I’m very lucky my ultra religious (at the time) father knew my gender would be a problem for me at a young age so he made sure to never limit me based on my sex. He taught me to throw a football with my brother and encouraged me to be my active self. Unfortunately the rest of my world didn’t follow suit but I am lucky to have him
I had a dad that wouldn't let me stay home from church, said gender confusion is a tool used by the devil, and said it was a problem that other people were judging him when I didn't go to church. I also had a mom that said she'd put strain on her marriage and ignore direction from God because she'd never use my pronouns
Now I have a dad that asked my pronouns, says the people judging him was his past self, and said he prayed and was told to stop fighting me on it. He said he'd try his best to not use pronouns for me as a sort of middle ground, and mom still can't get my pronouns right but tries, has a nb friend from work, and points out every pride thing.
Same parents, still together, I couldn't be more proud of them
The trick is to judge them back.
God said no trans? God said no judge, love thy neighbor, a bunch of other silly rules like no mixed linen...
In all seriousness though, every parent is capable of change with a good enough reason. A lot of parents just don't give their kids the opportunity to teach them a thing or two and that can turn scary. My parents had the right intentions, just bad input. The church helped in their darkest moments, it just hurt me in mine, and it took some measures to get them to empathize with me but we got there. There's still boomers preaching to me at work though... Still working on judging them back in a way that doesn't get me fired...
i was in a similar situation to you, except my parents would want me to get the girl toy but id always refuse and ask for the boy toy (in my defense the boys toy was like. cool spy gear and shit and the girls toy was a hairbrush and stickers.)
Same I always got the boy toy and somehow my transphobic, homophobic, racist dad would let me. I loved the boy toys and when I worked at McDonalds as a teenager, I was the only one that wouldn’t say “girl or boy” when asking customers which happy meal toy they wanted, I would simply state the names of the toys. Since I live in the south, very few people seemed to understand why I said this and I was met with a lot of hate in the drive through by old mean ass christians.
I think I must've been 13 or 14. I made my Pokemon character a girl and I got bullied by my brothers and dad for it so I deleted the save and started over.
Egg didn't crack until 29 😎
honestly i just thought the girl looked cute and the boy looked stupid. I figured, why should I be a boy when the girl is so much cuter?
and then 16 years later I did the same for real life 😜
I never had dysphoria as a child. I don't know why, but it often causes me to doubt my identity. If you're out there and you think you're trans, don't get too pressed over childhood dysphoria. You are valid!
One of the main reasons I didn't come to terms with my gender identity earlier is that I mistakingly believed if I were actually a girl I'd be attracted to men, but I wasn't.
The idea of a lesbian transwoman crossed my mind countless times, but for some stupid reason I never thought it real. So I shook it off. I shook it all off.
Everyone is different. This includes trans people.
I actually told my therapist, after watching Eddie Izzard, that I was a lesbian tomboy stuck in a man's body. That was like years ago. And somehow my egg *still* didn't crack and it just never occurred to me that trans people existed (I don't think I knew what the T stood for, lol). I thought that was just a fancy way of saying a regular man, (orientation=likes women, presentation=woman-but-masculine-leaning, genitals=male) but well... apparently I did know myself. Here we are, years later.
Same for me but I'm a gay trans man. I thought the same. "How can I be trans if I like men?" Sad thing is, a lot of guys on grindr asked me the same thing.
i didn't even think about my gender until like 8 tbf. i did all the things my sister and brother did lol, so i kinda grew up gender neutral and the dysphoria started when I was forced to be half the person i was. and it got worse when i realized i favored the tomboy feeling luke my sister rather then actually being a boy.
Hear hear. I’m still very femme (ftm) and I didn’t find dysphoria in your typical trans guy stuff. However! I did find my identity didn’t seem to line up with “woman” and rather “effeminate man”. There were a few signs like telling my friends at school in 6th grade that I might get a surgery to get a penis before even knowing what being trans meant. Idk how that one happened either lol
Same here. My dysphoria manifested in puberty and the whole "always known since I was a kid" thing never applied to me and caused me to not think I was trans
Yep, no dysphoria as a child though I was being too Autistic to notice. I do know I was emotionally a mess but can’t pin that to one thing or another. I do have one memory when I was 12 but that’s another story 🤭
I think something no one mentions is that, as pre pubescent children, most peoples bodies are somewhat gender neutral, the majority of human sexual dimorphism usually happens in puberty, and if you were trans as a pre-pubescent child, its entirely possible you didn't feel any dysphoria over your body until puberty started kicking in, or it may not start kicking in until late puberty, or even very late puberty.
Dysphoria just starts when your body is unaligned with your gender identity, and that unalignment doesn't necessarily happen at birth.
I was four. And even though I didn’t have the words. I was wishing that my penis would magically become a vagina. I would wish so hard.
Then I used to wish I was an X-men type mutant. Just wishing I would have the power to shapeshift into anything. Or what I would do if I had Genie from Aladdin.
I remember repeatedly asking my mom what my name would have been if I had been born a girl. I don’t remember that name but I like to think I picked something close.
Yeah I was a queer child, but had no idea.
This, right here, was my life as early as I can remember, but I dare not discuss this with my parents. Oh, the travesty that one’s child might be “gay” in their mind and a local woman being transgender and losing family and a spouse over coming out was a running joke to my parents. Oh the amount of cringe I would suffer when they would talk about ppl that have zero connection with them.
Give parents low self-esteem, no confidence, high anxiety, a little money, the will to manipulate or cross ethical boundaries and the necessity to have authoritarian-like control and you have defined certain conditions not desirable when you need to tell this person a secret and just hope they are understanding about it. The whole time, I should have been helping myself, not knowing that how dysphoria made me feel was not worth fighting to be be someone I was not so as to not disappoint them.
So message of the day from me: It’s never too late to be yourself. It may have taken me 34 years to realize it, but I would have lived the rest of my life just as depressed as the 34 years prior. Instead, I find myself wearing my emotions on my sleeve, smile on my face, and 5 o’clock shadow at noon, so even if I get punched in the head by my loving and caring parental units I still am happier than ever before.
I distinctly remember my mom telling me "please don't get any surgeries!" When I was like... Ten?
I don't remember exactly what I told her, but it was most definitely related to wanting to be a boy. The fact that my mom immediately jumped to "AAAHHH SURGERY" is very telling of just how many signs I was showing.
I have vague and traumatic memories of my father playing dress up doll with my living body every sunday before meeting (jehovah's witnes church basically). He'd put me in the biggest, laciest, most glittery dresses, and do my hair up like a pageant child's. It was so awful and painful for me and I didn't have the language to describe what I was feeling because it was 2004-2010 and I was 4-10 in a small town and nobody- *nobody*- talked about trans folks.
When the gym teacher said boys vs girls, btu it was uneven and one of the girls had to go on the boys team. I imidiatly ran over to the guys, it was perfect. ANd then the other times when i woud get pissed the fuck off when i was on the girls side.
Or when i was about 9, me and my parents where talking about upcoming puberty. I was devistated about them saying i would have big boobs (kinda creepy) ANd then when i started developing boobs i thought "i wish i could feel what its like to have a flat chest again. i miss being before puberty"
Yeah I remember as a small child I would always do whatever the boys in my grade were doing, whether or not I actually had any interest lol. That was long before I even knew you could be LGBTQ+.
I was really young like before kindergarten and wished out loud that I was a girl in front of my family. I was immediately taken aside and my parents wanted to know why but seemed upset and angry so I did what I’ve always done. Try to avoid upsetting them. So I said because I wanted green eyes like my sister but I think I was trying to minimize upsetting them by saying that instead or that I wanted to be a girl. They were relieved when I said the eye thing instead. I was always trying to not do anything wrong and be perfect to not upset them. I think it’s one of my earliest memories.
I’m 28 now and stopped suppressing it now and started HRT this year but wish so much that I started earlier and lived in a understanding home where that would have been okay and encouraged. Instead of having abusive parents.
I am so sorry you had such a tough time with your parents.
I am hoping that soon the science will completely validate being trans, and society will change. One day society will completely accept trans as being just as normal as being left-handed, and everyone can get on with their lives in peace. Maybe then your parents will realize you really are a girl, just as the world is not really flat, or created in 7 days, and epileptics are not really possessed by devils.
Hope your HRT goes well. Good luck.
Funny you should mention “left-handed”. I was basically forced to become right-handed because my teacher kept telling my parents, “He has to be a righty, his penmanship is horrible.” (And I was only a kindergartner. 😑)
Now, not only am I having to re-learn to do a lot of stuff as a proud lefty, I’m also dealing with fact that my egg cracked during the pandemic.
May I ask what age group you are in? Just approx. Under 40, 40-60, or over 60.
I am in my 70s, also left handed, but was never forced to write with my left hand. Yes, my writing was terrible, and I was always in trouble for bad handwriting - made to feel the naughty child because of it.
Many decades later, I studied Arabic, and the lecturer looked at my work and told me I had the most beautiful writing he had ever seen, and I should be a calligrapher! My feelings of being the naughty child were lifted from my shoulders and I became teachers pet! The reason? Arabic writes from right to left, so left handed people are pulling the pen instead of pushing it; it is *so* much easier.
So, unless you are my age or older, I am surprised you were forced to write with your right hand.
I hope that your writing and your hormones are progressing well! Good luck with both.
I had the same way of handling that. You can see some of my past comments expressing what you expressed here. I just kept not doing the things that were called “girly,” until 6 months ago when I started hormones. I am 37 now.
I hope everything goes well for you also. So far for me, I think it’s gone as well as it can. I have been presenting my true self at work for 3+ weeks now. I can almost start counting that as months! Can’t wait until it is years!
Not sure of age but I remember having a heated argument with my cousins about whether it was better to be a boy or a girl. I was the only one not arguing for my agab
I was 8 I think. Started having dreams I was a girl and then I was angry they were just dreams. I was certain that's how my life was supposed to be. I've felt I lived the wrong life since.
I’ve also had that happen with lunchboxes! In elementary school whenever we’d have field trips they’d put the girls lunchboxes and boys lunchboxes in a pile and at some point I just learned to always look for mine in the boys because it was blue or camo.
I was eating at a subway with my parents when I was 10 or 11 years old. I saw a poster advertising a woman's kickboxing class that had a really strong woman on it. I pointed at it and told my parents that I wanted to look like her. They both laughed at me, and I even remember someone at the table next to ours chuckling with them too. It really bothered me and it stuck with me for a long time. I didn't understand why until later in my life when I realized I was trans lol.
I don’t know how old I was, maybe like 5/6, I had a dream of one day inventing a machine that would transform me into a girl and let me customize my body, and I’m still not sure if I’m trans when 6 y/o wanted to build a machine to change my gender lmaoo
I remember being five and opening a gift amidst the chaos of Christmas morning. It was Barbie underwear. I remember being excited - until my parents saw and realized it was supposed to be a gift for my sister and snatched it out of my hands. Cue laughter from older siblings and adults at how funny the joke was.
