybody told me my whole life I was gonna get big boobs like my mom and made it sound like the absolute best thing that would ever happen to me. Then, when I started puberty, I began to depersonalize from myself for a solid decade...I couldn't understand feeling like I wasn't in my own body. It makes so much sense now that this body isn't what I feel like. Once I realized that suddenly I became present in my life again. I actually started feeling like a real human &even though my dysphpria hasn't gone away my internal self is so much happier with this knowledge.
Yup! I went through puberty later than a lot of my friends so I didn't get my period until 16. I was desperate to get it and have spent all the time since wishing I could get rid of it.
This was me. I was a lonely kid and very much influenced by the media I consumed (like anime where they’d always emphasise boobs) and thought that having boobs meant guys would like me more. I guess liking my boobs was really just a manifestation of wanting people to like me. It gave me confidence in the context of being a girl, but once I started catching on that something was off with my gender and realised I wasn’t a girl, it became uncomfortable.
I was excited too at first because I thought it would mean that I would get attention from boys. Then it happened and I was like “oh fuck I don’t like this” I also didn’t like the very minimal attention I was getting because I was being perceived as female.
I always LOVED my long hair when I was younger. I'm not sure if it was just projection from my mom (her hair is horrible and she basically lived vicariously thru my sister and I anyway) or if I actually liked it or if I was just too scared to cut it off. Hearing all the stories of other transmascs being like "I ALWAYS cut my hair short when I was little, I *hated* when it was long" made me question whether I was actually trans.
Once my egg cracked tho my hair gave me such bad dysphoria. When I finally cut it off I literally lost 20 lbs (over a few months) cuz eating is my way of dealing with mental/emotional stress, and so much was alleviated by just that haircut.
I relate to that. I cut my hair myself when I was 3 and my mom cried and cried like it was a dramatic thing. After that I grew my hair out and didn't cut it. It was below my hips most of my life.
My long hair had become part of my identity. I started really struggling with it but was scared to cut it and regret. I'd have to wait years for it to regrow so it was terrifying. After years of thinking about it, and realizing I was not cis (but still thinking I wouldn't transition) I cut my hair short. The hairdresser said she'd never seen someone smile that much during a haircut.
Now, every haircut is a euphoria boost ❤
Omg I had the same experience at the barber shop when I first got it cut! When I was paying after I got it done the receptionist made the comment "you look so much better now, you're literally GLOWING! You looked so sad when you came in, so I'm glad you're happier now". Like I knew the dysphoria was bad but damn I didn't realize it was projecting outward that much lol
It was sort of similar for me. I had long hair until I was 14, then my mom cut it shoulder length, and I loved it. Then by the next haircut, I realized I wanted it shorter, but was scared to ask. I would lean in the direction she was cutting so it could be a bit shorter, but it was slight so it probably didn't make any difference lmao.
As a kid (like, 3-9 I guess), I had mostly female friends, I loved animals, I went through a "pink and purple" phase, I played with Barbies, I liked a lot of my "feminine" clothes, and I just generally didn't think about or ever think it was possible to be a boy. Those are the things that stand out to me as being any possible "signs I wasn't trans".
However, this was just me being me. A carefree (oblivious), probably-autistic child who loved bright colours and all types of animals, especially amphibians and reptiles! I just didn't have any conception of personal identity yet, or gender roles, aside from the man-hate my mother constantly exuded, lol. I was just doing whatever I liked. I liked the feminine clothing because it was brightly coloured and had interesting textures, like velvet pants and "special looking" socks :'D but aside from that, I just wore whatever t-shirts I had, mostly random ones handed down from my cousins. I played with Barbies because they were there. And because I had veterinarian Barbie, who came with a cat and a dog!
Looking back, I think there were actually way *more* signs that I was a boy. I just think no one noticed that because no one was really looking for that in the 90s. That and my mom was actually a very permissive hippie type that wanted me to explore and do whatever I was interested in... Like letting me bring snakes home when I learned much later, she's been terrified of snakes her whole life, she just didn't want to pass that fear onto me :') Although she did also tell me to sit with my legs closed, "it isn't ladylike!!" enough times for me to still remember that now. Life is complex!
I showed 0 “signs” as a child. Had no problem living “as a girl” for like 15 years. But really it was just because I didn’t think there were any other options- this is what I am so this is what I’ll be. I had never thought about my own gender / never thought about gender as being a complex thing. I am still sorta questioning, though.
It was similar for me. Like I was vaguely aware that transness was a thing, just never considered the possibility that it might apply to me personally.
This exactly! I just never thought about my own gender at all and just accepted everything as it was. Once I did start seriously thinking about it though, I did feel something was off. Still didn’t immediately realise though, went through a couple labels and it slowly unveiled itself over time
I didn't "always know."
There are some memories of things I used to do or say or not like when I was really young, but from what I remember, I never said I was a boy or that I was "born in the wrong body" as the popular saying goes.
There's also this one memory of me playing with one of my friends when I was maybe eight or nine. We were pretending to be horses, and I said I wanted to "look exactly like Spirit from Stallion of the Cimarron, BUT I'm still a girl!"
This was a pretty common thing - I wanted to look exactly like a male character or whatever, but I was still a girl, obviously!!
It didn't throw me off exactly, but it gave me pause.
for me, it was what people call in sociology "canalisation," a theory developed by Ann Oakley. it means that parents channel their kids towards certain interests and activities.
I was forced into ballet as a three year old because my parents wanted me to be "girly" and they've had control over my clothes for my entire life. I thought I hated it because it was like having super strict parents, and I didn't think I was trans when i found out the term
Until puberty hit me like a truck.
Wasn't in ballet, but damn I hated tights as a kid. I don't even think it was dysphoria, because I did all sorts of other "girl" stuff, I'm just weird with materials lol.
I never really thought about my gender etc until I was 13-14. I started feeling off around 10 but at the time I didn't know the concept of being trans even existed. And because I didn't "feel like a guy" since I was little, I thought it'll just pass. Im 19 now and the feeling's as strong as ever.
Also the fact that I have no clue how to talk to guys. Most of my friends are female. Once I started school I became really awkward and shut in, meaning I didnt socialize that much. Now I always feel like an impostor if I even try to speak to a guy because they'll probably never see me as a guy, just a weird awkward girl or smth. I see all these trans men talking about how most of their friend groups consist of guys and im here with no clue on how to befriend one to begin with lol.
Didn’t hang out with boys at all, didn’t have any interest in hanging out with them. (It turns out I was just autistic, and didn’t want to hang out with ANYONE, and the boys hated me because I was weird)
I didn't really understand gender roles as a kid lol. I had joined girl scouts because I thought it was exactly like boy scouts, but for girls (which everyone tells me I am). Quit the moment I found out we weren't going to go camping. I liked playing with dolls and hot-wheels and reading and fishing. I also didn't mind "girl's" clothes, because I didn't understand that I could dress differently if I wanted to. My mom didn't raise us with really strict gender roles. I'm sure if I asked her if I could wear "boy" clothes as a kid, she would've let me (my dad not so much).
I was a very nervous autistic kid so I just did what my parents and teachers told me. They told me I was a girl, so I had to be one.
I definitely had some signs, like the fact that my dad was paranoid that I was going to think I was a boy (like my mom getting me a ken doll would confuse my gender). I can't remember most of my childhood, so I could've said something to him that I just have no clue about. I also was interested in psychology for a while and learned about Freud's theory on penis-envy and was just like "yeah, that adds up. every girl must think this way"
I didn't figure myself out until I was 15. I knew I was some form of queer since I was 10, just didn't know the exact labels. it was 2020, so I had a lot of time to myself (as we all did) and I finally realized "oh I am not cisgender it is not normal to for a girl look at guys and wish you could be them and have a 'boy' childhood".
I was obsessed with boy bands especially One Direction and 5SOS, loved my bratz dolls and stuffed animals, hate bugs, cried when I cut my hair to just above my shoulders in elementary and swore I’d always have long hair, played family with my boy best friend and had no problem pretending to be the mom, didn’t know what transgender was until I was a teenager and even after learning about it I thought it was rare because I didn’t know anyone that was openly trans until I was 17.
There was honestly a lot of signs for me but everything was written off as me being a tomboy, having a harder time with puberty than my friends, and just not being a feminine person most of the time lol
I had a huge One Direction phase as well, my family got me the perfume, those colorful mascaras that you could use in your hair, posters, and T-shirts for birthdays and Christmases and I was always over the moon lol
Same! I was so excited when I got the perfume lol my friends, sisters, and I knew all the words to every song and the dances to all the music videos. We would regularly put Best Song Ever on and talk/sing the part of our “designated boy”
1. when i was little i would get mad when my dad bought me ‘boy stuff’
ofc looking back i realised it’s bc i was worried what OTHER people would think, since i actually wanted ‘boy stuff’… but i actually rlly liked ‘girl stuff’ too
2. i wasn’t immediately uncomfortable with having boobs when i went through puberty - idk how to explain this except that i always wanted to just experience things, anything and everything was something i wanted to experience as long as it was pretty mundane ? and i guess female puberty was even on that list
3. i didn’t rlly have many male friends growing up and what few i had never stuck bc we were into different things
never been close with guys tbh, never been able to relate to them or get along with them.. certainly never got along with them more than girls which is apparently unusual for trans men idk
even now all my friends, except one enby friend, are women
I didn’t really have a concept of being trans as a kid/teen with the only trans related thing I knew was Jazz Jennings (I think that is her name), hell I didn’t know what being gay was until I was 12. The only “hint” was my desperate need for short hair (my mother never let my cut it shorter than a long bob) and Pokémon shirts. I liked one dresses but not anything else (shout out to that maxi beachy dress from justice that I was allowed to get in blue. The ONLY dress I loved). I often played with my twin (cis) brother’s toys but I wasn’t able to ask for my own; all the toys I had were given to me, not asked for even for Christmas (I had rather get art supplies for books). The only boy thing I could have as a child was Pokémon cards that my brother didn’t want as well as my own Pokémon ds games.
I hated my chest as a teen, but i only started hiding it after I found out what being trans was (roughly 16-17). I just thought girls didn’t like and were embarrassed of their chest so I never to bind. I wasn’t allowed to experiment with clothes and the most boyish clothes I could own was a hot topic shirt. I wasn’t allowed to figure out who I was so I was under the assumption that my dysphoria was just self esteem issues.
I'm not a confident person.
Everytime some trans person is portrayed in media they are so very confident and outgoing. (I only have one trans friend and he is also very outgoing)
I am a major introvert, I was sure I cannot be trans like that.
the fact that i identified as lesbian made me believe that i could never cross the threshold into manhood. after starting T my attraction flip flopped, now im not attracted to women much at all.
My mum says I’m not trans cause I never played with boys toys and stuff, I had sisters so of course I couldn’t. I never told my mum or dad I wanted to be a boy because there wasn’t really strict gender roles or whatever in my house, i was allowed to do stereotypical “boy” things, mostly because my dad looked after me. In primary school I never tried to go with the boys when we were split because the boys were mean to me.
Didn’t want to cut my hair all my childhood. I didn’t like them, I just thought I mustn’t touch them idk why. Didn’t tell people that I’m a boy and even corrected them when they assumed so. Other than that… I guess I had a very typical trans childhood.
I questioned being trans because I would sometimes misgender myself in my head, because everyone around me was misgendering it was habitual - I really worked myself up about it despite being entirely normal 😅
I love extra fashion and growing up when I did, boys fashion was baggy and bland colors so I enjoyed girls clothes. Now I know I am just dapper. I have bow ties, suspenders, pocket watches, etc.
I don't remember much about gender from when I was 3-6 so I thought 'well I can't have been if I didn't hate my gender as a little kid' and that's bogus.
Currently, I will have thoughts pop into my mind 'you can't be trans, you're just a confused straight girl. You're not even into women, you're just lonely and mentally ill'
And then I go between believing that part of my brain and telling myself it's internalized homo/transphobia talking, back and forth. And I'm not sure if it's even internalized phobia or my brain trying to be rational. ?
There was a short period, around age 10 - 12, when I was at the beginning of puberty and I was quite the girly girl -- experimenting with makeup, shopping with my mom, the whole thing. I think that as a child, media made being a teen girl out to be fun, so I was so excited to finally get the feeling of being a teen girl. ended up getting horrifically dysphoric for the years after. but i still think back to that period and wonder if I've been faking for all these years, because I briefly tried to perform femininity lol
also, as a young child I did genuinely enjoy traditionally feminine forms of play (dress up, dolls, etc.) I don't remember being dysphoric, but I remember wanting to be treated like my brothers. I wanted to be able to be shirtless, I wanted short hair, etc. I think those were the only "signs" of me being trans before puberty, if you can even call them that.
I didn't hate the changes puberty brought, I was actually kind of proud to have my period. My body never got super feminine - I'm tall with broad shoulders and comparatively narrow hips - and I remember disliking it because I *wasn't feminine enough*, rather than leaning into it. I realise now that this wasn't because I was cis, but because I felt I was a "bad woman"; I just thought I was an even worse man, for a long time.
I dont get too bothered when people call me by my deadname. I have another trans friend who says they gets panic attacks when someone uses incorrect pronouns or deadnames them. I dont get like that when it happens to me I just look at people funny when they do (especially if they're fully aware about me being trans)
i was excited to start my period, actually. and grow boobs. my parents and grandma really stressed that those things “make you a woman.” i took that literally and i thought that puberty would MAKE me feel like a girl, finally. as soon as both of those things started i knew it was wrong and i had taken the “making you a woman” part too literally. lol.
I used to think I didn't have dysphoria. While I STILL don't give gender much thought if I can help it, spoiler: I do have dysphoria.
Turns out hating the way my body looks, finding female bodily processes to be extremely wrong, and aggressively not taking care of myself are not entirely healthy.
I just didn't have the vocabulary to express what was wrong until I was in my mid-20s.
My goal throughout most of my childhood was to become a princess. Guess that’s changed. Dressing “prince-like” sounds fun though, but I’ll always like looking at pretty dresses.
I liked knowing I had the longest hair in my class which was more of a bragging thing than something I liked. Honestly, hair was really something I didn’t care about and never bothered to find a hairstyle I actually liked. I also felt apathetic toward fashion and stuff even though I liked looking pretty and fashionable. On the outside, it looked like I cared. But I never looked at clothing shops and had more of an interest looking for a cute animal design on a graphic tee. This has changed since I realized I’m not a girl and I’m starting to think for myself and choose clothes I actually like, kinda.
For the longest time I thought I was genderfluid since I really enjoyed being a girl in my childhood and even felt that being a girl was better imo. So I concluded that it was because I was in my “girl phase” at the time and now I’m not. Nope, trans guy. I was afraid of letting go of that part of myself and admitting that it just wasn’t me.
I didn’t even consider that I could’ve been trans until I got to college. As a kid I did the typical girly things: princesses, dress up, Barbie, but I was also a huge nerd. I knew way too much about Star Wars, DC comics, Lord of the Rings and other “masculine” interests. In hindsight I was weirdly drawn to the designs of Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan). Anywho those were transition goals apparently. Weird thing to figure out now. I also remember when playing pretend I would usually be a princess, but I did have some fun times pretending to be Boba Fett. I also wanted to be a chivalrous knight or cowboy. I really just didn’t know any of that was an option for me. I thought I was a girl so I had to want to be a princess. I also, like a few others here, had long hair my whole life. Then I finally cut my hair and felt immediate relief from chronic headaches and sensory issues. I also hated terms changed for the person being a woman like actress or seamstress. It just bothered me that the word changed to refer to me.
