What did you do that really made you certain of your gender? Did you experiment with different haircuts, clothes, etc.? Or was it something else? What made you just kind of know? Just wanna know how other people discovered themselves so I can mull over it myself.
Well, when I first discovered I might've been "different" I just denied it in hopes that it would go away, or that I was overthinking it. I thought that maybe all of the years I had felt wrong were just due to something else and I needed to try harder to accept myself "as I was" first and foremost. Then, after that didn't work, and I accepted myself partially and my new identity, I backlashed and thought I needed to prove it to myself (but I was still denying it) by deciding to go against every natural feeling of mine to try and force myself into the boxes I had never had an interest in before with hopes (or the illusion) of needing to "broaden my horizons", be more accepting, and not be so quick to dismiss things that I have found wrong for years just because I had never truly given them a chance. Once I stopped calling myself a "girl" though, everytime I tried to put myself back into that box I realize more and more how it truly was what was making me feel bad, and how no matter how much I forced, I could never think of myself that way again. Then, after all that was said and done and I had explored every region that I thought I could've been missing, I realized that there was a valid reason I had always intrinsically felt the way that I did and that it was never going away so long as I just tried to "get over it". So I accepted myself and realized that how I naturally feel may not be "normal", but its okay and I know myself and what I like and how I feel and that's not wrong.
I had a distinct sense that I was not my assigned gender. Nothing "happened" per se, just my God given instincts.
Hard to say. I think I've always known, but have suppressed the feelings. When I was young, my grandmother would always cut my hair. This saved us money, but my grandma only knew one type of haircut for men: really short. Both my brother and I hated having that short of hair. Her vision got worse and worse over the years, and eventually she was too blind to do much of anything, so we were able to grow our hair out. My brother grew his out as rebellion, and I thought I was doing the same. Now I think that was only part of the reason. As long as I can remember, I've always been somewhat jealous of girls, and wanted what they had: nails, hair, clothes, etc. As a guy, I could never have any of that, except long hair (though I couldn't style it). I've also always thought about what it would be like to be a girl, and the thought always made me feel somewhat happy. Even in high school, I wanted to wear a dress to prom. As a guy, I simply could not do that and suppressed those thoughts. A few years ago (twoish?), I ordered panties online just to try them, and I loved them. I also thought about buying a few dresses and skirts, but didn't (mostly because of money). I wasn't actually a girl, so was I just a crossdresser? About a year ago, I joined a site and listed myself as female. I didn't know anyone there, and they didn't now me, so as far as they knew, I really was a girl. I got to know some people there, and they used female pronouns and one even refers to me as his sister. This made me so happy! I had been called "brother" a few times by others, but never sister. Why did I enjoy "sister" so much? The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't a crossdresser, but transgender. It took me a few months to accept it, and another month or two before I told anyone. It wasn't until I posted about it on Facebook that I truly accepted it, but I'm happier now than I was for the past twenty-five years.
Life had been dropping hints at me since a long long time, however what actually made me swallow the red pill was online role play. Once I started interacting as a female with others, I could no longer go back to previous state of unawareness of what my identity was - after that I "only" had to struggle for months maybe years to sort it out.
I never really paid much attention to my gender at all until about a year and a half ago. I had always worn the clothes I liked personally, and not really any of the stuff my other girl classmates where wearing. So when my friend came out as trans to me, a year and a half ago, I researched gender identity and the entire spectrum so that I could understand what they (my friend) meant when they said 'trans', and learned a lot from it. I did some thinking about myself (something I'd never really done before. I honestly didn't really care about the differences between male and female when I was younger) and realized that some of it I could apply to myself. I did more deep thinking, and self-discoveries, and research, and finally I figured out the reason why I was never, and never want to be, your typical 'girl', or even try to make my own definition of being feminine.