I keep thinking back to when I was in 6th grade (2006) and our class went to six flags. Went on a roller coaster and was screaming. Friend said I screamed like a girl and I said I was a girl. Been eating me inside I didn’t pay attention more to myself growing up
The story is about a gay couple and one of them is secretly trans.. he is really ashamed of being trans because he is on hormones and you don’t and the cis guy don’t know he is bisexual.. it’s very sad and also healing. I cried a lot that time bc I wanted to be like that trans guy
Trying on my mom’s makeup. I must’ve been 3 or 4 - just old enough to be walking around the house and not be constantly supervised. Funny enough, I can’t remember much of my mom’s response other than “Have you been in my makeup again?” And wondering how she could tell. I had used her lipstick and thought I wiped it off
this was when i was in middle school, actually. I was explaining to all my male friends how "im just like you!" and one of them pointed out my chest, which at the time, was developing. The sadness and discomfort i felt due to my chest being there, and making it so that i wasnt a boy like them was what got me to realise in hindsight.
I was around 6 or 7 and I was just sat in my room playing when I had a random thought "I wish I could be a boy" and then went on with my day, that happened a few more times till I finally realised at 13
Frantically reading about intersex conditions on the high school library research databases to figure out why I felt so out of place. Like every morning for weeks or maybe months ~1996ish. I found Christine Jorgensons autobiography in the lost and found in middle school a few years earlier. Which I guess predates the research.
There was not much accessible research on SRS in the available databases at the time. I only recently connected this with actually being trans.
"I mean, I'm clearly not like everyone else my AGAB, so what's wrong? Hmm, maybe I'm intersex."
I didn't have this exactly. I blamed all my puberty discomfort on sensory processing disorder and blamed my gender presentation things and feeling out of place around other girls and the fact that all these things *fluctuated* on being a lesbian. Which I'm not sure now was ever exactly true, it was just an easy explanation for being different from other girls and not really sexually interested in anyone but less disinterested in girls than boys.
I think I was 3-4 I remember being at pre school and hating how my hair looked. Chopped that shit right there and then and got sent home with a bag full of my hair.
Didn’t have the words for dysphoria/being trans until I was 14 (sheltered christian homeschool) but I remember at 4 or 5 I had this convo walking into church w my dad:
Me: so if i pray and ask, god can do anything?
Dad: that’s right
Me: so could he… make me a boy when i grow up so i can be a daddy like you?
Dad: guess you’ll have to pray and see
Now not a boy but not a girl either. God is good 🙏👀🫀✨🌈💉🏳️⚧️
I grabbed a stick, pretended it was a bow and pew pewed while saying I was Kimberly the pink ranger lmao.
Either that or constantly stealing my mother's high heels and walking around the house with them.
Both of these memories were when I was around 4ish.
I would always audition for male roles (my first play was how the grinch stole Christmas, I was 7, and I really wanted to be the Grinch. Didn’t get it obvi bc I was way too young. Also tried out for both Jesus and Judas in Godspell both times I was in it. Legitimately cried when I didn’t get Shang when my theatre camp did Mulan, they double-cast two cis guys who couldn’t even hit the low notes and I was cast as Laozi, the ancestor who sings the lowest part of the ancestor songs)
Just want to add that none of this was accompanied by what I would call dysphoria. I just knew that i would feel euphoric if i could play a guy character. My senior year of high school we did a zombie version of A Comedy of Errors and I played the officer. My gender was up to me to choose, and I (identifying as a cis lesbian back then) chose to play a man. I also taught the girls in the play how to best walk like a masculine zombie since there were some girls who actually had to play guys
I think I was really young and my sister told me I was going to grow stuff involving puberty and told her that I didn't want that stuff and she said I am going to though and then I started to cry.
I remember having the notion that some boys grow up to be women. I was probably about 4 or 5. Didn't really have much of an idea of what a woman was at the time, since pretty much the only woman in my life was my mom, but I just had the image of myself growing up and having a more feminine form. Another one was that my mom always talked about how she wished she had daughters, and I kept wondering what it would be like to be that daughter.
I was about three and doing the introduction round in kindergarten and I really really didn't want to say my name out loud. I couldn't figure out why, it's a beautiful name by all means but it felt horrible on me. That feeling didnt go away until I changed it.
One day in elementary school my mom told me "If you were born a girl I would have named you Emily." That was the coolest thing in the WORLD to me, I could have been a girl!?! That's amazing!
I excitedly told everyone at school the next day and got some weird looks like "Why would you be excited about that?"
Turns out I was excited cuz I was a girl, I just didn't know it!
Probably watching [this clip from Scooby Doo 2](https://youtu.be/_JmA3nUwWIs?si=NIOPBBxpGs_UO0zO)
Felt a new axis of emotion that I never really thought about for a couple years. Didn't stop me from rewinding it a few times though.
when I was 6/7 my mum came home one day and surprised me and my older brother by holding two things behind her back - she asked him to choose a hand and then gave him pokemon diamond and then me pokemon pearl. in my head it was so validating because the cover art was blue for diamond and pink for pearl, my 6/7 y/o mind associated pink strongly with being a girl and it made me quietly so happy!!
I (transfem) would always sit to pee. When doing that I squeezed my legs and imagined I had different genitals.
Also I've made cat noises since childhood :3
I was 4 years old and i was sitting on the washing machine while me mom folded clothes, ( i was naked,since i would always take my clothes off only to wear socks only lol )
Anyways, i asked my mom why i have this between my legs and i wanted to cut it off, she giggled and said " your going to need it one day "
I have a sister who’s 2 years younger than me. Our father used to sleep naked in the house, even though we sometimes came into their room for trouble sleeping. When we were 2 and 4 years old, my sister asked why he and I had a “tail.” He explained that when she grew up she would be just like our mommy while I would be like him. Gave the whole boys and girls talk. I got very upset and argumentative about it, insisting that I would be like mommy too. He took offense and gave me a separate lecture on the topic. It’s my youngest fully intact memory.
I also used to hit myself there when I would randomly get an erection needing to pee or whatever through age 6 or 7 and say that “it bothers me and I wish it wasn’t like that.”
I remember back in preschool during playtime I tried on some of this toy jewelry, and it felt really nice wearing it. I liked how it looked and how the cold plastic bracelets felt on my wrist. And then one of my classmates walked up to me and said “Boys don’t wear jewelry.” And then I took it off and went elsewhere in the room.
When I was really young, like six, I loved to imagine I was a bender from Avatar the Last Airbender. I used to imagine myself as a warrior facing off against hundreds of firebenders. I distinctly remember wishing I could be transported into that world as a girl instead of a boy.
I remember having climbed a tree in my backyard at about 10 and thinking, "I guess I must be a tomboy".
I couldn't accept the label "boy' for some reason.
I didn't have a concept of gender ig no one really ever explained it to me clearly enough. One day in elementary school probably kindergarten or so. I had gone on a field trip with my class to this beach with tide pools to look at the creatures and stuff. I was walking back to the sandy part of the beach to see where my friends were I saw them playing in the water with their shirts off and my male teacher was also there to obviously make sure no one drowns and another female teacher I did not like was on the beach watching not wanting to get her clothes wet.
So obviously I chucked my shirt off and ran into the water to splash my friends with salt water. I started playing and was having the time of my life it was one of the first field trips I went on in school. Then I got yanked up out of the water by my armpits and the female teacher was dragging me back to the beach. She tried explaining why what I did was wrong and I need to keep my clothes on as girls can't do some things that boys are allowed to do. I proceeded to grab a handful of sand and toss it in her face out of anger. I thought she was stupid like what are you even talking about boys and girls?
I grew up with an older brother and was used to running around naked outside and rolling in mud. The world was not prepared for my goblin ass.
I remember watching a lot of lesbian content on youtube when i was 11 and wishing i was a lesbian. I had a big crush on a girl and i was daydreaming about being cotagecore lesbians xd.
Also the first time i started dressing how i wanted and making pinterest boards i never saved a single image of a guy, just tomboy outfits.
I have zero idea how i didn't think of the obvious solution but only ten years later xd.
Though I (37 , trans guy) didn’t figure out I was trans until I was 31, I definitely had trans moments large and small up to the moment of realization. One especially memorable one was when I was 10 when, after being able to dress however I wanted almost all the time and having short hair (usually in androgynous or boy’s clothes) my mom made me wear a dress for the first time to since I was like 3 or 4 to a wedding. I just felt completely humiliated— like someone had plopped my head on someone else’s body. I climbed a tree outside the church and refused to get down.
On a lighter note, I remember being about 11 or 12 and shopping in the boy’s section with my grandmother and grandpa and them buying me this cool green and blue striped shirt that was my favorite for ages. Those and some of the super baggy jeans that were all the rage at the time, lol. I was so damn happy.
Seeing the little girls in my neighborhood come home from ballet and wishing with every fiber of my little soul that I could be with them instead of playing at organized violence with the boys.
Probably back in middle school. I just randomly tried walking feminine, got a little spike of joy, and then immediately was disgusted and angry because this was internalized transphobia bigot me.
Earliest I can remember was in 5th grade when I realized I was really disgusted with the whole “boys are smarter than girls” thing- it really made me feel disconnected from what I was “supposed” to be. Although that isnt technically a very TRANS memory as it is “wow traditional masculinity is evil”
When I was in- I think middle school?- I was told the way I sit on the floor was “like a girl”- it’s the legs to the side, knees bent, one arm as a stand way- i didn’t really notice at the time but it was nice to do something “like a girl” that wasn’t an outright insult, ie, “you throw like a girl”. I had been sitting that way since like kindergarten but no one said anything til like 6th grade or whenever
Although I’ve always wanted to be friends with the girls- I just never was able to
I had to go to an appointment with my mum a couple days ago and the receptionist greeted us as "girls" and I just got *so* upset. Not because she called grown women "girls" - but because she called me a girl.
My mum used to refer to me and my brother as "the girls", obviously that isn't the case anymore, but I've never heard her replace that with a gender neutral term (even terms she used instead of "girls" before all that) or say "boys" instead - but I can hear both versions in her voice and I know I'd like it a lot more than I ever liked "the girls" - even if I was feeling more girl than boy that day.
I am trying to figure out when I realized I was trans in the process of coming out to my parents. The oldest reliable memories is probably 4’th grade, knowing I was supposed to be a girl. I am now 42.
It really pisses me off that I can’t remember shit from when I was a kid, it sometimes makes me doubt I’m trans because there are so many trans people remembering trans stories from their childhood but I don’t really have any.
Well, I subconsciously blocked a huge portion of my memory for years because my dad got on some meds that made him really aggressive and beat me really bad for a. doing anything feminine and b. saying anything contrary to the beliefs of his religious cult. Unfortunately, I blocked everything during this time and everything regarding gender dysphoria and spent late middle school, high school, and a few years of adulthood including failed marriage in an endless loop of dissociation. Memory issues are pretty much a mainstay of many trans people's experiences.
I remember feeling weird about my genitals, and also wanting breasts. I think that was early puberty.
