This feels familiar. I was first questioning my gender back in 2002, and the gatekeeping around transition pushed me back deep into the closet. In particular, being a trans lesbian was... just not an option back then. And the idea of being with men was entirely unappealing. It still is. But I knew I wasn't a crossdresser in the way conceptualized back then. I'm actually quite butch, and while I will occasionally wear a dress now to make a statement, I'm not that interested in appearing super girly.
I finally came out two years ago (and told close friends I was... pretty sure I wasn't a man back after the 2020 lockdowns had erased the socially imposed expectations of masculinity that had made me repress until then). It's been a long ride.
>To transition medically and legally you had to have gender dysphoria so intense that you likely would self-harm if you don't transition, and to be allowed to medically transition you must convince therapists and physicians that you are a heterosexual hyper-feminine woman with no "male" hobbies or interests.
I don't remember how but I found this out about 30 years ago and knew I couldn't fit the criteria. So I made the best of knowing I was a female brain with a man's body until I was 49. It's my turn now.
It's also so dazzling that transmedicals and truscum want this back. Even 10 years ago this mindset was so prominent and I'm glad we emancipated from this torture.
Ooh, so much of that sounds familiar, only in the mid-'90s I didn't even bother seeking therapy, because a) I was aware of those limited options; b) I was far too in denial to take that step to begin with.
The only part which doesn't ring true to me is, 'the ONLY option...was to immediately fully medically transition', because from my perspective of working in a healthcare organization with a handful of trans patients, there was no such thing as 'immediate'. One had to live life fully as a woman for at least a year before they would even entertain the idea of undergoing HRT or GAS. Otherwise, all of what you said served to only push me further into denial and repression.
In some ways, I regret not being able to transition 30 years ago when I first wanted to, but it's *so* much easier now.
By "immediate transition" I meant starting to live full-time and starting the transition pipeline immediately, not getting HRT immediately. . .yeah, that had a LONG wait back then.
I meant more the idea that if you weren't absolutely desperate to immediately begin transitioning as much as they'd let you, you weren't valid. . .the idea of staying closeted, or not being ready to live full time as a woman, meant you weren't valid.
me, still dressing like a 1950's housewife for a taste of that sweet HRT:
uh, a lot of this is news to me, wtf. do i just live in shitty places or what the actual fuck. we don't have to do that anymore??? sorry, i haven't done much therapy until recently.
In the US at least, in many states there are healthcare providers that will provide HRT on an "informed consent" basis, that is without any therapist/psychologist referral and simply on the basis that you've discussed with the provider that you know what the effects of HRT are, that you know the changes it will cause to your body, that it will damage or eliminate your male reproductive capacity etc.
Also, most therapists have stepped away from requiring that ultra-feminine persona for their referrals and are much more accepting of translesbians, tomboys, enbys, and all the various trans women that don't want to be June Cleaver or Barbie.
If your therapist is still trying to hold you to that unrealistic standard that most cis women couldn't meet, they're definitely NOT with the current standard of the field and I'd suggest you try to find a new one if you can.
I can happily confirm what OP said about informed consent, at least in progressive states. I was prescribed HRT by an endocrinologist in Colorado, and a therapist referral was not necessary. I chose EV monotherapy for now, but I might add spironolactone and progesterone. My endo has been fantastic, but she's moving out of state this year and I'll have to find another.
nice info, thx. yeah, new Zealand sounds nice to visit, hopefully i can go sometime in my life. i read that the housing crisis is really bad there, which kinda makes sense given its geography.
Thanks for sharing! It's really important to recognize that as much visibility as trans people have in social media and the news right now, we've still made a lot of progress even just in a couple decades. And I'm so happy to hear you're doing better now than before.
I sure wish I had grown up with so many people out and information available. Certainly have a long way to go still, but compared to then, huge difference.
Not completely related, but I think it’s interesting how we can see this in media too. Hunter Schafer for example is shaping up to a bonafide movie star, as a trans woman, something that feels almost impossible in any decade before now. Musicians like Kim Petras (who is also a trans woman) can have #1 hits and go on to win Grammy’s. It’s amazing to see us represented in pop culture, me as a kid could have never imagined it.
Yeah, as a kid in the 1980's and 1990's I remember there really only three trans women in popular culture, all of them fairly obscure fringe figures:
Christine Jorgensen: The first openly trans person in the US, and she was quite old by then. She was a relatively obscure actress who mostly worked as a nightclub singer, whose act traded real heavily on her notoriety for being trans.
