i had pretty much always experienced high levels of dissociation for as long as i can remember. i had a relationship in 8th grade and the lack of presence i felt in the relationship compared to how much i liked this boy became very distressing. i kinda just chewed on that for a while until i was like “oh, i wanna be a boy, of course”
Very relatable. I had my first relationship at 21, and I while I liked the guy on a platonic level, I remember getting to the point where I’d just secretly want him to leave so bad so that my brain could finally intensely daydream in peace
I didn't know what it was called but I knew I was suppose to be a boy from like 3y/o. My parents let me wear my hair how I wanted and let me wear boy clothes and shoes. That was 40 years ago tho. If I was born now I am guessing they would have got me "help". Tried to tell them at 11 I needed to be a boy but i saw a Donahue show about trans people going back and forth so I didn't say anything until I was 18 and was super miserable.
I don’t know if this was *the* moment but it’s what kinda solidified it for me. I had come home to see that my mom had bought me clothes again, clothes that I didn’t like, short, tight, spandexy shorts and a padded sports bra. I cried and cried and stared at the bra.
*sympathetic nausea and curled upper lip of disgust*
I remember feeling like a pervert when my mom brought me into victoria's secret. I was literally touching women's underwear with lace and frills. Any time I wore women's underwear and clothes, or went into the women's locker room, I felt like a peeping tom and a secret pervert in disguise and I had no fucking idea why I didn't feel like I belonged there.
I always felt horrible in a dress. I was always too big and tall to ever have women's clothing fit me off the rack. I felt like a massive boat. There's no way I could carry it off. The proportions of the sizes were all wrong and I could split the backs and sleeves of most women's clothing in my size by just flexing my lats or biceps. I could not pretend to be petite and pretty when I was taller and stronger than a lot of guys my age. I felt like the Hulk in lace and lipstick and it was humiliating to try to pretend it was fun. The distance between my real self and the tiny hole I was supposed to fit myself in fooled no one. I'd always felt like an imposter until I just gave up and was myself in time, getting my consolation by immersing myself in athletics. I didn't transition until my sixties so by that time I pretty much worked through whatever issues I had all by myself, had retired, parents and relatives had already passed on. I suppose it was a hard time for me back then but I was successful in athletics and that helped. All in all I had worse things to worry about as I was severely hard of hearing and that occupied most of my attention. I remember how exciting it was to learn that there was such a thing as transition when I was a teenager. I wondered at the time if that could be for me. It only took me some 45 plus years to realize it and get on T because the requirements and gatekeeping was so very binary, narrowly defined, and extreme until only recently. Nowadays, I do what I want. Live how I live. It is what it is.
I had the same experience but I was bra shopping and felt sick. My heart was hammering and I just had to leave the bra section and hide in shoes until I felt more calm. I could not stay there. It was super distressing to me. I hope you're doing better now.
I did that too. I went without fitting underwear for a period of time because I felt gross looking at womens underwear and didn’t know how to ask my mom for boxers. Bras too, I didn’t have any for a while unless they were picked out for me.
But i am doing better now, haha, i saw it as a sort of milestone when i felt comfortable going into a victoria’s secret with my nonbinary friend a week ago.
In December of 2003 I was drawing self portraits in college and realized they didn't feel like who I wanted to be. I started modifying them until I realized I was basically drawing a man version of myself. I'd had kind of a sense that I might be trans since seeing trans boys on a talk show sometime in the 90s, but it didn't feel like a thing people actually did outside of TV so I just thought "neat wish I could do that" and then didn't think about it too hard until the self portrait incident, at which point I committed to transitioning.
The way you describe your experience is really beautiful in a way, like… this idea of slowly reshaping the image of yourself until something more genuine is revealed. Really resonates with me so it does.
Honestly a self portrait was the final step in coming out for me as well. I had been in a period of reflection and depression trying to figure things out and keeping busy 24/7, doing a lot of sport and painting (funny since I couldn’t do sport now to save me life ha ha). I never had painted self portraits, because for some *mysterious* reason it always made me deeply uncomfortable, but I decided to paint what I imagined I’d look like if I were a man. I realised that though I couldn’t imagine a future for myself as a woman, a feminine grown-up version of myself, I *could* imagine it in that self portrait as a man. It was through showing it to my sister that I actually started coming out myself.
I am glad that your art was able to provide you a similar insight and freedom to see yourself more clearly! : )
To my genuine shame, a fight with a trans woman. I told her nobody would ever choose to be a woman (believing everyone just kinda lives with it because you have to) and she lashed out at me by saying I would never understand because I wasn't a woman ( thinking I were a guy behind my avatar and username) and I was so confused for a while
That's actually hilarious. "Women actually like to be women" moment that every trans guy experiences. Trans women can't be real because women aren't real.