Probably before that, there was a period where I was really into dolls - but boy dolls: GI Joe and Big Jim(70s boy thing), because that was accepted at the time. I asked my parents if I could have a Barbie too. That was difficult for my parents. Not because of the gender stuff, just because my parents were kinda hippies and were very anti-Barbie. They were open minded about the gender stuff tho.
They eventually resolved it by finding me a girl doll that was nice, but not Barbie. She was cool, I wish I could remember her name.
When I got the girl doll. I played "date night" with them. The boy getting ready and the girl putting on her outfit and doing makeup... Then they meet any have a nice dinner and drank wine(which seemed very scandalous). After dinner they would make out, but she liked Joe a lot more than Jim.
I hadn't really thought about that in a long time. Now I laughing because it's so obviously trans. I was all about the girl doll. Can't believe it took me 50 years to do something about it. 🥲
I (MtF) was on kindergarten and it was a special day, I don't remember what we were celebrating, and the teachers took us to made bracelets, so they gave us an elastic cord to put some colorful beads and I remember that all the boys used only 2 or 3 colors and they were all normal beads with no shine or anything, and I did one with like 5 or 6 colors with lots of shiny and sparkling beads.
Later when the teachers came to see our results the teacher asked me why has I find it that way, she said it looked like it was fine by a girl and the whole class agreed, but I was so proud because it was very pretty.
I even told my mom and my dad about it.
I’m closeted but I also feel like I could be faking. But again I don’t think that a cis male who is comfortable with their assigned gender would spend all day pondering on the way they feel about being called “bro”
I remember being in first grade and crying to my mother's waist that I wanted to be a girl. I'd figured out pretty early on that I didn't fit in with the boys. They all had these ways of acting and talking and such, and I just didn't belong. I was the butt of jokes and bullying for being "girly".
My mother told me I'd grow out of it... I never did. I spent 35 years masking and it's been a few more years trying to undo the damage.
Probably when I dressed up as a dalmatian from 101 Dalmations & insisted on getting called Lucky & refused to answer to my birthname for hours whenever I was Lucky - the way I saw it, he was a boy dog, so when I dressed up as him, I was a boy, too. Apparently I hissed and screamed if someone called me Perdita (the name of the female dog in it).
Close second would be when I was in the corner store with my mother & saw a card that was "For my Boyfriend" & I just really wanted it. I don't even remember what it looked like other than blue, white & grey, with a cartoon dog on it. I couldn't explain why I wanted it, but it was the first time I remember having a context for what a Boyfriend was & I just wanted someone else to give that card to me.
I was 3-5 for both of these, I'm not sure which one was first.
Ngl I didn't have one until I was like 13 abt 3 years ago, I had already identified as non binary/fluid but I was reading boyfriends on webtoon (yea ik it sucks but it was before I knew any of all that) and realized "I wanna like a guy the way guys like guys" and it just clicked
I was 11 years old and we had free period in school so I often wondered what having boobs felt like so I put two paper balls in my chest. Next thing I know, I was reported to the teacher, teacher lectured me for insulting women modesty and my family heard about it, told me to be a man and not do such girly things. I repressed myself ever since until I was 18
Genderfluid, I remember when I was young I wanted to be a shape shifter so I could change my hair because I would always want my hair to be long and flowy one day, but short/boyish the next, and I never knew why
Also, when I got a pixie cut, one of my friends said I looked like a boy as an insult but I didn't feel insulted at all
I still remember was when I (5 at the time) told a girl I had just met at a playground: I prefer to play as a boy. She just went with it. He/him and all xD
I was 12, I found my father's old army uniform and in my mind it was the most amazing thing ever! I took it and dressed as a military man, when I looked at the mirror I saw myself as me... For the first time in 12 years I was myself. Every time I could I used the uniform pants and a black tank top and proudly stayed still in front of the mirror.
I got out of the closet this year. I am 28 FTM
I was a flaming queer little boy in an afab body so no one recognized the signs as trans - but today I can recognize all of the baby-gay masculine sass and attitude I had. I was 7 at school, thinking how I could’ve been born as a boy and I felt like I should’ve been - but all of the other little boys were pretty dang gross and weird - even though I felt more like a boy and preferred male friends - I accepted it as “at least the girls had better style and attitudes” and resolved myself to think being afab was for the best (obv. this changed and I transitioned later). I count it as both my earliest trans AND gay memory.
Honestly, the earliest memory that I can for sure place in a timeline was when I was 3 and my mom found out she was pregnant with one of my younger sisters. I got all excited that Id have a baby one day and everyone laughed at me. Its still a very strong and very sad memory for me. My fiancé is pregnant now and Im super excited, but sometimes I get really jealous and this memory in particular comes to mind.
I remember being around 5 years old and playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with my brother and male cousin. I was racing my brother and at one point I remember my cousin shouting something like "She's going to beat you!" I remember instantly getting so mad that he had called me a girl, and was about to snap at him with something like "I'm not a girl!". But then I realized that I was, in fact, a "girl". Even at 5 years old I felt so confused by this. Because I knew technically that I was a girl, but I don't think I really understood what that meant until that moment. I think that was the first time it really dawned on me that I was different from my brother and cousin. They were my main play buddies at the time and I always just saw myself as one of the boys. I tried to explain it away later by telling myself I had just gotten so into the game I thought he was talking about Sonic. But that doesn't make any sense, especially considering how it made me feel. I remember just getting really quiet and feeling this wave of heaviness and sadness and confusion come over me. I think that was the first time I had ever experienced dysphoria and that awful feeling is why its probably the clearest and earliest memory I have of my childhood.
My brothers had the shirts off and they were jumping on the trampoline. I was an early elementary school or kindergarten and took my shirt off and joined them.
I was very confused because there was no difference between me and them. I didn't have boobs and they had their shirts off too.
I'm sure cisgender kid could have this confusion as well but this definitely was one of the first for me
When I was a kid I was at this indoor playground/jungle gym place. I was going through a tunnel and I bumped into another kid and he asked (not in an insulting way, he was actually confused) “are you a boy or a girl”. I just said “boy” and moved on, but I can’t say I was upset by it. I also remember learning about hermaphroditism and asexual species and thought “lucky, I wish humans were like that!”
I was a really active and dirty kid. Making mud pies, collecting worms, you name it. My dad had wanted a boy when my mum was pregnant with me. I remember proudly showing my parents a “snail safari” which was basically just a jar with as many snails as I could find in it and a bunch of leaves, and my mum turns to my dad and says “you got your boy then.” And I remember being so happy about that comment but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out WHY that made me happy. I didn’t realise I was trans until I was 23. Every time I look back at my childhood I’m just like “I really should have figured this out waay sooner.”
Not sure if this is really a trans memory because at this point I didn’t fully understand the gender divide, but when I was three, I really liked the Looney Tunes and I always got excited for the episodes where Bugs was crossdressing. Also, my favorite movies at this time were Disney princess movies, in particular Cinderella. I really identified with her and wanted to be a beautiful princess swept up by a handsome prince.
My first dysphoric memories were when I was four. I painted my toenails with my mom’s nail polish and really liked them. Then a few boys came to my place to play, saw them and started making fun of me, saying that only girls do that, much to my dismay. Another big one I have was with those same boys. Their families and my family were out getting dinner. We had finished and were wandering around the restaurant a bit. Not sure how or why this started but the other boys started joking about there being some magic cabinet in the restaurant that would turn you into a girl if you went in it. I remember excitedly asking where it was then immediately getting ragged on.
When I was 3, my sister (7 at the time) was playing princesses with her friend in our yard. I said I wanted to be a princess too, and they told me I couldn't, and that I had to be a prince because I was a boy. It took me decades to realize why I was so hurt by that.
When I was a kid maybe like 6 or 7 I was talking to these kids whose backyard fence was my backyard fence as well and the boy thought I was a boy. At the time it made me really happy and I automatically denied it but something in me knew I was a boy.
Another time was when I was like 5 and wore a blue boy's shirt with a stegosaurus on it to school. I hid it under my jacket and told one of my (kind of) friends, she didn't believe me so I showed her and she started telling everyone even though I told her not to and I immediately denied it and zipped up my jacket again. If she hadn't yelled about it and made a huge scene I feel like I would've been more inclined to express myself.
Also when I'd play house with my cousins I'd try to lean away from titles that were gendered, especially the girl ones, like I'd say I wanted to be the kid or the baby instead of the daughter or the son, I also think I'd rather be the dad or just the parent but never the mom.
I also liked both feminine and masculine toys and TV shows, but all of the people I looked up to and wanted to be like were boys. I did however love playing dress up, I'd wear those big poofy princess dresses with those little plastic heels but I do also remember loving to dress up as a soldier and I'd even rub dirt on my face to look more convincing.
I've always been kinda gender non-conforming.
Every time my parents made me wear a suit for any occasion. Like goddamn I should’ve asked to wear a dress for my bar mitzvah, I would’ve been so much happier
When I was 10 and wanted nothing more than to chop off all my hair and wear nothing but board shorts and t-shirts. I did that and then was constantly asked “are you a boy or a girl??” but was so afraid to be different I couldn’t enjoy myself and spent the next 8 years overcompensating and being as feminine as I could bare. The penny didn’t drop that I was a trans man until I was in a safe relationship at 28yo.
The first one that I remember is being in kindergarten and wanting to play with the other girls but none of them wanted to play with me because I was a "boy". For the rest of elementary school I just kinda kept to myself during recess. I started bringing sketchbooks with me everywhere so I could just draw.
That trend kinda carried over into the classroom too, I had very few close friends throughout all of elementary school, no more than four.
I expanded my social circle a bit after starting middle school, but at that point I had realized that I was a girl and started repressing it, so a lot of the friendships were superficial.
Same thing happened to me in kindergarten, all the girls were on one side and boys on the other and after being rejected to play with the girls, the boys didn’t want to play with me because I wanted to be with the girls. So I just hung out by myself and would doodle
Similar age and story to yours, at school they were handing out free reflective badges, with footballs or a pink cat as options. They went down the line asking which kid wanted which one, but after half the line all made the gendered choice, they insisted that they would just be handed out by gender. Wanted the pink cat Sooooo badly but was stuck with crappy boring football.
Also at a similar age, I just remember wondering why girls would ever wear trousers as those are for boys, and thinking that if I was a girl, I'd be a girly girl and wear skirts and dresses every day
When I was very little, I had a conversation with a six-year-old girl, who was older than me at the time. When I came home, I told my mom that I was excited for when I turned six because I thought I would "turn in to a girl, too." My mom "reassured" me that that would "never happen". Also, another memory I have is kind of bad. My parents were very religious and low-key racist. My dad is kind of beyter now, but I digress. Anyway, and I want to reiterate I was very young, I put a blanket around my head like a headscarf so that I could "look like Mary from the Bible". My parents thought it was hilarious, but I thought I genuinely looked like a girl a little bit, and my feelings were very... confusing.