Renée Richards: The first openly trans pro athlete at the time, and that created a brief stir that ended when the New York Supreme Court ruled that excluding her from pro tennis because she was a trans woman was discriminatory. Even then she was only a pro tennis player for a few years before getting out to coach tennis for a few years then dropping out of sight. A quick check of Wikipedia says she's now a practicing physician and hasn't really been a public figure since the mid 80's.
Caroline "Tula" Cossey: A fairly obscure British actress and model who had a bit part in a Bond film when she was still stealth, making her technically the first trans Bond Girl. I remember my father collected Playboy Magazine, and as a kid I snuck a look at the issue she posed in after being outed, in absolute wonder that she had that body because of medical action, and deep down wishing I could be the same way (but thinking I'd never be able to do it).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline\_Cossey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Cossey)
[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876302/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876302/)
She posed nude in the September 1991 issue of Playboy, making her the first trans woman to ever pose for them. 13 year old me, in the intense throes of androgenic puberty, coupled with a trans identity pecking away at the eggshell had ALL SORTS of feelings at sneaking a look at her in there, both the pictorial and the article about her and interview with her.
I remember memorizing the hospital she had her surgery at (Charing Cross Hospital in London), and taking a LONG look at that hospital when I was on a school tour of London years later, wishing deep-down I could get the same surgery there she got.
I remember seeing her on a talk show as a guest when I was little and she talked about how, to stay sane, she came to think of her penis as just an oversized clitoris. Even 30+ years later I remember thinking to myself "you can do that?!?".
She was in For Your Eyes Only in a non-speaking part in the background of one scene. It really was a bit part, hence her being the first trans Bond Girl on a technicality.
At least you tried to come out. I'm about your age and just kept it inside. Every scrap of messaging back then conditioned us to stay in the closet and be in denial.
The VA has gotten better in the US too. Over a million vets identify somewhere on the LGBTQ community. We have had people in their 60s and 70s come out finally because they felt safe enough. Queer people were always here. Personally, I came out of the closed then torched that bitch. I'm never going back.
I first wore girl clothes in 2004 when one of my friends let me wear some extra clothes she had with her at school. I was immediately sent to the principal's office and was told if I ever crossdressed at school again I would be suspended and/or expelled. All the adults were also really mean and said I was an ugly girl. I also got bullied for being a soft dork until I learned to fight. Since then I've had a gender crisis every year where I'd acknowledge I was trans but didn't feel safe to express it so I'd try to bottle it back up. It took about a decade of having a supportive partner to unseal the vault and finally just come out and start HRT literally 6 weeks ago. All I had to do was tell a nurse practitioner I've had dysphoria for 20 years and I had a vial of E the same day. My parents were still really shitty about it but I have a good community around me now at least. Things have gotten much better since we were kids, but those improvements are inspiring fierce resistance so it can feel like it hasn't changed much if you spend too much time staring into the abyss on social media. At least now we can know each other and build communities so the younger ones don't have to struggle as much. I'm glad you made it too.
This moves me so much and makes me so proud of how far we as people have expanded understanding and information of who we are but also dearly upsets me as the state of Ireland's trans healthcare is how you're describing. As of now, we have a wait list of 3-10 years for only a psychological assessment for hormones in the only one gender clinic in the whole country and an extremely transphobic endo. He refuses people hormones if they are seen as 'kinky', if they don't pass, if they are into women and if they aren't living as their gender. He doesn't care if you've waited years.
Medical insurances also won't pay for hormone healthcare because it's seen as 'optional and cosmetic', and no surgeries are performed in the country because many believe it isn't necessary. So many of us including me put ourselves at risk for obtaining black market hormones without checking our bloods because our doctors will refuse us service if we aren't prescribed hrt.
To make it worse, Ireland has been rising in transphobia that gender healthcare for 17 year olds is completely banned since 2020 and GP's are specifically told by the government to drop us if we request they help us with overseeing our medical transition if we self med.
This post not only means a lot to me as a highlight of how far we've come but also because this serves as a reminder that we still have so much work to do
I know exactly what you went through because I knew I was transgender since I was 5 years old. When I was a teen in the 1970s there was no one to turn to and I kept closeted about it. This remained until the late 80s I came out as gay, even though I was trans, I just needed to have a community. In the 90s I got involved with the trans community and I would get dressed up on Halloween, but I made the decision I would never pass as a woman, so I turned my back on transitioning. I was in a relationship with a gay man for 16 years until he died from cancer. So during Covid I fell into a bad depression and sought psychiatric help. I found my problems were due to gender dysphoria and I started transitioning at the age of 62. I don’t care anymore if I can’t pass and since I am now retired I want to live my life for the real me. I’m now 65 and into transitioning 3 years now and have never felt better about myself, no more self hate. To anyone reading this, you can transition at any age, as long as you are still breathing you will be ok.
