How old were you when dysphoria began?

[UncommonNonsense]

It seems a lot of us here were aware, from a very early age, that we did NOT want to be whatever gender we were born into.

I remember absolutely *loathing* anything 'girly' from about age three. Especially clothes and toys. I felt horrible, uncomfortable, and humiliated if I was forced to wear a dress or skirt, even to the point of throwing up. There was something about having to wear a garment that was so unmistakably clothing meant for a *girl* that made my whole body just twitch in abject revulsion. Clothing became an outright war between myself and my mother and grandmother starting when I was about 2.5 to 3. As soon as I was old enough to state a preference and realize that there was a difference between girls and boys, I wanted to be perceived as un-female as possible. And since the opposite of female was male, I was bound and determined that I wanted to be male.

It was a reactive thing... I was being pushed to be something I didn't want to be, so I chose to be as opposite as possible. I think, had my family just accepted my discomfort with being seen as female, I'd have come to see myself as agender a lot earlier.

I hated dolls with a passion - those fake, flat, dead eyes and that 'girls' toy' connotation! My intense dislike for dolls was a mix of equal parts hate and disgust, and it bordered on being phobic. One of the harshest spankings I ever got was when some family member gave me a Barbie for my 6th birthday and, upon ripping off the wrapping paper, I exclaimed "Awww NOOOO! It's a stupid damn *doll*!" and throwing it across the room. My mother, absolutely mortified, grabbed me out of my chair by the bicep and dragged me out of sight, where she gave me the spanking of my life. I was then forced to apologize to the person who gave me the stupid doll, in front of everyone at the party. I still think I may have been set up... after all. my parents usually warned potential gift-givers that I really hated dolls.

So... 2.5 to 3 was the earliest I can recall feeling at odds with the body I was born into and the gender that body was perceived as having. Is that unusual? When did you start feeling that your body's gender was not the gender it should have been? Did you do anything like I did to make your gender preference known? How did your parents react?

[Rising Sun]

As long as I can remember, I felt something abnormal. I have a few memories of that as early as 2 years old, and I was already quite vocal about it. And then at abut 5, I tried to mask it a bit. In my teenage years, the discomfort went much worse of course, but I was bullied so much that since then my priority has always been to fit in, no matter the price to pay.

[butterflydreams]

Mmm, probably 4 or 5. I used to have these intense feelings of absolute disgust about myself. I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't know what. It manifested as this intense anxiety. I was an incredibly anxious little kid, but my siblings really weren't. At that age it wasn't really a "preference" it was just who I was. My parents allowed some of it and disallowed other parts of it.

Of course, things kicked into overdrive around 12. That was when "The Long Descent" began.

[Guest]

I remember identifying more with female characters and wanting to be like them but I remember dyphoria more from when I was a teenager than as a child...

I remember "pretending" to be a girl online, because it felt good to be seen that way, but I thought I was just fake :(

Then when I was 16 I saw the the term GID on a forum, googled it and came to a wikipedia page about gender dsyphoria and I immediately knew that I had it.

(I began to transition to female a bit more than a year after that)

[Dodecahedron314]

I didn't suspect anything was awry until later than most other people seem to have figured it out, sometime around when puberty hit. (Before puberty, I was actually...almost cis? I had no problem with dresses and such, and had a few stereotypically feminine interests, but it's not like I ever rejected something because it was "for boys"--sure, 5-year-old Dodec occasionally enjoyed wearing flowery skirts, but she would also definitely be climbing trees and running around with the dog in those skirts because why not?) Then, when puberty happened, whenever my body started doing something it hadn't before, I had this intense feeling that something was massively wrong. At that point in my life, I was still pretty firmly on my mom's hippie New Age woo-woo train, so the whole "natural order of life and ~*~feminine energy~*~" schtick from her made an attempt to mask it, but that didn't change the fact that having to deal with things like a new chest made me feel like a little kid playing dress-up with their mother's clothes in all the wrong ways--not just a matter of "I'm not supposed to be grown up yet", but "I'm growing into something that I'm not." That really only came through quite strongly on a couple of occasions that I can remember now and retrospectively realize were quite obviously dysphoria, but it was still definitely there. I don't think I even knew trans people existed at that point, considering this was around the time where "gay" was still a perfectly socially acceptable insult among my 10-12-year-old friends, so my failure to connect the dots wasn't even because I was sure I wasn't a boy--it was because the concept of being anything other than a girl wasn't something even remotely within my sphere of consciousness. I didn't even know it was possible to be trans until my QPP came out during our senior year of high school, and it took me almost a year after that to realize I was too.