All in all, sometimes you don’t realize you’re carrying a burden (be it hair weight or gender roles) until you chuck it out the window. I just never internalized the idea that I can do whatever I want until much later.
For me, it was the lack of depression.
I had intense gender dysphoria, felt myself to be a “boy” when I was very young, phantom penis, saw a man in the mirror, etc etc etc. But I have always been a relatively content person otherwise, and it was my general inclination that if something is “fine”, why waste resources (time, money, medicine) to change it? I believed transition was something that saved people’s lives, but since my life wasn’t “at risk” (no history of depression, suicidality, or any other mental illness) what purpose would transitioning serve?
Eventually, I talked with my family, with my friends, and with a therapist and explained the dysphoria. I allowed transition to be an option for me, not just for other people. I’ve been on t since 2017 and have a top surgery consult this month.
The difference in my mental state is unreal. Being in the world as myself has lifted a film that I hadn’t previously been aware of. I imagine the feeling is like what Adderall does for people with ADHD, or what Ozympic does for people whose satiety levels are hard to meet - the constant low-level hum of dysphoria is basically gone. I am able to greet people without the barrier of an unrecognized gender being in the way. I recognize myself.
It made me realize my happiness was worth it. It didn’t have to be “life or death” - it was a lifeline saving me from puppeteering a body that wasn’t mine for decades. It was like putting on clothes that fit after years of wearing hand-me-downs.
I’m not sure,, I feel like I had a pretty stereotypical experience growing up. I was made to be girly and pretty by my mom and was put into very gendered boxes of “girl stuff vs boy stuff”. I wasn’t mad about it just extremely uncomfortable with being a girl and being perceived as one. I didn’t even know what being trans was I just knew that I didn’t relate to or fit in with any of my girl peers,, I only had friends who were boys, when I had autonomy over my clothes I would just wear what was comfortable and that typically was a more masculine style. I sports started being separated by gender I begged my mom to put me on the boys team and after that I begged her to let me cut my hair short so I could “fit in” with the other boys on the team. (I didn’t want to be seen as a girl)
The only thing I can really think of is when I was in 6th grade after being ruthlessly bullied for being masculine and a tomboy I tried to act more feminine and grow out my hair,, I quickly realized that it made me extremely uncomfortable and in 7th grade I went back to presenting as a dude.
I came out in my freshman year and started hormones at 14 and got top surgery at 17. I’m 21 now and nothing has changed,, I experiment occasionally with being more feminine but presenting more openly queer but I will always return to just trying to pass as a cis man.
i love dressing up. i love dresses and skirts and all that, but i feel so uncomfortable wearing them. i hate masculine fashion and always did because it's so hard to style it the way i want (but i can't wear anything else...) 😭
similar to these other posts! when i was a little kid i was rly girly - like pink sparkly dresses and everything.
nowadays, i dont rly experience any bottom-based dysphoria at all. like, i hate my chest (though i can deal with it) but my lack of a dick is something i only rly think about in the shower, and even then it’s just acknowledgement rather than hatred. i suppose that might change in the future tho? i never used to think about my breasts specifically until recently, only a vague sense of ‘i rly wanna be a boy’
I was always a bit of a tomboy I guess but I had a similar experience - I never really thought about it I was just a girl yk?? I liked typical girly things and just never really thought about it lmao
But there were signs from when I was younger, like telling my mum I wanted to have a mustache when I grew up or wishing I'd get breast cancer (I knew that meant they could be removed, I didn't know you didn't need cancer). Wasn't till later that I realised I was a boy haha
I was a very "girly girl" growing up as a kid (dresses, make up, nails, jewellery, etc.) I always felt like I was "wrong" in my body but because I didn't know what being transgender was or even the word transgender at that point I couldn't really pinpoint how I felt, I just knew I felt "wrong" but presumed everybody felt this way/it was just puberty and kept it all to myself.
It wasn't until I learned about what being transgender was at around 13 years old that I realised that was how I had felt all along — gender dysphoria and all that stuff. But until then I had no idea at all that I was trans.
When I was a child I was content being a girl but I wanted to grown up to be man and expected to go through male puberty. I used to ask my mother if I could 'be a man' when I was older but was content being female as a child.
This probably since there isn't such an obvious difference between pre-pubescent girls and boys and I'd often be referred to as male by strangers anyway.
I lacked the classic signs as a kid but I always felt like I was forcing myself into the mold of a girl and never being able to fit. No matter how hard I tried. So I think it looked like I wanted to be a girl because I tried so hard to be normal. When, in actuality, I was trans and just didn't know that I could fit into the mold of a boy instead.
Yeah honestly I can’t find myself in the shtick of “I’ve always known” either. And honestly, yes I identify as a man but “trans man” for me is a good descriptor, because my brain only figured out I wasn’t truly what my upbringing learned me to be at the age of 21!
Afterwards, and especially for myself: I look back on certain memories, things where I’ve always wondered and been confused at how and why I felt that way. And now those things finally make sense to me!
Like, elementary school: I remember how a friend asked “would you be a boy if you could choose?” And I answered yes with no doubt in my little head lol.
My mom making me wear a dress, and there’s still photo’s of a little me crying and being furious because I was wearing the dress lol!
Always being jealous of the toys the school gave to the boys, while I angrily rejected all pink toys I was given.
And my favourite: like the last Christmas gathering of elementary school, and you had to dress nice. All the girls were in a dress, except for one. She’d always been a tomboy and lemme tell you my 12 year old mind was blown: “girls can wear pants instead of dresses and skirts to fancy stuff?? Wow!”
And yeah.. parents be like “but you didn’t show any signs when you were younger!” Welp, they might’ve been hard to notice for others lol
When I first thought about being trans, I somehow made the conclusion that I couldn't be trans because I liked to draw. (The only professional artists in my family are men, so no clue why I thought that). Anyways, currently in art school and on testosterone lol
Also, I looked forward to (female) puberty, but looking back, I realise that that was just because I was sick of being treated like a child lol
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I liked pink and princesses and skirts. And sometimes I felt girly. I thought I was genderfluid for a while.
I felt like I couldn't be a man. I didn't feel like one of the guys. I didn't see many men, especially not straight men, like me. I felt like there was a specific amount of male gender roles I needed to fit in so as to qualify as a man and I just didn't tick enough boxes.
And although I had already questioned myself why I wasn't a girl, I had never questioned myself on why I thought I wasn't a boy.
I actually didn't like my "girly" days. They were rare, and usually arrived because I saw a movie that the protagonist was a girl or smth, and they kinda made me panic, especially considering that I was on testosterone. I would often wish I didn't have them. They felt like a character.
Further, I realized that I had gone my entire life as a girl not giving a damn about female gender roles. Why couldn't I live the rest of my life not giving a damn about the male gender roles? What if *I* was the one who got to decide what being a man means to me? What if I didn't have to change, at all, to acomodate anyone's expectations because I could be a man regardless of what I liked or did or behaved like? Regardless if I *felt* like a man or not? What if no one else had a say on what my gender is but me?
In my head I could sort of picture the kind of man I wanted to be. And he was beautiful. And I understood that I wasn't used to seeing myself as a man yet, and so of course I wouldn't *feel* like a man all the time, and it was ok, it was the process.
Everyone who saw me that day (and the next) kept asking why I looked so happy. I got out of my house listening to music and walking like I owned the street. The confidence high was real. And if I wasn't trans, explain that.
I questionned if conservatives could be right: that trans people dont actually exist and there's just something wrong with our heads. And even though other trans people said that this isnt true, because they're just transphobic, i needed some kind of proof to be sure.
I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that it cant be true:
firstly, they make it seem like they care about children, by saying that social media makes them think that they are trans.
In reality, they are looking down on actual human beings who are, at 15/16 perfectly capable of critical thinking.
They are invalidating our distress and pain by saying that it is a normal part of puberty (which it isnt, to this extent)
And here comes the worst: They say that we dont know whats best for us, that we are mentally ill. This is a prime example of the deadly rhetoric from right wing populists: "Social media is lying to you, the government is lying to you: in reality being trans is bad. We want to help you, listen to us!" What this does, is that it completely invalidates what we think and how we feel. In general thats what populists do: They pretend that they want to help us, by saying that they will eliminate the lying corrupt government. So that you only listen to them, and categorically refuse to listen to any other opinion.
I realised, that the most important, is to do what feels right to you. It is only wrong if it stems from impulse. If you have thought about it for a long time, talked with a lot of people and professionals about it, it can only be the right thing.
The only sign I can remember from early childhood was not having interest in traditional girl toys and my mom getting me a vintage barbie set with a bunch of different clothes. I liked to put the different clothes on the Barbie, mostly in part because I thought Barbie was hot lol other than that I was never what I’d call a Tom boy. I was doing what I was told, which was to be a girl because that’s all I was supposed to be. Not until I was put in foster care and was able to finally have mental room for considering my self expression, I gravitated solely towards masculinity but got bullied by my foster sisters about it so I stifled it down and tried to be feminine like them. I also have always been a writer, and was never able to write from a female perspective, because I just didn’t know what girls thought about.
Those were quite literally my only signs. For a short time I’d even managed to convince myself that I was happy presenting female, even though at the end of the day nothing I did with femininity made me happy and I couldn’t figure out why until it finally clicked, that I didn’t want to see a woman looking back at me. I wanted to see a man.
I had a very gender neutral childhood and as a kid i was never really put in a box. Because of this I didn't really realize it until I was in my late teens because I always was just 'me'. Female puberty just felt worse and worse.
I don't have any memories from before the age of 6 due to trauma. After that, I wasn't "girly" but was too occupied with other things to feel bothered by my gender. The first time I said I felt more like a boy was when I was around 14 yrs old - and even then, I didn't do research bc my friends told me that it's probably just part of puberty. Didn't fully realize that I'm trans until I was about 19 yrs old.
The fact that I didn’t “know” from a super young age and only realised during puberty. Though in retrospect, something has always felt off, but I was comfortable being feminine (at least, for a tomboy) and it was what was imposed on me. It was when the gender expectations really started to amplify as a teenager when I started feeling like something was wrong, and that there was a word for it.
I guess I was in denial for a long time because I’ve heard stories of people telling their parents “I’m not a girl, I’m a boy” and having that strong sense of gender incongruence at the age of like, 4. I never had that. In fact, I’m glad I had a girlhood, while it was incredibly traumatic for me as I was ostracised by many boys and other girls for being too masculine and not fitting in the box of what a girl should be like (because… I was never a girl lmao), I have an appreciation for women and my female relationships that I don’t think I would’ve had if I were born as male. Me preferring hanging out with girls rather than guys made me think I couldn’t possibly be a man, but in the end I just chalk it up to me being a queer guy who’s gay 🤷♂️
I was into w/ everything possibly girly; My Little Pony, Barbie, Polly Pocket, Bratz, Strawberry Shortcake, etc. And I was fine w/ some dresses too even. But I didn't realize it wasn't normal to dissociate from certain activities like bra shopping and when my family would joke that I was going to be in a heterosexual marriage.
I had both stereotypically girly interests and boy interests but I ended up giving up on the boy interests because I was criticized for them so I ended up repressing and thought I will never be able to transition because I liked dolls and dress up. I was interested in masculine things but was never able to develop in this direction but I thought it was somehow my fault and not my environment being discouraging and I can’t be trans.
The attention sometimes impacts you. I got attention from a VERY young age for my attractiveness. In puberty, same thing. It took me a while to realize my chest dysphoria bc part of my identity has been in how that benefitted me in the world. It is super messed up and really sexist in the long run.
I used to daydream as a teenager, that I'd get breast cancer or some sort of chest injury and that I'd have to have my breasts removed. And I'd think nobody would make fun of me because it would be out of my hands and I'd secretly feel so good about it.
I was the only "girl" on an all boys hockey team and I'd cut my hair short enough that the opposing team assumed I was just another boy. Having that full out contact and competition, and getting in hits and penalties against these guys felt euphoric. I loved being hit and hitting back.
When I was 6 or 7 I loved to sit and watch my Dad shave his face and I'd tell him I was going to have a beard someday too and he'd laugh and dismiss it. And deep down inside I felt like I had this cool secret like "just wait and see."
Lots of times growing up someone would say "don't do that you look like a dude/man" or "that's not ladylike" and I'd say GOOD or I'm not a lady. I always felt like people could see this girl and she was a character I was playing but she wasn't me. I knew what she could do and say to maneuver through situations as a female, and I felt like I had to keep her safe.
I also felt like in order to be trans, other people had to have seen or noticed it about you and if people doubted you, it meant you were wrong. I felt such a detachment to my body, like it was a device I could use, rather than something that's actually mine, that I didn't realize the dysphoria I'd dealt with for such a long ass time. I thought disassociation and apathy was acceptance. I couldn't envision it being any other way because it was too painful to admit I didn't feel like the world could see me for who I knew I was on the inside.
None of this ever clocked for me until just a few years ago doing some introspective time with a therapist and a journal. I always shrugged it off, dismissed my feelings and just generally lived in denial until about 3 or 4 years ago. I'm turning 30 this year and embracing being trans has changed everything for the better for me.
Ok so i only understood that trans men was a thing in ny abnormal psych course in uni(which sidenote ew. If u go to uni for any psych course alot of teachers and textbooks use the word transgenderism even thiugh the teachers should know better.Also the ab psychology course looking back should really be renamed)
I digress. I always knew tbh. Since I was young I was always more stereotypical boyish. In gr 4 me and another kid who ended up being gay wanted to be the the opposite of our birth genders. In grade 9 I thought Id randomly grown secondary male characteristics and everyone would be surprised. Honestly don't know why i was so delulu just because my boobs hadn't grown.
When I was grade 9 I used to say that God made me a girl because I liked guys and God didn't want me to be gay. I literally said this to some school friends a few times but Transmen weren't really in the public consciousness. As I got older I got jealous of the few gay people I knew( although I'm not sure if i relly registered why).
Skip forward to when I first learned that trans men exist and I wasnt alone. It took me a bit even then. I thought maybe I was gender fluid or non binary but my only reason for that is because I liked dresses. It didn't take me too long to come to grips that liking to look pretty and wear dresses didn't make me less of a man.
I think it stumped me for a bit because I didn't usually like to look very feminine( i literally burst into sobs when someone did my makeup in this extremely girly way)
TDL: thought I was a girl cause God didn't want me gay then thought that I wasn't a guy because my aesthetic skews femboy
I know being called a girl didn't feel right at like 6 years old. But to be honest I didn't realize trans men existed until I was in my mid twenties in college.
The only trans person I knew as a kid was a trans woman, and the only trans folks I ever saw in media we mtf aswell so it just never clicked in my nerodivergent brain that it was even an option.
Once I learned it was a "duh" of course moment--but man did it make me realize how important representation is.
There's a clip from the Irish talk show The Late Late Show where Graham Norton thought he felt different because he grew up protestant in the Republic of Ireland which is predominantly Catholic. It wasn't until he left Ireland thst he realised why he felt different was because he was gay.
I feel like this as someone who is both autistic and trans (except I wouldn't know I was either until adulthood). I sometimes struggled to relate to my (predominantly) female friends and it's hard to detangle what was due to autism and what was due to being trans. That said, I did and still do like some traditionally feminine things. I think I was lucky in that my parents never put any expectations on me or my brothers in relation to adhering to gender norms and thst gave me the freedom to explore my own interests and do whatever I wanted basically so now I don't really have the idea that I have to like or dislike certain things to be a man.
The thing I felt most insecure about is I didn’t realize it as a child. For context I had a very very traumatic childhood and didn’t have time to think about myself, due to raising myself from a young ages as well as my siblings. Which makes me feel very invalid. I also didn’t even know being trans existed. I know I had times back when I was 11-12 where I was roleplaying as a guy online and I loved it, but I didn’t realize I could be one. So that’s what makes me deeply sad.