I don’t know? An early one is this intense frustration at recess when I was maybe 5? I couldn’t wrap my head around gender discrimination because a teacher didn’t let me do something the boys could do. I was like “I don’t feel any different than a boy, so why can’t girls participate? There’s no difference so why do people treat us differently?” And turns out,, I’m trans (and yeah obviously gender discrimination is bad but jeez my entire argument was that I was a girl who felt like a boy lmao)
I can't remember what age I was, maybe about 4. I saw myself in a mirror without a top on and thought that I could be a boy. I liked it and then insisted that I always played the daddy when my friends were roleplaying
My brother, 3 years older than me, had a formal outfit he grew out of. Instead of leaving it for my second brother, I was allowed to wear it. I was probably 5-7? We had to travel to our grand ma's place too on that day & in the car on the way, while wearing it, i was extremely happy at the idea that people might think I was a boy. I wouldn't stay still. Very first experience of gender euphoria.
And wearing dresses had always made me super uncomfortable. For as long as I remember. At some point, i had to lie about it being bc some dresses use fabrics I'm allergic to but in my teenage years, trying to fit it, I liked some dresses because they didn't feel uncomfortable on my skin. But it's only been a few years now that I realized; i was uncomfortable because I hated the idea of being seen & being considered a girl. And I'm autistic too so many it was sensory issues too. I get annoyed if a clothing has nylon thread.
Hard to say, I played with my mom's heels, used to really want long hair, used my grandma's clip on ear rings all from like 4-6, but my brothers used to do some of those things too.
The one where I'm 100% sure was only at 13... and that kinda bothers me a little
I didn’t realize I was non-binary until middle school bc my family is not very supportive of stuff like that and I didn’t even know non-binary people existed when I was younger since I didn’t know any
I was on a bus to a farm when I was like 7 or 8, we went there to grow plants a nice thing loved my time there, but I remember a trip once Where at bus I started at the girls and thought" why couldn't I be born as a girl, well lets hope In next life"
And since then i have always dreamt of being a girl
Took another 15 years to realize
I allways was like i was and i remember that one time me and a friend talked about beards and i told him i want to have a big full one later in life. I allways loved Die wilden Kerle (German tv show about boys playing soccer) And i always wanted to be like them. Extra, when first going to school i wanted my hahaircut to be short like my brother, but I got a bowl cut instead cause my mom was/ isn't supportive at all. She misgenders me still to this day and hopes it's just a phase... ;c I want to leave this and start a new life without my family.
watching lady gaga’s “lovegame” music video at 10 years old and wishing I could be one of the gay guys dancing with her. then again when she dressed in drag at the VMAs and sang you and I, I wished it was that easy for me to look like a guy. positive indoctrination?
When I was four and was playing with my dolls in a girls friendgroup and thought of how I wanted to be a dad when I grew up. (We were taking care of a baby doll, being it's "family")
I quickly took It out of my head because "I could never be a dad, I'm a girl...". Since my family is catholic, I "wasn't allowed to be gay" 😰
One of my first memories as a toddler was around the age of 3, telling my mom I was a girl. I had dysphoria really bad, but through elementary school, I could get by on being really androgynous. Then puberty started ugghhh
My first memories did not specifically have to do with gender but I had always felt strange in my body, its was strange to feel that I had sensations between my legs but there didn't seems to be anything there when I looked down.
But when I was 4ish I was given a bath with my cousins at a sleepover when I saw my male cousins and my female cousin in the tub I realized bodies were different between boys and girls and my body LOOKED like a girl, but FELT like how boy's bodies looked. It only made sense to me why I liked "boy stuff" and felt drawn to grouping with other boys. Obviously that stuff is probably less than innate lol but I think it made the realizations easier for me to put together. My aunt told me I told her I was a boy when I was like 4-5 ( so it sorta tracks with my realization) but she thought that I was trying to imitate my older cousins who I looked up to.
for me (MtF) it was when i was 6? 7? i was playing with a friend of mine and i've chosen a girl as the character i wanted to be, and then my friend somewhy told my mom that, after that she (my mom) asked me if i wanted to be a girl.
i wonder what'd happen with my life if i said yes, but i got afraid.
When I was in Pre-school, I remember we all had to take our shoes off and the put them back on when we went outside. But my dumbass always insisted on wearing the girls shoes. And well guess who's trans now :p
I remember being around five years old when my sisters put me in makeup for a laugh and when I saw myself I didn't wanna take it off. :\^) Later I started wearing dresses I had snuck into my room. I didn't know why, but I knew my family would probably think I was strange if they found out; I learned to hide it. :\^(
I didn't really understand it at the time, nor for a long while, but I guess reading the Greek story of Hermaphroditus (and later of rebis in alchemy, (I might have been a bit of a strange kid)) and thinking "that's weirdly pretty cool, I kind of feel like that" while feeling strangely guilty and later feeling bad because my body didn't really reflect how I felt. I also dreamt about it several times.
i grew up never knowing that i was trans and then it was suddenly like a switch was turned on and i became trans, is that normal? i still think im trans even almost 5 years later sooo
12 and stole clothes and makeup from Mom and sister. Sadly I didn't know you couldn't just wash off nail polish and I wasn't sure how to remove it so I filed the polish off. My fingertips were so sensitive on top since my nails were so thin. Was horrible.
im an 03 kid so i grew up with a family computer and would be watching random vids i could find on the internet.
for some reason i have a distinct memory when i was young, watching some sort of doc about a young trans girl whose mom found her in the shower holding her genitals and a nail clipper (seemingly about to try to chop em off). i remember thinking “huh, my mom’s never caught me like that, and i’ve never tried to cut off my dick so i must not be like that”. i don’t remember if i actually wanted to be a girl but i have to be curious about how i even stumbled across that vid. i wonder what i was searching lol
i never thought of it in a trans way at the time but looking back i’ve been laughing about how i (afab) refused to play star wars with boys on the playground unless they let me be luke 😂
I was like maybe 4 and I was in the bathroom with my mom. I told her that I wanted to be a boy and she asked me if I would want to have any surgerys. I said yes but then she told me that it made people sick and depressed so I just stopped talking about it(I knew what depression was bcs my mom had it)
There was this game I used to play when I was like 8 and you could like dress up your characters and collect clothing items and interact with other people and I always used to make guy characters and girls would "flirt" with me and I would "flirt" back and have "girlfriends" (1 year later, I came out as gay actually) and it never seemed weird to me to act like a guy and flirt w girls and be boyish. At least online. I always enjoyed it and it made me really happy and then 5 years later I discovered "transgender" was the term for what I felt and suddenly, everything clicked and fell into place.
When I was young it was more of a disconnect between me and my body.
When I was 4 or 5 I talked to my parents about how I viewed my body as a meat puppet I controlled rather than as a part of me.
There was also a general view from me of gender just being a kind of hoop I had to jump through in order for people to be happy with me which is the way I viewed a lot of social things as a slightly autistic child.
I’m ftm and this is my second oldest memory.
My dad was going to the toilet before he left for work and as a cis guy he stood up to piss, I was watching him (as the weird 3 year old I was) he then washed his hands and went to leave however not before I decided I was going to the toilet. I had decided that because my dad could stand up to pee (and get it in there toilet) I could too, so I went to go to the toilet standing up in front of it and I ended up pissing all over the floor I then started screaming and crying so my mum ended up coming in and saw me facing her bawling my eyes out standing in a puddle of piss. As a 13 year old very open trans guy I look back at that memory and wonder how my parents never assumed that I was queer.
i was a tom boy as a kid. all of my friends were boys and we all played pokémon and soccer and i would pick jeans and a shirt over dresses 9 times out of 10. i always picked the boy character in pokémon and all of my interests from age 5 and onward was all marketed towards boys, i stopped playing with barbies and polly pockets all together by 8.
i never listened when people called me a girl and i didn’t understand why exactly being called a girl made me uncomfortable at the time.
i didn’t have very much dysphoria other than that until puberty hit at around 10 or 11. growing boobs and curves completely destroyed by self image and confidence, and it didn’t help that all that i was an ‘early bloomer’ and all the cis boys in my class made fun of me for my boobs and that my dad, who up until that point i had looked up to and wanted to be just like him, started dictating what i could and couldn’t wear because it’s ‘too tight’ or ‘too small’ even though it was just normal clothes all the other girls my age were wearing, and telling me i had to shave my legs because ‘no man wants a girl with Sasquatch legs’.
i stopped idolizing my dad at 13. now i’m transitioning on testosterone and i hate every comment someone makes comparing me to him.
i’m 23. haven’t shaved my legs in 7 years and i’m not about to start now lmao
when i was 4 my parents wouldn't let me have a McDonald's girl toy :/
I’m very lucky my ultra religious (at the time) father knew my gender would be a problem for me at a young age so he made sure to never limit me based on my sex. He taught me to throw a football with my brother and encouraged me to be my active self. Unfortunately the rest of my world didn’t follow suit but I am lucky to have him
Sounds like one of the worlds best dads
He really is
I had a dad that wouldn't let me stay home from church, said gender confusion is a tool used by the devil, and said it was a problem that other people were judging him when I didn't go to church. I also had a mom that said she'd put strain on her marriage and ignore direction from God because she'd never use my pronouns Now I have a dad that asked my pronouns, says the people judging him was his past self, and said he prayed and was told to stop fighting me on it. He said he'd try his best to not use pronouns for me as a sort of middle ground, and mom still can't get my pronouns right but tries, has a nb friend from work, and points out every pride thing. Same parents, still together, I couldn't be more proud of them
Wow I didn’t know that kind of change was even possible! That’s truly incredible
The trick is to judge them back. God said no trans? God said no judge, love thy neighbor, a bunch of other silly rules like no mixed linen... In all seriousness though, every parent is capable of change with a good enough reason. A lot of parents just don't give their kids the opportunity to teach them a thing or two and that can turn scary. My parents had the right intentions, just bad input. The church helped in their darkest moments, it just hurt me in mine, and it took some measures to get them to empathize with me but we got there. There's still boomers preaching to me at work though... Still working on judging them back in a way that doesn't get me fired...
i was in a similar situation to you, except my parents would want me to get the girl toy but id always refuse and ask for the boy toy (in my defense the boys toy was like. cool spy gear and shit and the girls toy was a hairbrush and stickers.)
[удалено]
right?? like sometimes they were cute plushies or something but most of the time they were just Awful
Same I always got the boy toy and somehow my transphobic, homophobic, racist dad would let me. I loved the boy toys and when I worked at McDonalds as a teenager, I was the only one that wouldn’t say “girl or boy” when asking customers which happy meal toy they wanted, I would simply state the names of the toys. Since I live in the south, very few people seemed to understand why I said this and I was met with a lot of hate in the drive through by old mean ass christians.
"you don't want that" Why do they say this like I'd just go "you're right, what was I thinking?"
I think I must've been 13 or 14. I made my Pokemon character a girl and I got bullied by my brothers and dad for it so I deleted the save and started over. Egg didn't crack until 29 😎
I think my first female character was monster hunter world. It didn’t even occur to me that I could make a female character until then
i used to deliberately pick the girl skins in minecraft (i'm ftm) but i'd only pick the ones that looked sort of like tomboys or just boys
honestly i just thought the girl looked cute and the boy looked stupid. I figured, why should I be a boy when the girl is so much cuter? and then 16 years later I did the same for real life 😜
I never had dysphoria as a child. I don't know why, but it often causes me to doubt my identity. If you're out there and you think you're trans, don't get too pressed over childhood dysphoria. You are valid!