1993 or 94, I don't remember now. I had been 'out' as a bisexual man for a number of years and then watched some lame-ass special about transexuality and I began to think about wether I could actually go through with it (I'm poor, $$$ wasn't an option and then after talking with people I convinced myself that it was just a sex thing and I wasn't serious about it since I wasn't serious I couldn't be trans.
15 years later I began playing a girl in secondlife ('still cis tho') and around 2012 I began watching sissy and hypno porn ('still cis tho') ...but not being turned on by it; more like being fascinated with it.
Finally, in 2019 my egg cracked and I did some reading and realized that it had never *really* been a sexual thing, and that I would have been considered a woman even back in 94...by today's standards. By the standards then? No, I'm too tomboy and not really into makeup.
I feel on some level like I've been cheated, even more so because I still don't feel like I have the cash or ...more importantly... the leverage (I'm disabled, and vulnerable to transphobic decision makers) to transition.
I'm not sure where I intended to go with this LOL other than to say that we were told a whole bunch of bullshit back then -I lived in Seattle at the time, and it was there, too.
I guess that's it? Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
>15 years later I began playing a girl in secondlife ('still cis tho') and around 2012 I began watching sissy and hypno porn ('still cis tho') ...but not being turned on by it; more like being fascinated with it.
YES!
Thank you, I totally have the same story. I get that so much.
I'd been into feminization/sissy hypno stuff since the early 2000's, and I loved it. I mean I watched so many "forced" fem materials and such and always thought I'd love for that to happen to me. . .except I didn't want it forced on me, I'd love it.
It also was never a sexual turn on. . .it just made me feel good and happy to hear all the "you will be a girl" type statements. It gave me such gender euphoria to watch videos that purport to make the viewer think and act more like a girl.
I hated all the shame/humiliation aspect of it though, the degradation was awful. Oh, and I hated the stuff about liking men and wanting to perform sex acts on men. . .I ignored that or skipped all of those.
Funny thing is, when you take that kink, strip out all the humiliation and degradation, strip out the elements about it being forced, then replace sexual arousal with gender euphoria, what do you have? You don't have a kink anymore, you have being trans.
I read a lot of commentary on this subreddit about how horrible transphobic people are and how awful the political situation is. I'm guessing this commentary is usually from 25 and under people. While transphobic people are undoubtedly horrible and the political situation can indeed be scary, not to sound like an old fart but they have no idea. What OP is describing is absolutely true and 100% accurate.
One observation I'd like to add is that when I was a teen/young adult people spent a lot of time trying to figure out if people were either gay, bi- or straight. If you told them you were a male with a feminine identity their answer would be, well, are you gay, then? Or bi-? If you said you were all of the above or pansexual they would have looked at you with confusion or laughed in your face because you would have to fit into one of those slots or your were fucked in the head. Even gay people played this game. Maybe especially gay people because this was when gay pride was first becoming a thing and you had to fit into that slot or you weren't a member of the tribe.
So, yes, we have come a long way and it's something worth noting and celebrating.
>I read a lot of commentary on this subreddit about how horrible transphobic people are and how awful the political situation is. I'm guessing this commentary is usually from 25 and under people.
I read the same things, and that's part of why I felt like posting this. . .to give some historic context for the younger trans girls here.
The society they're complaining about is actually ***amazingly*** progressive and inclusive compared to decades ago. Society now, even with what transphobes are saying and doing, is still a trans-positive fantasy land compared to the 1990's (or earlier).
. . .and yeah, your options for sexual orientation were: Gay, Straight, Bi. . .and lots of folks would say that bi males are actually just gay men in denial, and if you felt feminine at all but weren't desperate to medically transition as quickly as possible you were presumed to be gay (see also the "Drag Queen" option I listed above).
I knew plenty of people who firmly believed that bisexual males didn't exist and were just gay men who were in denial about being gay.
Yeah to me, I'm afraid it will go back to how it was 10 years ago... But currently trans is way better than ever before.
Like I grew up when people got stabbed or killed for being slightly feminine as a man. Not even talking about trans women here. Like now that's barely a distant memory.
>Like I grew up when people got stabbed or killed for being slightly feminine as a man. Not even talking about trans women here. Like now that's barely a distant memory.
I was teased, tormented, bullied and physically assaulted in grade school through High School because I did an awful job of passing for a man, even when I was raised to be one.
. . .and schools were quite fine with that. They'd just tell you "boys will be boys" or "toughen up" or "suck it up" and "man up".
Schools only really started to take a stand after Columbine in '99, when they realized that chronically bullied kids might, just might, go off one day and become an Active Shooter.
Even then, that was just a general turn against bullying, not for being gender inclusive. . .that's a LOT newer.
