How and when did you know you were trans?

[ffppff]

Hello.

As stated in the title, I'd love to learn more about what it was that made anyone here realise that their gender was not the same as their biological sex, and also when they knew. For example, were you always a man in a woman's body from when you were young, or did you have a 'eureka'-type moment of discovery later in life?

Thanks a lot :) (and sorry if this is an old post, I had difficulty finding the answers I was looking for)

[dissolved]

I think I've always known I'm male minded (don't even know if that's the correct terminology, probably not), but I'd not really thought anything of it until someone pointed out that she had "female" thoughts as opposed to "male" thoughts, which was about six or seven years ago.

[Rimethurs]

A little bit of both. When I was about 23 (? I can't remember when exactly), I had a eureka-type moment where it suddenly started to make sense why I wanted a penis and hoped I would turn out to be at least part boy when I was a kid.

Funny thing is, the eureka moment wasn't really triggered by anything. It just happened. I had all the information in my head somewhere. I just didn't put it together. I think maybe because subconsciously I didn't want to. It was just the right time, psychologically.

[genderirrelevant]

I've always known that puberty did not change me into a 'young lady' or 'woman' but I didn't realize until last fall that trans* was a label that could used to describe someone like me who doesn't really identify as either male or female. I think it was somewhere here that I ran across a link to neutrois.me and was a life changing moment.

In my whole life I haven't had much struggle with identiy because I really didn't have deal with it much. I'm rather asocial so I don't have to deal with many awkward questions or pressures from friends. I'm aromantic so I don't have deal with who I'm attracted to nor have to explain myself to that object of attraction. My job and work clothes don't need to be gendered. My family is non-intrusive to the extreme. Basically no one was hassling me for not fitting in a box so I wasn't trying to break out of the box. The one thing I desperately wanted to be different I thought was essentially impossible for me so I didn't dwell on it. Now that I realize it's possible I think about it all the time.

[butterflydreams]

Actually, for me, the "jolt" was coming to terms with my asexuality. That led me here, where I discovered the discussions on gender. I'd never really thought about it in those terms before, because I didn't have the language. All I had were thoughts and feelings. Just like with asexuality, I thought everyone had those feelings, and I never bothered asking, because I was also kind of embarrassed by them.

There are a lot more narratives out there than "x trapped in y body" and "always knew they were an x from a young age". I don't know why those are so common. Maybe because they're so easy to cram into a media sound bite?

So yeah, once I finally had the language, saw others here, and was very much in a life-reset position after realizing I was asexual, it was the perfect storm. There had been times in the more recent past when I had actually started referring to myself internally as "genderfluid". This wasn't actually correct for what I was trying to describe. I was trying to describe something that was more like gender-flexible. I've been on a months-long journey of self-discovery since taking that initial leap and realizing, hey, I'm not sure what I am, but I know for sure I'm not that.

It's kind of funny actually. Asexuality was like special glasses I could put on and look at my past and suddenly everything was in focus. Gender turned out to be very much the same. Though in my particular case, if asexuality was my past, gender was my future. It was like, "Hey, you know those tracks you've been on? The ones that led to nowhere? The ones you always lamented being on, even if you didn't realize at the time that's what it was? You can get off them. Just stop and get off."

I guess you could say I'm "old" (I'm 26), but my life circumstances didn't allow me to do this kind of self discovery and learning when I was a teenager. But boy am I ever making up for lost time!

[Chardog]

I've always had a preference for male things from a young age and never fit in with other females socially. I kept waiting for some kind of switch to flip and that I'd figure out how to "be a woman" at some point or I thought I wasn't trying hard enough. Looking at other women I could tell they had something that I didn't have, but my understanding of being trans was defined by body dysphoria (which I didn't have in the usual sense). Once I ended up in the forums here (was also trying to figure out being ace), I learned that dysphoria wasn't necessarily the defining characteristic of being trans and that it can manifest in ways other than having an existential crisis every time you look in the mirror...

TMI- There were also some sexual related clues about what "flipped my switch" that indicated a gender mismatch. I'm repulsed at the idea of someone wanting to engaged with me sexually in my female body, but would definitely be demisexual if someone could see me as male for that purpose..,

[Dawnpaw]

Well even as a little kid I didn't identify with being a male. Before puberty I was okay with it and I tried to fit in as a "boy" (aside from wearing a skirt once :P) since that was what everyone thought I was and I didn't question it, but when I started to go through puberty the changes felt so wrong to me and then there was more of that "boys should hang out with other boys" mentality too, I began to realize something was different with me and that I was trans.

[dash]

Hello.

As stated in the title, I'd love to learn more about what it was that made anyone here realise that their gender was not the same as their biological sex, and also when they knew. For example, were you always a man in a woman's body from when you were young, or did you have a 'eureka'-type moment of discovery later in life?

Thanks a lot :) (and sorry if this is an old post, I had difficulty finding the answers I was looking for)

I didn't start using the label trans until my late twenties or so because my experience of gender didn't fit into the picture of what I understood trans to be. I started seriously questioning my gender when I was 20 and 21. (Or rather, I started being able to listen to the parts of me that I had been shutting out for so long.)

I was not trans as a child. My gender dysphoria started at puberty, and is only about secondary sex characteristics (not primary ones). Socially, things were just WRONG gender-wise once puberty happened, but that's another long story. :/ I'd only written about female main characters growing up, at 12 I wrote a story about a very masculine woman character, at 13 I wrote a story about boy and girl twins, and at 14 (and from then on, for a very long time) all my main characters were male, so I guess that shows the progression of my internal sense of gender.