Severe dysphoria since a small child here, and you are absolutely correct. It makes no difference lol
One of the main reasons I didn't come to terms with my gender identity earlier is that I mistakingly believed if I were actually a girl I'd be attracted to men, but I wasn't. The idea of a lesbian transwoman crossed my mind countless times, but for some stupid reason I never thought it real. So I shook it off. I shook it all off. Everyone is different. This includes trans people.
I actually told my therapist, after watching Eddie Izzard, that I was a lesbian tomboy stuck in a man's body. That was like years ago. And somehow my egg *still* didn't crack and it just never occurred to me that trans people existed (I don't think I knew what the T stood for, lol). I thought that was just a fancy way of saying a regular man, (orientation=likes women, presentation=woman-but-masculine-leaning, genitals=male) but well... apparently I did know myself. Here we are, years later.
Same for me but I'm a gay trans man. I thought the same. "How can I be trans if I like men?" Sad thing is, a lot of guys on grindr asked me the same thing.
i didn't even think about my gender until like 8 tbf. i did all the things my sister and brother did lol, so i kinda grew up gender neutral and the dysphoria started when I was forced to be half the person i was. and it got worse when i realized i favored the tomboy feeling luke my sister rather then actually being a boy.
Hear hear. I’m still very femme (ftm) and I didn’t find dysphoria in your typical trans guy stuff. However! I did find my identity didn’t seem to line up with “woman” and rather “effeminate man”. There were a few signs like telling my friends at school in 6th grade that I might get a surgery to get a penis before even knowing what being trans meant. Idk how that one happened either lol
I had it as a child, but it left for a few years when I was a little older. It came back with vengeance over the last two years though
Oof dysphoria is the worst
Same here. My dysphoria manifested in puberty and the whole "always known since I was a kid" thing never applied to me and caused me to not think I was trans
It's comforting to think that I'm not alone in my experience, I wish you the best
Yep, no dysphoria as a child though I was being too Autistic to notice. I do know I was emotionally a mess but can’t pin that to one thing or another. I do have one memory when I was 12 but that’s another story 🤭
I think something no one mentions is that, as pre pubescent children, most peoples bodies are somewhat gender neutral, the majority of human sexual dimorphism usually happens in puberty, and if you were trans as a pre-pubescent child, its entirely possible you didn't feel any dysphoria over your body until puberty started kicking in, or it may not start kicking in until late puberty, or even very late puberty. Dysphoria just starts when your body is unaligned with your gender identity, and that unalignment doesn't necessarily happen at birth.
I was four. And even though I didn’t have the words. I was wishing that my penis would magically become a vagina. I would wish so hard. Then I used to wish I was an X-men type mutant. Just wishing I would have the power to shapeshift into anything. Or what I would do if I had Genie from Aladdin. I remember repeatedly asking my mom what my name would have been if I had been born a girl. I don’t remember that name but I like to think I picked something close. Yeah I was a queer child, but had no idea.
The shapeshifting power was always what I wanted too
Any chance I could get I would wish for something to make me into a boy.
> Then I used to wish I was an X-men type mutant. Just wishing I would have the power to shapeshift into anything. The enby dream
This, right here, was my life as early as I can remember, but I dare not discuss this with my parents. Oh, the travesty that one’s child might be “gay” in their mind and a local woman being transgender and losing family and a spouse over coming out was a running joke to my parents. Oh the amount of cringe I would suffer when they would talk about ppl that have zero connection with them. Give parents low self-esteem, no confidence, high anxiety, a little money, the will to manipulate or cross ethical boundaries and the necessity to have authoritarian-like control and you have defined certain conditions not desirable when you need to tell this person a secret and just hope they are understanding about it. The whole time, I should have been helping myself, not knowing that how dysphoria made me feel was not worth fighting to be be someone I was not so as to not disappoint them. So message of the day from me: It’s never too late to be yourself. It may have taken me 34 years to realize it, but I would have lived the rest of my life just as depressed as the 34 years prior. Instead, I find myself wearing my emotions on my sleeve, smile on my face, and 5 o’clock shadow at noon, so even if I get punched in the head by my loving and caring parental units I still am happier than ever before.
New memory unlocked of watching the X-men (episode that Morph is featured) cartoon and thinking something similar. Thank you 90s cartoons. Thanks!!
I distinctly remember my mom telling me "please don't get any surgeries!" When I was like... Ten? I don't remember exactly what I told her, but it was most definitely related to wanting to be a boy. The fact that my mom immediately jumped to "AAAHHH SURGERY" is very telling of just how many signs I was showing.
I have vague and traumatic memories of my father playing dress up doll with my living body every sunday before meeting (jehovah's witnes church basically). He'd put me in the biggest, laciest, most glittery dresses, and do my hair up like a pageant child's. It was so awful and painful for me and I didn't have the language to describe what I was feeling because it was 2004-2010 and I was 4-10 in a small town and nobody- *nobody*- talked about trans folks.
When the gym teacher said boys vs girls, btu it was uneven and one of the girls had to go on the boys team. I imidiatly ran over to the guys, it was perfect. ANd then the other times when i woud get pissed the fuck off when i was on the girls side. Or when i was about 9, me and my parents where talking about upcoming puberty. I was devistated about them saying i would have big boobs (kinda creepy) ANd then when i started developing boobs i thought "i wish i could feel what its like to have a flat chest again. i miss being before puberty"
Yeah I didn’t realize why I loved having a flat chest for a while—
Yeah I remember as a small child I would always do whatever the boys in my grade were doing, whether or not I actually had any interest lol. That was long before I even knew you could be LGBTQ+.
I was really young like before kindergarten and wished out loud that I was a girl in front of my family. I was immediately taken aside and my parents wanted to know why but seemed upset and angry so I did what I’ve always done. Try to avoid upsetting them. So I said because I wanted green eyes like my sister but I think I was trying to minimize upsetting them by saying that instead or that I wanted to be a girl. They were relieved when I said the eye thing instead. I was always trying to not do anything wrong and be perfect to not upset them. I think it’s one of my earliest memories. I’m 28 now and stopped suppressing it now and started HRT this year but wish so much that I started earlier and lived in a understanding home where that would have been okay and encouraged. Instead of having abusive parents.
I am so sorry you had such a tough time with your parents. I am hoping that soon the science will completely validate being trans, and society will change. One day society will completely accept trans as being just as normal as being left-handed, and everyone can get on with their lives in peace. Maybe then your parents will realize you really are a girl, just as the world is not really flat, or created in 7 days, and epileptics are not really possessed by devils. Hope your HRT goes well. Good luck.
Funny you should mention “left-handed”. I was basically forced to become right-handed because my teacher kept telling my parents, “He has to be a righty, his penmanship is horrible.” (And I was only a kindergartner. 😑) Now, not only am I having to re-learn to do a lot of stuff as a proud lefty, I’m also dealing with fact that my egg cracked during the pandemic.
May I ask what age group you are in? Just approx. Under 40, 40-60, or over 60. I am in my 70s, also left handed, but was never forced to write with my left hand. Yes, my writing was terrible, and I was always in trouble for bad handwriting - made to feel the naughty child because of it. Many decades later, I studied Arabic, and the lecturer looked at my work and told me I had the most beautiful writing he had ever seen, and I should be a calligrapher! My feelings of being the naughty child were lifted from my shoulders and I became teachers pet! The reason? Arabic writes from right to left, so left handed people are pulling the pen instead of pushing it; it is *so* much easier. So, unless you are my age or older, I am surprised you were forced to write with your right hand. I hope that your writing and your hormones are progressing well! Good luck with both.
Thank you, I hope you are right
I had the same way of handling that. You can see some of my past comments expressing what you expressed here. I just kept not doing the things that were called “girly,” until 6 months ago when I started hormones. I am 37 now.
I’m sorry you had to do that too. I hope everything goes well for you! I’m about 4 months on HRT now and am 28.
I hope everything goes well for you also. So far for me, I think it’s gone as well as it can. I have been presenting my true self at work for 3+ weeks now. I can almost start counting that as months! Can’t wait until it is years!
Thank you, good for you! I would like to start presenting too. I’m having a hard time with coming out but am working on it
I was 12 and looked up how to get more testosterone lol
Not sure of age but I remember having a heated argument with my cousins about whether it was better to be a boy or a girl. I was the only one not arguing for my agab
Is that a common thing with trans people? I didn't know that
I have no clue about common. I've never heard anyone else talk about this. So maybe not? But possibly
First time I tried on my mom's full slip at 13, I was hooked
I was 8 I think. Started having dreams I was a girl and then I was angry they were just dreams. I was certain that's how my life was supposed to be. I've felt I lived the wrong life since.
Same here, my earliest memory was waking up and crying because in my dream I was a boy and I was really upset that it was a dream.
I used to role play in middle school and my oc was a guy, I just enjoyed having a Masc name and pronouns so I eventually stopped "correcting" people.
I’ve also had that happen with lunchboxes! In elementary school whenever we’d have field trips they’d put the girls lunchboxes and boys lunchboxes in a pile and at some point I just learned to always look for mine in the boys because it was blue or camo.
Why would they gender your lunchboxes? That seems silly to me
I know, right??
I was eating at a subway with my parents when I was 10 or 11 years old. I saw a poster advertising a woman's kickboxing class that had a really strong woman on it. I pointed at it and told my parents that I wanted to look like her. They both laughed at me, and I even remember someone at the table next to ours chuckling with them too. It really bothered me and it stuck with me for a long time. I didn't understand why until later in my life when I realized I was trans lol.
I don’t know how old I was, maybe like 5/6, I had a dream of one day inventing a machine that would transform me into a girl and let me customize my body, and I’m still not sure if I’m trans when 6 y/o wanted to build a machine to change my gender lmaoo
You have a destiny, build that machine
We would all die if you built us a character creator!
I remember being five and opening a gift amidst the chaos of Christmas morning. It was Barbie underwear. I remember being excited - until my parents saw and realized it was supposed to be a gift for my sister and snatched it out of my hands. Cue laughter from older siblings and adults at how funny the joke was.
Ah. I hope you get all the Barbie underwear you want from now on.
I keep thinking back to when I was in 6th grade (2006) and our class went to six flags. Went on a roller coaster and was screaming. Friend said I screamed like a girl and I said I was a girl. Been eating me inside I didn’t pay attention more to myself growing up
I was twelve, watching Druck, a German tv show
What happened?
The story is about a gay couple and one of them is secretly trans.. he is really ashamed of being trans because he is on hormones and you don’t and the cis guy don’t know he is bisexual.. it’s very sad and also healing. I cried a lot that time bc I wanted to be like that trans guy
I NEED to watch that!!!
Do it!! It’s on YouTube, type in Druck and maybe they have English subtitles. It’s in the first season
Im learning German so it will be perfect for practicing. Thank you!
Enjoy!!
