Might've worded that title slightly oddly... For everyone who is trans or nonbinary, how did you discover it, or otherwise come to realize it? Kind of a generic question, but for example- did you figure stuff out by experimenting (such as with binding or whatnot), was it from watching a video or reading something, or did it just "click" one day, or was it a slow process? Or even a quick one? Did you not even realize you were unconsciously piecing things together until suddenly things fell into place? ...Or, did you not have to discover it or realize it at all, and just always knew? I'm interested in knowing some of the experiences, because I'm sure everyone's is a little different.
For me I guess you could say it was a slow process. I knew there was something different about me from other boys as a child but the feelings always passed. Wasn't till a couple months ago when feeling female again that I got pissed off at myself enough to search online. That's how I discovered mine at least. Wish I had done it years ago lol
To copy and paste from elsewhere: Spoiler I never really had an issue with 'men only' and 'women only' for, say, jobs or expressions. They were just that, jobs and expressions, for anybody to use. So I can't say something, like, wanting to be all glittery and pretty alerted me. It really came down to how I wanted to contain the things that I already have. I didn't need to have boobs and curves to be, for example, kinder; in the same way, somebody shouldn't require a penis and chiseled jawline to be protective. When you boil it down, the female body just feels appropriate for myself. The fact I don't instinctively create myself as male-bodied, because it feels like I'm "roleplaying" and not emulating like a female-bodied individual, went beyond a casual curiosity. If you ask me to describe myself, I have to take a second and remember, you're not the epitome of pretty right now, you're just radiantly sexy. LOL. That was a little telling... Figuring out if you're trying to escape a situation, entertaining a curiosity, or believing you need to be one way to do something*, can be contradicting and frustrating thoughts to dwell on, but you have to -- if you want to get a much better understanding of yourself; your gender. * Just an observation, and it shouldn't apply to all transmen: One thing I have noticed with proclaimed transmen is, a lot of them are so focused on the "benefits" of being male-bodied, that it appears what they want -- to be taken seriously, to not have to live up to the high standards of femininity, to be protective or initiating, etc -- can already be obtained. They're affected by gender roles and not their gender, basically. Not playing gender police here, just laying out what I've seen and pondered. If anything, it should provide you more perspective, I hope!
It's a cliche, but I always felt like I got screwed over in the biology department--that I wasn't right in my skin. If we take away getting mad about being forced to do things that are considered to be traditionally female (like crying in a bathroom stall about being forced to wear a skirt and pitching a fit over gender binary arts and crafts projects), then it was one of those moments we all have as kids where we see the difference between boys and girls for ourselves. I must have been seven or so at the time, and that put it together for me about why I felt like something was missing. It was also around the same time I tried on "boy underwear" for the first time and I almost cried because it felt so right. Fast forward about two years and I'd first hear that SRS/GRS was a real thing (via a 2002 edition of the Guinness Book of Records), and I knew that was something I wanted. If you told me I could transition right then and there, I'd take the offer without a second thought. Granted my idea of what transition was was simplistic (and obviously that of a child), but that might have been the biggest thing out of everything; even getting emotional over binding and packing for the very first time and how being forced to shop for bras triggered my dysphoria immensely. It did bring me comfort later on to know I wasn't the only one who felt this way, but there was no real "click" for me. There was a moment of realization that my situation was a "do or die" thing, that if I didn't pursue the possibility of transition, then it would be the death of me.
Well... I always knew something was off about me. I didn't know about the word "transgender" at all, since I come from a very sheltering and conservative family where things such as being gay is a "sinful, chosen lifestyle." Actually the first time I came across the term it was by accident, when I was studying about asexuality (which is what I found out I was, before I discovered my gender). Anywho, as I read more on it things started getting weird. Everything I read was explaining everything that had gone on in my life. These things, for example, were some of the "signs" in my childhood/early adolescence: -The thought that I was a gay/asexual guy trapped in a girl's body, at age 12 and having no notion of what trans people were. -All role models and role-playing characters ever were male. -I was traumatized by puberty, far beyond what could be considered normal. -When thinking of "my future self," I always pictured some shirtless guy with a stubbly face. It confused me as to why I could never comfortably see myself as a woman. -Being uncomfortable around adult women, or any girls my age - the very people I was supposed to look up to or relate to. -I always preferred hanging around guys or men because I admired them more and related better. -Was extremely tomboyish. -Having unexplained poor body image, which, regardless of how much weight I lost my body was never "right." -Making actual plans to get a hysterectomy as soon as possible. All of this was before I knew I was trans. Looking back it's almost laughable how obvious it all is. Finding Youtubers who were FtM also enlightened me a lot, and helped me come to terms with my own identity. Also, just the suddenness which everything "clicked" was astonishing. Right after I learned what being trans was all about, I knew without as shadow of a doubt that that's what I was. In fact, I came out in one class at my school (secretly) and joined the GSA very soon after accepting my trans identity. I was lucky to have such kind support at the time.