Sometimes I'm male but more often I'm agender. I've stopped my period but I want to feel more "final" in that (and will once I've completed egg freezing) and I want top surgery some day but have no immediate plans for it -- I have other things to take care of in my life first, and also expect to have to pay for it out of pocket.

It took me a long time to figure out my gender, and even longer for me to feel like "trans" was a useful label to use. It may or may not be for me in the future, but it is for now.

[Kappamaki]

I'd only written about female main characters growing up, at 12 I wrote a story about a very masculine woman character, at 13 I wrote a story about boy and girl twins, and at 14 (and from then on, for a very long time) all my main characters were male, so I guess that shows the progression of my internal sense of gender

Ha! I did that! My protagonists definitely shifted their usual gender around... huh, age 18? I had some trans tendencies before then, but more afterwards... perhaps that's when the scales tipped.

Didn't recognize it until I was 23, though. Until then I'd identified as "cis but bad at it" and roleplayed the opposite gender whenever I could with videogames and tabletop RPGs and the occasional LARP. Unfortunately, I didn't have a eureka moment - it was more like a gradual wave and submerging - so I don't have a good story of a moment. Except for the first time I cleanly recognized my dysphoria as such and mentally labeled it (which surprised me a lot), which was months before I actually decided these increasingly frequent incidents meant something.

If I wrote my own life, it'd have a cleaner narrative.

[nerdperson777]

I found out last year when I was 19 and a half years old. A topic in one of my lectures about women in the 1920s triggered this sense that I was not like them, going to college just to look for a man and get married, have children by the age of 20. Just a few months before I just thought nothing was going to surprise me. And then I started getting frustrated and depressed after looking up what mental disorders I had. I internalized my inferiority complex and social anxiety disorder. I talked to the school psychologist about it. Then I'm not sure how, but I stumbled on gender identity.

I was always afraid of being outcasted, more than I already was, with my general shy paranoid behavior. I didn't need another reason to be looked down upon and bullied like in secondary school. I tend to have no shame looking up things that were awkward, just watch out for whenever someone comes up behind you and asks what you're looking at. But I was cautious to label myself this way, especially if it has a negative connotation.

But I've experienced dysphoria as a child even if I didn't know a term for it. I didn't like dresses, skirts, anything that sparkles. I always wanted to wear a suit and shirts with big collars. I wanted what the boys got, but I still refused to let go of my teletubbies. So I went through my life as a tomboy. But I knew I hated puberty even before it started. Bras were foreign to me. I dreaded periods. I wanted to go through life without them.

In games, I always wanted to be a guy, my avatar had to be male. I didn't want my character to have boobs. I would love to have the short hair my character did. Should've found out sooner with all the stuff that make sense now.

But now I say that I don't really know myself. I just became what people wanted me to be. That's why I still have some feminine habits I can't break. If I wasn't so shy or anxious I'd probably be totally sure I was FtM.

(Fun fact: When I was younger, I liked going to the bra section and flip them inside out. :P)

[Zapstileon]

I don´t think I always knew, so to speak, but being female always bothered me. I always complained that I should have been born a man. At least after puberty hit, which is when the real distinctions started. But I never seriously considered transitioning until I was maybe, 17. Even now, I struggle with the part of it where I think that no operation will ever be good enough. There will still be that fraction of me that thinks *I should have been born a man*.

I spent about a year trying to be female, you know. It´s not my thing. I don´t fit in. I don´t know how to be like that. So I guess, at some point, that got me thinking. I´m still not... a hundred percent. I don´t really like the label of trans*man, so I´m kind of staying away from that... I like to say I´m mentally male. Whatever else I am, that, at least, is covered.

As some people have mentioned though, all my characters in stories I wrote were always male. I was never quite able to put myself in the female role. I can do that better now, but I feel the male is more familiar to me. And also, something I´ve noticed is that most of my favourite characters from movies and books are male. I´ve had a few females, but they are nearly always the kind that isn´t very feminine. Recently I´ve come to appreciate the good and notice the bad in both genders, but growing up, I must say I was very gender-biased. And it all started with King Mufasa from the Lion King. :D

That said, I wasn´t much of a tomboy. Or maybe I was. But it wasn´t a big deal for a female to play with boys and get her knees scraped up where I grew up, so I never really noticed if I was. We all were, really. We were divided into girls who played in the mud with boys and boys who didn´t like mud and stayed dry with the girls that didn´t like mud either. :P That was before puberty, of course, at which time all the females outran me. They were all so freaking excited about boobs and blood and things... Good for you, now you can get pregnant... stop squealing like a pig on a high. Oh and Sex-ed was always uncomfortable for me. I couldn´t understand why the boys got to leave at the uncomfortable part, whereas I had to sit there and be uncomfortable. Little things like that would indicate a gender-problem, I guess, but I never noticed until I started thinking about it in retrospect.

Edit: I had my identity-crisis when I discovered Asexuality. The gender-thing was just me rolling with it. So I didn´t really have any big "aha" moments. It was more of a confused dread kind of feeling.

[anann]

I didn't have an aha moment because I am so slow at getting used to anything that I didn't even really believe I wasn't cis gendered until I was had gotten fairly comfortable with being agender. I started to have trouble when I started puberty. Before that I didn't really think about gender. I would go outside without a shirt, I liked playing in the mud and stuff outside, but also played with dolls and stuff inside. I didn't wear dresses much but I don't remember having a problem with it either. I was pretty much oblivious. When my body started to change was when I noticed, and I didn't appreciate the change. I tried to hide my chest from the beginning and have always dreaded my period. But I never identified as male. It wasn't until college when I was steered to AVEN that I found out I could be asexual or not on the gender binary. I took me a few years to understand being asexual and incorporate that into my identity and didn't seriously think about gender until I was 23, but I started binding my chest as soon as I found out (through AVEN posts) that there was a way to do that. I thought that was what a bra was supposed to do...