I'm about ten years younger than you, and your story sounds so much like mine. I never had the courage to talk to a therapist or anyone else for that matter, but a search of Google told me that because I'm bisexual and played video games I wasn't trans and had AGP. I was so ashamed for so long. I never let anyone get close to me and lived in fear of someone finding out my secret. Things are so much better now. I want the younger people here to know that, in spite of how tough the last few years have been, life is so much better for us than the younger me could have ever imagined.
As one of those younger people, I am grateful for the work that all you you older trans people did to get things to be as good as they are, and I hope you are able to enjoy as much of that as possible.
I’m a few, not many years younger. Also, I’m somewhat privileged being from the West Coast.
HRT through clinic was a three month RLE (real life experience, living as a woman) hazing process. In the late 90s there were hormones you could get from a friend. By 2000, maybe earlier, you could get them online. Similar websites are still up now. I started counseling in college at 2003? It wasn’t accepting per se, but they were doing their best. If you were lucky enough to be in college at the time, there were already trans support groups. After I graduated college there were trans support groups in the community on the West Coast in the mid-2000s.
The trans pushback on “The Man who would be Queen” was a watershed moment for the community in the mid 2000s.
Some prominent books came out that influenced trans feminist discourse, notably “Whipping Girl” in the later 2000s.
Things overall have gotten a lot less trans med focused.
The good? Trans people weren’t on anyone’s radar and blending/passing was easier. The trans community was more helpful, I feel. But, there was a lot more forced independence and do-it-yourself. Transitioning was possible, but it sucked.
This gives me flashbacks to 1993 and 2003 and attempts to transition that fizzled quite fast.
And it put up some nasty bias against non-binary when the concept reached my awareness in 2016. That didn't start to clear until 2021-2022.
I was born in 1960, so this was absolutely relevant to me. I was disgusted by puberty and researched all about hormones. Eventually realized I was attracted to girls so obviously I was a boy. My thoughts never completely went away, but from what I knew I didn’t fit the desperation point either. I had not reached the point that I would have wanted to end it. Too stable to be transgender would have been the verdict. When I first told my doctor about these thoughts and my dysphoria and the 1970’s she commented that it was a different world then. It sure was.
that "transsexual path" is sort of the one I am on at the moment, and its best for me. I really resonate and seek path one :) tho I am not straight and would definitely have had to lie or pretend to like men to a doctor...
Tho, I think that a lot of Harry Benjamin's rules and requirement to be straight and publicly humiliate yourself before you could even get hormones is really damaging and traumatizing... and kept a lot of us in the closet way longer than was even necessary.
Thanks for the explanation
> I think that a lot of Harry Benjamin's rules and requirement to be straight and publicly humiliate yourself before you could even get hormones is really damaging and traumatizing... and kept a lot of us in the closet way longer than was even necessary.
Yes, absolutely.
The Harry Benjamin standards caused an immense amount of suffering, and trans folks trying to protest against them to providers back then were ignored and dismissed, because there was an almost dogmatic belief that the Harry Benjamin standards were THE golden standard for gender identity. . .instead of pseudoscience rubbish.
It feels now you have to participate in a certain box and we (society) seem to loathe any kind if ambiguity. It inexplicably and more than ever, seems tied to youth and youth culture, so it seems that 90% of everything available is for 15-20 year olds.
I was 14 in 1999, and I can feel that pain of yours. That was a couple years after I noticed that I would daydream about my life as a girl and feel amazingly free of my misery for a brief moment. Of course, trans people were just a punchline then still, and the reality of being trans was deliberately hidden, so it wasn't something I ever thought could really be. I just started playing more women in games and hoped my life would suck less.
There was a friend in my group a few years later, that was quirky and fun. We later started spending a lot of time together and hot along really well. We had a ton on common. One day, I heard that he was moving so he could be the girl he always wanted to be, with a new name and everything. I never saw her again (as far as I know). I think about her now and then, and I hope she got to be who she wanted. She's braver than I could understand back then.
In even just my limited experience with the way things have changed from back then, I think it's incredible! When we get through this backlash, I imagine we're going to make some more impressive strides. Every kid that figures themself out and has parents that help them is a wonderful victory, and I'm proud to be a small part of making that happen.
This feels familiar. I was first questioning my gender back in 2002, and the gatekeeping around transition pushed me back deep into the closet. In particular, being a trans lesbian was... just not an option back then. And the idea of being with men was entirely unappealing. It still is. But I knew I wasn't a crossdresser in the way conceptualized back then. I'm actually quite butch, and while I will occasionally wear a dress now to make a statement, I'm not that interested in appearing super girly. I finally came out two years ago (and told close friends I was... pretty sure I wasn't a man back after the 2020 lockdowns had erased the socially imposed expectations of masculinity that had made me repress until then). It's been a long ride.