There were always odd inklings.. feelings and thoughts that crossed my mind, nothing that made me think too long, but made me think enough to at least subconciously know that something was off. It then sort of all hit me at once earlier this year after a few things happened, it was like... "wait.. this isn't really right, These things mean something", and the process kind of spiraled out from there until I finally accepted that I was who I was, that I was a woman; just a woman who had been born into the wrong body.
I guess it was sort of in two steps, seperated by a wall of time. First, as a child, I always knew something was off. I was painfully jealous of the girls who got to skip around together and be sensitive and emotional, while I was supposed to be a boy and be though and all. I also had this terrible emptiness in my heart. I felt I would really rather have been a girl so that I could be with the girls and all instead. I also hated my lower regions and thought seriously of self-mutilation for a long time. Then some shitty stuff happened in my life which drove my dysphoria to the side. I hadn't forgotten about it, I just didn't think about it as much. Fast forward, I'm in junior high and then high school (hope I got those two names right - I mean 7th-9th grade and 10th-13th grade). I'm able to hang around with girls more and find myself naturally more comfortable around them. I got comments such as "You act just like a girl" (with a positive connotation). In high school I am acquainted with the LGBT+ community for the first time, with there being many LGBT+ people in my class. I read about "transgender" on the Internet, and I simply think "this is me. This is who I've always been." At first, I guessed I was on the genderfluid spectrum on the feminine side. But as time passes, I get more and more signs that I am indeed just a female spirit who by the devious crafts of Mother Earth is being contained in a male body. I even had a full-blown hallucination of an angelic being who looked similar to me, but well, female. I guess you could say she represented my higher self. I started to ID as trans female, and here I am.
For me, there were signs for a long time but they were hidden under years of repression of various kinds. I've been working on becoming unrepressed for awhile now, so there was a slow trickle of realizations and then suddenly it clicked into an "oh... well, duh..." moment. Though born female, I've never especially felt like a girl. Even at times when I felt like wearing a skirt and actively trying to look pretty (very, very rare! :lol I more or less just felt like "me". On occasion, I actively wished I was male but attributed it to males generally having an easier time in society and that I was just jealous or something. I've also realized that there's been many a time when I had dysphoria related anxiety but, since I am a natural worrier, I figured that anxiety was just from something else. I was never athletic but I was always more interested in "boy" things than "girl" things growing up. After unrepressing a bit, I realized I was not quite completely straight when I formed a crush on a female coworker (a friend once called me "recklessly heterosexual". I was amused to tell him that was no longer accurate). I had deep yearnings to try a strap-on with a male partner as well. I attributed both to becoming unrepressed and more accepting of different varieties of sexuality and a bit of kink and didn't really think more of it. Then one day while I was sitting on the bus on my way home, the thought occurred to me somewhat randomly that I might be genderfluid. I was aware of the term from poking around the internet. I thought about it and it was like a puzzle piece I was unaware was missing suddenly shifted into place and so many things made more sense. I had a sudden mental image of myself in a sharp suit with a neat beard and ponytail (I have very long hair and adore ponytails on guys) and my knees just about went out from under me while I was walking with the sheer force of want. Over the time since (it's been less than a week! :eek I've realized that the periods of anxiety I've felt were when my body just did not feel right. I had a fit one evening recently of "There's something missing from my crotch!" and made up a packer out of rolled up stockings out of desperation. I instantly felt better with it in place and it was like this void was filled (haha, pun type thing...). My understanding of precisely what gender I am keeps evolving. As I understand it now, I rarely feel female, frequently feel male, and the rest of the time is about an even mix between both and neither. Orientation seems fairly constant (though proper description of it whether I'm feeling male or female/neither/both seems complicated). Regardless of how I'm feeling genderwise at the time, I overwhelmingly prefer the lads so I was delighted to discover the term "androphilic". Sorry for the long post. :icon_redf
I've always wanted to be a boy. Of course, I spent most of my life thinking it was just wishful thinking and that it'd never happen. When I was a child I only ever played with boys, dressed like a boy, and would even cry over the fact that I was a girl. Slowly, I began to accept my fate, although I never really left my tomboy-ness behind. As a teen, I began writing a lot to get out my feelings, and I always found myself way more comfortable writing from a male perspective. I also always ended up picking male characters when I was playing video games, and even going so far as saying I was a male on the Internet. It was weird to me, to be considered male, but I liked it, and I still do. Then, I hit high school. Freshman year, I met my first transgendered person. He's still a close friend, but finding out that it's possible to not be a female anymore just about floored me. Over the years, a few other friends came out as well, and I'm simply waiting to get into college to start activity trying to pass. So, I suppose it was a fairly slow process that kind of all clicked together. I rarely have bad disphoria, which has always made me wonder if I'm really trans. The biggest sign for me was something closer to gender euphoria, a massive rush of joy and relief whenever someone-even a stranger on the Internet-ended up using male pronouns for me.