I still don't use the trans label to describe myself, because even though it fits the way I feel, I don't feel like I have anywhere to transition to. I do plan to make some changes to my body, but people will either consider me male of female and neither is correct.

[Conscientious Ghost]

Gender roles didn't (and still don't) click to me. Boy or girl I was still a kid, so I would tuck my stuffed animals under a blanket and then shoot a Hot Wheels Car over the couch. The last thing my five-year-old self would predict in the future was I would become a marine biologist or a famous artist. News flash: none of the following happened to this day.

Elementary school years were rough years. I thought I was a girl because that's what my birth certificate and gender marker stated. My mom loves shoving me in petite clothing like frilly dresses or feminine outfits, but my dad couldn't care less if I wore a t-shirt and shorts. It felt so wrong when I wore "boyish" clothes because my mom scowled at me like I walked in the house with muddy shoes. Despite the disapproval, I secretly enjoyed wearing outfits meant for boys. It felt so... right. Girl was a convenient label, but I honestly felt like it didn't fit me. It moreover didn't help when students bullied me because of my inadequate social skills and weird behaviors. I felt out of place.

After I entered middle school I had moments of confusion. Puberty threw me off a cliff. Cliques threw me in an abyss. I wasn't adjusted to neither the physical changes nor the social changes. My passionate hatred of periods, femininity, and people was sparked. I wore any black or purple material, participated in any male-dominated sports, and almost lived inside the school library. In 8th grade I eventually pulled my head out of my ass to realize some folks do care about me, and I didn't need to put up a fake air of superiority so I can conceal my insecurities. I didn't need to care I was boyish and socially awkward.

I slowly figured out I was trans when I became a sophomore (10th grade) in high school. I knew something was off; I didn't know how to describe it. I wasn't like any other girl—wasn't even a girl. What the hell. Tomboy would have made sense if it didn't implied I was a girl. After I discovered the word 'genderqueer' and 'asexual' on the internet, that was the stepping stone to who I am now. I started stealing my dad's old clothes from my parents' closet and receiving my guy friends' old clothes from their younger years to wear. I slashed off my hair and let my natural body hair grow. It felt fantastic. Some dresses were decent and I liked a few, but I couldn't understand why or how it makes me less of a boy or transmasculine-leaning person for liking or rarely wearing it. Same with long hair and other "feminine" related appearances or activities nowadays. That felt like bullshit for me. Call me a pretty boy and I'll take that as an exceptional compliment.

I finally knew I was a trans person after the spring semester of junior year. Dysphoria was presented for a while, but that following year smashed me like a refrigerator fell on me. My birth name, assigned sex at birth, and specific body parts and functions burned my skin with massive discomfort. I was so happy being mistaken and treated like a guy I almost forgot other people know me as something else. It was an excruciating eye-opening experience before I slipped into therapy and worked it out.

I plan to undergo hormone therapy and top surgery in the near future. I'm excited for that!

[dash]

When I was growing up (and in high school), trans just meant binary transsexual, there wasn't anything else, and I knew I wasn't that, so what was I?

The first time I met a trans person was when my high school invited someone to come and read poetry to us. I couldn't relate to her AT ALL and so the whole thing basically failed -- I came out more afraid of "trans" than I had gone in. /slow clap of irony/ It would have been better if I'd been getting messages from anywhere that asexual was a thing, and that agender was a thing -- but there were no such messages. Don't get me wrong, my school was quite progressive for that day and age to bring in a trans person to speak to the kids. It just backfired for me. Backfired HARD. (All I took away from it as a teen (15 or so) was "the school as an institution, through its curriculum, is pressuring me consistently, day in and day out, to have sex, that sex is the meaning of life, that you can't be human or a good person without sex, but that sex will kill you, too, and now they're pressuring me to have 'perverted sex' as well! ARGH KEEP THE SEX AWAY FROM ME.")

I met a trans kid in between my first and second years of college. I went back to visit my old summer camp (which was an amazing experience for so many reasons, REALLY connecting my present (lost) self back to my past, not-lost self), and one of the kids told me there's this girl, she thinks she's a boy. She changes with the boys and everything. He and his friend were just pointing it out to me, because they were confused by it. And there I was being like oh, OK and "yeah, sometimes that happens." I learned that these things were possible, and that this same community that had been so wonderfully accepting of me as a kid was still wonderful and accepting to younger kids.

Sometimes a girl can be a boy. It stuck with me.

I met my next trans person in college. I found out he was trans sophomore year because one day a friend of mine at the time, who was over my room, told me this other kid had entered college as a girl but announced a month later to everyone in his living group that he was a boy now (and transferred over to the boys' side of the barracks-style collective sleeping quarters). "But then everyone got used to it and now he's a boy."

And this made an impression on me. I would pass him in the halls and look at his beard and it was the first time that I'd realized that a body like mine could do that. Like, really do that. So that just sat there in my mind.

All of these were little steps on the journey. It's ironic because I knew I was asexual very early on, that this was the way I was no matter what the world said about whether it was possible or not. (Mostly people didn't care.) But stepping out of gender, that was hard. And now ironically I'm the one going back to my old high school and talking to the kids (about asexuality, but I also mention being nonbinary). It's really come full circle in some ways.

[nerdperson777]

I spent about a year trying to be female, you know. It´s not my thing. I don´t fit in. I don´t know how to be like that. So I guess, at some point, that got me thinking. I´m still not... a hundred percent. I don´t really like the label of trans*man, so I´m kind of staying away from that... I like to say I´m mentally male. Whatever else I am, that, at least, is covered.