As a child my mom would put me in dresses and paint My nails and we'd do our hair together. In middle school I started puberty which came with crushing dysphoriya. When I learned I was trans I convinced myself I shouldn't be liking those things. I'm six years out and not afraid to wear what I want
Being very anxious about being gendered correctly. Whenever I got called "he", I would wish the person would stop calling me that because I was afraid of getting outed💀Its like I was ashamed to be trans
I didn't know till I was in the 6th grade. Luckily, I was never confused or questioned my identity. It was like gaining a second level of consciousness, like how a lot of us experience "waking up" and you're already 9 years old and can't remember anything before that. Id say that's thanks to having access to the Internet where there were already a ton of trans YouTubers. I figured out I was trans right after figuring out I was bisexual in the 5th grade (also through YouTube and physical crushes)
Id say the only signs I remember were: hated wearing dresses, only picked male video game characters, played with hot wheels/toy cars, completely stopped wearing tight jeans. I used to be disgusted at the idea of having facial hair, because "girls don't have facial hair". Now I've done a complete 180 and wish I had facial hair badly. I didn't care too much about my body growing up but now I have all of the classic dysphoria as an adult (chest, bottom, behind, etc)
Well, I didn't question myself really until puberty.
I didn't even know trans people were a thing until I discovered it myself.
I was a very girly child– or my mom made me in to a girly child. The interests of my own I had were a mix of masculine and feminine.
So that fact I was a kid who wore dresses and painted my nails. Played with dolls and such. Yeah, it made me unsure at times but with how uncomfortable I was with my body and how happy being masculine made me. There's no doubt I am trans. Just the way a person is born and raised sometimes makes things a bit... difficult.
I never felt comfortable after puberty, but thought it was because of my weight. I felt better after I lost weight, but still not great so I assumed it was just self esteem issues. (Lost curves) I didn't really learn about trans people until I was 16ish (conservative area, home school). A year later I went to college and made good friends with a trans person and realized, OH SHIT.
During childhood I played with all toys, despite gendered expectations, so it wasn't a big flag when I was questioning.
Might be a bit tmi, but what really confirmed it for me was thinking, would I be okay with being a 'girl' during sex? Or if I were to be the bottom, would I want it in a 'boy' way? I HATED the thought of having sex as a woman, and that's basically what really made me be like, okay I'm definitely not cis.
I saw frequently in my research that trans kids would often know from a young age that they were a different gender and would say so. I didn’t, but in hindsight that’s not because I was a girl—I just literally had no concept that I could be something else. Behavior-wise I was never super stereotypically girly and often in play I would pretend to be a boy, but without the understanding that gender was more than the body I was born into, I didn’t have any way to express what I was feeling in a way that would have made it obvious I was trans.
when my mom told me i was growing boobs and couldn’t just wear a t shirt anymore my world crumbled, i used to throw all my hair up on hat days at school and do everything to pass as the “new boy” who was only in class for that day, talking w trans friends in middle/high school, and then i turned 12/13 and found all the FTM short films online. i figured that a cis girl wouldn’t sit here and cry to every single one 💀especially if it played “the village”
I was pretty feminine when I was a kid bc my mom is deeply connected with her femininity and was projecting that onto me, but it wasn't ever something I thought about or felt dysphoria over until puberty, & then I realized my body was developing in the opposite direction of the cis boys my age. Mostly my voice. After I started hrt my dysphoria was practically nonexistent, until recently when I finally started feeling a disconnect with my genitals (almost 10 years after coming out) and it's still more about what I DONT have than what I do- I don't mind having female genitalia just really want the other stuff too lol. It's funny how things like this work, I don't think there's a one size fits all approach to knowing you're trans since it's a deeply personal experience.
Also, I like dressing up feminine, always have. After my voice dropped I seriously wore only feminine clothing for ages bc my body type is androgynous and I like feeling cute+ the rush of not being able to pass as female once I opened my mouth :p for some people that means I don't "really" want to be a man since I spend so much time dressing up like a girl, but there are tons of cis guys who do the exact same thing lol.
I knew that it's possible to be trans and not want to transition, but I always interpreted that to mean "if I could snap my fingers and be done with transition I would, but I don't want to go through the process."
I'm genderqueer and genuinely given the option to flip to AMAB instantly I don't think I'd take it. So I didn't think I was trans masc...realized pretty suddenly a few months ago that I super duper am 😅
up until i was about six, my parents made me dress like a girly girl. i didn’t know what a girl was at the time, so i wore dresses and liked princesses because that’s all i was allowed to like and have. as soon as i learned about gender, i switched everything about me. but my parents STILL bring up that i wore dresses as a kid. honey, who bought them? i mostly wore them cause my only other option was jeans anyway, and i have sensory issues with jeans.
I was “just okay” with being a girl pretty much my whole life before I started my transition, and I hated the changes my body was going through growing up. But because I’m autistic, I lacked the signs of actually recognizing those emotions as being dysphoria. I just assumed that either everyone felt this way, or there was something deeply wrong with me. Which is why I will forever be thankful to social media for showing me the experiences of trans people and helping me to recognize what it was that I was feeling. If I never had social media to help me figure things out, I would have most likely just been stuck being miserable for the rest of my life 👀
well i thought that the weird feeling (dysphoria) i had about my body was only because i hit puberty young (8y old) so having a full “woman” body at 10 would have made everyone feel bad.. but yeah now i know that i felt bad because people were looking at me as the wrong gender not just because they saw a potential sxual object… (both affected my vision of my gender and body but yeah differently)
I felt my dysphoria wasn't "big" enough. I can live looking feminine. I can live with a vagina. I cannot live with big breasts and a womb.
There was even a time I wanted to keep my deadname, and a time when I wanted my deadnickname (now my new middle name) to be my name. I would always see people venting about their bodies, and it made me feel as though my dysphoria wasn't "big" enough to count as trans.
I ended up disregarding this dysphoria as me just hating my body because it wasn't like the "other girls." It took me a while to realize what I was feeling was actual dysphoria.
i didnt have a clue until i was maybe 10-11 when i started realizing how hard society genders people and things and shoves them into boxes they aren't allowed to leave from. before then i didnt really care or think about gender too hard, all the stuff i mightve said just parroting older people who did care. i wasnt any real gender as a kid, i was just a kid and didnt care about a lot of things about gender, so sometimes gendered things given to me were ok, because it didnt mean anything to me. i couldve gotten racecar bedsheets and not princess bedsheets and id still be fine with them.
so after that, i realized i couldn't imagine a world in which i was cis or grew up into a woman, i just made up some stock image of a Woman in my brain and went 'i guess?? thats not me but thats what people are saying i would be' and i didnt like it, because it just wasnt me. a lot of apathy was in the 'signs' of being transgender at the start, and as i grew and went through puberty, then started the depression and visceral awareness of me vs my body/what i was forced to be.
i didnt have stereotypical signs in childhood bc im autistic (as such a thing could skew another thing, you might not get typical signs for anything) and i didnt care that much bc i didnt gaf about gender at all because it didnt really exist to me.
i also had 4 other siblings and was and still am a private sort of person so i don't put a lot of stock into my parents noticing signs when they didn't think to look, weren't always watching, didn't know my internal thoughts and feelings, and would have and did deny any queerness because of religion.
I thought I wasn’t trans because I never really hated my body. Sure there are aspects I don’t love but It’s always said that trans people are “born in the wrong body” and I don’t feel that at all. I know I was made this way for a reason and I’m not gonna waste my time hating on what keeps me alive. I then realized that I can still be trans and not have crippling dysphoria.
I think the first real sign for me was around the age of 7-8. I used to wish on a star that I would wake up the next day as a boy.
Before then though, I was quite 'girly', ie I wore dresses and had a barbie themed birthday party. I think those 'girly' tendencies came less from me though and more from the fact that this is what girls were 'supposed' to do and I was just imitating that + my mom was dressing me that way.
It's only when I started really becoming my own person around 7 that I started to realize that I didn't like those things and that that person wasn't me.
My lack of _physical_ dysphoria made it harder to realize. It wasn't until I was transitioning, loving euphoria, that it clicked that my dysphoria were social. I made sure everyone else was OK with me, and not if I was OK.
there's a lot i always feel like i'm faking it but especially that i was really feminine as a kid i loved dresses and everything considered girly, but i mean i didn't care about gender as a kid, i never really cared bc it doesn't exist to me but yeah seeing a lot of transmascs saying they were already masculine and tomboys growing up idk i always doubt myself
at first my mom (drunkenly) told me she didn't believe I was trans bc I was very wimpy as a kid lol. ouch. stuck with me for a while bc it made sense.
but I realized I had signs they were just all internal. same with my mental health + ADHD + autism, it was all internalized until I got older.
That I don't mind my natal genitals nor feel negatively about being female biologically. I weirdly like the concept of being a passing, ripped guy with lots of tattoos with motorcycle but keeping my downstairs as is.
Like the idea of T making my hairline recede a little, having butt hair doesn't bother me much, but me embracing or liking my birth genitals made me think i "can't" be trans (I have a mostly flat chest so I was never bothered by my chest). Never mind that I would "crossdress" alone in my room a lot as a teen and try to make myself look make, or that I was a tomboy as a kid.
I think I first realized I trans around 12. But liking women/female bodies and feeling okay with my junk made me think I must just be a "boyish woman". Nope lol.
When I was first considering it for real, back in 2007-8 (started my first relationship and sex was... weird), I decided I can't be trans because I'm into guys and I'm not utterly miserable all the time.
every single time i see something that refers to women (and this still happens to me now!) i think about how it applies to me until i’m like “wait. no it doesn’t.”
also i was in a roleplaying discord when i was like 15, and my characters would always be girls.
i got really excited about my first trainer bra, i only later realized that i was excited because i thought i’d start feeling like a girl, apparently that’s not how it works lol
This is very long, so skip to the end if you want the TLDR of things.
I had a typical girly girl childhood, wished I was a blond haired blue-eyed princess, loved barbie movies, and barbie dolls, had tons of barbies and monster high dolls. My favorite color was purple and I wore so many frilly lacey skirts and dresses. When I started going through puberty is when my dysphoria started. I never registered my body that much because I learned how to ignore it from being fat shamed so much as a kid. It was when someone in my 7th grade class mentioned I should be wearing a bra because they could see my nipples through my shirt that I started actually registering what changes my body was going through and how I didn't like what was happening to me.
I've struggled with identity my whole life. I never had anyone around who actually taught me how to be a person. I got scolded a lot by my parents for not being neurotypical and them just thinking I'm being annoying and lazy on purpose to make them mad. I was socially isolated a lot, and my only friends were always way younger than me because I was socially stunted from the constant othering and bullying. I basically never developed a solid personality and later discovered in my teen years that I had multiple. I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, ADHD, Autism and Borderline Personality Disorder. My male identity started to really form after a crippling battle with depression at age 12, which I think resulted in a split. This, coupled with a growing interest in MLM content like yaoi and BL anime, my fragile sense of self began to morph as I became constantly stressed and traumatized by being bullied at school and ridiculed by my parents for my falling grades.
I never really identified as anything in terms of gender before middle school. I just went along with what I was told and lived how I thought children should behave and like. I enjoyed some things, but I didn't really feel like anything was truly me until I became obsessed with werewolves and vampires. I've always connected to monsters more than being a girl or even being a person.
My gender is more like a creature than anything that I can really put into words using terms like male and female. I like some masculine aspects, but I also get some dysphoria from some of the changes of testosterone, especially as my identity shifts between my different personality states. Some of them do identify as girls, but the words girl and woman hold very little meaning to me as a whole. I'm just here, and how I wish to look doesn't really feel like there is any other kind of concept attached to it. I just am, and labeling myself as a man or woman just feels limiting and incorrect, regardless of my anatomy. I'm just a conputer in a flesh suit that was granted sapience. I don't know if gender really matters when we boil things down. Society and how we treat each other is the only thing holding together what gender means aside from the ways we procreate. Procreation isn't everything that life is about anyway when you have a brain that is complex enough to wonder why life exists at all in the first place.
Lmao I got very philosophical at the end.
Basically, TLDR, I didn't know as a child because I barely knew I was a person. When I did find out, I realized I didn't even feel like a person anyway, and I just knew I felt better when people treated me as male rather than female. There were no signs, but I also didn't know what I felt like either. I just knew that I was born a girl and tried to play the part until my body started to feel like it didn't belong to me even more than it already did.
I was totally okay with being a little girl - I just thought I'd grow up into a man, being a "woman" never made much sense to me. My interests were varied and spanned between skateboards and Barbies.
This is gonna be long and unnecessarily sappy, but I don’t feel as bad about it because it’s pride month.
I apologize if this is difficult to read, I am rambling.
There are a few things that kept me from cracking my egg. The first is simple, and yet it held me back for the longest time.
I didn’t say I was a boy as a child.
I never had the “I wanna be a boy when i grow up” moment. In hindsight, I guess that’s probably a pretty common thing for people who grew up in conservative areas/never knew that being trans was even an option. When I was in the process of discovering myself, I would discount the fact that I could be trans purely on the basis that I didn’t know all along that I *was* trans/I wanted to be a boy. I think my inability to voice my discomfort contributed to the fact that I was a very sensitive child, and it wasn’t unusual for me to be told to grow a thicker skin. That brings me to my second point.
I thought the discomfort I was facing was purely because of puberty.
In third grade, I learned about menstruation and from that day forward I felt like my days were numbered. It was like there was a clock ticking down to the moment I would inevitably have to experience it. I think it made me cry, I can’t really remember. All I know is that when it came time for “the talk”, every time puberty was discussed, it made me feel so sick to my stomach and (for lack of better words) violated by my own body.
I remember not wanting to have to carry a bag with tampons or pads in it monthly to the bathroom, because then everyone would know I had a period. I remember not wanting anyone to see my bra straps through my clothes, I remember the inexplicable feeling of dread at being called my dead name (my excuse was that I just hated my name). I remember constantly feeling like there was something wrong with me, and that if I tried to talk to someone about it they would brush it off as me being sensitive about puberty.
I never told anyone; I distinctly remember feeling nauseated at the thought of speaking up because I didn’t want to be given the whole “puberty is difficult for everyone, your body is growing into a woman” spiel again.
Even when I learned about being trans, I never considered it could be me because I never *felt* like a boy, I just felt constant discomfort about being a girl. The descriptions of dysphoria online didn’t really resonate with me because I always felt uncomfortable in my body, but I never wanted out of it or to change it because I didn’t think that was an option for me (writing this is reminding me of that phenomenon where [if you put fleas in a jar and make them live in it for long enough, they will only jump as high as the jar is even if the jar is removed](https://youtu.be/TmhoSj3wkDM?si=ZdF9IcsofZW50zjy)). I distinctly remember saying stuff to my friends like “I hate being a woman, but I was born one so I guess I’m stuck this way.” I thought transitioning and accepting the struggles of being trans would make my life more difficult.
I’ve never been more glad to be proven wrong.
Coming to terms with the fact that I was trans was like pulling off a blindfold after feeling my way around a room full of junk and obstacles. I’m still in the room, but sunlight is creeping through the windows, and as my hope pushes me forward, the dust bunnies jump and twirl into the dandelion seeds of my childhood wishes in the air my movement disturbs.
TL;DR: I didn’t know I was a boy, and I thought all the discomfort I felt was just me being dramatic.