In a nutshell: It came about after thinking about it for a long time, but here's a few reasons: -Always saying as a child that I wanted to be a boy -Would always play boy characters in games as a kid (also, most of the "nicknames" I came up with for myself were boy names) -Being perfectly fine with people mistaking me for a man, but never being comfortable being referred to/referring to myself as "female" or never liking to use my birth name And, of course, learning what transgender actually meant (and that it didn't mean just a man in drag), befriending a transwoman in college and realizing that it's perfectly fine to be transgender.
I seen this too when it first hit me I seen an angelic figure walking towards me she was a she. It was as if God was telling me. "Your finally at one with your soul
I got strangely into Hollyoaks when there was a trans storyline because I related so hard. That's what made me realise I wasn't 'normal', but I didn't properly realise I was trans until later. In retrospect, I should have noticed right then, but I was10/ 11, and when I told my best friend I "want to be a boy " she responded "no, you don't " which really messed me up for a long time because I really thought I did, but I was very easily influenced back then..
I did not really 'discover' my gender until I seriously took time in my life for self-reflection on the subjects that I normally considered too dirty, embarrassing, perverted or taboo to address. Could you believe that I was so paranoid and afraid I couldn't even look honestly at myself until I was 20 years old? Well, that's what happened. I ended up devoting many nights to private writing to try to figure out the feelings I'd felt, and think about what I'd done for a while, the feelings I'd had about envying female figures and fantasizing about being female, having my family accept me as their daughter, wishing that everyone I knew and the world would be okay with it. I did some searching on the internet and believe it or not the most telling 'moment' for me was reading for the first time the difference between SEX (in your body) and GENDER (in your mind.) One thing's for sure, I've always had a BIG body-mind disconnect that has bothered me and honestly made me felt kinda like a girl piloting a manly mechasuit. So from there I started looking at analyzing my gender identity. It's still something I'm working on because I know there's a lot to learn from something I kept holed up from early moments in childhood through puberty and beyond. I can be more comfortable with it online and in my writings. In real life, I am far from comfortable with it ... at least around other people.
Oh man, is it time for Socket to embarrass themself? Excellent, because my gender origin story is awful and nonsensical and it's time for everyone to give me the side-eye probably. I wouldn't even protest it. Cosplay. Cosplay is how. I got into cosplay, proceeded almost immediately into crossplaying, discovered that presenting as a guy was something I enjoyed on a level I never quite expected to...devised this whole 'crossplay original character' who was literally just Me, But A Guy (imagine, a moment, that I take a break from writing this to groan loudly into my own hands) and somewhere along the line it stopped being a game. There was something a little too comfortable about it, and next thing you know I'm binding every college day and furtively trying to construct a packer out of socks and delighting every time I get a throaty cold. In truth, I can't remember how slow or fast it all came about. I have no records of it beyond old photos and the descriptions I added to them - any old journals I wrote about it are lost to the broken servers of an LGBT youth forum I used to frequent. I briefly considered that I might be a trans guy (during a moderately dysphoric patch), then realised after a few months of presenting male 24/7 at college that that definitely wasn't the case. While I enjoyed passing for a cis guy, it also just felt like 'passing' rather than 'being', and I always ended up feeling compelled to confess that I wasn't the guy people thought I was. I continue to be unsure of where the soft butchness ends and the genderqueer aspect begins, and in honesty I think even now, 7 years later, I'm still discovering.
I remember in July of last year, I began to experience dysphoria for the first time, as puberty was pretty much over and my adult features were pretty much setting in. I hated being seen as a girl/woman, and I thought that maybe I wanted to be a dude instead. It didn't really seem appealing being male either, though. Which totally confused me. I thought I was bigender, and it took over a year of confusion and dysphoria to figure it out; I wasn't a guy and a girl at the same time, I was neither!
Thank you for all the replies everyone (and some quite detailed ones too!) It's definitely been interesting, and helpful, reading the replies, and maybe one day I'll add my full story as well. Take care and best of luck with everything to all of you, gender-wise and all. (*hug*)
For me, I've always felt out of place whether with boys or with girls. When I was 7 I called myself a boy in a girl's body. For a while I was really uncomfortable with my chest. Especially when it started getting bigger when I was younger. Now, I'm not as uncomfortable. It doesn't feel right when I'm called a girl. Boy wasn't right either. I'm not agender. I feel like I have an undefined gender.