I don't see myself as trans* man either, since I'm still mentally a child. But I find trans* male to be perfectly acceptable. It doesn't say man or boy. I'm somewhere between a 10 and 15 year old male (without the raging hormones of course).

Before, I actually considered growing my hair a little longer and now I have an excuse to say why my hair should be even shorter than it is now.

One night, I went on a walk with a new friend and she suggested me to grow my hair out. She put her hand right under her bust to indicate a length and I couldn't find a good reason to tell her why I wanted shorter hair other than I don't like long hair. Can't be out to people I've only known for a month.

[butterflydreams]

When I was growing up (and in high school), trans just meant binary transsexual, there wasn't anything else, and I knew I wasn't that, so what was I?

The first time I met a trans person was when my high school invited someone to come and read poetry to us. I couldn't relate to her AT ALL and so the whole thing basically failed -- I came out more afraid of "trans" than I had gone in. /slow clap of irony/ It would have been better if I'd been getting messages from anywhere that asexual was a thing, and that agender was a thing -- but there were no such messages. Don't get me wrong, my school was quite progressive for that day and age to bring in a trans person to speak to the kids. It just backfired for me. Backfired HARD. (All I took away from it as a teen (15 or so) was "the school as an institution, through its curriculum, is pressuring me consistently, day in and day out, to have sex, that sex is the meaning of life, that you can't be human or a good person without sex, but that sex will kill you, too, and now they're pressuring me to have 'perverted sex' as well! ARGH KEEP THE SEX AWAY FROM ME.")

All I remember about school was that anything I felt they were "pushing" onto me, I instinctively resisted. Even if it was stuff I wanted, or thought I should want. I guess it's just my personality to always want to figure stuff out on my own. At least you had someone who was trans come in and talk to you. I mean, it stinks it had the opposite effect, but I never even got that.

I met my next trans person in college. I found out he was trans sophomore year because one day a friend of mine at the time, who was over my room, told me this other kid had entered college as a girl but announced a month later to everyone in his living group that he was a boy now (and transferred over to the boys' side of the barracks-style collective sleeping quarters). "But then everyone got used to it and now he's a boy."

And this made an impression on me. I would pass him in the halls and look at his beard and it was the first time that I'd realized that a body like mine could do that. Like, really do that. So that just sat there in my mind.

You have no idea how much it means to me to see someone else say what I highlighted here. That was exactly the same kind of "aha" moment I experienced. Don't remember how, but in trying to learn more, I happened to come across a bunch of transwomen blogs (which was exciting by itself, because it seemed like there were a lot more about transmen). I remember just going through page after page and thinking, "oh my god...this is not the transgender I grew up understanding. This is the real deal. They look amazing. They look so happy. They're all so different from each other. Some had before and after pictures. People who looked way more 'manly' than I do. They did it. Their bodies became what they wanted...could I do that?" Talk about a revelation! Scary too. At least before there was no question, it wasn't me. Now it's like someone saying, "ok, so what's your excuse?"

All of these were little steps on the journey. It's ironic because I knew I was asexual very early on, that this was the way I was no matter what the world said about whether it was possible or not. (Mostly people didn't care.) But stepping out of gender, that was hard. And now ironically I'm the one going back to my old high school and talking to the kids (about asexuality, but I also mention being nonbinary). It's really come full circle in some ways.

It would've been great if I had accepted being asexual much earlier on. I knew about the term, and someone who a few people had called asexual, since I was 15. I wasn't like that kid though, so it obviously wasn't me. I parked it in my mind for 10 years. Your mind knows what things not to ditch. And I agree, aside from potential partners, no one really cares about it nowadays. It was more like lifting a weight off than anything. But stepping outside of gender...that's taken far longer, and it's an ongoing process. Much scarier too.

Love that you're getting to go back and help younger kids learn about asexuality. If I gave a crap about my high school (they probably think I've fallen into oblivion :P) I'd love to help younger kids learn about this stuff.

[dash]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Actually I cannot even type all the things in this story I need to TW for because I would need to TW the TW.

That story gave me nightmares. No, not even -- daymares. I was utterly, utterly horrified by the concept of transgender people (and even more horrified by my own anatomy) after reading that story. That story traumatized me. You want a single incident that f*cked me up gender-wise for YEARS? Being forced to read this story in school, I think at the age of 15.

That story, folks, is the very first narrative of transgender that I ever read.

After that story, trans people, like being "female-bodied" in the first place, were for me the complete antithesis of anything that was good and right in the world. Trans-ness was the ultimate violent destruction of one's self. The ultimate crazy. Trans-ness was self-rape.

The poet herself never could have messed me up the way this story did, though it did take me a bit of time to think back about why I'd been so upset seeing her perform. Maybe she'd talked explicitly about sex in some way that upset me. But I think it's because I'd read this story, and this is what I thought being trans (or cis, or a woman) was all about.

And the only way out of gender would be surgery, and even this was framed in the story as "self-inflicted violence out of mental illness." That's one of the things that f*cked with me so much. It felt like the world is saying, "you can suffer from gender dysphoria your whole life, you can harm yourself because you're crazy, or you can transition -- which is the same thing." Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. And you can never be "right," no matter what you do. There is no surgery that can ever make you "not a girl." You're cursed. You're crazy. You're sick. Oh also, real girls want to be raped and murdered. FYI. (One girl in the story wants to be raped and murdered by her bf. The other -- who's really a boy, he can never be a real girl -- wants to transition. Totally parallel, don't you see?) "And if you don't write me a paper on the deep literary meaning of this, about what it says about the true nature of human gender, if you don't write me a good paper on this that says what I want to hear, you're getting a bad grade. I'll fail you. I'll ruin you."