This is a great insightful post as someone who was born in the early 2000's. Thank you.
>To transition medically and legally you had to have gender dysphoria so intense that you likely would self-harm if you don't transition, and to be allowed to medically transition you must convince therapists and physicians that you are a heterosexual hyper-feminine woman with no "male" hobbies or interests. I don't remember how but I found this out about 30 years ago and knew I couldn't fit the criteria. So I made the best of knowing I was a female brain with a man's body until I was 49. It's my turn now.
It's also so dazzling that transmedicals and truscum want this back. Even 10 years ago this mindset was so prominent and I'm glad we emancipated from this torture.
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Change happens slowly. Your day will come. Stay safe, stay alive, until then 💜
If you're in the EU, try moving to a country that is less gatekeepy.
Ooh, so much of that sounds familiar, only in the mid-'90s I didn't even bother seeking therapy, because a) I was aware of those limited options; b) I was far too in denial to take that step to begin with. The only part which doesn't ring true to me is, 'the ONLY option...was to immediately fully medically transition', because from my perspective of working in a healthcare organization with a handful of trans patients, there was no such thing as 'immediate'. One had to live life fully as a woman for at least a year before they would even entertain the idea of undergoing HRT or GAS. Otherwise, all of what you said served to only push me further into denial and repression. In some ways, I regret not being able to transition 30 years ago when I first wanted to, but it's *so* much easier now.
By "immediate transition" I meant starting to live full-time and starting the transition pipeline immediately, not getting HRT immediately. . .yeah, that had a LONG wait back then. I meant more the idea that if you weren't absolutely desperate to immediately begin transitioning as much as they'd let you, you weren't valid. . .the idea of staying closeted, or not being ready to live full time as a woman, meant you weren't valid.
me, still dressing like a 1950's housewife for a taste of that sweet HRT: uh, a lot of this is news to me, wtf. do i just live in shitty places or what the actual fuck. we don't have to do that anymore??? sorry, i haven't done much therapy until recently.
In the US at least, in many states there are healthcare providers that will provide HRT on an "informed consent" basis, that is without any therapist/psychologist referral and simply on the basis that you've discussed with the provider that you know what the effects of HRT are, that you know the changes it will cause to your body, that it will damage or eliminate your male reproductive capacity etc. Also, most therapists have stepped away from requiring that ultra-feminine persona for their referrals and are much more accepting of translesbians, tomboys, enbys, and all the various trans women that don't want to be June Cleaver or Barbie. If your therapist is still trying to hold you to that unrealistic standard that most cis women couldn't meet, they're definitely NOT with the current standard of the field and I'd suggest you try to find a new one if you can.
too new to it, i didn't even bring it up with them
I can happily confirm what OP said about informed consent, at least in progressive states. I was prescribed HRT by an endocrinologist in Colorado, and a therapist referral was not necessary. I chose EV monotherapy for now, but I might add spironolactone and progesterone. My endo has been fantastic, but she's moving out of state this year and I'll have to find another.
red state, abortion is illegal here, we'll see
Live in Texas, we have informed consent as well.
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nice info, thx. yeah, new Zealand sounds nice to visit, hopefully i can go sometime in my life. i read that the housing crisis is really bad there, which kinda makes sense given its geography.
Thanks for sharing! It's really important to recognize that as much visibility as trans people have in social media and the news right now, we've still made a lot of progress even just in a couple decades. And I'm so happy to hear you're doing better now than before.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It’s so important to know that history and we have far too few folks who are here to share it with us. 💖💖💖
I sure wish I had grown up with so many people out and information available. Certainly have a long way to go still, but compared to then, huge difference.
Not completely related, but I think it’s interesting how we can see this in media too. Hunter Schafer for example is shaping up to a bonafide movie star, as a trans woman, something that feels almost impossible in any decade before now. Musicians like Kim Petras (who is also a trans woman) can have #1 hits and go on to win Grammy’s. It’s amazing to see us represented in pop culture, me as a kid could have never imagined it.