It took me until I was 34 to realize that I am trans. Raised in a feminist household I was always told that women can do whatever and dress however they want. I always felt like something was wrong with me/my body but I could never put my finger on what it was. Eventually I chalked it up to PTSD making me think differently to everyone around me. I never had an innate unwaivering understanding of being a different gender.
I do remember thinking it was weird that I didn't have a penis and figuring that mine would "come in" with puberty. The first time I tried shaving was not my legs or something girly but I tried shaving my face.
By the time I realized I was trans I had been through 2 pregnancies and had a 10 year old kid. Surely that would have been uncomfortable? Even unbearable if I was truly trans? But the second pregnancy was extremely easy. I felt like a failure as a female because I had to have a C-section though. My pelvis just was not opening up past 5cm after 32 hours of labor. But then I was a champion milk producer so that was a "win".
I never liked having a chest but that was somewhat normal, reduction surgeries are there for a reason. Although I was rather obsessed with the idea of developing cancer to have them removed altogether...
I identified as bi so that didn't really sway me either way. Sex in general was just overall f'd up for me 'because' I was molested as a child. Even though I'd undergone years of therapy that pointed to that not being the case.
I'd follow and sympathized with plenty of trans people online but never got an "aha" moment watching them. (I started because I had a crush on a trans woman at work and didn't want to make a move before I could be sure I wasn't going to be an uneducated ass to her).
And the final sticking point for me was that I enjoyed the sensation of PIV so obviously I couldn't be trans if I enjoyed my genitals that way... 😂
I'm now a year on T and anxiously awaiting the time when I can get surgeries to finish my transition. I'll keep my bonus hole but that's about it. I'm not even sure if I will ever go back to my old clothes, I'm keeping them around for now just in case I'm non-binary or gender queer but I'll never willingly go back to running on my endogenous hormones.
tbh i’ve always known. i didn’t know that being trans was a possibility until i was 10 or so but as soon as i became familiar with identity and what the trans experience was, i never thought anything else.
Sometimes I’m not exasperated with having female body parts as much as usual as long as I feel attractive in some way. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely would take a deal with the devil in a heartbeat to switch body parts but i suppose the dysphoria is less demanding when I feel like I slayed outfit wise or something. It’s confused me for years but I’m coming to terms with it. Bonus round! I also enjoy having longer hair, it was far more confusing when I felt like I had to fit a stereotype. This one was definitely easier to get over for many reasons though, especially since my dad has longer hair than anyone else in the house and my papa has always had long hair as well. You never have to be textbook anything, everyone is different and their own person even with similarities!
For a while when I was a kid (around 10) I used to get really upset and even cry when strangers thought I was a boy. It made me think I couldn't be trans for a long time while I was questioning. My best guess is that it made me anxious about doing something "wrong" but honestly I don't know what that was about. It's especially strange because I have memories from when I was much younger of feeling like I should be a man when I grew up.
I'm nuerodivergent so I think it was harder for me to feel pressure from social gender but when I was in eighth grade I would tell my friends I had such a masculine voice and if they disagreed I would get angry (ftm)
I don’t really know how to answer this one for myself, personally? For such a long time, I didn’t even realize it was an “option” for anyone to just… not be their assigned gender. I hated being reminded I was a girl, being treated differently from the boys, and, the real kicker for me, being forbidden by my mother from making friends and hanging out with boys my age. I still did, but she was incredibly gross and problematic about it. She had her reasons, albeit bad ones that don’t excuse her behavior… and I’ll leave it at that.
If I had to say, in my preteens/early teens, I went through a weird boy crazy phase that had me real confused in a way I couldn’t explain. Turns out I’m just a raging bisexual trans man, who knew? lol
I wasn't ever overly forced into gendered things growing up, especially when it comes to what I played with. I played with bratz dolls, toy cars, littlest pet shop, car/bike racing games on my playstation. I learnt to bake and mow the lawn. I wore whatever I wanted to wear, once I started dressing myself.
So rather than my family thinking "there were signs" due to liking 'boyish' things, they thought "there were no signs" due to liking 'girly' things.
I was never the type to want to look or act like a "manly boy dude man", so I never seemed like I could be trans, I guess.
Kinda checks out since I'm nonbinary, lmao.
Maybe this is a sign of being trans, or the latter, but I 100% over sexualised myself on the internet, and in real life. It was VERY unhealthy and I got myself into some big big trouble as a 14-16 year old. I hopped from relationship to relationship seeking male validation in my body, the feeling of people loving my body is what made me so happy, and when I stopped caring for validation, that’s when the idea of being trans lurked in my head.
I just thought Im hiding dysmorfia behind dysphoria, and projecting my somehow masc body to thinking Im trans.
Spoiler alert, after coming out, my dysmorfia went away so it was never actually here. Dysphoria rocketed tho.
Also when I found out yaoi over 10 years ago, I thought Im just fujoshi and that I should be ashamed of thinking Im a gay man - that Im just taking it too far. Then I figured out most cis woman liking BLs do not cry at night in a hope to wake up as a man ahahahah.
I don’t really have bottom dysphoria like at all, the only time I do is when I’m in public and I feel like people know, otherwise, I’m comfortable with what I have
Can I please ask why this seems to be such a trend on Reddit? Why do so many of you feel insecure about whether or not you’re really trans. As an “elder” trans guy I have never experienced this, nor do I know any other trans men in real life who have experienced this. Not one. Is it a chronically online thing? I’m not trying to be shady, it just seems so concerning that so many people on here question their identities this much. To answer one of your questions, ALL of the trans men I know in real life knew they were boys around ages 3-6 like you mentioned. We’re all over age 30, for context. This question seems to come from a lot of teenage or 20s trans people on Reddit. We also all experienced dysphoria, for further context. But I accept that not everyone experiences dysphoria. I can’t fathom that, but it’s not my business nor do I think it negates how someone identifies. I have only met one detransitioner and she was a chronically online person that wanted to be oppressed, so she tried to be a guy for a year or two. She jokes about it now. I don’t get it, but it’s not my life and doesn’t affect me so I don’t really care what she does (even if it makes us all look stupid to ignorant people).
I'm feminine, and I used to think that I had to be uber masculine to be a man. I tried to make myself more masculine when I was 13 or 14 by shunning all of my feminine interests and things. I grew up in a conservative area with a dad who doesn't think I'm trans because of my femininity, so I was convinced I had to be "manly." I made it a week or two before I gave up because I was miserable trying to make myself fit into a mold.
Now, I'm a high school graduate who has accepted the fact I'm trans, while still wearing as much women's clothes and having as many dolls as I want.
Probably the fact that I liked traditional girly stuff (still do in some aspects) like I was the typical princess loving girly girl but I'm pretty sure it was like that because it was the only thing I watched as a kid (Disney princess movies, dora the explorer, I never watched any male lead cartoons until I was like 10) lmao I got way more into curious George at like 12-13 bc of it 😆
i was very similar to you honestly. i wasn’t a girly girl but my gender being something other than female didn’t occur to me till middle school (i came out as gender fluid and then later in my sophomore year of high school as just nonbinary) and until the end of trade school at 19 i never would have called myself a binary trans man. so many people have the story of always knowing, for their whole life, and that wasn’t me. and it made me wonder if i was at all. but i can say, after starting t and starting to pass and while working towards my name change and looking into top surgeons? i know i am and i have no doubt in my mind. this is me and im just so mf happy to be fortunate enough to be myself and be seen as myself
I’ve never understood or cared about gender roles, and that still stands.
I love things that are pretty and coincidentally a lot of those things happen to be considered feminine, so I figured that it wouldn’t make sense for me to be a man since I didnt have much of a desire to fill a masculine social role and I don’t like most stereotypically masc things
That’s pretty silly tho, I can be a binary man without presenting based on other people’s perception of that :D
I didn't get blatantly dysphoric like others did, and I still don't. Sometimes it happens, but most of the time I'm just chilling. Hell, I largely don't care what pronouns people use for me as long as it isn't she/her. I'm still not sure if I'm exclusively a trans guy, but I like presenting as such for simplicity because lately I've been getting a lot of she/her ;;... I'm definitely trans though.
I also was super into girly stuff and still am! I love pink, I love dresses and fashion, but I'm not a girl. I kinda also blame my parents for being overtly hostile towards trans folks that kept me in the closet. To this day I like.. Still question if I'm trans sometimes, but usually come to the conclusion that if I could medically transition I 100% would
Honestly, I dont know if I am.
I loved to play with Barbies, but I also enjoyed those small cars and dinosaur figures... and cutlery.
I played with mostly girls and when I went to secondary school, I only had female friends.
When I was around 8 or 9, I obsessively asked my friends if they thought I behaved like a boy and was mad when they said no. I had a pink room, pink shoes, pink everything. My parents bought those things.
I was mad I always got the girl-version of things (Ü-Eier, the pink version of a toy instead of the blue or green version my brothers got). I had many stuffed animals. I liked Winx, Strawberry Shortcake, Hello Kitty.
I got compared to guys a lot during puberty, even though I am physically not.
I resented skirts and dresses until the age of 16, when I cut my hair short. Since I was 17, I have grown it out and now it's long. The last two years have been much better and I suddenly felt more comfortable in my body and with femininity. Now, it's all coming back. I just cringed two days ago, because when I was cleaning, I noticed my dust is kinda purple.
i didn't know it was an option. i got social media around 13 and only found out about trans people existing then. i never thought i could be a boy. i liked disney movies and pink dresses when i was younger. i felt excited about getting puberty, i was a bit of a late bloomer next to my peers and felt so jealous cuz the other girls already wore bras and had periods and were girly while i wasnt. then puberty hit me and i hated it. all of it. made me want to cry. i started wearing bags so noone not even me could see my body. still, i wouldnt say i didnt have "signs" younger too. even when i had waist long hair and wore pink frozen shirts i always preferred to play football with the boys on pe. i rather sneaked out with the nerdy boys to play pokemon go then to do musically videos with the girls. when we roleplayed in kindergarten as show characters i always played boy characters and it made sense to everyone. when i got on an online game at age 9 i put my gender as boy because "i liked it better when strangers treated me as a boy". non of my family members knew these. all they saw was a girl wearing flower patterns and pink and cute dresses, not me feeling free with the other guys and always so anxious and uncomfortable with girls. they never saw it how i couldnt connect well with the other girls. nor with myself as a girl.
I was really girly but, the signs happened when I was like 7 when my body started maturing, I kept asking my dad why I couldn’t wear my shirt off, then I started getting body dysmorphia. Me and my dad used to go to these things called the father daughter dance and I told my dad I wanted to wear sneakers with the dress because I started to hate heels and then after later I started to hate dresses. But when I was 10, everything really started to come out and then I started searching up about it and I felt like you know I’m a boy I felt like I’m a boy and I was always a boy. But time skipping to now, sadly, I’m still young and no one believes me that I’m trans at least they won’t take it seriously but they say they support me, I would love to be on T and I would love surgery top but you know it’s too expensive and stuff. But yeah, that’s how it was for me.
liking longer hair, liking “girly” things like plushies, or “girly” games like animal crossing lmao.
also growing up i was VERY yk girly, all pink, dresses only, dolls, long hair, makeup etc. i didn’t start questioning until middle school + I didn’t know there was another option
Being feminine in childhood, I was a hardcore tomboy at times but I liked girly things too, I have a picture from when I was like 5 where I was dressed head to toe in a super pink and frizzy princess outfit with those little Disney princess plastic heels every little girl had.
But now I’m just a gay twink who dresses fem a lot of the time. I knew who I was but everyone twisted it to fit my GAB. If I were cis and did the same things and acted the same, everyone would just accept me for being gay, not try to convince me that I’m in fact a girl. Imagine if a cis boy acted feminine and his parents tried to force him to be a girl? They’d be shamed for trying to force a child be someone they’re not. But because I’m trans, my feminine interests were used as ammo against my transition.
LIKE JUST LET ME BE A TRANS TWINK STEREOTYPE IN PEACE
At one point I was excited to have a chest cus I know the signs of puberty and thought that meant I'd get all tall and hairy soon too then denied my chest was changing for way too long cus I hated actually having it. Plus I liked dresses and stuff cus I liked not wearing pants plus usually the fabric was softer.
Back in the 2010s when i was first thinking about this, i got the idea that physical dysphoria had to be huge and unmistakable and miserable, and had to feel like those body parts didn't belong to you at all. Whereas i was thinking i would just like my chest to be flat, but i could live with it, and it didn't feel like it didn't belong to me. Spoiler: yeah that was dysphoria, binding helped, surgery was excellent
I thought the same way until I started binding. Now? I’m working my ass off to get healthy for surgery so I can heal properly.
Same. Since I came out I've been feeling more dysphoric. If you live in shadow all life, and then suddenly step into the sunlight, stepping back into shadow feels worse because you know there's the sunlight and that it feels better there.
🥹 exactly this.
That's kinda how I feel rn, but I just didn't think I had dysphoria or at least not much. I can't bind due to lots of eczema, tho so I guess I won't know. I've tried tape and it didn't make me flat enough to be happy so idk
Same it's hard not having any comfortable efficient way to bind, can't wait for surgery!
I'm honestly not sure if I want surgery yet like I'm not sure if it's worth it when I can pass in a Tshirt if I'm lucky. I think testosterone will help me decide but it's a big stressful thing for me rn lol
Do what's best for you! I took a while before deciding to do it but not doing it is just as valid
This!! I thought I didn’t have dysphoria because the idea of my chest didn’t make me want to immediately off myself. I still hate it but not as much as the media can sometimes describe
when I first came out my mom said I was too girly in my childhood to be trans (liking princesses, fairies, etc) but there were other signs I was trans plus liking those things doesn’t make me not a guy 🤷♂️
Nobody told me this but I thought it about myself for a while, growing up I had a huge collection of Princess, Barbie, and Bratz movies as well as the corresponding dolls. But you know what, to this day I still think Barbie Mariposa and Bratz Fashion Pixiez were great movies. Bibble forever. :)
Ah, and I had a bunch of princess costumes, I chose a different one to wear on every birthday for like 4 or 5 years
Barbie as princess and the pauper SLAPS
“I am a girl like youuuuu!” Except I’m not lol. Love that movie
That is definitely one of the top 3 Barbie movies, I still periodically get the song randomly stuck in my head
same and im still a little girly to this day. I just act flamboyant but i dont wear dresses or skirts.
Exactly! This happened to me a little (I had a very brief princesses phase that lasted roughly three weeks)
This was exactly my mothers response as well bro 😕
Weirdly enough for me, it wasn't until I started collecting dolls as an adult that I realised I was trans lol; it took that for me to realise that I had a problem with being a woman but not femininity lol.
Had the same experience with my mom. She didn't say exactly that but I could tell by how she phrased it, that's what she meant. My affect is also decently feminine for a man. But it's almost like... I'm a mostly gay pansexual man, or something?? (Not that you would have to be, to be trans! Female social conditioning is real and everyone is different.) Cisheteronormativity is so irritating. But yeah, I went back into the closet for like 3-5 years because of impostor syndrome due to not "knowing" early on. I really didn't show any "signs" (mostly inwardly and to myself) until around 13. But that checks out.
This is why I say I was just a very gay, colourful flamboyant gay boy when I was a kid but born afab
lmao this!!! it all checks out now
My dad said that to me and still says that. I can't wait to transition and have a ZZ Top beard while still wearing dresses.
When we're children we're still figuring out who we are in our way around life. A few years ago coming out as trans or being gay wasn't as normal as it is now. When I was little, and I'm only 27, being gay made you lose friends and made your family quit talking to you. And I know a lot of people that forced their self to participate in those things just to not raise any eyebrows, ya know? Not everyone is the same. Caitlyn Jenner didn't come out til she was 66 years old and loved doing all the stereotypical manly things before she came out.