Going to English class was sometimes like being forced to abuse myself, and I was punished if I didn't abuse myself "right." They fed me all kinds of sick violent twisted shit and punished me if I didn't force myself to agree.

Egads I have emotional scars from high school.

So yeah, it wasn't until many, many years later that I'd eventually learned enough about what trans really meant, and went to therapy, and went to trans support groups, and did a bunch of other stuff that I was finally able to get to where I am now. Though there's still a ways to go.

[TheStarrySkai]

Around the time when puberty starts [puberty is hell...... ugh]. Something like "WTF body?? What are you doing? Stop it!!" As a kid I was completely oblivious to gender roles. In the back of my mind I knew them, but they didn't really.... click in my mind? I was just a person that happened to have a female body.

I suppose things didn't hit me until I got into high school and I joined the GSA.

[Heart]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Actually I cannot even type all the things in this story I need to TW for because I would need to TW the TW.

That story gave me nightmares. No, not even -- daymares. I was utterly, utterly horrified by the concept of transgender people (and even more horrified by my own anatomy) after reading that story. That story traumatized me. You want a single incident that f*cked me up gender-wise for YEARS? Being forced to read this story in school, I think at the age of 15.

That story, folks, is the very first narrative of transgender that I ever read.

After that story, trans people, like being "female-bodied" in the first place, were for me the complete antithesis of anything that was good and right in the world. Trans-ness was the ultimate violent destruction of one's self. The ultimate crazy. Trans-ness was self-rape.

The poet herself never could have messed me up the way this story did, though it did take me a bit of time to think back about why I'd been so upset seeing her perform. Maybe she'd talked explicitly about sex in some way that upset me. But I think it's because I'd read this story, and this is what I thought being trans (or cis, or a woman) was all about.

And the only way out of gender would be surgery, and even this was framed in the story as "self-inflicted violence out of mental illness." That's one of the things that f*cked with me so much. It felt like the world is saying, "you can suffer from gender dysphoria your whole life, you can harm yourself because you're crazy, or you can transition -- which is the same thing." Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. And you can never be "right," no matter what you do. There is no surgery that can ever make you "not a girl." You're cursed. You're crazy. You're sick. Oh also, real girls want to be raped and murdered. FYI. (One girl in the story wants to be raped and murdered by her bf. The other -- who's really a boy, he can never be a real girl -- wants to transition. Totally parallel, don't you see?) "And if you don't write me a paper on the deep literary meaning of this, about what it says about the true nature of human gender, if you don't write me a good paper on this that says what I want to hear, you're getting a bad grade. I'll fail you. I'll ruin you."

Going to English class was sometimes like being forced to abuse myself, and I was punished if I didn't abuse myself "right." They fed me all kinds of sick violent twisted shit and punished me if I didn't force myself to agree.

Egads I have emotional scars from high school.

So yeah, it wasn't until many, many years later that I'd eventually learned enough about what trans really meant, and went to therapy, and went to trans support groups, and did a bunch of other stuff that I was finally able to get to where I am now. Though there's still a ways to go.

I have to admit that I couldn't even finish the story. I'm so sorry dash. I'm so sorry. No one ever should be forced to read that.

I won't make myself read the rest, but I want to be here. Just be here. I don't have the right words to say. Cake?

[butterflydreams]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Actually I cannot even type all the things in this story I need to TW for because I would need to TW the TW.

That story gave me nightmares. No, not even -- daymares. I was utterly, utterly horrified by the concept of transgender people (and even more horrified by my own anatomy) after reading that story. That story traumatized me. You want a single incident that f*cked me up gender-wise for YEARS? Being forced to read this story in school, I think at the age of 15.

That story, folks, is the very first narrative of transgender that I ever read.

After that story, trans people, like being "female-bodied" in the first place, were for me the complete antithesis of anything that was good and right in the world. Trans-ness was the ultimate violent destruction of one's self. The ultimate crazy. Trans-ness was self-rape.

The poet herself never could have messed me up the way this story did, though it did take me a bit of time to think back about why I'd been so upset seeing her perform. Maybe she'd talked explicitly about sex in some way that upset me. But I think it's because I'd read this story, and this is what I thought being trans (or cis, or a woman) was all about.

And the only way out of gender would be surgery, and even this was framed in the story as "self-inflicted violence out of mental illness." That's one of the things that f*cked with me so much. It felt like the world is saying, "you can suffer from gender dysphoria your whole life, you can harm yourself because you're crazy, or you can transition -- which is the same thing." Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. And you can never be "right," no matter what you do. There is no surgery that can ever make you "not a girl." You're cursed. You're crazy. You're sick. Oh also, real girls want to be raped and murdered. FYI. (One girl in the story wants to be raped and murdered by her bf. The other -- who's really a boy, he can never be a real girl -- wants to transition. Totally parallel, don't you see?) "And if you don't write me a paper on the deep literary meaning of this, about what it says about the true nature of human gender, if you don't write me a good paper on this that says what I want to hear, you're getting a bad grade. I'll fail you. I'll ruin you."

Going to English class was sometimes like being forced to abuse myself, and I was punished if I didn't abuse myself "right." They fed me all kinds of sick violent twisted shit and punished me if I didn't force myself to agree.

Egads I have emotional scars from high school.

So yeah, it wasn't until many, many years later that I'd eventually learned enough about what trans really meant, and went to therapy, and went to trans support groups, and did a bunch of other stuff that I was finally able to get to where I am now. Though there's still a ways to go.

I have to admit that I couldn't even finish the story. I'm so sorry dash. I'm so sorry. No one ever should be forced to read that.

I won't make myself read the rest, but I want to be here. Just be here. I don't have the right words to say. Cake?