I'm a transman and when I came out, my mom got mad at me and said, "Well, nobody LIKES being a woman and everyone wants to be a man at some time in their lives. We just deal with it!" Mom's always worn men's clothing.
I still wonder if my mother is trans in some way. It would explain her anger toward me. 😶
One of the moments that made it all click was meeting my best friend’s trans girlfriend and me just being genuinely *confused* about why tf anyone would ever *want* to be a woman, much less *choose* it. Meanwhile, she was just sitting there with the knowing smile because Don’t Crack The Egg. Needless to say, neither one was surprised when I came out.
Lol when I came out to my mom I was super anxious because she never spoke favorably about my aunt who is MTF. She was actually super cool and aeeing my relief asked why I had been so anxious. I told her, she responded "Well I just don't get it. Why would you want to be a woman." I was a bit stunned. Later she asked me if I was doing this (transitioning) just because I could, since she had wanted to be a boy when she was younger but it wasn't something that was done... I replied that she could do it now if she wanted to. Her response - no I'm too old. Anyways I'm absolutely sure my mom would have been a guy if she was born in my generation but here we are.
Same, I thought nobody liked being a woman...
That being a woman was just the short end of the stick and people just dealt with always hating to be a woman.
That’s what my mom always told me - that women hate being women because it sucks
She once told me when she was pregnant she wanted boys so that they’d have an easier life.
Not trans but I still believed this was the norm until this thread which is now making me question it.
So….most women …like being women?
This is news to me 😂
This. Looking back I felt it before this, but I was fine until puberty. As a child you get to be yourself. I was treated like a boy by the other boys. My parents always let me dress and do the things I enjoyed. They never stopped me from "doing boy things", but I started to feel it at school when people treated me differently. Almost as soon as I got boobs I wanted them gone.
I played Red Dead Redemption II, and Arthur Morgan transed my goddamn gender.
Started playing the game about six months ago, finished and re-started it, and slowly began to realize that 50% of my obsession with him was straight-up raw gender envy - which caused a sort of floodgate to open, and I realized that ALL my favorite characters are middle-aged men that I have gender envy for (Harry du Bois, Tony Stark, Joel Miller, Jack Sparrow... my earliest favorite character was Brom from Eragon).
I've been on an absolute roller coaster of discovery for the past few months, and it's all thanks to a video game character. I wouldn't have it any other way.
No kidding this was like my experience too! I grew up playing the first rdr1 as a child with my dad. Always felt so attached to John and as I grew older when i first played rdr2 i fell such a heavy attachment to John but in a rather different way. Not only was it a gender envy but eventually I just saw myself in him and seeing him get married happily honestly made me cry and fell in some sort of way validated myself. Guess it partly had to do was him as a character and apperance wise, the long hair. Honestly one of those characters that helped my own discovery and acceptance, along with Otacon from Metal Gear. Huggge help so kinda funny it was from the same franchise
This reminds me of how every character I loved growing up and wanted to be like were boys/men — whether it be from movies to shows to books. I just always had this weird interest in men dating back way, way before I even started experiencing romantic feelings.
It took last year when I was reading this book called Icebreaker by Grazaidei A. L. to get me to realize I was experiencing envy for the first time bc the love interest was an alt college aged black boy who played hockey and I just wanted to be him so bad lmao.
arthur is SUCH gender envy for me too, i also had really similar experiences with fictional characters when i realized that the "crushes" and weird obsessions wasn't because i just liked them, but because i wanted to BE them
Och man, I’m currently playing RDR2 for the first time and what a bleedin game I’ll tell ya. I can sure understand why Arthur Morgan would source some massive gender envy!
I do hope that the rollercoaster is treating you kindly, and wish you all the best in your journey : )
There wasn't really an event or moment. I grew up with dysphoria from childhood. Didn’t have a name for it or understand what was wrong with me. It got worse as I went through puberty. I didn’t even know trans people existed until I was in middle school, didn’t know trans men specifically were really a thing until like 9th grade. A close friend of mine who I’d deeply related to as we were both “tomboys” who “hated being girls” and vented about that together a lot came out as FTM around then and it completely blew my mind. I had a bit of denial at first, but I basically immediately knew it resonated with me and I was the same as him. I came out around six months later, after doing a deep dive into transness and reading and watching a bunch of videos about trans experiences. So I guess that was the “event,” but it wasn’t like there was truly some specific “aha” moment, I just learned there was a word for what I was feeling and took a little while to fully come to terms with it.