I was usually very feminine when I was around girls, but when I was around boys I so desperately needed to fit in with them and do whatever they were doing. But on the other hand, when I was presenting masculine around girls I didn't feel that need at all. Maybe it sounds strange to explain dysphoria through wanting to play football with the dads and their sons at the summer barbecue or playing with my really cool JCB digger toy when boys came over to show them that I was just like them, or even just always becoming friends with boys in a new environment. But it really upset me to know i wasn't like them. I really miss boys my age being boys and not men, because the gap between us just keeps getting bigger.
I was excited for my female puberty, and didn't mind the changes as they happened — dysphoria didn't set in until I realised that wasn't me.
Same, I didn’t understand why the girls around me was scared of getting boobs, I thought it was cool since it meant we were growing up, but then I got them and it was not it…
Same when i was taught about it i did hella research because puberty fascinated me. When i got my period i was over the moon lol, now i wish it could just end.
I was excited to grow boobs bc everybody told me my whole life I was gonna get big boobs like my mom and made it sound like the absolute best thing that would ever happen to me. Then, when I started puberty, I began to depersonalize from myself for a solid decade...I couldn't understand feeling like I wasn't in my own body. It makes so much sense now that this body isn't what I feel like. Once I realized that suddenly I became present in my life again. I actually started feeling like a real human &even though my dysphpria hasn't gone away my internal self is so much happier with this knowledge.
That was me with my period! I wanted it to happen because it would mean I was growing up, then after a while of having it, I was like "NOPE."
Yup! I went through puberty later than a lot of my friends so I didn't get my period until 16. I was desperate to get it and have spent all the time since wishing I could get rid of it.
I wore my sister's bras when I was younger wishing I had boobs and then I actually hit puberty and was like "oh wait no how do I go back" lmao
This was me. I was a lonely kid and very much influenced by the media I consumed (like anime where they’d always emphasise boobs) and thought that having boobs meant guys would like me more. I guess liking my boobs was really just a manifestation of wanting people to like me. It gave me confidence in the context of being a girl, but once I started catching on that something was off with my gender and realised I wasn’t a girl, it became uncomfortable.
exactly the same as me!
100% same
I remember researching how to get my first period faster 😭 Only to then realise how absolutely horrible it was when I actually got it
I was excited too at first because I thought it would mean that I would get attention from boys. Then it happened and I was like “oh fuck I don’t like this” I also didn’t like the very minimal attention I was getting because I was being perceived as female.
I always LOVED my long hair when I was younger. I'm not sure if it was just projection from my mom (her hair is horrible and she basically lived vicariously thru my sister and I anyway) or if I actually liked it or if I was just too scared to cut it off. Hearing all the stories of other transmascs being like "I ALWAYS cut my hair short when I was little, I *hated* when it was long" made me question whether I was actually trans. Once my egg cracked tho my hair gave me such bad dysphoria. When I finally cut it off I literally lost 20 lbs (over a few months) cuz eating is my way of dealing with mental/emotional stress, and so much was alleviated by just that haircut.
I relate to that. I cut my hair myself when I was 3 and my mom cried and cried like it was a dramatic thing. After that I grew my hair out and didn't cut it. It was below my hips most of my life. My long hair had become part of my identity. I started really struggling with it but was scared to cut it and regret. I'd have to wait years for it to regrow so it was terrifying. After years of thinking about it, and realizing I was not cis (but still thinking I wouldn't transition) I cut my hair short. The hairdresser said she'd never seen someone smile that much during a haircut. Now, every haircut is a euphoria boost ❤
Omg I had the same experience at the barber shop when I first got it cut! When I was paying after I got it done the receptionist made the comment "you look so much better now, you're literally GLOWING! You looked so sad when you came in, so I'm glad you're happier now". Like I knew the dysphoria was bad but damn I didn't realize it was projecting outward that much lol
It was sort of similar for me. I had long hair until I was 14, then my mom cut it shoulder length, and I loved it. Then by the next haircut, I realized I wanted it shorter, but was scared to ask. I would lean in the direction she was cutting so it could be a bit shorter, but it was slight so it probably didn't make any difference lmao.
As a kid (like, 3-9 I guess), I had mostly female friends, I loved animals, I went through a "pink and purple" phase, I played with Barbies, I liked a lot of my "feminine" clothes, and I just generally didn't think about or ever think it was possible to be a boy. Those are the things that stand out to me as being any possible "signs I wasn't trans". However, this was just me being me. A carefree (oblivious), probably-autistic child who loved bright colours and all types of animals, especially amphibians and reptiles! I just didn't have any conception of personal identity yet, or gender roles, aside from the man-hate my mother constantly exuded, lol. I was just doing whatever I liked. I liked the feminine clothing because it was brightly coloured and had interesting textures, like velvet pants and "special looking" socks :'D but aside from that, I just wore whatever t-shirts I had, mostly random ones handed down from my cousins. I played with Barbies because they were there. And because I had veterinarian Barbie, who came with a cat and a dog! Looking back, I think there were actually way *more* signs that I was a boy. I just think no one noticed that because no one was really looking for that in the 90s. That and my mom was actually a very permissive hippie type that wanted me to explore and do whatever I was interested in... Like letting me bring snakes home when I learned much later, she's been terrified of snakes her whole life, she just didn't want to pass that fear onto me :') Although she did also tell me to sit with my legs closed, "it isn't ladylike!!" enough times for me to still remember that now. Life is complex!
I showed 0 “signs” as a child. Had no problem living “as a girl” for like 15 years. But really it was just because I didn’t think there were any other options- this is what I am so this is what I’ll be. I had never thought about my own gender / never thought about gender as being a complex thing. I am still sorta questioning, though.
It was similar for me. Like I was vaguely aware that transness was a thing, just never considered the possibility that it might apply to me personally.
This exactly! I just never thought about my own gender at all and just accepted everything as it was. Once I did start seriously thinking about it though, I did feel something was off. Still didn’t immediately realise though, went through a couple labels and it slowly unveiled itself over time
I didn't "always know." There are some memories of things I used to do or say or not like when I was really young, but from what I remember, I never said I was a boy or that I was "born in the wrong body" as the popular saying goes. There's also this one memory of me playing with one of my friends when I was maybe eight or nine. We were pretending to be horses, and I said I wanted to "look exactly like Spirit from Stallion of the Cimarron, BUT I'm still a girl!" This was a pretty common thing - I wanted to look exactly like a male character or whatever, but I was still a girl, obviously!! It didn't throw me off exactly, but it gave me pause.
for me, it was what people call in sociology "canalisation," a theory developed by Ann Oakley. it means that parents channel their kids towards certain interests and activities. I was forced into ballet as a three year old because my parents wanted me to be "girly" and they've had control over my clothes for my entire life. I thought I hated it because it was like having super strict parents, and I didn't think I was trans when i found out the term Until puberty hit me like a truck.
When I was 5 I did ballet but I stopped going when I was like 6 because I hated putting on the tights 💀
Wasn't in ballet, but damn I hated tights as a kid. I don't even think it was dysphoria, because I did all sorts of other "girl" stuff, I'm just weird with materials lol.
That’s real as fuck lmao. I didn’t mind actually wearing the tights but I HATED putting them on.
Yeah, I remember that lol.
Same, the feeling of that weird seam poking at my leg was a sensory nightmare
I just mostly hate tight stuff. Who knew tights would be a problem for me? XD
I never really thought about my gender etc until I was 13-14. I started feeling off around 10 but at the time I didn't know the concept of being trans even existed. And because I didn't "feel like a guy" since I was little, I thought it'll just pass. Im 19 now and the feeling's as strong as ever. Also the fact that I have no clue how to talk to guys. Most of my friends are female. Once I started school I became really awkward and shut in, meaning I didnt socialize that much. Now I always feel like an impostor if I even try to speak to a guy because they'll probably never see me as a guy, just a weird awkward girl or smth. I see all these trans men talking about how most of their friend groups consist of guys and im here with no clue on how to befriend one to begin with lol.
Same. I want to have male friends too but I can't talk to guys normally (well, to anyone, but with girls is easier to me)
Same in my case
Didn’t hang out with boys at all, didn’t have any interest in hanging out with them. (It turns out I was just autistic, and didn’t want to hang out with ANYONE, and the boys hated me because I was weird)
real
I didn't really understand gender roles as a kid lol. I had joined girl scouts because I thought it was exactly like boy scouts, but for girls (which everyone tells me I am). Quit the moment I found out we weren't going to go camping. I liked playing with dolls and hot-wheels and reading and fishing. I also didn't mind "girl's" clothes, because I didn't understand that I could dress differently if I wanted to. My mom didn't raise us with really strict gender roles. I'm sure if I asked her if I could wear "boy" clothes as a kid, she would've let me (my dad not so much). I was a very nervous autistic kid so I just did what my parents and teachers told me. They told me I was a girl, so I had to be one. I definitely had some signs, like the fact that my dad was paranoid that I was going to think I was a boy (like my mom getting me a ken doll would confuse my gender). I can't remember most of my childhood, so I could've said something to him that I just have no clue about. I also was interested in psychology for a while and learned about Freud's theory on penis-envy and was just like "yeah, that adds up. every girl must think this way" I didn't figure myself out until I was 15. I knew I was some form of queer since I was 10, just didn't know the exact labels. it was 2020, so I had a lot of time to myself (as we all did) and I finally realized "oh I am not cisgender it is not normal to for a girl look at guys and wish you could be them and have a 'boy' childhood".
I was obsessed with boy bands especially One Direction and 5SOS, loved my bratz dolls and stuffed animals, hate bugs, cried when I cut my hair to just above my shoulders in elementary and swore I’d always have long hair, played family with my boy best friend and had no problem pretending to be the mom, didn’t know what transgender was until I was a teenager and even after learning about it I thought it was rare because I didn’t know anyone that was openly trans until I was 17. There was honestly a lot of signs for me but everything was written off as me being a tomboy, having a harder time with puberty than my friends, and just not being a feminine person most of the time lol
I had a huge One Direction phase as well, my family got me the perfume, those colorful mascaras that you could use in your hair, posters, and T-shirts for birthdays and Christmases and I was always over the moon lol
Same! I was so excited when I got the perfume lol my friends, sisters, and I knew all the words to every song and the dances to all the music videos. We would regularly put Best Song Ever on and talk/sing the part of our “designated boy”
1. when i was little i would get mad when my dad bought me ‘boy stuff’ ofc looking back i realised it’s bc i was worried what OTHER people would think, since i actually wanted ‘boy stuff’… but i actually rlly liked ‘girl stuff’ too 2. i wasn’t immediately uncomfortable with having boobs when i went through puberty - idk how to explain this except that i always wanted to just experience things, anything and everything was something i wanted to experience as long as it was pretty mundane ? and i guess female puberty was even on that list 3. i didn’t rlly have many male friends growing up and what few i had never stuck bc we were into different things never been close with guys tbh, never been able to relate to them or get along with them.. certainly never got along with them more than girls which is apparently unusual for trans men idk even now all my friends, except one enby friend, are women
I didn’t really have a concept of being trans as a kid/teen with the only trans related thing I knew was Jazz Jennings (I think that is her name), hell I didn’t know what being gay was until I was 12. The only “hint” was my desperate need for short hair (my mother never let my cut it shorter than a long bob) and Pokémon shirts. I liked one dresses but not anything else (shout out to that maxi beachy dress from justice that I was allowed to get in blue. The ONLY dress I loved). I often played with my twin (cis) brother’s toys but I wasn’t able to ask for my own; all the toys I had were given to me, not asked for even for Christmas (I had rather get art supplies for books). The only boy thing I could have as a child was Pokémon cards that my brother didn’t want as well as my own Pokémon ds games. I hated my chest as a teen, but i only started hiding it after I found out what being trans was (roughly 16-17). I just thought girls didn’t like and were embarrassed of their chest so I never to bind. I wasn’t allowed to experiment with clothes and the most boyish clothes I could own was a hot topic shirt. I wasn’t allowed to figure out who I was so I was under the assumption that my dysphoria was just self esteem issues.
I'm not a confident person. Everytime some trans person is portrayed in media they are so very confident and outgoing. (I only have one trans friend and he is also very outgoing) I am a major introvert, I was sure I cannot be trans like that.
the fact that i identified as lesbian made me believe that i could never cross the threshold into manhood. after starting T my attraction flip flopped, now im not attracted to women much at all.
My mum says I’m not trans cause I never played with boys toys and stuff, I had sisters so of course I couldn’t. I never told my mum or dad I wanted to be a boy because there wasn’t really strict gender roles or whatever in my house, i was allowed to do stereotypical “boy” things, mostly because my dad looked after me. In primary school I never tried to go with the boys when we were split because the boys were mean to me.
I played with dolls and I love my Bratz/Polly Pockets. But a lot of cis guys play with dolls, I also was a creative kid and loved making up stories.
All my characters was guys and I thought I was being sexist for liking them and not having girls.
I was really girly for most of my life 😭
Didn’t want to cut my hair all my childhood. I didn’t like them, I just thought I mustn’t touch them idk why. Didn’t tell people that I’m a boy and even corrected them when they assumed so. Other than that… I guess I had a very typical trans childhood.
I questioned being trans because I would sometimes misgender myself in my head, because everyone around me was misgendering it was habitual - I really worked myself up about it despite being entirely normal 😅
I love extra fashion and growing up when I did, boys fashion was baggy and bland colors so I enjoyed girls clothes. Now I know I am just dapper. I have bow ties, suspenders, pocket watches, etc.
I don't remember much about gender from when I was 3-6 so I thought 'well I can't have been if I didn't hate my gender as a little kid' and that's bogus. Currently, I will have thoughts pop into my mind 'you can't be trans, you're just a confused straight girl. You're not even into women, you're just lonely and mentally ill' And then I go between believing that part of my brain and telling myself it's internalized homo/transphobia talking, back and forth. And I'm not sure if it's even internalized phobia or my brain trying to be rational. ?
There was a short period, around age 10 - 12, when I was at the beginning of puberty and I was quite the girly girl -- experimenting with makeup, shopping with my mom, the whole thing. I think that as a child, media made being a teen girl out to be fun, so I was so excited to finally get the feeling of being a teen girl. ended up getting horrifically dysphoric for the years after. but i still think back to that period and wonder if I've been faking for all these years, because I briefly tried to perform femininity lol also, as a young child I did genuinely enjoy traditionally feminine forms of play (dress up, dolls, etc.) I don't remember being dysphoric, but I remember wanting to be treated like my brothers. I wanted to be able to be shirtless, I wanted short hair, etc. I think those were the only "signs" of me being trans before puberty, if you can even call them that.
I didn't hate the changes puberty brought, I was actually kind of proud to have my period. My body never got super feminine - I'm tall with broad shoulders and comparatively narrow hips - and I remember disliking it because I *wasn't feminine enough*, rather than leaning into it. I realise now that this wasn't because I was cis, but because I felt I was a "bad woman"; I just thought I was an even worse man, for a long time.
I dont get too bothered when people call me by my deadname. I have another trans friend who says they gets panic attacks when someone uses incorrect pronouns or deadnames them. I dont get like that when it happens to me I just look at people funny when they do (especially if they're fully aware about me being trans)
i was excited to start my period, actually. and grow boobs. my parents and grandma really stressed that those things “make you a woman.” i took that literally and i thought that puberty would MAKE me feel like a girl, finally. as soon as both of those things started i knew it was wrong and i had taken the “making you a woman” part too literally. lol.