I have to say, as someone who took great pride in reading "difficult" and controversial books in high school (stuff like A Clockwork Orange, and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead), even I was a bit weirded out by this. I don't know what the context was in which it was presented, but this seems like a bit much for the high school level. I sincerely hope this wasn't a public school. I'd gladly take my "street-knowledge"/no-knowledge about transgendered people and issues over that piece.

I'm sorry you had to go through that, and that it's taken many years to come to a better understanding of things. is definitely warranted.

[Kappamaki]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Ugh. Mmm. Nng.

Just - just trigger warning for everyone who has a physical body and wants to not feel worse about that. Don't mind me, I'm just going to slip out of corporeality and exist as a purely ethereal being for a few hours until I can reconcile with the meat.

[Jockey]

My preschool classmates told me I wasn't a real boy or a real girl. The first prayer I remember praying was to please please please let me be a real boy or a real girl.

That's not really the same as saying I'm trans, nor the same as saying I'm an x in a y body.

I did not hear the term transgender until I was maybe 14. But I saw "transvestite" before that, and gay and lesbian before that. I identified with all of them briefly.

I remember some excitement (okay, extreme excitement) over the word lesbian, and some excitement at learning the word transvestite. But I don't remember any real and lasting aha moments.

I was three the first I remember being told that I wasn't a real boy or girl, and it seemed fairly obvious to me by then. My gender was routinely commented on and asked about when I was little. The summer I was seven, my camp counselor (who was himself only fifteen) informed there was a surgery to fix me. That was the first time it occurred to me that there were other people somewhat like me out there, and it made the question of whether I really wanted a different body much much more real to me. I remained ambivalent about that for ten years, during which time I continued to struggle extremely much with how other people perceive my gender/sex.

The summer I was seventeen I got sicker and sicker, and on September 1st, I was hospitalized. The hospital doctor kept coming by and pulling down my underwear- "Just checking," she'd say. She made a point of telling me that my newly diagnosed chronic progressive typically fatal disease wasn't going to stop me from transitioning- as if I obviously was going to transition, as if it were my goal already, as if that was more important than my new disease.

Two months later I decided I didn't want to die with the body I had. I began the pursuit of a hormone letter to begin a medical transition. It took me more than a year and three rejections before somebody wrote me the letter. When I had the letter, I immediately felt a million times lighter. I could imagine a future I might have.

I have been on hormones for seven years. During the process of getting on hormones, I was given a tentative diagnosis of a particular condition that is known to cause ambiguous genitalia in severe forms, and increased rates of transgender identity and homosexuality in both mild and severe forms. The specialist I was referred to for further testing said that while I might very well have it, he didn't see a point in testing- he said the mild form that I probably have is mostly relevant for people who are worried about infertility, and as I am not, he didn't want to test. So I have not been tested, however, an immediate family member of mine has the condition.

Being on hormones had a much more dramatic effect on my moods than I had expected. I became a much quieter, more mild mannered person. The last time I lost my temper was six weeks after going on hormones- more than seven years ago.

I continue to feel that I chose to transition because it was the path of least resistance. From age 1 to 19, my gender was constantly an issue. An exhausting issue. I changed schools more than a dozen times as a kid, and every time, the principal, vice prinicipal, and just about every student knew who I was within a week (usually quicker). Finally, I am anonymous. People forget if they met me before! It is delicious.

But it is also wrong. I hate how many people were intensely uncomfortable with me as a kid and are happy with me now. People who told me transitioning was wrong are happy that I've transitioned. I attempted suicide multiple times before I became a teenager. I was first assaulted (and sent to the emergency room) because of my gender expression at the age of four.

If I had lived in a world where it was okay to be different like I was as a kid, I know I would have been happier. I don't know if I would have transitioned.

Oh!- and regarding being a boy in a girl's body- my take on that is this: I am a man. This is MY body. That makes it a man's body. It's that simple.

[dash]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Actually I cannot even type all the things in this story I need to TW for because I would need to TW the TW.

That story gave me nightmares. No, not even -- daymares. I was utterly, utterly horrified by the concept of transgender people (and even more horrified by my own anatomy) after reading that story. That story traumatized me. You want a single incident that f*cked me up gender-wise for YEARS? Being forced to read this story in school, I think at the age of 15.

That story, folks, is the very first narrative of transgender that I ever read.

After that story, trans people, like being "female-bodied" in the first place, were for me the complete antithesis of anything that was good and right in the world. Trans-ness was the ultimate violent destruction of one's self. The ultimate crazy. Trans-ness was self-rape.

The poet herself never could have messed me up the way this story did, though it did take me a bit of time to think back about why I'd been so upset seeing her perform. Maybe she'd talked explicitly about sex in some way that upset me. But I think it's because I'd read this story, and this is what I thought being trans (or cis, or a woman) was all about.

And the only way out of gender would be surgery, and even this was framed in the story as "self-inflicted violence out of mental illness." That's one of the things that f*cked with me so much. It felt like the world is saying, "you can suffer from gender dysphoria your whole life, you can harm yourself because you're crazy, or you can transition -- which is the same thing." Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. And you can never be "right," no matter what you do. There is no surgery that can ever make you "not a girl." You're cursed. You're crazy. You're sick. Oh also, real girls want to be raped and murdered. FYI. (One girl in the story wants to be raped and murdered by her bf. The other -- who's really a boy, he can never be a real girl -- wants to transition. Totally parallel, don't you see?) "And if you don't write me a paper on the deep literary meaning of this, about what it says about the true nature of human gender, if you don't write me a good paper on this that says what I want to hear, you're getting a bad grade. I'll fail you. I'll ruin you."