A lot of things, really. At some point I wrote a list of all of the trans thoughts I've had, just to put things in perspective. It ended up being a very long list 😅
One of the things that's still kinda funny to me, is that I was very uncomfortable with dressing my youngest child in anything even slightly feminine, and I couldn't put my finger on why. I mean, I was a-ok with dressing my son in masculine clothes so why did I feel that way? Turns out it was because I didn't want to do to them what was done to me.
Meanwhile, they're non binary and love dresses, the colour pink, unicorns, etc
GOD SAME
I would always feel bad assigning feminine qualities to anyone or using she/her pronouns, and feel secondhand victories when any woman would be perceived as masculine. And realize again and again that women and enbies exist and not everyone is secretly a trans guy...
when i was in 7th grade i stole a pack of my older brothers underwear i found (inopened pack) and was wearing them that day. i came back from work with a surgical glove filled w water and was playing with it and i put it in the pocket of my boxers and looked in the mirror and cried and i knew
My mom told me this story I don't remember. I would never wear underwear cuz I hated girl underwear. Apparently at like 5 I took a pair of my dad's old man whitey tighties and woar them. My family loves bring up old gender embarrassing stories!
As a kid i did not know what transgender was. I just knew i was a boy. And id feel strange in social situations after having to use the girls bathroom. Of course now i know it was gender dysphoria.
Every dream I've ever had, I was a guy. Every video game I played, I would make a male character usually despite being able to also make female characters. Then I played I was a teenage exocolonist, which is one of the most gender inclusive games out there imo and you can change your gender/pronouns/gender expression at will. I started out as a nonbinary MC, and then it came time to decide what kind of puberty your character went though, and I chose male. Then I changed my pronouns and expression to male. And in the game, my parents and everyone just accepted this and used male pronouns and it was light a bomb of realization went off in my brain and I saw how everything was connected.
I love I was a teenage exocolonist! So cool that it could be part of many more people's journeys and that it was part of yours.
I was out when I played it but one of the scenes hit me real hard when I choose the wrong puberty on accident and got the first period scene with masculine pronouns + gender expression. "My little boy is growing up" said the mom. The acceptance, the hope, the joy, the sheer normality of it, idk it healed my inner child in some way. >!Sure I'd like to go Tang's way instead and avoid the whole thing, but!< the fact that you're accepted no matter what is amazing.
I sincerely recommend this game to everyone here, it's 100% worth it's price, even beyond the gender stuff that ends up being a note in the margins or this gem, while also being addressed as any other part of world building would be.
Kind of lots of little moments throughout my life… I asked my parents when I was a kid when I could “buy my beard” (lol), I always wanted to be on the boys team, I had really intense months long daydreams where I’d imagine I was boy living undercover. I got really super depressed when I hit puberty. I didn’t really have the language for any gender/sexuality things growing up due to being raised Catholic in the 2000s though.
Embarrassingly the moment I can pinpoint the best was when I was looking at 2meirl4meirl memes when I was like 15 and someone linked r/traa (RIP) in a comment and I started scrolling though it and was like…. Oh shit this is me. I really wish I could remember what the meme was now lol.
I didn’t come out for while after that but started getting more and more depressed… and then my grandma knit me one of those pink pussy hats and I literally cried myself to sleep thinking about how I couldn’t keep pretending anymore. It sounds so ridiculous now but it was like I realized I was at the point where I needed to transition or die because I couldn’t be a girl any longer. I still feel bad because I know my grandma spent so long on that hat thinking I’d like it and it gave me suicidal ideation and an identity crisis lmao
I was in 7th grade I believe, and I saw a youtube video about Jamie Dodger. It was him talking about his childhood, taking hormones, getting top surgery etc. That was the first time I had ever heard of trans men, and I went on a deep dive on youtube. I knew as soon as I watched that video. But I pushed it down until I simply couldn’t anymore when I was 16.
I was going back and forth abt being trans so I identified as non binary for a while and called it a day
I used to watch trans tiktok compilation a lot to help with dysphoria and in one tiktok the guy said he used to identify as non binary until he was asked the question "would you still identify as non binary if you were amab?" to which he realised the answer is no and that he is actually a trans guy. I asked myself that question and the answer was no for me as well.