Thankfully, my parents didn't really care about gender save for my mom's aforementioned "feminine energy" BS, so it never really caused any problems, but even just said BS has made me cautious enough that I'm *still* not out to either of them yet.

[Dodecahedron314]

Double post

[mikeman7918]

I remember at about age 8 on a week where I was feeling particularly feminine experiencing dysphoria and wishing I was female, I don't remember any specific instances earlier then that 'cause my memory of that time is quite fuzzy. I also remember being rather annoyed when my voice started getting deeper but then I went through another phase of feeling more masculine and I loved it. When I started growing facial hair I sometimes wanted to grow it out more and sometimes couldn't get it off fast enough.

[scarletlatitude]

Mmm, I don't know. I don't remember ever fully feeling like a girl. But my parents were never pushy about it. If I wanted to dress like a dude, I could dress like a dude. As long as I wasn't leaving the house naked they didn't care. So, I don't know really. I've always felt it somewhat. Then again, I am androgynous/gender fluid. It might have been different if I were trans.

[JAKQ7111]

I think I first remember feeling dysphoria when I was in early high school. My body hair had just grown in all the way, and it was thick, abundant, and made me very self-conscious about my body. I was already pretty modest about changing in front of people, but once I grew chest/back hair, forget about it. I stopped wearing a separate shirt for PE, and just quickly changed from my jeans into sweats or shorts before leaving the locker room. It was a very quick, "get in get out" experience, because I was just not about to let people see my disgusting, hairy body. I first shaved off my arm and chest hair when I was a sophomore in college, and have only just this year added leg shaving into the mix, and it has helped my dysphoria immensely.

[butterflydreams]

I was already pretty modest about changing in front of people, but once I grew chest/back hair, forget about it.

Ditto :( I had such an immense amount of anxiety over it.

Though for some stupid reason, it never occurred to me that I could shave it off until much, much later. There was a period when I stopped swimming entirely. The only reason I started again was because I'd become so dissociated it didn't really matter.

That's no way to live, kids.

[OttRInvy]

As a kid, I always rejected and vehemently resented being put into feminine gender roles. I proudly called myself a tomboy, tried to distance myself from anything feminine, to the point where it wasn't healthy because I was belittling all feminine people and interests. I really latched onto feminism when I was 12 or 13. It helped me deal with my hatred of femininity, realizing that some women were more masculine and others were more feminine, and both were perfectly okay. I remember getting really excited about this. Feminism means that women are just as capable as men. Feminism means that women and men can have masculine or feminine interests and they aren't lesser for it. Feminism means, as a girl, I can be masculine. I don't need to date boys. I don't even need to feel like I am a girl! At this point, I would correct myself. Feminism meant I could be a lot of things I felt wasn't socially acceptable for me to be, but my perception of feminism didn't explain why I didn't feel like a girl.

I didn't know anything about transgender people until 14 or 15, and even then my knowledge was very limited. When I was 16, one of my friends came out to me as a trans male and I did more research. I still didn't make the connection because all the resources I found were very binary.

I came to realize I was nonbinary when I was 19. I had been reading about people who identify as agender and I figured it was something I related to. However, it wasn't until I was reading a comic about A. Stiffler, someone who identifies as agender, that it finally hit me that there's no way that I'm cisgender. That I'm non-binary in some way and it's not something that can just be ignored. I was so scared, I immediately started sobbing.

[Starbogen]

Hmm not sure if it's dysphoria exactly but I guess looking back at it could be, I just didn't even know what that meant at the time.. But yeah I also hated being put in dresses since I can remember, so about four years old, and I know I felt "not girly like a girl" when I was from about five to seven but I didn't feel like the boys either or like a tomboy so I was just kinda lost as to what I was other than my sex.

Then there's the way more obvious one of getting really sad and scared and uncomfortable when puberty hit instead of being excited and satisfied about the changes or the end result like other people, and I just wanted the stuff I got to be gone as soon as I started getting it. There was also what I'm now thinking of as sexual dysphoria..I felt like I just could never even think of myself having sex and at the time I thought it was because of asexuality but now I know it was because of body dysphoria. As I got older stuff started getting more noticeably seperate on the social aspect and that made me frustrated and uncomfortable and feel out of place too. And everything's just gone downhill since then.