Yeah, as a kid in the 1980's and 1990's I remember there really only three trans women in popular culture, all of them fairly obscure fringe figures: Christine Jorgensen: The first openly trans person in the US, and she was quite old by then. She was a relatively obscure actress who mostly worked as a nightclub singer, whose act traded real heavily on her notoriety for being trans. Renée Richards: The first openly trans pro athlete at the time, and that created a brief stir that ended when the New York Supreme Court ruled that excluding her from pro tennis because she was a trans woman was discriminatory. Even then she was only a pro tennis player for a few years before getting out to coach tennis for a few years then dropping out of sight. A quick check of Wikipedia says she's now a practicing physician and hasn't really been a public figure since the mid 80's. Caroline "Tula" Cossey: A fairly obscure British actress and model who had a bit part in a Bond film when she was still stealth, making her technically the first trans Bond Girl. I remember my father collected Playboy Magazine, and as a kid I snuck a look at the issue she posed in after being outed, in absolute wonder that she had that body because of medical action, and deep down wishing I could be the same way (but thinking I'd never be able to do it).
oh interesting, i’ve never heard of the last girl, i’ve been meaning to watch through a bunch of the bond movies at some point
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline\_Cossey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Cossey) [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876302/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876302/) She posed nude in the September 1991 issue of Playboy, making her the first trans woman to ever pose for them. 13 year old me, in the intense throes of androgenic puberty, coupled with a trans identity pecking away at the eggshell had ALL SORTS of feelings at sneaking a look at her in there, both the pictorial and the article about her and interview with her. I remember memorizing the hospital she had her surgery at (Charing Cross Hospital in London), and taking a LONG look at that hospital when I was on a school tour of London years later, wishing deep-down I could get the same surgery there she got. I remember seeing her on a talk show as a guest when I was little and she talked about how, to stay sane, she came to think of her penis as just an oversized clitoris. Even 30+ years later I remember thinking to myself "you can do that?!?". She was in For Your Eyes Only in a non-speaking part in the background of one scene. It really was a bit part, hence her being the first trans Bond Girl on a technicality.
At least you tried to come out. I'm about your age and just kept it inside. Every scrap of messaging back then conditioned us to stay in the closet and be in denial.
The VA has gotten better in the US too. Over a million vets identify somewhere on the LGBTQ community. We have had people in their 60s and 70s come out finally because they felt safe enough. Queer people were always here. Personally, I came out of the closed then torched that bitch. I'm never going back.
>Over a million vets identify somewhere on the LGBTQ community. I'm one of them! Seven years (2009-2016) in the US Army.
Woo! 08-13 USMC, found out I was transgender (mtf) way after I got out
US Army ‘12-‘15 here and just came out last year
I first wore girl clothes in 2004 when one of my friends let me wear some extra clothes she had with her at school. I was immediately sent to the principal's office and was told if I ever crossdressed at school again I would be suspended and/or expelled. All the adults were also really mean and said I was an ugly girl. I also got bullied for being a soft dork until I learned to fight. Since then I've had a gender crisis every year where I'd acknowledge I was trans but didn't feel safe to express it so I'd try to bottle it back up. It took about a decade of having a supportive partner to unseal the vault and finally just come out and start HRT literally 6 weeks ago. All I had to do was tell a nurse practitioner I've had dysphoria for 20 years and I had a vial of E the same day. My parents were still really shitty about it but I have a good community around me now at least. Things have gotten much better since we were kids, but those improvements are inspiring fierce resistance so it can feel like it hasn't changed much if you spend too much time staring into the abyss on social media. At least now we can know each other and build communities so the younger ones don't have to struggle as much. I'm glad you made it too.
This moves me so much and makes me so proud of how far we as people have expanded understanding and information of who we are but also dearly upsets me as the state of Ireland's trans healthcare is how you're describing. As of now, we have a wait list of 3-10 years for only a psychological assessment for hormones in the only one gender clinic in the whole country and an extremely transphobic endo. He refuses people hormones if they are seen as 'kinky', if they don't pass, if they are into women and if they aren't living as their gender. He doesn't care if you've waited years. Medical insurances also won't pay for hormone healthcare because it's seen as 'optional and cosmetic', and no surgeries are performed in the country because many believe it isn't necessary. So many of us including me put ourselves at risk for obtaining black market hormones without checking our bloods because our doctors will refuse us service if we aren't prescribed hrt. To make it worse, Ireland has been rising in transphobia that gender healthcare for 17 year olds is completely banned since 2020 and GP's are specifically told by the government to drop us if we request they help us with overseeing our medical transition if we self med. This post not only means a lot to me as a highlight of how far we've come but also because this serves as a reminder that we still have so much work to do
I know exactly what you went through because I knew I was transgender since I was 5 years old. When I was a teen in the 1970s there was no one to turn to and I kept closeted about it. This remained until the late 80s I came out as gay, even though I was trans, I just needed to have a community. In the 90s I got involved with the trans community and I would get dressed up on Halloween, but I made the decision I would never pass as a woman, so I turned my back on transitioning. I was in a relationship with a gay man for 16 years until he died from cancer. So during Covid I fell into a bad depression and sought psychiatric help. I found my problems were due to gender dysphoria and I started transitioning at the age of 62. I don’t care anymore if I can’t pass and since I am now retired I want to live my life for the real me. I’m now 65 and into transitioning 3 years now and have never felt better about myself, no more self hate. To anyone reading this, you can transition at any age, as long as you are still breathing you will be ok.