Going to English class was sometimes like being forced to abuse myself, and I was punished if I didn't abuse myself "right." They fed me all kinds of sick violent twisted shit and punished me if I didn't force myself to agree.

Egads I have emotional scars from high school.

So yeah, it wasn't until many, many years later that I'd eventually learned enough about what trans really meant, and went to therapy, and went to trans support groups, and did a bunch of other stuff that I was finally able to get to where I am now. Though there's still a ways to go.

I have to admit that I couldn't even finish the story. I'm so sorry dash. I'm so sorry. No one ever should be forced to read that.

I won't make myself read the rest, but I want to be here. Just be here. I don't have the right words to say. Cake?

I have to say, as someone who took great pride in reading "difficult" and controversial books in high school (stuff like A Clockwork Orange, and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead), even I was a bit weirded out by this. I don't know what the context was in which it was presented, but this seems like a bit much for the high school level. I sincerely hope this wasn't a public school. I'd gladly take my "street-knowledge"/no-knowledge about transgendered people and issues over that piece.

I'm sorry you had to go through that, and that it's taken many years to come to a better understanding of things. is definitely warranted.

Oh, it was a public school. It was presented with as far as I remember no context whatsoever, when I was 14 or 15. I certainly don't recall any conversation in class about what it means to be trans. (The GSA brought in that speaker, but it was completely separate, and she was a poet who read us some of her poetry. I don't recall a conversation about transgender issues in that context, either.)

My school really prided itself on being "progressive" and much of the English curriculum was teaching us books and stories about sex, death and suicide (all linked together, naturally). Some, of course, are classics (Romeo and Juliet), but there was a lot of other material in there. I don't want to detail this post with a long rant about how completely and utterly f*cked up my high school English curriculum was, but believe me, it was. (Senior year was much better, though there were still some problems.) At 14 we read a book where a woman comes home to find her best friend and husband on the floor on all fours licking each other. At 15 or so we read a short story where a couple settle a dispute by literally ripping their baby in half.

It was psychological abuse, my high school curriculum for three years. (Plus summer reading assignments!) Occasionally we would read something that wasn't so bad -- maybe just boring but not outright abusive -- and then it would be back to the abuse. Books about just plain murder were a relief, because at least they weren't books about sex, suicide, and how this is the fundamental meaning of what it means to be a woman. (Or whatever.)

So, yeah, there was no context for this story. (Had my teacher ever even met a real life trans person, or was this just her being 'edgy' and 'progressive'?) This is how I learned what to be trans meant. (That and the general ignorance of society, and maybe someone having mentioned drag queens somewhere along the way.) And so I hated trans people and hated myself and you know what? I'm still not over all the emotional damage that story caused me. Except now (as in, the last day or two since I thought about the story again and realized a few things) I can stop and think, "so when I get into a bad place and think about transition as self-mutilation, as self-inflicted sexual violence, someone had to have taught me that, that's just not a narrative I could have invented on my own. This is probably where I picked that up."

[dash]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Ugh. Mmm. Nng.

Just - just trigger warning for everyone who has a physical body and wants to not feel worse about that. Don't mind me, I'm just going to slip out of corporeality and exist as a purely ethereal being for a few hours until I can reconcile with the meat.

Yeah we can add that to the list of trigger warnings. :(

As I said, I can't even list them all or I would have to put a trigger warning on the trigger warnings. WARNING: This story is META warning labeled!

[dash]

So, after giving this a bunch more thought, I realized there's another reason it took me so long to identify as trans. And that's because in high school (I'm not sure if this was before or after they invited in the trans poet but given my reaction to that presentation I'm going to guess this was before), we read a story in English class that was supposed to be about trans issues.

TW for graphic descriptions of violence, rape, wanting to be raped and murdered, and transition (presented in some really horrifying ways, IMO), TW for transition being compared to cancer surgery, and also for the consistent misgendering of the main character's sister, from the title right to the last line: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-dwc/ruiz.htm

Actually I cannot even type all the things in this story I need to TW for because I would need to TW the TW.

That story gave me nightmares. No, not even -- daymares. I was utterly, utterly horrified by the concept of transgender people (and even more horrified by my own anatomy) after reading that story. That story traumatized me. You want a single incident that f*cked me up gender-wise for YEARS? Being forced to read this story in school, I think at the age of 15.

That story, folks, is the very first narrative of transgender that I ever read.

After that story, trans people, like being "female-bodied" in the first place, were for me the complete antithesis of anything that was good and right in the world. Trans-ness was the ultimate violent destruction of one's self. The ultimate crazy. Trans-ness was self-rape.

The poet herself never could have messed me up the way this story did, though it did take me a bit of time to think back about why I'd been so upset seeing her perform. Maybe she'd talked explicitly about sex in some way that upset me. But I think it's because I'd read this story, and this is what I thought being trans (or cis, or a woman) was all about.

And the only way out of gender would be surgery, and even this was framed in the story as "self-inflicted violence out of mental illness." That's one of the things that f*cked with me so much. It felt like the world is saying, "you can suffer from gender dysphoria your whole life, you can harm yourself because you're crazy, or you can transition -- which is the same thing." Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. Crazy and mutilated. And you can never be "right," no matter what you do. There is no surgery that can ever make you "not a girl." You're cursed. You're crazy. You're sick. Oh also, real girls want to be raped and murdered. FYI. (One girl in the story wants to be raped and murdered by her bf. The other -- who's really a boy, he can never be a real girl -- wants to transition. Totally parallel, don't you see?) "And if you don't write me a paper on the deep literary meaning of this, about what it says about the true nature of human gender, if you don't write me a good paper on this that says what I want to hear, you're getting a bad grade. I'll fail you. I'll ruin you."