So I'm not sure how to answer this since I'm not exactly sure what would count as dysphoria and there seems to be different times when I started feeling different types of discomforts, but I guess it could technically go back to when I was really little and just felt different in some way.

[Wayfarer]

For me I think dysphoria didn't start until I was 13/14. Before that I was fine. I liked wearing dresses, still do, and liked some stereotypically feminine things. I also liked all kinds of less stereotypically feminine stuff, and my parents never gave me a reason to believe that I shouldn't like them, so all was good. I even remember talking to a friend about preferring to be a girl over a boy, 'because girls can do all the things boys can, and they can also wear dresses'. In my view then, girls had more options, so that was what I would have preferred, given the choice.

Dysphoria started with the onset of puberty. Gaining weight, getting curves, I couldn't deal with it. I just figured everyone secretly felt the same, but that it was socially unacceptable to say so. It took me seven more years to figure out that that wasn't the case.

[Blue raven]

This is a tough question to answer and has really made me think. I don't remember feeling dysphoria as a child. I certainly felt the restrictions of being seen as female. I never asked for anything that would be classed as "for boys" even though I would have loved to have some of those things. I just kept on trying to "be a girl". I was about 17 when I really started to feel unable to relate to being called a female. I thought I would eventually feel like a woman as I got older but 20 years later and I still don't. I only discovered 2 years ago that I am agender. I don't know if what I have experienced is dysphoria or not though as my lack of gender can never align with being afab. Its possible i have constant dysphoria as i just dont feel "right" most of the time. I have suffered with anxiety and depression for years though which could be partly caused by this misalignment. I feel like there is no way to resolve it either. Sorry for my spelling! Its late and I am pretty tired.

[Blue raven]

This is a tough question to answer and has really made me think. I don't remember feeling dysphoria as a child. I certainly felt the restrictions of being seen as female. I never asked for anything that would be classed as "for boys" even though I would have loved to have some of those things. I just kept on trying to "be a girl". I was about 17 when I really started to feel unable to relate to being called a female. I thought I would eventually feel like a woman as I got older but 20 years later and I still don't. I only discovered 2 years ago that I am agender. I don't know if what I have experienced is dysphoria or not though as my lack of gender can never align with being afab. Its possible i have constant dysphoria as i just dont feel "right" most of the time. I have suffered with anxiety and depression for years though which could be partly caused by this misalignment. I feel like there is no way to resolve it either. Sorry for my spelling! Its late and I am pretty tired.

[Mychemicalqpr]

For me I think dysphoria didn't start until I was 13/14. Before that I was fine. I liked wearing dresses, still do, and liked some stereotypically feminine things. I also liked all kinds of less stereotypically feminine stuff, and my parents never gave me a reason to believe that I shouldn't like them, so all was good. I even remember talking to a friend about preferring to be a girl over a boy, 'because girls can do all the things boys can, and they can also wear dresses'. In my view then, girls had more options, so that was what I would have preferred, given the choice.

Dysphoria started with the onset of puberty. Gaining weight, getting curves, I couldn't deal with it. I just figured everyone secretly felt the same, but that it was socially unacceptable to say so. It took me seven more years to figure out that that wasn't the case.

Pretty much what happened with me, except I think I was a little younger since my puberty started at more like 11 or 12. According to my mom, I insisted on wearing dresses when I was little. I just aesthetically preferred them. I didn't have a heavily gendered environment growing up, so it took me a while to really realize that there were feminine stereotypes associated with dresses. I had some stereotypically feminine interests, but also loved to play fight with the boys, so I think it comes out about even. I also get what you're saying about thinking everyone else must hate getting curves too. It still surprises me sometimes how OK cisgirls are with being girls. Suddenly I hit a point where I instead insisted on NOT wearing dresses.

[DC69]

I would have been eight or nine years old when I first had the urge to wear women's clothes and began a lifetime of wanting to be a girl. I never really enjoyed what would be considered boy activities like climbing trees and playing team sports. I was always happier reading or watching my mother sew, cook, do laundry, etc... or just visiting and playing with my friends. Emotionally I have always been more feminine than masculine and am extremely sensitive to others and if there is a "Type C" personality, well that would be me. For most of my life I tried very hard to repress that feminine me and prove how masculine I was, when really I'm not. That led to me not being a very nice person a lot of the time, but for some reason I think that others could sense my nicer feminine side and for whatever reason they liked me.