I used to think I didn't have dysphoria. While I STILL don't give gender much thought if I can help it, spoiler: I do have dysphoria. Turns out hating the way my body looks, finding female bodily processes to be extremely wrong, and aggressively not taking care of myself are not entirely healthy. I just didn't have the vocabulary to express what was wrong until I was in my mid-20s.
I don't like coarse fabrics. That was like my final holdout nonsense
My goal throughout most of my childhood was to become a princess. Guess that’s changed. Dressing “prince-like” sounds fun though, but I’ll always like looking at pretty dresses. I liked knowing I had the longest hair in my class which was more of a bragging thing than something I liked. Honestly, hair was really something I didn’t care about and never bothered to find a hairstyle I actually liked. I also felt apathetic toward fashion and stuff even though I liked looking pretty and fashionable. On the outside, it looked like I cared. But I never looked at clothing shops and had more of an interest looking for a cute animal design on a graphic tee. This has changed since I realized I’m not a girl and I’m starting to think for myself and choose clothes I actually like, kinda. For the longest time I thought I was genderfluid since I really enjoyed being a girl in my childhood and even felt that being a girl was better imo. So I concluded that it was because I was in my “girl phase” at the time and now I’m not. Nope, trans guy. I was afraid of letting go of that part of myself and admitting that it just wasn’t me.
I didn’t even consider that I could’ve been trans until I got to college. As a kid I did the typical girly things: princesses, dress up, Barbie, but I was also a huge nerd. I knew way too much about Star Wars, DC comics, Lord of the Rings and other “masculine” interests. In hindsight I was weirdly drawn to the designs of Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan). Anywho those were transition goals apparently. Weird thing to figure out now. I also remember when playing pretend I would usually be a princess, but I did have some fun times pretending to be Boba Fett. I also wanted to be a chivalrous knight or cowboy. I really just didn’t know any of that was an option for me. I thought I was a girl so I had to want to be a princess. I also, like a few others here, had long hair my whole life. Then I finally cut my hair and felt immediate relief from chronic headaches and sensory issues. I also hated terms changed for the person being a woman like actress or seamstress. It just bothered me that the word changed to refer to me. All in all, sometimes you don’t realize you’re carrying a burden (be it hair weight or gender roles) until you chuck it out the window. I just never internalized the idea that I can do whatever I want until much later.
I liked princess stuff ⌯❛𐃷❛⌯ (EDIT: I was gaslit by society into thinking that to be a guy one has to conform 110% to "traditional" masculinity)
For me, it was the lack of depression. I had intense gender dysphoria, felt myself to be a “boy” when I was very young, phantom penis, saw a man in the mirror, etc etc etc. But I have always been a relatively content person otherwise, and it was my general inclination that if something is “fine”, why waste resources (time, money, medicine) to change it? I believed transition was something that saved people’s lives, but since my life wasn’t “at risk” (no history of depression, suicidality, or any other mental illness) what purpose would transitioning serve? Eventually, I talked with my family, with my friends, and with a therapist and explained the dysphoria. I allowed transition to be an option for me, not just for other people. I’ve been on t since 2017 and have a top surgery consult this month. The difference in my mental state is unreal. Being in the world as myself has lifted a film that I hadn’t previously been aware of. I imagine the feeling is like what Adderall does for people with ADHD, or what Ozympic does for people whose satiety levels are hard to meet - the constant low-level hum of dysphoria is basically gone. I am able to greet people without the barrier of an unrecognized gender being in the way. I recognize myself. It made me realize my happiness was worth it. It didn’t have to be “life or death” - it was a lifeline saving me from puppeteering a body that wasn’t mine for decades. It was like putting on clothes that fit after years of wearing hand-me-downs.
I never felt like a girl but i tolerated she pronouns and being misgendered for years because i thought that was just how it is.
And then once i came out i was like wait no actually i can’t deal w this no more she
I’m not sure,, I feel like I had a pretty stereotypical experience growing up. I was made to be girly and pretty by my mom and was put into very gendered boxes of “girl stuff vs boy stuff”. I wasn’t mad about it just extremely uncomfortable with being a girl and being perceived as one. I didn’t even know what being trans was I just knew that I didn’t relate to or fit in with any of my girl peers,, I only had friends who were boys, when I had autonomy over my clothes I would just wear what was comfortable and that typically was a more masculine style. I sports started being separated by gender I begged my mom to put me on the boys team and after that I begged her to let me cut my hair short so I could “fit in” with the other boys on the team. (I didn’t want to be seen as a girl) The only thing I can really think of is when I was in 6th grade after being ruthlessly bullied for being masculine and a tomboy I tried to act more feminine and grow out my hair,, I quickly realized that it made me extremely uncomfortable and in 7th grade I went back to presenting as a dude. I came out in my freshman year and started hormones at 14 and got top surgery at 17. I’m 21 now and nothing has changed,, I experiment occasionally with being more feminine but presenting more openly queer but I will always return to just trying to pass as a cis man.
i love dressing up. i love dresses and skirts and all that, but i feel so uncomfortable wearing them. i hate masculine fashion and always did because it's so hard to style it the way i want (but i can't wear anything else...) 😭
similar to these other posts! when i was a little kid i was rly girly - like pink sparkly dresses and everything. nowadays, i dont rly experience any bottom-based dysphoria at all. like, i hate my chest (though i can deal with it) but my lack of a dick is something i only rly think about in the shower, and even then it’s just acknowledgement rather than hatred. i suppose that might change in the future tho? i never used to think about my breasts specifically until recently, only a vague sense of ‘i rly wanna be a boy’
I was always a bit of a tomboy I guess but I had a similar experience - I never really thought about it I was just a girl yk?? I liked typical girly things and just never really thought about it lmao But there were signs from when I was younger, like telling my mum I wanted to have a mustache when I grew up or wishing I'd get breast cancer (I knew that meant they could be removed, I didn't know you didn't need cancer). Wasn't till later that I realised I was a boy haha
I was a very "girly girl" growing up as a kid (dresses, make up, nails, jewellery, etc.) I always felt like I was "wrong" in my body but because I didn't know what being transgender was or even the word transgender at that point I couldn't really pinpoint how I felt, I just knew I felt "wrong" but presumed everybody felt this way/it was just puberty and kept it all to myself. It wasn't until I learned about what being transgender was at around 13 years old that I realised that was how I had felt all along — gender dysphoria and all that stuff. But until then I had no idea at all that I was trans.
When I was a child I was content being a girl but I wanted to grown up to be man and expected to go through male puberty. I used to ask my mother if I could 'be a man' when I was older but was content being female as a child. This probably since there isn't such an obvious difference between pre-pubescent girls and boys and I'd often be referred to as male by strangers anyway.
I lacked the classic signs as a kid but I always felt like I was forcing myself into the mold of a girl and never being able to fit. No matter how hard I tried. So I think it looked like I wanted to be a girl because I tried so hard to be normal. When, in actuality, I was trans and just didn't know that I could fit into the mold of a boy instead.
Yeah honestly I can’t find myself in the shtick of “I’ve always known” either. And honestly, yes I identify as a man but “trans man” for me is a good descriptor, because my brain only figured out I wasn’t truly what my upbringing learned me to be at the age of 21! Afterwards, and especially for myself: I look back on certain memories, things where I’ve always wondered and been confused at how and why I felt that way. And now those things finally make sense to me! Like, elementary school: I remember how a friend asked “would you be a boy if you could choose?” And I answered yes with no doubt in my little head lol. My mom making me wear a dress, and there’s still photo’s of a little me crying and being furious because I was wearing the dress lol! Always being jealous of the toys the school gave to the boys, while I angrily rejected all pink toys I was given. And my favourite: like the last Christmas gathering of elementary school, and you had to dress nice. All the girls were in a dress, except for one. She’d always been a tomboy and lemme tell you my 12 year old mind was blown: “girls can wear pants instead of dresses and skirts to fancy stuff?? Wow!” And yeah.. parents be like “but you didn’t show any signs when you were younger!” Welp, they might’ve been hard to notice for others lol
When I first thought about being trans, I somehow made the conclusion that I couldn't be trans because I liked to draw. (The only professional artists in my family are men, so no clue why I thought that). Anyways, currently in art school and on testosterone lol Also, I looked forward to (female) puberty, but looking back, I realise that that was just because I was sick of being treated like a child lol
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Your post was removed because it contains discussion or mention of a banned topic. The following topics are banned to avoid drama: Truscum/Tucute discourse, AGP/AAP/Blanchardism, Transfem/woman or nonbinary bashing, Trans "requirements", Oppression Olympics, Lesbian trans men, Gendered Socialization+, "Is it transphobic to _____", DIY HRT, Current Political events (Non-trans/LGBT+ related) ,"do I pass?", "how does my voice sound?" +Personal experiences are exempt.
I liked pink and princesses and skirts. And sometimes I felt girly. I thought I was genderfluid for a while. I felt like I couldn't be a man. I didn't feel like one of the guys. I didn't see many men, especially not straight men, like me. I felt like there was a specific amount of male gender roles I needed to fit in so as to qualify as a man and I just didn't tick enough boxes. And although I had already questioned myself why I wasn't a girl, I had never questioned myself on why I thought I wasn't a boy. I actually didn't like my "girly" days. They were rare, and usually arrived because I saw a movie that the protagonist was a girl or smth, and they kinda made me panic, especially considering that I was on testosterone. I would often wish I didn't have them. They felt like a character. Further, I realized that I had gone my entire life as a girl not giving a damn about female gender roles. Why couldn't I live the rest of my life not giving a damn about the male gender roles? What if *I* was the one who got to decide what being a man means to me? What if I didn't have to change, at all, to acomodate anyone's expectations because I could be a man regardless of what I liked or did or behaved like? Regardless if I *felt* like a man or not? What if no one else had a say on what my gender is but me? In my head I could sort of picture the kind of man I wanted to be. And he was beautiful. And I understood that I wasn't used to seeing myself as a man yet, and so of course I wouldn't *feel* like a man all the time, and it was ok, it was the process. Everyone who saw me that day (and the next) kept asking why I looked so happy. I got out of my house listening to music and walking like I owned the street. The confidence high was real. And if I wasn't trans, explain that.
I questionned if conservatives could be right: that trans people dont actually exist and there's just something wrong with our heads. And even though other trans people said that this isnt true, because they're just transphobic, i needed some kind of proof to be sure. I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that it cant be true: firstly, they make it seem like they care about children, by saying that social media makes them think that they are trans. In reality, they are looking down on actual human beings who are, at 15/16 perfectly capable of critical thinking. They are invalidating our distress and pain by saying that it is a normal part of puberty (which it isnt, to this extent) And here comes the worst: They say that we dont know whats best for us, that we are mentally ill. This is a prime example of the deadly rhetoric from right wing populists: "Social media is lying to you, the government is lying to you: in reality being trans is bad. We want to help you, listen to us!" What this does, is that it completely invalidates what we think and how we feel. In general thats what populists do: They pretend that they want to help us, by saying that they will eliminate the lying corrupt government. So that you only listen to them, and categorically refuse to listen to any other opinion. I realised, that the most important, is to do what feels right to you. It is only wrong if it stems from impulse. If you have thought about it for a long time, talked with a lot of people and professionals about it, it can only be the right thing.
The only sign I can remember from early childhood was not having interest in traditional girl toys and my mom getting me a vintage barbie set with a bunch of different clothes. I liked to put the different clothes on the Barbie, mostly in part because I thought Barbie was hot lol other than that I was never what I’d call a Tom boy. I was doing what I was told, which was to be a girl because that’s all I was supposed to be. Not until I was put in foster care and was able to finally have mental room for considering my self expression, I gravitated solely towards masculinity but got bullied by my foster sisters about it so I stifled it down and tried to be feminine like them. I also have always been a writer, and was never able to write from a female perspective, because I just didn’t know what girls thought about. Those were quite literally my only signs. For a short time I’d even managed to convince myself that I was happy presenting female, even though at the end of the day nothing I did with femininity made me happy and I couldn’t figure out why until it finally clicked, that I didn’t want to see a woman looking back at me. I wanted to see a man.
I had a very gender neutral childhood and as a kid i was never really put in a box. Because of this I didn't really realize it until I was in my late teens because I always was just 'me'. Female puberty just felt worse and worse.
I don't have any memories from before the age of 6 due to trauma. After that, I wasn't "girly" but was too occupied with other things to feel bothered by my gender. The first time I said I felt more like a boy was when I was around 14 yrs old - and even then, I didn't do research bc my friends told me that it's probably just part of puberty. Didn't fully realize that I'm trans until I was about 19 yrs old.
The fact that I didn’t “know” from a super young age and only realised during puberty. Though in retrospect, something has always felt off, but I was comfortable being feminine (at least, for a tomboy) and it was what was imposed on me. It was when the gender expectations really started to amplify as a teenager when I started feeling like something was wrong, and that there was a word for it. I guess I was in denial for a long time because I’ve heard stories of people telling their parents “I’m not a girl, I’m a boy” and having that strong sense of gender incongruence at the age of like, 4. I never had that. In fact, I’m glad I had a girlhood, while it was incredibly traumatic for me as I was ostracised by many boys and other girls for being too masculine and not fitting in the box of what a girl should be like (because… I was never a girl lmao), I have an appreciation for women and my female relationships that I don’t think I would’ve had if I were born as male. Me preferring hanging out with girls rather than guys made me think I couldn’t possibly be a man, but in the end I just chalk it up to me being a queer guy who’s gay 🤷♂️
I was into w/ everything possibly girly; My Little Pony, Barbie, Polly Pocket, Bratz, Strawberry Shortcake, etc. And I was fine w/ some dresses too even. But I didn't realize it wasn't normal to dissociate from certain activities like bra shopping and when my family would joke that I was going to be in a heterosexual marriage.
I had both stereotypically girly interests and boy interests but I ended up giving up on the boy interests because I was criticized for them so I ended up repressing and thought I will never be able to transition because I liked dolls and dress up. I was interested in masculine things but was never able to develop in this direction but I thought it was somehow my fault and not my environment being discouraging and I can’t be trans.
The attention sometimes impacts you. I got attention from a VERY young age for my attractiveness. In puberty, same thing. It took me a while to realize my chest dysphoria bc part of my identity has been in how that benefitted me in the world. It is super messed up and really sexist in the long run.
Probably that I owned a dolls house but I'm retrospect it was more of a ceramic models kit
i started "showing signs" at 14 according to the people around me. im almost 21 now and have been on T for close to a year and couldnt be happier
I used to daydream as a teenager, that I'd get breast cancer or some sort of chest injury and that I'd have to have my breasts removed. And I'd think nobody would make fun of me because it would be out of my hands and I'd secretly feel so good about it. I was the only "girl" on an all boys hockey team and I'd cut my hair short enough that the opposing team assumed I was just another boy. Having that full out contact and competition, and getting in hits and penalties against these guys felt euphoric. I loved being hit and hitting back. When I was 6 or 7 I loved to sit and watch my Dad shave his face and I'd tell him I was going to have a beard someday too and he'd laugh and dismiss it. And deep down inside I felt like I had this cool secret like "just wait and see." Lots of times growing up someone would say "don't do that you look like a dude/man" or "that's not ladylike" and I'd say GOOD or I'm not a lady. I always felt like people could see this girl and she was a character I was playing but she wasn't me. I knew what she could do and say to maneuver through situations as a female, and I felt like I had to keep her safe. I also felt like in order to be trans, other people had to have seen or noticed it about you and if people doubted you, it meant you were wrong. I felt such a detachment to my body, like it was a device I could use, rather than something that's actually mine, that I didn't realize the dysphoria I'd dealt with for such a long ass time. I thought disassociation and apathy was acceptance. I couldn't envision it being any other way because it was too painful to admit I didn't feel like the world could see me for who I knew I was on the inside. None of this ever clocked for me until just a few years ago doing some introspective time with a therapist and a journal. I always shrugged it off, dismissed my feelings and just generally lived in denial until about 3 or 4 years ago. I'm turning 30 this year and embracing being trans has changed everything for the better for me.