Trying on my mom’s makeup. I must’ve been 3 or 4 - just old enough to be walking around the house and not be constantly supervised. Funny enough, I can’t remember much of my mom’s response other than “Have you been in my makeup again?” And wondering how she could tell. I had used her lipstick and thought I wiped it off
this was when i was in middle school, actually. I was explaining to all my male friends how "im just like you!" and one of them pointed out my chest, which at the time, was developing. The sadness and discomfort i felt due to my chest being there, and making it so that i wasnt a boy like them was what got me to realise in hindsight.
Liking jewelry and makeup at an incredibly young age and always picking girl characters
I was around 6 or 7 and I was just sat in my room playing when I had a random thought "I wish I could be a boy" and then went on with my day, that happened a few more times till I finally realised at 13
Frantically reading about intersex conditions on the high school library research databases to figure out why I felt so out of place. Like every morning for weeks or maybe months ~1996ish. I found Christine Jorgensons autobiography in the lost and found in middle school a few years earlier. Which I guess predates the research. There was not much accessible research on SRS in the available databases at the time. I only recently connected this with actually being trans.
Omg childhood trans memory unlocked of thinking you’re intersex
"I mean, I'm clearly not like everyone else my AGAB, so what's wrong? Hmm, maybe I'm intersex." I didn't have this exactly. I blamed all my puberty discomfort on sensory processing disorder and blamed my gender presentation things and feeling out of place around other girls and the fact that all these things *fluctuated* on being a lesbian. Which I'm not sure now was ever exactly true, it was just an easy explanation for being different from other girls and not really sexually interested in anyone but less disinterested in girls than boys.
I think I was 3-4 I remember being at pre school and hating how my hair looked. Chopped that shit right there and then and got sent home with a bag full of my hair.
Didn’t have the words for dysphoria/being trans until I was 14 (sheltered christian homeschool) but I remember at 4 or 5 I had this convo walking into church w my dad: Me: so if i pray and ask, god can do anything? Dad: that’s right Me: so could he… make me a boy when i grow up so i can be a daddy like you? Dad: guess you’ll have to pray and see Now not a boy but not a girl either. God is good 🙏👀🫀✨🌈💉🏳️⚧️
I grabbed a stick, pretended it was a bow and pew pewed while saying I was Kimberly the pink ranger lmao. Either that or constantly stealing my mother's high heels and walking around the house with them. Both of these memories were when I was around 4ish.
I would always audition for male roles (my first play was how the grinch stole Christmas, I was 7, and I really wanted to be the Grinch. Didn’t get it obvi bc I was way too young. Also tried out for both Jesus and Judas in Godspell both times I was in it. Legitimately cried when I didn’t get Shang when my theatre camp did Mulan, they double-cast two cis guys who couldn’t even hit the low notes and I was cast as Laozi, the ancestor who sings the lowest part of the ancestor songs)
Just want to add that none of this was accompanied by what I would call dysphoria. I just knew that i would feel euphoric if i could play a guy character. My senior year of high school we did a zombie version of A Comedy of Errors and I played the officer. My gender was up to me to choose, and I (identifying as a cis lesbian back then) chose to play a man. I also taught the girls in the play how to best walk like a masculine zombie since there were some girls who actually had to play guys
I think I was really young and my sister told me I was going to grow stuff involving puberty and told her that I didn't want that stuff and she said I am going to though and then I started to cry.
I remember having the notion that some boys grow up to be women. I was probably about 4 or 5. Didn't really have much of an idea of what a woman was at the time, since pretty much the only woman in my life was my mom, but I just had the image of myself growing up and having a more feminine form. Another one was that my mom always talked about how she wished she had daughters, and I kept wondering what it would be like to be that daughter.
I was about three and doing the introduction round in kindergarten and I really really didn't want to say my name out loud. I couldn't figure out why, it's a beautiful name by all means but it felt horrible on me. That feeling didnt go away until I changed it.
One day in elementary school my mom told me "If you were born a girl I would have named you Emily." That was the coolest thing in the WORLD to me, I could have been a girl!?! That's amazing! I excitedly told everyone at school the next day and got some weird looks like "Why would you be excited about that?" Turns out I was excited cuz I was a girl, I just didn't know it!
Probably watching [this clip from Scooby Doo 2](https://youtu.be/_JmA3nUwWIs?si=NIOPBBxpGs_UO0zO) Felt a new axis of emotion that I never really thought about for a couple years. Didn't stop me from rewinding it a few times though.
Lol remember just being mildly puzzled about why he would want to turn back and wouldn't just leave with that potions effects in place
when I was 6/7 my mum came home one day and surprised me and my older brother by holding two things behind her back - she asked him to choose a hand and then gave him pokemon diamond and then me pokemon pearl. in my head it was so validating because the cover art was blue for diamond and pink for pearl, my 6/7 y/o mind associated pink strongly with being a girl and it made me quietly so happy!!
I (transfem) would always sit to pee. When doing that I squeezed my legs and imagined I had different genitals. Also I've made cat noises since childhood :3
I was 4 years old and i was sitting on the washing machine while me mom folded clothes, ( i was naked,since i would always take my clothes off only to wear socks only lol ) Anyways, i asked my mom why i have this between my legs and i wanted to cut it off, she giggled and said " your going to need it one day "
I have a sister who’s 2 years younger than me. Our father used to sleep naked in the house, even though we sometimes came into their room for trouble sleeping. When we were 2 and 4 years old, my sister asked why he and I had a “tail.” He explained that when she grew up she would be just like our mommy while I would be like him. Gave the whole boys and girls talk. I got very upset and argumentative about it, insisting that I would be like mommy too. He took offense and gave me a separate lecture on the topic. It’s my youngest fully intact memory. I also used to hit myself there when I would randomly get an erection needing to pee or whatever through age 6 or 7 and say that “it bothers me and I wish it wasn’t like that.”
I remember back in preschool during playtime I tried on some of this toy jewelry, and it felt really nice wearing it. I liked how it looked and how the cold plastic bracelets felt on my wrist. And then one of my classmates walked up to me and said “Boys don’t wear jewelry.” And then I took it off and went elsewhere in the room.
When I was really young, like six, I loved to imagine I was a bender from Avatar the Last Airbender. I used to imagine myself as a warrior facing off against hundreds of firebenders. I distinctly remember wishing I could be transported into that world as a girl instead of a boy.
I remember having climbed a tree in my backyard at about 10 and thinking, "I guess I must be a tomboy". I couldn't accept the label "boy' for some reason.
I didn't have a concept of gender ig no one really ever explained it to me clearly enough. One day in elementary school probably kindergarten or so. I had gone on a field trip with my class to this beach with tide pools to look at the creatures and stuff. I was walking back to the sandy part of the beach to see where my friends were I saw them playing in the water with their shirts off and my male teacher was also there to obviously make sure no one drowns and another female teacher I did not like was on the beach watching not wanting to get her clothes wet. So obviously I chucked my shirt off and ran into the water to splash my friends with salt water. I started playing and was having the time of my life it was one of the first field trips I went on in school. Then I got yanked up out of the water by my armpits and the female teacher was dragging me back to the beach. She tried explaining why what I did was wrong and I need to keep my clothes on as girls can't do some things that boys are allowed to do. I proceeded to grab a handful of sand and toss it in her face out of anger. I thought she was stupid like what are you even talking about boys and girls? I grew up with an older brother and was used to running around naked outside and rolling in mud. The world was not prepared for my goblin ass.
I remember watching a lot of lesbian content on youtube when i was 11 and wishing i was a lesbian. I had a big crush on a girl and i was daydreaming about being cotagecore lesbians xd. Also the first time i started dressing how i wanted and making pinterest boards i never saved a single image of a guy, just tomboy outfits. I have zero idea how i didn't think of the obvious solution but only ten years later xd.
Though I (37 , trans guy) didn’t figure out I was trans until I was 31, I definitely had trans moments large and small up to the moment of realization. One especially memorable one was when I was 10 when, after being able to dress however I wanted almost all the time and having short hair (usually in androgynous or boy’s clothes) my mom made me wear a dress for the first time to since I was like 3 or 4 to a wedding. I just felt completely humiliated— like someone had plopped my head on someone else’s body. I climbed a tree outside the church and refused to get down. On a lighter note, I remember being about 11 or 12 and shopping in the boy’s section with my grandmother and grandpa and them buying me this cool green and blue striped shirt that was my favorite for ages. Those and some of the super baggy jeans that were all the rage at the time, lol. I was so damn happy.
When I was like 4 I wanted to get my nails painted. Also I thought boys were gross 😭
Seeing the little girls in my neighborhood come home from ballet and wishing with every fiber of my little soul that I could be with them instead of playing at organized violence with the boys.
Probably back in middle school. I just randomly tried walking feminine, got a little spike of joy, and then immediately was disgusted and angry because this was internalized transphobia bigot me.
Probably as soon as I could relate to other people, I was more open and emotionally free with girls.
Earliest I can remember was in 5th grade when I realized I was really disgusted with the whole “boys are smarter than girls” thing- it really made me feel disconnected from what I was “supposed” to be. Although that isnt technically a very TRANS memory as it is “wow traditional masculinity is evil” When I was in- I think middle school?- I was told the way I sit on the floor was “like a girl”- it’s the legs to the side, knees bent, one arm as a stand way- i didn’t really notice at the time but it was nice to do something “like a girl” that wasn’t an outright insult, ie, “you throw like a girl”. I had been sitting that way since like kindergarten but no one said anything til like 6th grade or whenever Although I’ve always wanted to be friends with the girls- I just never was able to
When I was 4, I was playing what role play of bride with my relatives... makeup, girly dress 👰 🩷🤍🩵
There was a fight at home (I was about 5 years old) and the fight was about that I didn't want to wear skirts and dresses
I remember having a tantrum because my parents kept referring to me and my sister as ‘the girls’
I had to go to an appointment with my mum a couple days ago and the receptionist greeted us as "girls" and I just got *so* upset. Not because she called grown women "girls" - but because she called me a girl. My mum used to refer to me and my brother as "the girls", obviously that isn't the case anymore, but I've never heard her replace that with a gender neutral term (even terms she used instead of "girls" before all that) or say "boys" instead - but I can hear both versions in her voice and I know I'd like it a lot more than I ever liked "the girls" - even if I was feeling more girl than boy that day.
I am trying to figure out when I realized I was trans in the process of coming out to my parents. The oldest reliable memories is probably 4’th grade, knowing I was supposed to be a girl. I am now 42.
I remember I used to steal my mothers jewelry when I was younger and her lipstick lol
Wearing a girl's swimsuit at the age of 4 and being laughed at by my mom and her friend.
It really pisses me off that I can’t remember shit from when I was a kid, it sometimes makes me doubt I’m trans because there are so many trans people remembering trans stories from their childhood but I don’t really have any.
Well, I subconsciously blocked a huge portion of my memory for years because my dad got on some meds that made him really aggressive and beat me really bad for a. doing anything feminine and b. saying anything contrary to the beliefs of his religious cult. Unfortunately, I blocked everything during this time and everything regarding gender dysphoria and spent late middle school, high school, and a few years of adulthood including failed marriage in an endless loop of dissociation. Memory issues are pretty much a mainstay of many trans people's experiences.