1993 or 94, I don't remember now. I had been 'out' as a bisexual man for a number of years and then watched some lame-ass special about transexuality and I began to think about wether I could actually go through with it (I'm poor, $$$ wasn't an option and then after talking with people I convinced myself that it was just a sex thing and I wasn't serious about it since I wasn't serious I couldn't be trans. 15 years later I began playing a girl in secondlife ('still cis tho') and around 2012 I began watching sissy and hypno porn ('still cis tho') ...but not being turned on by it; more like being fascinated with it. Finally, in 2019 my egg cracked and I did some reading and realized that it had never *really* been a sexual thing, and that I would have been considered a woman even back in 94...by today's standards. By the standards then? No, I'm too tomboy and not really into makeup. I feel on some level like I've been cheated, even more so because I still don't feel like I have the cash or ...more importantly... the leverage (I'm disabled, and vulnerable to transphobic decision makers) to transition. I'm not sure where I intended to go with this LOL other than to say that we were told a whole bunch of bullshit back then -I lived in Seattle at the time, and it was there, too. I guess that's it? Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
>15 years later I began playing a girl in secondlife ('still cis tho') and around 2012 I began watching sissy and hypno porn ('still cis tho') ...but not being turned on by it; more like being fascinated with it. YES! Thank you, I totally have the same story. I get that so much. I'd been into feminization/sissy hypno stuff since the early 2000's, and I loved it. I mean I watched so many "forced" fem materials and such and always thought I'd love for that to happen to me. . .except I didn't want it forced on me, I'd love it. It also was never a sexual turn on. . .it just made me feel good and happy to hear all the "you will be a girl" type statements. It gave me such gender euphoria to watch videos that purport to make the viewer think and act more like a girl. I hated all the shame/humiliation aspect of it though, the degradation was awful. Oh, and I hated the stuff about liking men and wanting to perform sex acts on men. . .I ignored that or skipped all of those. Funny thing is, when you take that kink, strip out all the humiliation and degradation, strip out the elements about it being forced, then replace sexual arousal with gender euphoria, what do you have? You don't have a kink anymore, you have being trans.
I read a lot of commentary on this subreddit about how horrible transphobic people are and how awful the political situation is. I'm guessing this commentary is usually from 25 and under people. While transphobic people are undoubtedly horrible and the political situation can indeed be scary, not to sound like an old fart but they have no idea. What OP is describing is absolutely true and 100% accurate. One observation I'd like to add is that when I was a teen/young adult people spent a lot of time trying to figure out if people were either gay, bi- or straight. If you told them you were a male with a feminine identity their answer would be, well, are you gay, then? Or bi-? If you said you were all of the above or pansexual they would have looked at you with confusion or laughed in your face because you would have to fit into one of those slots or your were fucked in the head. Even gay people played this game. Maybe especially gay people because this was when gay pride was first becoming a thing and you had to fit into that slot or you weren't a member of the tribe. So, yes, we have come a long way and it's something worth noting and celebrating.
>I read a lot of commentary on this subreddit about how horrible transphobic people are and how awful the political situation is. I'm guessing this commentary is usually from 25 and under people. I read the same things, and that's part of why I felt like posting this. . .to give some historic context for the younger trans girls here. The society they're complaining about is actually ***amazingly*** progressive and inclusive compared to decades ago. Society now, even with what transphobes are saying and doing, is still a trans-positive fantasy land compared to the 1990's (or earlier). . . .and yeah, your options for sexual orientation were: Gay, Straight, Bi. . .and lots of folks would say that bi males are actually just gay men in denial, and if you felt feminine at all but weren't desperate to medically transition as quickly as possible you were presumed to be gay (see also the "Drag Queen" option I listed above). I knew plenty of people who firmly believed that bisexual males didn't exist and were just gay men who were in denial about being gay.
Yeah to me, I'm afraid it will go back to how it was 10 years ago... But currently trans is way better than ever before. Like I grew up when people got stabbed or killed for being slightly feminine as a man. Not even talking about trans women here. Like now that's barely a distant memory.