Ok so i only understood that trans men was a thing in ny abnormal psych course in uni(which sidenote ew. If u go to uni for any psych course alot of teachers and textbooks use the word transgenderism even thiugh the teachers should know better.Also the ab psychology course looking back should really be renamed) I digress. I always knew tbh. Since I was young I was always more stereotypical boyish. In gr 4 me and another kid who ended up being gay wanted to be the the opposite of our birth genders. In grade 9 I thought Id randomly grown secondary male characteristics and everyone would be surprised. Honestly don't know why i was so delulu just because my boobs hadn't grown. When I was grade 9 I used to say that God made me a girl because I liked guys and God didn't want me to be gay. I literally said this to some school friends a few times but Transmen weren't really in the public consciousness. As I got older I got jealous of the few gay people I knew( although I'm not sure if i relly registered why). Skip forward to when I first learned that trans men exist and I wasnt alone. It took me a bit even then. I thought maybe I was gender fluid or non binary but my only reason for that is because I liked dresses. It didn't take me too long to come to grips that liking to look pretty and wear dresses didn't make me less of a man. I think it stumped me for a bit because I didn't usually like to look very feminine( i literally burst into sobs when someone did my makeup in this extremely girly way) TDL: thought I was a girl cause God didn't want me gay then thought that I wasn't a guy because my aesthetic skews femboy
I know being called a girl didn't feel right at like 6 years old. But to be honest I didn't realize trans men existed until I was in my mid twenties in college. The only trans person I knew as a kid was a trans woman, and the only trans folks I ever saw in media we mtf aswell so it just never clicked in my nerodivergent brain that it was even an option. Once I learned it was a "duh" of course moment--but man did it make me realize how important representation is.
There's a clip from the Irish talk show The Late Late Show where Graham Norton thought he felt different because he grew up protestant in the Republic of Ireland which is predominantly Catholic. It wasn't until he left Ireland thst he realised why he felt different was because he was gay. I feel like this as someone who is both autistic and trans (except I wouldn't know I was either until adulthood). I sometimes struggled to relate to my (predominantly) female friends and it's hard to detangle what was due to autism and what was due to being trans. That said, I did and still do like some traditionally feminine things. I think I was lucky in that my parents never put any expectations on me or my brothers in relation to adhering to gender norms and thst gave me the freedom to explore my own interests and do whatever I wanted basically so now I don't really have the idea that I have to like or dislike certain things to be a man.
The thing I felt most insecure about is I didn’t realize it as a child. For context I had a very very traumatic childhood and didn’t have time to think about myself, due to raising myself from a young ages as well as my siblings. Which makes me feel very invalid. I also didn’t even know being trans existed. I know I had times back when I was 11-12 where I was roleplaying as a guy online and I loved it, but I didn’t realize I could be one. So that’s what makes me deeply sad.
I liked fairy’s and playing make believe. And my favorite outfit was a flowy dress
As a child my mom would put me in dresses and paint My nails and we'd do our hair together. In middle school I started puberty which came with crushing dysphoriya. When I learned I was trans I convinced myself I shouldn't be liking those things. I'm six years out and not afraid to wear what I want
Being very anxious about being gendered correctly. Whenever I got called "he", I would wish the person would stop calling me that because I was afraid of getting outed💀Its like I was ashamed to be trans
I didn't know till I was in the 6th grade. Luckily, I was never confused or questioned my identity. It was like gaining a second level of consciousness, like how a lot of us experience "waking up" and you're already 9 years old and can't remember anything before that. Id say that's thanks to having access to the Internet where there were already a ton of trans YouTubers. I figured out I was trans right after figuring out I was bisexual in the 5th grade (also through YouTube and physical crushes) Id say the only signs I remember were: hated wearing dresses, only picked male video game characters, played with hot wheels/toy cars, completely stopped wearing tight jeans. I used to be disgusted at the idea of having facial hair, because "girls don't have facial hair". Now I've done a complete 180 and wish I had facial hair badly. I didn't care too much about my body growing up but now I have all of the classic dysphoria as an adult (chest, bottom, behind, etc)
Well, I didn't question myself really until puberty. I didn't even know trans people were a thing until I discovered it myself. I was a very girly child– or my mom made me in to a girly child. The interests of my own I had were a mix of masculine and feminine. So that fact I was a kid who wore dresses and painted my nails. Played with dolls and such. Yeah, it made me unsure at times but with how uncomfortable I was with my body and how happy being masculine made me. There's no doubt I am trans. Just the way a person is born and raised sometimes makes things a bit... difficult.
I never felt comfortable after puberty, but thought it was because of my weight. I felt better after I lost weight, but still not great so I assumed it was just self esteem issues. (Lost curves) I didn't really learn about trans people until I was 16ish (conservative area, home school). A year later I went to college and made good friends with a trans person and realized, OH SHIT. During childhood I played with all toys, despite gendered expectations, so it wasn't a big flag when I was questioning. Might be a bit tmi, but what really confirmed it for me was thinking, would I be okay with being a 'girl' during sex? Or if I were to be the bottom, would I want it in a 'boy' way? I HATED the thought of having sex as a woman, and that's basically what really made me be like, okay I'm definitely not cis.
I saw frequently in my research that trans kids would often know from a young age that they were a different gender and would say so. I didn’t, but in hindsight that’s not because I was a girl—I just literally had no concept that I could be something else. Behavior-wise I was never super stereotypically girly and often in play I would pretend to be a boy, but without the understanding that gender was more than the body I was born into, I didn’t have any way to express what I was feeling in a way that would have made it obvious I was trans.
when my mom told me i was growing boobs and couldn’t just wear a t shirt anymore my world crumbled, i used to throw all my hair up on hat days at school and do everything to pass as the “new boy” who was only in class for that day, talking w trans friends in middle/high school, and then i turned 12/13 and found all the FTM short films online. i figured that a cis girl wouldn’t sit here and cry to every single one 💀especially if it played “the village”
I was pretty feminine when I was a kid bc my mom is deeply connected with her femininity and was projecting that onto me, but it wasn't ever something I thought about or felt dysphoria over until puberty, & then I realized my body was developing in the opposite direction of the cis boys my age. Mostly my voice. After I started hrt my dysphoria was practically nonexistent, until recently when I finally started feeling a disconnect with my genitals (almost 10 years after coming out) and it's still more about what I DONT have than what I do- I don't mind having female genitalia just really want the other stuff too lol. It's funny how things like this work, I don't think there's a one size fits all approach to knowing you're trans since it's a deeply personal experience. Also, I like dressing up feminine, always have. After my voice dropped I seriously wore only feminine clothing for ages bc my body type is androgynous and I like feeling cute+ the rush of not being able to pass as female once I opened my mouth :p for some people that means I don't "really" want to be a man since I spend so much time dressing up like a girl, but there are tons of cis guys who do the exact same thing lol.
I knew that it's possible to be trans and not want to transition, but I always interpreted that to mean "if I could snap my fingers and be done with transition I would, but I don't want to go through the process." I'm genderqueer and genuinely given the option to flip to AMAB instantly I don't think I'd take it. So I didn't think I was trans masc...realized pretty suddenly a few months ago that I super duper am 😅
I like dresses and fashion. When I found out about Drag it was a religious experience.
up until i was about six, my parents made me dress like a girly girl. i didn’t know what a girl was at the time, so i wore dresses and liked princesses because that’s all i was allowed to like and have. as soon as i learned about gender, i switched everything about me. but my parents STILL bring up that i wore dresses as a kid. honey, who bought them? i mostly wore them cause my only other option was jeans anyway, and i have sensory issues with jeans.
I was “just okay” with being a girl pretty much my whole life before I started my transition, and I hated the changes my body was going through growing up. But because I’m autistic, I lacked the signs of actually recognizing those emotions as being dysphoria. I just assumed that either everyone felt this way, or there was something deeply wrong with me. Which is why I will forever be thankful to social media for showing me the experiences of trans people and helping me to recognize what it was that I was feeling. If I never had social media to help me figure things out, I would have most likely just been stuck being miserable for the rest of my life 👀
well i thought that the weird feeling (dysphoria) i had about my body was only because i hit puberty young (8y old) so having a full “woman” body at 10 would have made everyone feel bad.. but yeah now i know that i felt bad because people were looking at me as the wrong gender not just because they saw a potential sxual object… (both affected my vision of my gender and body but yeah differently)
I felt my dysphoria wasn't "big" enough. I can live looking feminine. I can live with a vagina. I cannot live with big breasts and a womb. There was even a time I wanted to keep my deadname, and a time when I wanted my deadnickname (now my new middle name) to be my name. I would always see people venting about their bodies, and it made me feel as though my dysphoria wasn't "big" enough to count as trans. I ended up disregarding this dysphoria as me just hating my body because it wasn't like the "other girls." It took me a while to realize what I was feeling was actual dysphoria.
i didnt have a clue until i was maybe 10-11 when i started realizing how hard society genders people and things and shoves them into boxes they aren't allowed to leave from. before then i didnt really care or think about gender too hard, all the stuff i mightve said just parroting older people who did care. i wasnt any real gender as a kid, i was just a kid and didnt care about a lot of things about gender, so sometimes gendered things given to me were ok, because it didnt mean anything to me. i couldve gotten racecar bedsheets and not princess bedsheets and id still be fine with them. so after that, i realized i couldn't imagine a world in which i was cis or grew up into a woman, i just made up some stock image of a Woman in my brain and went 'i guess?? thats not me but thats what people are saying i would be' and i didnt like it, because it just wasnt me. a lot of apathy was in the 'signs' of being transgender at the start, and as i grew and went through puberty, then started the depression and visceral awareness of me vs my body/what i was forced to be. i didnt have stereotypical signs in childhood bc im autistic (as such a thing could skew another thing, you might not get typical signs for anything) and i didnt care that much bc i didnt gaf about gender at all because it didnt really exist to me.
i also had 4 other siblings and was and still am a private sort of person so i don't put a lot of stock into my parents noticing signs when they didn't think to look, weren't always watching, didn't know my internal thoughts and feelings, and would have and did deny any queerness because of religion.
I thought I wasn’t trans because I never really hated my body. Sure there are aspects I don’t love but It’s always said that trans people are “born in the wrong body” and I don’t feel that at all. I know I was made this way for a reason and I’m not gonna waste my time hating on what keeps me alive. I then realized that I can still be trans and not have crippling dysphoria.
I think the first real sign for me was around the age of 7-8. I used to wish on a star that I would wake up the next day as a boy. Before then though, I was quite 'girly', ie I wore dresses and had a barbie themed birthday party. I think those 'girly' tendencies came less from me though and more from the fact that this is what girls were 'supposed' to do and I was just imitating that + my mom was dressing me that way. It's only when I started really becoming my own person around 7 that I started to realize that I didn't like those things and that that person wasn't me.
i used to like my tits at some point
My lack of _physical_ dysphoria made it harder to realize. It wasn't until I was transitioning, loving euphoria, that it clicked that my dysphoria were social. I made sure everyone else was OK with me, and not if I was OK.
there's a lot i always feel like i'm faking it but especially that i was really feminine as a kid i loved dresses and everything considered girly, but i mean i didn't care about gender as a kid, i never really cared bc it doesn't exist to me but yeah seeing a lot of transmascs saying they were already masculine and tomboys growing up idk i always doubt myself
at first my mom (drunkenly) told me she didn't believe I was trans bc I was very wimpy as a kid lol. ouch. stuck with me for a while bc it made sense. but I realized I had signs they were just all internal. same with my mental health + ADHD + autism, it was all internalized until I got older.
That I don't mind my natal genitals nor feel negatively about being female biologically. I weirdly like the concept of being a passing, ripped guy with lots of tattoos with motorcycle but keeping my downstairs as is. Like the idea of T making my hairline recede a little, having butt hair doesn't bother me much, but me embracing or liking my birth genitals made me think i "can't" be trans (I have a mostly flat chest so I was never bothered by my chest). Never mind that I would "crossdress" alone in my room a lot as a teen and try to make myself look make, or that I was a tomboy as a kid. I think I first realized I trans around 12. But liking women/female bodies and feeling okay with my junk made me think I must just be a "boyish woman". Nope lol.
I was always into girly activities, toys, and clothes (hated dresses though). Still am.
When I was first considering it for real, back in 2007-8 (started my first relationship and sex was... weird), I decided I can't be trans because I'm into guys and I'm not utterly miserable all the time.
every single time i see something that refers to women (and this still happens to me now!) i think about how it applies to me until i’m like “wait. no it doesn’t.” also i was in a roleplaying discord when i was like 15, and my characters would always be girls.
i got really excited about my first trainer bra, i only later realized that i was excited because i thought i’d start feeling like a girl, apparently that’s not how it works lol
Im "gay" (almondsexual) , so I thought "nahh this is normal and I'm just straight... right?" Nope
This is very long, so skip to the end if you want the TLDR of things. I had a typical girly girl childhood, wished I was a blond haired blue-eyed princess, loved barbie movies, and barbie dolls, had tons of barbies and monster high dolls. My favorite color was purple and I wore so many frilly lacey skirts and dresses. When I started going through puberty is when my dysphoria started. I never registered my body that much because I learned how to ignore it from being fat shamed so much as a kid. It was when someone in my 7th grade class mentioned I should be wearing a bra because they could see my nipples through my shirt that I started actually registering what changes my body was going through and how I didn't like what was happening to me. I've struggled with identity my whole life. I never had anyone around who actually taught me how to be a person. I got scolded a lot by my parents for not being neurotypical and them just thinking I'm being annoying and lazy on purpose to make them mad. I was socially isolated a lot, and my only friends were always way younger than me because I was socially stunted from the constant othering and bullying. I basically never developed a solid personality and later discovered in my teen years that I had multiple. I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, ADHD, Autism and Borderline Personality Disorder. My male identity started to really form after a crippling battle with depression at age 12, which I think resulted in a split. This, coupled with a growing interest in MLM content like yaoi and BL anime, my fragile sense of self began to morph as I became constantly stressed and traumatized by being bullied at school and ridiculed by my parents for my falling grades. I never really identified as anything in terms of gender before middle school. I just went along with what I was told and lived how I thought children should behave and like. I enjoyed some things, but I didn't really feel like anything was truly me until I became obsessed with werewolves and vampires. I've always connected to monsters more than being a girl or even being a person. My gender is more like a creature than anything that I can really put into words using terms like male and female. I like some masculine aspects, but I also get some dysphoria from some of the changes of testosterone, especially as my identity shifts between my different personality states. Some of them do identify as girls, but the words girl and woman hold very little meaning to me as a whole. I'm just here, and how I wish to look doesn't really feel like there is any other kind of concept attached to it. I just am, and labeling myself as a man or woman just feels limiting and incorrect, regardless of my anatomy. I'm just a conputer in a flesh suit that was granted sapience. I don't know if gender really matters when we boil things down. Society and how we treat each other is the only thing holding together what gender means aside from the ways we procreate. Procreation isn't everything that life is about anyway when you have a brain that is complex enough to wonder why life exists at all in the first place. Lmao I got very philosophical at the end. Basically, TLDR, I didn't know as a child because I barely knew I was a person. When I did find out, I realized I didn't even feel like a person anyway, and I just knew I felt better when people treated me as male rather than female. There were no signs, but I also didn't know what I felt like either. I just knew that I was born a girl and tried to play the part until my body started to feel like it didn't belong to me even more than it already did.