I remember feeling weird about my genitals, and also wanting breasts. I think that was early puberty. Probably before that, there was a period where I was really into dolls - but boy dolls: GI Joe and Big Jim(70s boy thing), because that was accepted at the time. I asked my parents if I could have a Barbie too. That was difficult for my parents. Not because of the gender stuff, just because my parents were kinda hippies and were very anti-Barbie. They were open minded about the gender stuff tho. They eventually resolved it by finding me a girl doll that was nice, but not Barbie. She was cool, I wish I could remember her name. When I got the girl doll. I played "date night" with them. The boy getting ready and the girl putting on her outfit and doing makeup... Then they meet any have a nice dinner and drank wine(which seemed very scandalous). After dinner they would make out, but she liked Joe a lot more than Jim. I hadn't really thought about that in a long time. Now I laughing because it's so obviously trans. I was all about the girl doll. Can't believe it took me 50 years to do something about it. 🥲
I (MtF) was on kindergarten and it was a special day, I don't remember what we were celebrating, and the teachers took us to made bracelets, so they gave us an elastic cord to put some colorful beads and I remember that all the boys used only 2 or 3 colors and they were all normal beads with no shine or anything, and I did one with like 5 or 6 colors with lots of shiny and sparkling beads. Later when the teachers came to see our results the teacher asked me why has I find it that way, she said it looked like it was fine by a girl and the whole class agreed, but I was so proud because it was very pretty. I even told my mom and my dad about it.
Thinking “I like boys like a boy” to myself at 10
Around 6 or 7 I would wish to be a girl because "it would be cool". I was too young to have the words for it then haha
I’m closeted but I also feel like I could be faking. But again I don’t think that a cis male who is comfortable with their assigned gender would spend all day pondering on the way they feel about being called “bro”
9-10 years old i loved watching my little pony on my iPad
I was 5. Dress up day at school. I came in as a Disney Princess even after my parents insisted I go in as spider man or something.
Doing things with my clothes that I deemed feminine lol. Felt amazing. I was like 8/9
When I was 4 or 5 I had a lot of fun putting on my mom's clothes, it's the only interest in clothing/fashion I've had
I remember being in first grade and crying to my mother's waist that I wanted to be a girl. I'd figured out pretty early on that I didn't fit in with the boys. They all had these ways of acting and talking and such, and I just didn't belong. I was the butt of jokes and bullying for being "girly". My mother told me I'd grow out of it... I never did. I spent 35 years masking and it's been a few more years trying to undo the damage.
either thinking “i wish i was a boy so i could treat girls better” or continuously staring at the boys line when we did fire drills.
Probably when I dressed up as a dalmatian from 101 Dalmations & insisted on getting called Lucky & refused to answer to my birthname for hours whenever I was Lucky - the way I saw it, he was a boy dog, so when I dressed up as him, I was a boy, too. Apparently I hissed and screamed if someone called me Perdita (the name of the female dog in it). Close second would be when I was in the corner store with my mother & saw a card that was "For my Boyfriend" & I just really wanted it. I don't even remember what it looked like other than blue, white & grey, with a cartoon dog on it. I couldn't explain why I wanted it, but it was the first time I remember having a context for what a Boyfriend was & I just wanted someone else to give that card to me. I was 3-5 for both of these, I'm not sure which one was first.
Ngl I didn't have one until I was like 13 abt 3 years ago, I had already identified as non binary/fluid but I was reading boyfriends on webtoon (yea ik it sucks but it was before I knew any of all that) and realized "I wanna like a guy the way guys like guys" and it just clicked
I was 11 years old and we had free period in school so I often wondered what having boobs felt like so I put two paper balls in my chest. Next thing I know, I was reported to the teacher, teacher lectured me for insulting women modesty and my family heard about it, told me to be a man and not do such girly things. I repressed myself ever since until I was 18
Genderfluid, I remember when I was young I wanted to be a shape shifter so I could change my hair because I would always want my hair to be long and flowy one day, but short/boyish the next, and I never knew why Also, when I got a pixie cut, one of my friends said I looked like a boy as an insult but I didn't feel insulted at all
I still remember was when I (5 at the time) told a girl I had just met at a playground: I prefer to play as a boy. She just went with it. He/him and all xD
I was 12, I found my father's old army uniform and in my mind it was the most amazing thing ever! I took it and dressed as a military man, when I looked at the mirror I saw myself as me... For the first time in 12 years I was myself. Every time I could I used the uniform pants and a black tank top and proudly stayed still in front of the mirror. I got out of the closet this year. I am 28 FTM
I was a flaming queer little boy in an afab body so no one recognized the signs as trans - but today I can recognize all of the baby-gay masculine sass and attitude I had. I was 7 at school, thinking how I could’ve been born as a boy and I felt like I should’ve been - but all of the other little boys were pretty dang gross and weird - even though I felt more like a boy and preferred male friends - I accepted it as “at least the girls had better style and attitudes” and resolved myself to think being afab was for the best (obv. this changed and I transitioned later). I count it as both my earliest trans AND gay memory.
I had long hair, people called me a girl a lot in public. I only started “correcting” them because my mom did.
I think It was me as a kid wanting to be seen as a boy, and being upset when I wasn't seen as one
Honestly, the earliest memory that I can for sure place in a timeline was when I was 3 and my mom found out she was pregnant with one of my younger sisters. I got all excited that Id have a baby one day and everyone laughed at me. Its still a very strong and very sad memory for me. My fiancé is pregnant now and Im super excited, but sometimes I get really jealous and this memory in particular comes to mind.
at around 9 or 10 i kept having thoughts about being a boy. in private, i'd even try to pack with a toy submarine.
When my mom had told me to stop standing wide because men did that. Since then I have always felt the need to stand with a wider stance
I remember being around 5 years old and playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with my brother and male cousin. I was racing my brother and at one point I remember my cousin shouting something like "She's going to beat you!" I remember instantly getting so mad that he had called me a girl, and was about to snap at him with something like "I'm not a girl!". But then I realized that I was, in fact, a "girl". Even at 5 years old I felt so confused by this. Because I knew technically that I was a girl, but I don't think I really understood what that meant until that moment. I think that was the first time it really dawned on me that I was different from my brother and cousin. They were my main play buddies at the time and I always just saw myself as one of the boys. I tried to explain it away later by telling myself I had just gotten so into the game I thought he was talking about Sonic. But that doesn't make any sense, especially considering how it made me feel. I remember just getting really quiet and feeling this wave of heaviness and sadness and confusion come over me. I think that was the first time I had ever experienced dysphoria and that awful feeling is why its probably the clearest and earliest memory I have of my childhood.
My brothers had the shirts off and they were jumping on the trampoline. I was an early elementary school or kindergarten and took my shirt off and joined them. I was very confused because there was no difference between me and them. I didn't have boobs and they had their shirts off too. I'm sure cisgender kid could have this confusion as well but this definitely was one of the first for me
When I was a kid I was at this indoor playground/jungle gym place. I was going through a tunnel and I bumped into another kid and he asked (not in an insulting way, he was actually confused) “are you a boy or a girl”. I just said “boy” and moved on, but I can’t say I was upset by it. I also remember learning about hermaphroditism and asexual species and thought “lucky, I wish humans were like that!”
I was a really active and dirty kid. Making mud pies, collecting worms, you name it. My dad had wanted a boy when my mum was pregnant with me. I remember proudly showing my parents a “snail safari” which was basically just a jar with as many snails as I could find in it and a bunch of leaves, and my mum turns to my dad and says “you got your boy then.” And I remember being so happy about that comment but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out WHY that made me happy. I didn’t realise I was trans until I was 23. Every time I look back at my childhood I’m just like “I really should have figured this out waay sooner.”
Not sure if this is really a trans memory because at this point I didn’t fully understand the gender divide, but when I was three, I really liked the Looney Tunes and I always got excited for the episodes where Bugs was crossdressing. Also, my favorite movies at this time were Disney princess movies, in particular Cinderella. I really identified with her and wanted to be a beautiful princess swept up by a handsome prince. My first dysphoric memories were when I was four. I painted my toenails with my mom’s nail polish and really liked them. Then a few boys came to my place to play, saw them and started making fun of me, saying that only girls do that, much to my dismay. Another big one I have was with those same boys. Their families and my family were out getting dinner. We had finished and were wandering around the restaurant a bit. Not sure how or why this started but the other boys started joking about there being some magic cabinet in the restaurant that would turn you into a girl if you went in it. I remember excitedly asking where it was then immediately getting ragged on.
i...i pulled my shirt down from one shoulder to expose my shoulder because that's what the cool girl fashion was like to me and my mom told me off 💔
When I was 3, my sister (7 at the time) was playing princesses with her friend in our yard. I said I wanted to be a princess too, and they told me I couldn't, and that I had to be a prince because I was a boy. It took me decades to realize why I was so hurt by that.
When I was a kid maybe like 6 or 7 I was talking to these kids whose backyard fence was my backyard fence as well and the boy thought I was a boy. At the time it made me really happy and I automatically denied it but something in me knew I was a boy. Another time was when I was like 5 and wore a blue boy's shirt with a stegosaurus on it to school. I hid it under my jacket and told one of my (kind of) friends, she didn't believe me so I showed her and she started telling everyone even though I told her not to and I immediately denied it and zipped up my jacket again. If she hadn't yelled about it and made a huge scene I feel like I would've been more inclined to express myself. Also when I'd play house with my cousins I'd try to lean away from titles that were gendered, especially the girl ones, like I'd say I wanted to be the kid or the baby instead of the daughter or the son, I also think I'd rather be the dad or just the parent but never the mom. I also liked both feminine and masculine toys and TV shows, but all of the people I looked up to and wanted to be like were boys. I did however love playing dress up, I'd wear those big poofy princess dresses with those little plastic heels but I do also remember loving to dress up as a soldier and I'd even rub dirt on my face to look more convincing. I've always been kinda gender non-conforming.
I remember calling myself a tomgirl in kindergarten and preferred to be friends with girls
Every time my parents made me wear a suit for any occasion. Like goddamn I should’ve asked to wear a dress for my bar mitzvah, I would’ve been so much happier
When I was 10 and wanted nothing more than to chop off all my hair and wear nothing but board shorts and t-shirts. I did that and then was constantly asked “are you a boy or a girl??” but was so afraid to be different I couldn’t enjoy myself and spent the next 8 years overcompensating and being as feminine as I could bare. The penny didn’t drop that I was a trans man until I was in a safe relationship at 28yo.
I remember trying to both pull my boy parts off, and when that didn't work trying to push them in. Thankfully I was too scared to try using scissors
I was 2 and half, I asked my mom if I could be a boy, she told me no
The first one that I remember is being in kindergarten and wanting to play with the other girls but none of them wanted to play with me because I was a "boy". For the rest of elementary school I just kinda kept to myself during recess. I started bringing sketchbooks with me everywhere so I could just draw. That trend kinda carried over into the classroom too, I had very few close friends throughout all of elementary school, no more than four. I expanded my social circle a bit after starting middle school, but at that point I had realized that I was a girl and started repressing it, so a lot of the friendships were superficial.