[fatal flower-boy]

Definitely started during 4th grade (so, I had to have been 9?). I remember wanting to wear my dad's shirts to school, even though they were way too big for me. Through middle school and high school I didn't know what was up. I guess I was on the fence. You know, boy one day, girl another. Right now, In University, I'm the same, but I have a good sense of who I am.

[Heart]

I'm a bit of an oddball here, I guess. I was cis until about 20 or 21 years old. I even gave it some thought before finding the word "asexual". I wondered if I was so uncomfortable with sex because I wanted to have sex as "the other" gender? Nope. Happy being a girl, or woman.

The first few times my gender flipped around were confusing as all heck, and it took me a year or two to figure out that what was happening must be gender fluidity. I went from intense dysphoria and convinced I was a trans man to being fine being a woman again a few times before wondering why the heck I was so confused :P

I'm glad I had found AVEN by then. I think I could have spent a LONG time being confused without this forum ;)

[Janus the Fox]

Could be at any age after a child discovers difference of gender, can happen at any age when a personal resistance to your own gender is realized.

So it could be as early as say around 4 years of age when a child develops socially, can also trigger at puberty when the body does physically change or when any time after when there's some form of desire or not being able to conform or feel comfortable in one own body.

This could feel mild, only desiring to change minor gender aspects or anywhere beyond feeling a total change is required. This could also be rather fixed until a change is complete or its fluid.

I've never really felt this aspect of gender, never actually felt either one or the other and have always mildly suffered from some kind of dysphoria. That's until the dysphoria become a lot worse after some significant weight loss was achieved, this is when my body felt more male and I felt a desire to change some aspects like growing hair, nails, among other things.

But otherwise this is fluid based on my current state of mood experiencing depression and rare hypomania, being within the autism spectrum may also play a part in gender as I'm told. I though at the least identify non-binary.

[Nylocke]

On 11/17/2016 at 8:54 AM, Heart said:

I'm a bit of an oddball here, I guess. I was cis until about 20 or 21 years old. I even gave it some thought before finding the word "asexual". I wondered if I was so uncomfortable with sex because I wanted to have sex as "the other" gender? Nope. Happy being a girl, or woman.

The first few times my gender flipped around were confusing as all heck, and it took me a year or two to figure out that what was happening must be gender fluidity. I went from intense dysphoria and convinced I was a trans man to being fine being a woman again a few times before wondering why the heck I was so confused :P

I'm glad I had found AVEN by then. I think I could have spent a LONG time being confused without this forum ;)

 

I also didn't learn of my differences till I was in high school. When I got into anime I identified more then male characters and the like. I don't think many of my interests were ever feminine as a kid. I remember in my youth my mom always used to get on my case about not being feminine enough and the like. Like you, I didn't start dissociating with my birthed assignment until I was in my 20s and then when I was 22 I learned I was genderqueer and the rest from then is history :p

[dissolved]

Social dysphoria was at around age four or five. Physical dysphoria wasn't until my teens, when the joy that is puberty started.

[Toothlesss]

On 11/13/2016 at 6:23 PM, scarletlatitude said:

Mmm, I don't know. I don't remember ever fully feeling like a girl. But my parents were never pushy about it. If I wanted to dress like a dude, I could dress like a dude. As long as I wasn't leaving the house naked they didn't care. So, I don't know really. I've always felt it somewhat. Then again, I am androgynous/gender fluid. It might have been different if I were trans.

This :) 

And socially, I guess I've had it forever to some extent, but didn't know it. I also have a distaste for some parts of American culture that still enforce, and reinforce the binary. There's nothing wrong with identifying on the binary, but for me it's always implied a bad way of categorizing myself and others. 

Growing up- I had both barbie dolls and toy cars. Also, my parents never forced me to dress "like a girl", even though as a child I LOVED dresses. Still do to some extent. 🙂

[J. van Deijck]

I was around 3 or 4, I remember how I hated dresses and pink clothes my mother was forcing on me. She used to say "Girls wear pink", and my reply was "But I'm not a girl!". They have never treated me seriously, though, and I doubt they ever will.