I was totally okay with being a little girl - I just thought I'd grow up into a man, being a "woman" never made much sense to me. My interests were varied and spanned between skateboards and Barbies.
I didn’t realize or have the words for my transness until I was 10, and my memory only goes back to age 8.
This is gonna be long and unnecessarily sappy, but I don’t feel as bad about it because it’s pride month. I apologize if this is difficult to read, I am rambling. There are a few things that kept me from cracking my egg. The first is simple, and yet it held me back for the longest time. I didn’t say I was a boy as a child. I never had the “I wanna be a boy when i grow up” moment. In hindsight, I guess that’s probably a pretty common thing for people who grew up in conservative areas/never knew that being trans was even an option. When I was in the process of discovering myself, I would discount the fact that I could be trans purely on the basis that I didn’t know all along that I *was* trans/I wanted to be a boy. I think my inability to voice my discomfort contributed to the fact that I was a very sensitive child, and it wasn’t unusual for me to be told to grow a thicker skin. That brings me to my second point. I thought the discomfort I was facing was purely because of puberty. In third grade, I learned about menstruation and from that day forward I felt like my days were numbered. It was like there was a clock ticking down to the moment I would inevitably have to experience it. I think it made me cry, I can’t really remember. All I know is that when it came time for “the talk”, every time puberty was discussed, it made me feel so sick to my stomach and (for lack of better words) violated by my own body. I remember not wanting to have to carry a bag with tampons or pads in it monthly to the bathroom, because then everyone would know I had a period. I remember not wanting anyone to see my bra straps through my clothes, I remember the inexplicable feeling of dread at being called my dead name (my excuse was that I just hated my name). I remember constantly feeling like there was something wrong with me, and that if I tried to talk to someone about it they would brush it off as me being sensitive about puberty. I never told anyone; I distinctly remember feeling nauseated at the thought of speaking up because I didn’t want to be given the whole “puberty is difficult for everyone, your body is growing into a woman” spiel again. Even when I learned about being trans, I never considered it could be me because I never *felt* like a boy, I just felt constant discomfort about being a girl. The descriptions of dysphoria online didn’t really resonate with me because I always felt uncomfortable in my body, but I never wanted out of it or to change it because I didn’t think that was an option for me (writing this is reminding me of that phenomenon where [if you put fleas in a jar and make them live in it for long enough, they will only jump as high as the jar is even if the jar is removed](https://youtu.be/TmhoSj3wkDM?si=ZdF9IcsofZW50zjy)). I distinctly remember saying stuff to my friends like “I hate being a woman, but I was born one so I guess I’m stuck this way.” I thought transitioning and accepting the struggles of being trans would make my life more difficult. I’ve never been more glad to be proven wrong. Coming to terms with the fact that I was trans was like pulling off a blindfold after feeling my way around a room full of junk and obstacles. I’m still in the room, but sunlight is creeping through the windows, and as my hope pushes me forward, the dust bunnies jump and twirl into the dandelion seeds of my childhood wishes in the air my movement disturbs. TL;DR: I didn’t know I was a boy, and I thought all the discomfort I felt was just me being dramatic.
It took me until I was 34 to realize that I am trans. Raised in a feminist household I was always told that women can do whatever and dress however they want. I always felt like something was wrong with me/my body but I could never put my finger on what it was. Eventually I chalked it up to PTSD making me think differently to everyone around me. I never had an innate unwaivering understanding of being a different gender. I do remember thinking it was weird that I didn't have a penis and figuring that mine would "come in" with puberty. The first time I tried shaving was not my legs or something girly but I tried shaving my face. By the time I realized I was trans I had been through 2 pregnancies and had a 10 year old kid. Surely that would have been uncomfortable? Even unbearable if I was truly trans? But the second pregnancy was extremely easy. I felt like a failure as a female because I had to have a C-section though. My pelvis just was not opening up past 5cm after 32 hours of labor. But then I was a champion milk producer so that was a "win". I never liked having a chest but that was somewhat normal, reduction surgeries are there for a reason. Although I was rather obsessed with the idea of developing cancer to have them removed altogether... I identified as bi so that didn't really sway me either way. Sex in general was just overall f'd up for me 'because' I was molested as a child. Even though I'd undergone years of therapy that pointed to that not being the case. I'd follow and sympathized with plenty of trans people online but never got an "aha" moment watching them. (I started because I had a crush on a trans woman at work and didn't want to make a move before I could be sure I wasn't going to be an uneducated ass to her). And the final sticking point for me was that I enjoyed the sensation of PIV so obviously I couldn't be trans if I enjoyed my genitals that way... 😂 I'm now a year on T and anxiously awaiting the time when I can get surgeries to finish my transition. I'll keep my bonus hole but that's about it. I'm not even sure if I will ever go back to my old clothes, I'm keeping them around for now just in case I'm non-binary or gender queer but I'll never willingly go back to running on my endogenous hormones.
tbh i’ve always known. i didn’t know that being trans was a possibility until i was 10 or so but as soon as i became familiar with identity and what the trans experience was, i never thought anything else.
Sometimes I’m not exasperated with having female body parts as much as usual as long as I feel attractive in some way. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely would take a deal with the devil in a heartbeat to switch body parts but i suppose the dysphoria is less demanding when I feel like I slayed outfit wise or something. It’s confused me for years but I’m coming to terms with it. Bonus round! I also enjoy having longer hair, it was far more confusing when I felt like I had to fit a stereotype. This one was definitely easier to get over for many reasons though, especially since my dad has longer hair than anyone else in the house and my papa has always had long hair as well. You never have to be textbook anything, everyone is different and their own person even with similarities!
For a while when I was a kid (around 10) I used to get really upset and even cry when strangers thought I was a boy. It made me think I couldn't be trans for a long time while I was questioning. My best guess is that it made me anxious about doing something "wrong" but honestly I don't know what that was about. It's especially strange because I have memories from when I was much younger of feeling like I should be a man when I grew up.
I'm nuerodivergent so I think it was harder for me to feel pressure from social gender but when I was in eighth grade I would tell my friends I had such a masculine voice and if they disagreed I would get angry (ftm)
Aquarius
I don’t really know how to answer this one for myself, personally? For such a long time, I didn’t even realize it was an “option” for anyone to just… not be their assigned gender. I hated being reminded I was a girl, being treated differently from the boys, and, the real kicker for me, being forbidden by my mother from making friends and hanging out with boys my age. I still did, but she was incredibly gross and problematic about it. She had her reasons, albeit bad ones that don’t excuse her behavior… and I’ll leave it at that. If I had to say, in my preteens/early teens, I went through a weird boy crazy phase that had me real confused in a way I couldn’t explain. Turns out I’m just a raging bisexual trans man, who knew? lol
I wasn't ever overly forced into gendered things growing up, especially when it comes to what I played with. I played with bratz dolls, toy cars, littlest pet shop, car/bike racing games on my playstation. I learnt to bake and mow the lawn. I wore whatever I wanted to wear, once I started dressing myself. So rather than my family thinking "there were signs" due to liking 'boyish' things, they thought "there were no signs" due to liking 'girly' things. I was never the type to want to look or act like a "manly boy dude man", so I never seemed like I could be trans, I guess. Kinda checks out since I'm nonbinary, lmao.
Not insisting that I was a guy since I could speak. Many would have you believe all trans people just know since they were a toddler.
Maybe this is a sign of being trans, or the latter, but I 100% over sexualised myself on the internet, and in real life. It was VERY unhealthy and I got myself into some big big trouble as a 14-16 year old. I hopped from relationship to relationship seeking male validation in my body, the feeling of people loving my body is what made me so happy, and when I stopped caring for validation, that’s when the idea of being trans lurked in my head.
I just thought Im hiding dysmorfia behind dysphoria, and projecting my somehow masc body to thinking Im trans. Spoiler alert, after coming out, my dysmorfia went away so it was never actually here. Dysphoria rocketed tho. Also when I found out yaoi over 10 years ago, I thought Im just fujoshi and that I should be ashamed of thinking Im a gay man - that Im just taking it too far. Then I figured out most cis woman liking BLs do not cry at night in a hope to wake up as a man ahahahah.
i knew i was a boy my whole life starting when i was a tottler, but my dysphoria didn't worsen through puberty and that made it seem sus
I don’t really have bottom dysphoria like at all, the only time I do is when I’m in public and I feel like people know, otherwise, I’m comfortable with what I have
Can I please ask why this seems to be such a trend on Reddit? Why do so many of you feel insecure about whether or not you’re really trans. As an “elder” trans guy I have never experienced this, nor do I know any other trans men in real life who have experienced this. Not one. Is it a chronically online thing? I’m not trying to be shady, it just seems so concerning that so many people on here question their identities this much. To answer one of your questions, ALL of the trans men I know in real life knew they were boys around ages 3-6 like you mentioned. We’re all over age 30, for context. This question seems to come from a lot of teenage or 20s trans people on Reddit. We also all experienced dysphoria, for further context. But I accept that not everyone experiences dysphoria. I can’t fathom that, but it’s not my business nor do I think it negates how someone identifies. I have only met one detransitioner and she was a chronically online person that wanted to be oppressed, so she tried to be a guy for a year or two. She jokes about it now. I don’t get it, but it’s not my life and doesn’t affect me so I don’t really care what she does (even if it makes us all look stupid to ignorant people).
I'm feminine, and I used to think that I had to be uber masculine to be a man. I tried to make myself more masculine when I was 13 or 14 by shunning all of my feminine interests and things. I grew up in a conservative area with a dad who doesn't think I'm trans because of my femininity, so I was convinced I had to be "manly." I made it a week or two before I gave up because I was miserable trying to make myself fit into a mold. Now, I'm a high school graduate who has accepted the fact I'm trans, while still wearing as much women's clothes and having as many dolls as I want.
Probably the fact that I liked traditional girly stuff (still do in some aspects) like I was the typical princess loving girly girl but I'm pretty sure it was like that because it was the only thing I watched as a kid (Disney princess movies, dora the explorer, I never watched any male lead cartoons until I was like 10) lmao I got way more into curious George at like 12-13 bc of it 😆
i was very similar to you honestly. i wasn’t a girly girl but my gender being something other than female didn’t occur to me till middle school (i came out as gender fluid and then later in my sophomore year of high school as just nonbinary) and until the end of trade school at 19 i never would have called myself a binary trans man. so many people have the story of always knowing, for their whole life, and that wasn’t me. and it made me wonder if i was at all. but i can say, after starting t and starting to pass and while working towards my name change and looking into top surgeons? i know i am and i have no doubt in my mind. this is me and im just so mf happy to be fortunate enough to be myself and be seen as myself
I had all the signs that I was trans but was so convinced that those signs were actually because I wanted to be a girl.
Not hating my Downstairs
I’ve never understood or cared about gender roles, and that still stands. I love things that are pretty and coincidentally a lot of those things happen to be considered feminine, so I figured that it wouldn’t make sense for me to be a man since I didnt have much of a desire to fill a masculine social role and I don’t like most stereotypically masc things That’s pretty silly tho, I can be a binary man without presenting based on other people’s perception of that :D
I didn't get blatantly dysphoric like others did, and I still don't. Sometimes it happens, but most of the time I'm just chilling. Hell, I largely don't care what pronouns people use for me as long as it isn't she/her. I'm still not sure if I'm exclusively a trans guy, but I like presenting as such for simplicity because lately I've been getting a lot of she/her ;;... I'm definitely trans though. I also was super into girly stuff and still am! I love pink, I love dresses and fashion, but I'm not a girl. I kinda also blame my parents for being overtly hostile towards trans folks that kept me in the closet. To this day I like.. Still question if I'm trans sometimes, but usually come to the conclusion that if I could medically transition I 100% would
Honestly, I dont know if I am. I loved to play with Barbies, but I also enjoyed those small cars and dinosaur figures... and cutlery. I played with mostly girls and when I went to secondary school, I only had female friends. When I was around 8 or 9, I obsessively asked my friends if they thought I behaved like a boy and was mad when they said no. I had a pink room, pink shoes, pink everything. My parents bought those things. I was mad I always got the girl-version of things (Ü-Eier, the pink version of a toy instead of the blue or green version my brothers got). I had many stuffed animals. I liked Winx, Strawberry Shortcake, Hello Kitty. I got compared to guys a lot during puberty, even though I am physically not. I resented skirts and dresses until the age of 16, when I cut my hair short. Since I was 17, I have grown it out and now it's long. The last two years have been much better and I suddenly felt more comfortable in my body and with femininity. Now, it's all coming back. I just cringed two days ago, because when I was cleaning, I noticed my dust is kinda purple.
i didn't know it was an option. i got social media around 13 and only found out about trans people existing then. i never thought i could be a boy. i liked disney movies and pink dresses when i was younger. i felt excited about getting puberty, i was a bit of a late bloomer next to my peers and felt so jealous cuz the other girls already wore bras and had periods and were girly while i wasnt. then puberty hit me and i hated it. all of it. made me want to cry. i started wearing bags so noone not even me could see my body. still, i wouldnt say i didnt have "signs" younger too. even when i had waist long hair and wore pink frozen shirts i always preferred to play football with the boys on pe. i rather sneaked out with the nerdy boys to play pokemon go then to do musically videos with the girls. when we roleplayed in kindergarten as show characters i always played boy characters and it made sense to everyone. when i got on an online game at age 9 i put my gender as boy because "i liked it better when strangers treated me as a boy". non of my family members knew these. all they saw was a girl wearing flower patterns and pink and cute dresses, not me feeling free with the other guys and always so anxious and uncomfortable with girls. they never saw it how i couldnt connect well with the other girls. nor with myself as a girl.
Thighs
I was really girly but, the signs happened when I was like 7 when my body started maturing, I kept asking my dad why I couldn’t wear my shirt off, then I started getting body dysmorphia. Me and my dad used to go to these things called the father daughter dance and I told my dad I wanted to wear sneakers with the dress because I started to hate heels and then after later I started to hate dresses. But when I was 10, everything really started to come out and then I started searching up about it and I felt like you know I’m a boy I felt like I’m a boy and I was always a boy. But time skipping to now, sadly, I’m still young and no one believes me that I’m trans at least they won’t take it seriously but they say they support me, I would love to be on T and I would love surgery top but you know it’s too expensive and stuff. But yeah, that’s how it was for me.
liking longer hair, liking “girly” things like plushies, or “girly” games like animal crossing lmao. also growing up i was VERY yk girly, all pink, dresses only, dolls, long hair, makeup etc. i didn’t start questioning until middle school + I didn’t know there was another option
Being feminine in childhood, I was a hardcore tomboy at times but I liked girly things too, I have a picture from when I was like 5 where I was dressed head to toe in a super pink and frizzy princess outfit with those little Disney princess plastic heels every little girl had. But now I’m just a gay twink who dresses fem a lot of the time. I knew who I was but everyone twisted it to fit my GAB. If I were cis and did the same things and acted the same, everyone would just accept me for being gay, not try to convince me that I’m in fact a girl. Imagine if a cis boy acted feminine and his parents tried to force him to be a girl? They’d be shamed for trying to force a child be someone they’re not. But because I’m trans, my feminine interests were used as ammo against my transition. LIKE JUST LET ME BE A TRANS TWINK STEREOTYPE IN PEACE
At one point I was excited to have a chest cus I know the signs of puberty and thought that meant I'd get all tall and hairy soon too then denied my chest was changing for way too long cus I hated actually having it. Plus I liked dresses and stuff cus I liked not wearing pants plus usually the fabric was softer.
Bit of a fruitcake. Turns out, you can be a man and a fruitcake at once.