Going to English class was sometimes like being forced to abuse myself, and I was punished if I didn't abuse myself "right." They fed me all kinds of sick violent twisted shit and punished me if I didn't force myself to agree.

Egads I have emotional scars from high school.

So yeah, it wasn't until many, many years later that I'd eventually learned enough about what trans really meant, and went to therapy, and went to trans support groups, and did a bunch of other stuff that I was finally able to get to where I am now. Though there's still a ways to go.

I have to admit that I couldn't even finish the story. I'm so sorry dash. I'm so sorry. No one ever should be forced to read that.

I won't make myself read the rest, but I want to be here. Just be here. I don't have the right words to say. Cake?

Thanks. You do NOT have to read the rest. It's horrible, utterly horrible. And ends with the protagonist misgendering the sister again, but in a way that I guess cis readers are supposed to find "sweet." ARGH.

There's only one good line from it, imo, and that's the comment that group therapy is when "everyone's in the same boat, and no one has an oar in the water." That I found clever.

[Dawnpaw]

Yes that is a pretty horrible story :(

Why they thought that was a good way to talk about trans issues confounds me. Especially with them not giving much info before or after the story. If I had to read that before I started to come out and begin transitioning it would have just made me more depressed and worried.

[dash]

Yes that is a pretty horrible story :(

Why they thought that was a good way to talk about trans issues confounds me. Especially with them not giving much info before or after the story. If I had to read that before I started to come out and begin transitioning it would have just made me more depressed and worried.

Yes. Exactly.

Plus it gives some really untrue depictions of SRS. Someone needs to already know this is untrue or at least be taught that in context so they don't come out with harmful misconceptions. I wonder if my teachers had any idea these things were wrong (e.g. "what do they do with all those extra penises?"). Frankly I think they didn't care -- this was the 90s and they were trying to be edgy and progressive, and were obsessed with sex, death and suicide, like a fetish in a bad way. Bad because we didn't have a choice about being a part of it (though my parents did sign the forms to get me out of "put a condom on a banana day"). And trans people, woah, so edgy. Sex and suicide and madness and self-mutilation! ALL OF OUR FAVORITE GOODIES!

I'd also heard about trans because one of my friends really loved the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And she'd told me a little about it. But I never saw it.

[nerdperson777]

My high school was nothing real special, other than that we were decent academically. We were having budget cuts so we weren't getting our books and such. We were supposed to read one Shakespeare per year, and I didn't get one during third year. But the English teacher I had that year was not afraid to give us explicit readings if they were a good read. So we read "Beloved" and I didn't really want to know about all these details about the sex. And I'm not an literature/art person so all that symbolism about Beloved, I have no idea why it's important to know about her getting intimate with her mother's boyfriend. Is she even real? Is he sleeping with a ghost? I'm still confused today.

I wish there were some trans readings though. I might've discovered my identity earlier. But then again, I was always afraid to have a label because my secrets are either really deep secrets or they shouldn't even be secrets. I was afraid to identify as trans so actually I don't know what I would've done.

[Jockey]

The first book I ever read about trans issues was Luna by Julie Anne Peters and I'm still mad about how horrible being trans was portrayed as being. I wrote to the author. She said she had trans friends and that that's what it's really like. Thanks for nothing, Ms. Peters.

[dash]

The first book I ever read about trans issues was Luna by Julie Anne Peters and I'm still mad about how horrible being trans was portrayed as being. I wrote to the author. She said she had trans friends and that that's what it's really like. Thanks for nothing, Ms. Peters.

Oh, that sucks.

As an adult I got halfway through the book and put it down. One, it wasn't especially accurate about trans. (lol the scene where Luna infodumps her sister about the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, as if trans people talk that way). It didn't read as "authentic" at all, and the writing was pretty clumsy at times. Two, it was from the point of view of the cis sister, and don't want to read yet another book about a cis person having to learn to deal with a trans person and understand them -- I want to read trans perspectives. Three, it was just a boring, boring book. I couldn't make myself care enough about the characters to finish it.

You know what I think happened? There just plain weren't any books about there for that age range about trans issues. So the first thing that gets published -- even if it's clumsy, inaccurate, preachy, whiny, or just plain boring -- gets all the accolades. YAY, NOW WE CAN INCLUDE TRANS ISSUES ON OUR READING LIST AND CHECK OFF THAT DIVERSITY CHECKBOX! /cis educators pat themselves on the back/ "It had to be good! It got published, right???"

I've seen this happen before with other LGBT-themed books. It's sad.

And there may have been elements in that book that were like her friends, but that doesn't make it representative of all trans people, and it doesn't mean she has the right to dismiss the points of view of trans readers for whom it was not like their experience, or who have other criticisms of the book. Plus, I take it she means that she had trans friends like that from her perspective -- facts aren't truths, of a people, or a nation, or a community, or an identity. A story can have all the right "facts" inserted in, in awkward places (e.g. "let me tell you about the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care!") and still be telling the wrong story entirely -- here, a story about a trans person as seen through cis eyes, a story about a cis protagonist coming to terms with her own ignorance as a screen for the author to hide behind about her own ignorance, a story where the trans person "teaches the readers about trans" for the whole duration of the book rather than just being herself, a dynamic interesting person who happens also to be about trans. That was one of my biggest criticisms of the (first half of the) book -- Luna is in the book to "teach the readers what it means to be trans," and isn't herself a character. Which is super ironic given that she's the title character!

She's a mouthpiece for "trans-ness." "Trans", in quotes, is all she is. How then does one communicate to cis readers that trans people are much more than this, and further, that no one has a "duty" to educate? One can read this book and come out feeling like any question they want to ask a trans person is appropriate, anywhere, any time, because that's what this trans person is there for, right? To teach you!