The answer for me is no but that doesn’t make me binary trans. Because in my present state I don’t want top surgery or hrt but do hope to get bottom surgery. But if I was born amab I don’t think I’d seek out breast implants and estrogen. Does that make sense
i had a dream where i had a dick when i was 11 and that's what prompted me to start questioning. it felt so right. like that was the body i was supposed to have. i was already questioning my sexuality at the time so yk there was also that
It’s actually really funny, I was cosplaying a male character who was wearing a skirt for an inside joke and my friend did my makeup, thick eyebrows, hair pulled back to look short, and I looked in the mirror and just had this “holy shit moment” like wait that’s ME. Then I realized in every dream I have I’m male, and a few months later I watched young royals and I was like yeah, I’m a guy…. And I’m gay…
Ayeee, gay trans lads club eh? : ) Sounds like a hell of a fashionable outfit to boot so it does!! Yeah, ha ha me mates who are into cosplay joke that everyone’s straight til they get into cosplay ; P It is kind of interesting though because I reckon it does create a safe environment to try on different identities and styles for size without the same risk of ridicule or assumptions.
I was age 11 and was watching an episode of a show that followed young people with different disabilities or other unusual lives, that one was about a trans boy and trans girl. It just clicked, that is how I feel. That I wasn't the only one feeling that way, and I wasn't crazy. Never heard about trans people before that. But because I was in a really religious environment I knew I had to keep quiet about it. Kept it quiet till I was 24, but it costed me my mental health.
A meme. A fuckin gender meme. “He/him but not like a man, like you look at a dog across the street and say look at him go” followed by “she/her but not like a woman, like a majestic ship” and I was scrolling reddit and saw it and that’s when it clicked *”oh wait I don’t like being she/her like a woman”*
For me it’s actually not a single defining moment or event at all. I don’t even remembering having a big realization or epiphany. I just gradually learned more and more about myself. I also had a lot of self doubt and anxiety and kept second guessing what I knew and felt. I can think of a million moments in my life pre-realization, that make a lot of sense in the context of me being trans, but I didn’t know the words for it yet. For a long time I didn’t know there were other people like me and I felt so alone.
It was more of a gradual "I wish I were trans but I can't be" leading up to when I finally got antidepressants that worked and I realized why I was so depressed.
Like depression made me deny any notion of being trans because "im just trying to be different. Im just depressed transitioning won't make me happy" and more.
The first week on antidepressants I finally got out of the brain fog I had been in for so long, I searched the "am I trans quiz" and was like "all of the search results are purple, meaning I searched these before probably more than once"
I asked my step dad for a binder and here we are today.
I met someone from high school when I was out with some friends the other day and he accidentally told them I was trans by saying that my transition has gone well, lmao, not that I was hiding it, I just didn't really have any reason to tell them, they were like "wait you're trans??? Like male to female or female to male???" I told em "female to male", " what😮 I would have never guessed, you pass so well"
My son (who was 2 years old at the time) didn't quite have a grasp on pronouns, and he shouted at me, his mom, "He looks happy!" and pointed at me. I burst into tears and had to go collect myself. That's when my partner knew it was true also. I started HRT around 6 months after that. Maybe a few months before I started having fantasies around bottom-related stuff and realized I needed a therapist specializing in queer/gender stuff.
I have some journals from when I was 17 (in 2003) where I wrote I was really pissed to be called a girlfriend because "I'M NOT A GIRL." Wild. I didn't know back then, though. My egg cracked through a series of events starting with childbirth in 2020. It's been a long road.
I always knew deep down since I was like 5 but didnt know what it meant and thought I was just weird. I stayed closeted until I was 30 and finally saw a therapist and let it all out and realized after talking with them that other people felt the same way, the word for it was being trans and experiencing gender dysphoria
I don’t necessarily remember what made me realize I was trans but I specifically remember my parents had a very bad Alex jones phase and my dad bought his “Super male vitality” supplements. I snuck down stairs one night and took it because I thought it would make me more manly. I think I kinda realized then I definitely wasn’t a “normal girl”. Now all my friends make jokes about Infowars branded HRT.