I don't think I've ever felt certain. But what has made me feel pretty confident that I am correct about being trans is that I am more comfortable now (socially transitioned, binding, packing, presenting male) than I was about three years ago when I started questioning. There was no single change that made me sure (although the relief that resulted from binding for the first time was a big sign that I was on the right track), but rather I gained confidence from the fact that every time I made a change, I felt better. Every step I took in my transition, from little things like cutting my hair to big things like coming out to my parents and having them call me by my real name, made me feel a bit more comfortable. They didn't always make me more comfortable right away (coming out is always nerve-racking and having people use a name for you that they're not used to can feel uncomfortable at first) but in the long run, they were really helpful. My advice is to just keep trying to make yourself more comfortable. Make changes that you think might help, and see where it leads you. I don't know where you are in your transition, but reversible changes (everything from hair cuts to coming out) are good ways to figure out what makes you feel good. At some point, you might try something that causes a big revelation and suddenly you'll be sure. But lots of people don't have sudden revelations. You might end up being sure about your gender just because three years later you decide the choices you've made in your transition have made you happy.
This was actually part of it for me too. I play mostly female characters in games lately(always have played both), and MMORPGs made me realize I was really enjoying being read and interacting with others as female. Then an incident on here made me realize that I was not being thought of as a woman, here or anywhere. I had never actually thought about that before. But boy, it HURT. A lot. More than an online interaction should. When I say it hurt, I don't mean mildly stung. I mean hyperventilating, near tears, shaking, spiraling into depression, my day is fucked now, hurt. I really can't explain the reaction, or couldn't at first. Then as my head cleared, I went "wait a second..." and did some research. I started to put things together and realize some feelings I've had my whole life but couldn't explain, were being explained. The "Holy shit, that's me" moment. I realized I've basically thought of myself as a girl MY ENTIRE LIFE. The "maybe I'm trans" or "do I want to be a girl?" thought had crossed my mind a few times, but I'd always brush it off. "I'm not that bad, trans people feel worse. I'm OKAY being a guy." (Spoiler, I wasn't) Or, "yeah I want to be a girl, but I wouldn't want to stay that way, just see what it's like for a few days." (HA!) Ever since then, I feel like the feelings have gotten worse, since I acknowledged them.
when I was about 9, I started labelling myself as a "tomboy." but as time went on, I started feeling like that wasn't an appropriate word to describe myself. I did some research, and now I'm thirteen and waiting for the right time to tell my parents that I'm agender.
For me it was a long, messy, emotionally painful process that isn't quite over yet. Like Lulamoon, as a child around 11 or so, I was envious of girls, especially the freedom of expression that they had, not only in clothes but also in terms of behaviour. Girls walking down the street with linked arms, or kissing each other on the cheek in greeting were seen as just friends, but if boys did that it was seen as a bad thing or romantically/sexually significant. There were also times when I didn’t really like being separated from them or having restrictions applied to me which weren’t to them, not just because this was blatantly sexist (and I thought so at the time) but I didn’t feel any different from them inside, so why was it that boys were treated differently? My peers didn’t seem to mind, but to me it didn’t seem fair. At the same time, there was this girly aspect of me which I didn’t know what to do with. I never cross dressed as it didn’t really appeal, but I knew there were aspects of me and certain interests I had which were quite girly. The need to express them came and went. I knew I was a boy and not a girl because my brain didn’t seem to work the way a girl’s brain did, and I felt like a boy, but at the same time, “I’m just a girly boy” didn’t feel right as a valid defence. I did enjoy being a boy, though. I’m not sure exactly when it started, but a few years later I’d get these bursts of feeling awful and of not fitting in. Initially I put this down to feeling social separated due to Asperger’s, but once I was comfortable with that it still didn’t stop. Three years ago I had my first major identity crisis where I started questioning both my sexuality and my gender. I still didn’t feel that saying “I’m a guy” was 100% honest and I’d just come out of a period of homosexual dating which I just couldn’t admit as being such. At the end of my crisis I concluded I was still cis and straight. Things started to get more complicated from last Christmas onwards. At a party one of my “adult” friends, i.e. someone who’d been adult all the time I knew them, brought their AFAB child along who identifies as genderfluid and uses they/them pronouns. They also present on the masculine side of androgynous. I’d met them before and we had an enjoyable conversation, but I realised I felt threatened by who they were, envied the freedom of their presentation, and also felt an affinity for them which I couldn’t explain. I was forced to realise that maybe I wasn’t cis after all. The endgame came in March of this year when I started to fall for my current partner and I remember clearly the thought, “You can’t date her because you’re not straight and you’re not cis.” This had never happened with other girls I’d crushed on, so I felt it was probably fairly serious and started my questioning phase. In April I felt I sudden emotional shift in my core at work, and the first thing my brain said was, “This is what feeling female is”. It was accompanied by an intense crushing negative feeling of frustration, envy, anger, and grief that my male body stopped people seeing the girl that I was inside. I was not only feeling something I’d never felt before, but also hurting in a way and to a degree I never had hurt before. Over about an hour and a half the crushing feeling and the feeling of being female slowly slid backwards and by lunch I was as right as rain, if somewhat emotionally shell shocked. Keeping a daily log of my shifts and a lot of talking through my feelings to others helped convince me that there was something genuine going on, but I struggled to accept this as real. I panicked that I was cis after all, and then that I was MtF and couldn’t admit it. In the end there were two clinchers: one was that I met another person who identified as non-binary and their story was scarily close to mine, and the other was that I went for a period of about two weeks where I consciously denied I was trans and then suddenly I had a bunch of shifts over only a few seconds leaving me emotionally exhausted, scared and frightened. There’s still work to be done, not least in conclusively determining whether my fluidity is real or if it’s just continued denial of being MtF, but either way I’m convinced I’m not cis.