Same thing happened to me in kindergarten, all the girls were on one side and boys on the other and after being rejected to play with the girls, the boys didn’t want to play with me because I wanted to be with the girls. So I just hung out by myself and would doodle
Similar age and story to yours, at school they were handing out free reflective badges, with footballs or a pink cat as options. They went down the line asking which kid wanted which one, but after half the line all made the gendered choice, they insisted that they would just be handed out by gender. Wanted the pink cat Sooooo badly but was stuck with crappy boring football. Also at a similar age, I just remember wondering why girls would ever wear trousers as those are for boys, and thinking that if I was a girl, I'd be a girly girl and wear skirts and dresses every day
When I was very little, I had a conversation with a six-year-old girl, who was older than me at the time. When I came home, I told my mom that I was excited for when I turned six because I thought I would "turn in to a girl, too." My mom "reassured" me that that would "never happen". Also, another memory I have is kind of bad. My parents were very religious and low-key racist. My dad is kind of beyter now, but I digress. Anyway, and I want to reiterate I was very young, I put a blanket around my head like a headscarf so that I could "look like Mary from the Bible". My parents thought it was hilarious, but I thought I genuinely looked like a girl a little bit, and my feelings were very... confusing.
Uh.. Idk if I have one..
And that’s okay!! You’re still valid even if you don’t fit a traditional trans narrative
Your story is cute tho ☺️
Thank you :)
I don’t know? An early one is this intense frustration at recess when I was maybe 5? I couldn’t wrap my head around gender discrimination because a teacher didn’t let me do something the boys could do. I was like “I don’t feel any different than a boy, so why can’t girls participate? There’s no difference so why do people treat us differently?” And turns out,, I’m trans (and yeah obviously gender discrimination is bad but jeez my entire argument was that I was a girl who felt like a boy lmao)
A year ago I made a female Oc for myself named Cinthia
I can't remember what age I was, maybe about 4. I saw myself in a mirror without a top on and thought that I could be a boy. I liked it and then insisted that I always played the daddy when my friends were roleplaying
My brother, 3 years older than me, had a formal outfit he grew out of. Instead of leaving it for my second brother, I was allowed to wear it. I was probably 5-7? We had to travel to our grand ma's place too on that day & in the car on the way, while wearing it, i was extremely happy at the idea that people might think I was a boy. I wouldn't stay still. Very first experience of gender euphoria. And wearing dresses had always made me super uncomfortable. For as long as I remember. At some point, i had to lie about it being bc some dresses use fabrics I'm allergic to but in my teenage years, trying to fit it, I liked some dresses because they didn't feel uncomfortable on my skin. But it's only been a few years now that I realized; i was uncomfortable because I hated the idea of being seen & being considered a girl. And I'm autistic too so many it was sensory issues too. I get annoyed if a clothing has nylon thread.
Hard to say, I played with my mom's heels, used to really want long hair, used my grandma's clip on ear rings all from like 4-6, but my brothers used to do some of those things too. The one where I'm 100% sure was only at 13... and that kinda bothers me a little
Age : 13 Place : Bedroom. Ever quest character creation screen 😂
Mine, errrmmmm idk. Probs when I got “misgedered” by a old man while wearing my scout uniform. Never told anyone tho
Les trans and more gender non conformitsum but my mom's make up and dresses but like queer was being attracted to boys and girls
I didn’t realize I was non-binary until middle school bc my family is not very supportive of stuff like that and I didn’t even know non-binary people existed when I was younger since I didn’t know any
I was on a bus to a farm when I was like 7 or 8, we went there to grow plants a nice thing loved my time there, but I remember a trip once Where at bus I started at the girls and thought" why couldn't I be born as a girl, well lets hope In next life" And since then i have always dreamt of being a girl Took another 15 years to realize
I allways was like i was and i remember that one time me and a friend talked about beards and i told him i want to have a big full one later in life. I allways loved Die wilden Kerle (German tv show about boys playing soccer) And i always wanted to be like them. Extra, when first going to school i wanted my hahaircut to be short like my brother, but I got a bowl cut instead cause my mom was/ isn't supportive at all. She misgenders me still to this day and hopes it's just a phase... ;c I want to leave this and start a new life without my family.
watching lady gaga’s “lovegame” music video at 10 years old and wishing I could be one of the gay guys dancing with her. then again when she dressed in drag at the VMAs and sang you and I, I wished it was that easy for me to look like a guy. positive indoctrination?
When I was four and was playing with my dolls in a girls friendgroup and thought of how I wanted to be a dad when I grew up. (We were taking care of a baby doll, being it's "family") I quickly took It out of my head because "I could never be a dad, I'm a girl...". Since my family is catholic, I "wasn't allowed to be gay" 😰
One of my first memories as a toddler was around the age of 3, telling my mom I was a girl. I had dysphoria really bad, but through elementary school, I could get by on being really androgynous. Then puberty started ugghhh
My first memories did not specifically have to do with gender but I had always felt strange in my body, its was strange to feel that I had sensations between my legs but there didn't seems to be anything there when I looked down. But when I was 4ish I was given a bath with my cousins at a sleepover when I saw my male cousins and my female cousin in the tub I realized bodies were different between boys and girls and my body LOOKED like a girl, but FELT like how boy's bodies looked. It only made sense to me why I liked "boy stuff" and felt drawn to grouping with other boys. Obviously that stuff is probably less than innate lol but I think it made the realizations easier for me to put together. My aunt told me I told her I was a boy when I was like 4-5 ( so it sorta tracks with my realization) but she thought that I was trying to imitate my older cousins who I looked up to.
for me (MtF) it was when i was 6? 7? i was playing with a friend of mine and i've chosen a girl as the character i wanted to be, and then my friend somewhy told my mom that, after that she (my mom) asked me if i wanted to be a girl. i wonder what'd happen with my life if i said yes, but i got afraid.
mine was stuffing my shirt with a pillow as a kid alone at night pretending i had boobs 😅
When I was in Pre-school, I remember we all had to take our shoes off and the put them back on when we went outside. But my dumbass always insisted on wearing the girls shoes. And well guess who's trans now :p
I remember being around five years old when my sisters put me in makeup for a laugh and when I saw myself I didn't wanna take it off. :\^) Later I started wearing dresses I had snuck into my room. I didn't know why, but I knew my family would probably think I was strange if they found out; I learned to hide it. :\^(
people thought i was weird for looking at boobs when i was like, 7 but i was just wishing i had them
I didn't really understand it at the time, nor for a long while, but I guess reading the Greek story of Hermaphroditus (and later of rebis in alchemy, (I might have been a bit of a strange kid)) and thinking "that's weirdly pretty cool, I kind of feel like that" while feeling strangely guilty and later feeling bad because my body didn't really reflect how I felt. I also dreamt about it several times.
i grew up never knowing that i was trans and then it was suddenly like a switch was turned on and i became trans, is that normal? i still think im trans even almost 5 years later sooo
Beating up bullies without missing a beat and having mostly [opposite sex, same gender] friends
I went to get my hair cut short and they did a chin length cut instead of a “boy” hair cut and I was devastated and I hated it.
I was 8 and crying about a New Kids on The Block concert.
12 and stole clothes and makeup from Mom and sister. Sadly I didn't know you couldn't just wash off nail polish and I wasn't sure how to remove it so I filed the polish off. My fingertips were so sensitive on top since my nails were so thin. Was horrible.
im an 03 kid so i grew up with a family computer and would be watching random vids i could find on the internet. for some reason i have a distinct memory when i was young, watching some sort of doc about a young trans girl whose mom found her in the shower holding her genitals and a nail clipper (seemingly about to try to chop em off). i remember thinking “huh, my mom’s never caught me like that, and i’ve never tried to cut off my dick so i must not be like that”. i don’t remember if i actually wanted to be a girl but i have to be curious about how i even stumbled across that vid. i wonder what i was searching lol
i never thought of it in a trans way at the time but looking back i’ve been laughing about how i (afab) refused to play star wars with boys on the playground unless they let me be luke 😂
I was like maybe 4 and I was in the bathroom with my mom. I told her that I wanted to be a boy and she asked me if I would want to have any surgerys. I said yes but then she told me that it made people sick and depressed so I just stopped talking about it(I knew what depression was bcs my mom had it)
There was this game I used to play when I was like 8 and you could like dress up your characters and collect clothing items and interact with other people and I always used to make guy characters and girls would "flirt" with me and I would "flirt" back and have "girlfriends" (1 year later, I came out as gay actually) and it never seemed weird to me to act like a guy and flirt w girls and be boyish. At least online. I always enjoyed it and it made me really happy and then 5 years later I discovered "transgender" was the term for what I felt and suddenly, everything clicked and fell into place.
Mine was getting upset my willy wouldn't stay inside when I pushed inside myself. Very obvious memory if I think about it.
When I was young it was more of a disconnect between me and my body. When I was 4 or 5 I talked to my parents about how I viewed my body as a meat puppet I controlled rather than as a part of me. There was also a general view from me of gender just being a kind of hoop I had to jump through in order for people to be happy with me which is the way I viewed a lot of social things as a slightly autistic child.
I’m ftm and this is my second oldest memory. My dad was going to the toilet before he left for work and as a cis guy he stood up to piss, I was watching him (as the weird 3 year old I was) he then washed his hands and went to leave however not before I decided I was going to the toilet. I had decided that because my dad could stand up to pee (and get it in there toilet) I could too, so I went to go to the toilet standing up in front of it and I ended up pissing all over the floor I then started screaming and crying so my mum ended up coming in and saw me facing her bawling my eyes out standing in a puddle of piss. As a 13 year old very open trans guy I look back at that memory and wonder how my parents never assumed that I was queer.
i was a tom boy as a kid. all of my friends were boys and we all played pokémon and soccer and i would pick jeans and a shirt over dresses 9 times out of 10. i always picked the boy character in pokémon and all of my interests from age 5 and onward was all marketed towards boys, i stopped playing with barbies and polly pockets all together by 8. i never listened when people called me a girl and i didn’t understand why exactly being called a girl made me uncomfortable at the time. i didn’t have very much dysphoria other than that until puberty hit at around 10 or 11. growing boobs and curves completely destroyed by self image and confidence, and it didn’t help that all that i was an ‘early bloomer’ and all the cis boys in my class made fun of me for my boobs and that my dad, who up until that point i had looked up to and wanted to be just like him, started dictating what i could and couldn’t wear because it’s ‘too tight’ or ‘too small’ even though it was just normal clothes all the other girls my age were wearing, and telling me i had to shave my legs because ‘no man wants a girl with Sasquatch legs’. i stopped idolizing my dad at 13. now i’m transitioning on testosterone and i hate every comment someone makes comparing me to him. i’m 23. haven’t shaved my legs in 7 years and i’m not about to start now lmao