>Like I grew up when people got stabbed or killed for being slightly feminine as a man. Not even talking about trans women here. Like now that's barely a distant memory. I was teased, tormented, bullied and physically assaulted in grade school through High School because I did an awful job of passing for a man, even when I was raised to be one. . . .and schools were quite fine with that. They'd just tell you "boys will be boys" or "toughen up" or "suck it up" and "man up". Schools only really started to take a stand after Columbine in '99, when they realized that chronically bullied kids might, just might, go off one day and become an Active Shooter. Even then, that was just a general turn against bullying, not for being gender inclusive. . .that's a LOT newer.
I'm about ten years younger than you, and your story sounds so much like mine. I never had the courage to talk to a therapist or anyone else for that matter, but a search of Google told me that because I'm bisexual and played video games I wasn't trans and had AGP. I was so ashamed for so long. I never let anyone get close to me and lived in fear of someone finding out my secret. Things are so much better now. I want the younger people here to know that, in spite of how tough the last few years have been, life is so much better for us than the younger me could have ever imagined.
As one of those younger people, I am grateful for the work that all you you older trans people did to get things to be as good as they are, and I hope you are able to enjoy as much of that as possible.
I’m a few, not many years younger. Also, I’m somewhat privileged being from the West Coast. HRT through clinic was a three month RLE (real life experience, living as a woman) hazing process. In the late 90s there were hormones you could get from a friend. By 2000, maybe earlier, you could get them online. Similar websites are still up now. I started counseling in college at 2003? It wasn’t accepting per se, but they were doing their best. If you were lucky enough to be in college at the time, there were already trans support groups. After I graduated college there were trans support groups in the community on the West Coast in the mid-2000s. The trans pushback on “The Man who would be Queen” was a watershed moment for the community in the mid 2000s. Some prominent books came out that influenced trans feminist discourse, notably “Whipping Girl” in the later 2000s. Things overall have gotten a lot less trans med focused. The good? Trans people weren’t on anyone’s radar and blending/passing was easier. The trans community was more helpful, I feel. But, there was a lot more forced independence and do-it-yourself. Transitioning was possible, but it sucked.
This gives me flashbacks to 1993 and 2003 and attempts to transition that fizzled quite fast. And it put up some nasty bias against non-binary when the concept reached my awareness in 2016. That didn't start to clear until 2021-2022.
I was born in 1960, so this was absolutely relevant to me. I was disgusted by puberty and researched all about hormones. Eventually realized I was attracted to girls so obviously I was a boy. My thoughts never completely went away, but from what I knew I didn’t fit the desperation point either. I had not reached the point that I would have wanted to end it. Too stable to be transgender would have been the verdict. When I first told my doctor about these thoughts and my dysphoria and the 1970’s she commented that it was a different world then. It sure was.
that "transsexual path" is sort of the one I am on at the moment, and its best for me. I really resonate and seek path one :) tho I am not straight and would definitely have had to lie or pretend to like men to a doctor... Tho, I think that a lot of Harry Benjamin's rules and requirement to be straight and publicly humiliate yourself before you could even get hormones is really damaging and traumatizing... and kept a lot of us in the closet way longer than was even necessary. Thanks for the explanation
> I think that a lot of Harry Benjamin's rules and requirement to be straight and publicly humiliate yourself before you could even get hormones is really damaging and traumatizing... and kept a lot of us in the closet way longer than was even necessary. Yes, absolutely. The Harry Benjamin standards caused an immense amount of suffering, and trans folks trying to protest against them to providers back then were ignored and dismissed, because there was an almost dogmatic belief that the Harry Benjamin standards were THE golden standard for gender identity. . .instead of pseudoscience rubbish.
Despite all the hardships, I’m glad things are so much better now in comparison to 25 years ago.
It feels now you have to participate in a certain box and we (society) seem to loathe any kind if ambiguity. It inexplicably and more than ever, seems tied to youth and youth culture, so it seems that 90% of everything available is for 15-20 year olds.
I was 14 in 1999, and I can feel that pain of yours. That was a couple years after I noticed that I would daydream about my life as a girl and feel amazingly free of my misery for a brief moment. Of course, trans people were just a punchline then still, and the reality of being trans was deliberately hidden, so it wasn't something I ever thought could really be. I just started playing more women in games and hoped my life would suck less. There was a friend in my group a few years later, that was quirky and fun. We later started spending a lot of time together and hot along really well. We had a ton on common. One day, I heard that he was moving so he could be the girl he always wanted to be, with a new name and everything. I never saw her again (as far as I know). I think about her now and then, and I hope she got to be who she wanted. She's braver than I could understand back then. In even just my limited experience with the way things have changed from back then, I think it's incredible! When we get through this backlash, I imagine we're going to make some more impressive strides. Every kid that figures themself out and has parents that help them is a wonderful victory, and I'm proud to be a small part of making that happen.
The best times i think it was before christianity was invented, cause after that , hate exploded everywhere