well in short, I guess it started with puberty *sigh* I basically just started hating everything about myself that was remotely female. I soon heard of the trans community and that's sort of how it started. I don't think I was ever 100% certain before coming out, it was sort of just a gut feeling kind of thing and then after I came out it just felt so so right and that's when I knew for sure
How did you know? What did you do that really made you certain of your gender? Did you experiment with different haircuts, clothes, etc.? Or was it something else? What made you just kind of know? Just wanna know how other people discovered themselves so I can mull over it myself. The thing that made me start questioning was reading an online article about a guy's thoughts and feelings, the moment that he realised he was trans. I then found that I could relate almost exactly to his feelings, it was crazy. After that I did experience a lot of self-doubt, but the thing that finally made me certain of my gender was having a go at presenting myself as male for a weekend. In both days I was supposed to go out with friends, which gave me the perfect opportunity to experiment. I'll admit that I did feel extremely nervous to begin with, but then I gradually began to feel more and more confident. Finally I was addressed as a guy by a stranger, and I felt amazing and validated. I've never turned back since that day.
I'm really still not 100% sure of my gender, but feel quite comfortable calling myself genderflux, and will stick with that until and if I feel the need to change it. Clothes wise, I bought a few binders, one is strapless and the other is built into a tank top, and is extremely masculine looking. I finally convinced my mom to let me cut my hair short over the summer, and I loved it. The strange thing is that I really didn't start experiencing dysphoria until quite recently, feeling more masculine as time passed. I think that came with accepting the fact that I liked girls and got more into the LGBT+culture. At the moment, I don't feel like I am a trans guy. But I know I am not cis, because I have become very uncomfortable with female "things", and now I am 100% comfortable with all pronouns being associated with me. Personally, I don't really feel the need to tell people about my actual gender identity. I am fine with people using female pronouns with me. I wear skinny jeans and don't experience the "phantom limb" sensation, if you know what I mean by that.
I felt different all my life. Childhood was messed up because on one hand my parents tried to give me a decent upbringing and on the other my dad would smack my mum about. They made me feel shame for exhibiting masculine traits so I buried it until my teens. Got my hair cut off and dressed more masculine. I was in a relationship for 3 years late teens/early 20s with someone that wanted me to dress female - I felt like a man in drag. Over the last however many years, its seeped out and I've dressed exclusively male. It started coming to the surface that I had gender issues about a year and a half ago and it's been quite a journey of realisation. Especially getting over the shame. But I accept it now. I sometimes gets panicky because of how huge transitioning is but I try to keep calm and remember the support I do have in my life. And how badly I want to be a man.
I always thought that being a man was better for me somehow. I was jealous of the muscles of the guys and actually couldn't understand why they were so visible when mine were not because I was stronger after all. Then somehow I researched about transgender and so I went with an experiment. I used one of my hoodies and bound my chest with a belt, wore the most baggy trousers that I could. And euphoria hit me. Because this was the first time I had seen my actual reflection, not just a meat suit.