Oh. I've had toy cars, too, and I loved them.

[cosmosredshift7]

My easiest trans-related memories are of looking in the mirror at school and crying because I saw/read myself as a boy (which is how I now determine with 100% accuracy what gender I am); and started crying because my mom always said that girls are pretty and that self-worth as a girl came from being pretty.😒

Another is when I would play with my cousins, who are mostly boys, and I couldn't grasp the concept of why boys and girls were different.

[epiphanycakes]

 to be honest I was a bit of a tom boy as a child but i was feminine in other areas . I was very sensitive would cry a lot , loved films like the swan princess and thumbelina , would save animals moved n talked very fem .

i was I don't know in the middle? I remember one day i was poking my boy bits like what are these why are they here? but dysphoria for me didn't start till i saw my aunt pregnant and i realized my body was male = no babies plus her breast feeding so age 6 ish but more confusion . There was a few things before that but not like " omg classic transgender narrative!!"  as I neared puberty i saw the girls develop and felt jealousy and envy. I had this nevie thinking i was a messed up girl maybe or a confused boy  and i would be like them 

I repressed it all because of bullying well beatings more like i would hide under school bags n stuff never wanting to be found my teachers had to look for me a lot of the time . 

When i was 11 it really sank in I should of been female and 15 years of pain began. My cousins were older n saw them develop and dreaded it but tried to be happy about it lol

When my voice started to brake i sobbed at night that's when it really hurt inside and that's when I started to numb myself   as I thought i would be stuck like this ( did not know about transgender or transition till 17/8)  I just tried to be a feminine boy , i did pray to god to cure me of my feelings or make me a girl ,after a while i just begged for death.

be a emo guy and have a gf , and purge myself of my real self 

I remember watching star dust there's a tg scene   and thinking " wish someone did that to me!" but I repressed it cus that mad sigh

iv been though hell to be me a really bad end of teen phase of self harm stopping eating and mental health deterioration was almost in a mental ward

im glad im finnally me though no matter the bulllshit i get from people or family 

[Sivath]

I was a completely zen kid until I went to elementary school. I didn't experience dysphoria before then because I was somewhat socially blind. I didn't understand that my peers had feelings and that I could hurt them with a word, and I didn't socialize. I just marveled at passing ants, and blue sky and the many wild animals I came across in New Zealand. So naturally, I didn't realize what boys and girls were. The world was just me, my mom, my dad, authorities, peers and strangers.

Half way through elementary school though, I started to take notice of my peers and how there seemed to be a concept of boys and girls. People started teasing me that I was boyish, and I liked being called that. I didn't want to be like the girls. I couldn't understand girls.

But it didn't bother me too much, as I was still somewhat socially blind. Kids cry when they are bullied. I didn't even notice that I was bullied. And it also helped that I was in Korea, a country without gender pronouns. Still I despised it when my mom forced me to wear a dress. And I had a strong desire to cut my hair short.

When puberty started and my chest started budding, I was horrified. I didn't know why, but I hated it, and always wished it would stop. When it did, girls teased and pitied me for having small breasts. I jokingly pretended I was upset by it, but I never understood them. It's funny because I liked other girls breasts. I yearned to have a different body. Funnily enough, I yearned to be a mouse. A boy mouse. With green wings.

It was only until high school that I started yearning to be a different sex. I mused changing my sex, and googled it. I was shocked to find that it was possible. And I learned that I was transgender. The possibility of it gave me happiness, but also worsened my dysphoria.

In university, I found that guys treat girls drastically differently from other guys. It disgusts me when I am viewed as a girl.

[Leolith]

Apparently I threw tantrums so big when shopping that from a very young age onward I got unisex clothes.

I was angry to lack the vocabulary to tell the adults that I felt alienated in gendered shopping sections and refused to go shopping.

And when puberty hit body dysphoria did too.

[Rynn]

I first got it when I was about 9 or 10. My boobs started growing and I was convinced they were tumors, so my parents actually took me to the doctor to get them checked out.

To be honest they still feel like tumors 11 years later.

[epiphanycakes]

1 hour ago, Laurann said:

I first got it when I was about 9 or 10. My boobs started growing and I was convinced they were tumors, so my parents actually took me to the doctor to get them checked out.

To be honest they still feel like tumors 11 years later.

I had the same feeling with my male parts like they were growths that pee comes out of lmao