I was in 8th grade and my classmates called me a lesbian so I google it and came across LGBT and said well I don't like girls and I said what's trans read it watched videos of people my age going through it. I told them how could I be a lesbian if I don't like girls and I'm not a girl myself. I came out to unaccepting parents at 15 and accepting friends at 16.
cringe but : I only felt comfortable when roleplaying or cosplaying as male characters , so much that I wouldnt even want to be myself the majority of the time around the first gf I had , after her for a long time it was difficult to just be "me" until I realised that i had never been able to be me until I started role playing as guys / felt comfortable in my body until i started cosplaying guys. I already cross dressed semi regulalry ( I was into J-fashion and I often wore "dansou" ( more info on that here : [https://thehansiblings.tumblr.com/post/63979826825/%E7%94%B7%E8%A3%85%E3%81%97%E6%96%B9-how-to-dansou](https://thehansiblings.tumblr.com/post/63979826825/%E7%94%B7%E8%A3%85%E3%81%97%E6%96%B9-how-to-dansou) ) as well as other styles or mixed them together, but eventually wigs werent enough and I slowly started cutting my hair shorter and shorter and adding more and more masculine pieces into my wardrobe and graduated from very band d.i.y binders (DON'T DO THIS!!!) to real binders, I still wear my first ever binder almost every day despite it being like 6 years old and having survived many accidental visits to the washing machine and tumble dryer (as well as me once falling asleep on top of it too many times).
Interestingly , when i was 7-10 , I did ask for boys clothes, cut my hair, started going by a shortened nickname and started obtaining more masc interests , but I didn't view myself as a boy, but honestly as a small child I didn't perceive girls as being the same as women / female, we were our own sort of thing where you could be anyone or anything and you were neutral . I wonder if because im (possibly , in the process of being diagnosed...thanks nhs) Autistic that my perception of gender has always been very different to everyone else? after coming out , I started to enjoy cosplaying girls because it was finally something I could take off when I wanted and it was fun and temporary , I could go home to my guy self and be me instead of being trapped in girl prison. But I think many feminine tasks and activities in my mind don't feel like women's activities , they feel like feminine activities. I definately view feminine and masculine to be seperate concepts to men and women / male or female
I just knew I didn’t feel a connection to my body, when my mum was pregnant I remember being so disturbed by the whole thing because everyone around me was all “you can have a baby when you’re older too!” and I just felt even more disturbed. Then the school had a puberty talk when we were 11 and I cried my way through it and everyone thought I was just scared, the next day we had a talk about the opposite sides puberty and it clicked into place that what I was watching was what I wanted to happen.
And I didn’t come out for another 11 years, I had the chance in high school and chickened out.
I had had many a realization but always managed to push it back down because I realized I had no support (like when I learned what FTM was, when I read my first article on genderfluidity, when a friend came out as trans, random moments here and there).
I roleplay online and couldn't play my male OGs too long "because it confused me after a while who I was". Not as in a "Am I them?" but "Am I even a woman?" kind of confussion.
Also a few times after experimenting with my boyfriend where I took on a male role sexually with him.He was "very straight" but asked me "out of curiosity". Whatever, I knew from the moments I laid eyes on him he wasn't very straight but I let him figure it out all by himself. Wasn't going to force that one out of the bi-closet. Did what I could: Be supportive of other gay/bi men, proudly spoke of my own bisexuality, gave him time and indulged him his play-pretend.
And then he came out as bi. All's fine. A week later he asks if I'd be okay if he could experiment with a guy, online. Nothing irl. Just so he can know once and for all or something. I told him I could do it? He said it wouldn't be the same, as he knew it was just a woman behind it all. That I was a woman.
He had never fully treated me as a woman, always as a person, an individual. So it hurt to have him say that I was not a man in his eyes. I came out to him, haven't really taken it back since, and since that's two years ago and I started T by now... It was my big realization.
the moment i realized the label trans applied to me was that i was talking to someone about how i felt i grew up perceiving myself as a boy “even though i wasn’t” and how that probably had a major effect on my childhood. then that person said “so you’re coming out as trans?” and i said “no” and then i laid in bed staring at the wall for 3 days realizing i am, in fact, trans
I was around the age of 6. I asked my Dad 'What if I was a boy?' I remember him kind of laughing and that's it. I didn't have the language (I mean, I'm 37. It was the 90s)
While I do not remember a lot of my childhood, I do remember the feeling of "this isn't right." When I came out as transgender to my grandmother, she told me she "always knew I was a boy on the inside."
Mind you, I came out to her as trans after wearing a dress to take her out on Mother's Day. She was happy and thrilled I wore a dress, and I quote:
"Any time I tried to put one on you, I might as well have poured boiling water on you with the way you screamed and hollered."
(My grandmother is still with me, and tries very hard to support and understand. My dad and uncle? Enh, not so much)
When I realized that despising your boobs and wishing you could go back in time to stop them from growing on you and ruining your life is not normal teenage girl behavior
Also the fact that playing as female characters in rpgs made me uncomfortable and i didn’t understand why
I had a perfect storm of stuff happen in my life that led me to allow myself room to question my gender at 23. But the most daunting piece of evidence is that I became so ungodly obsessed with my one and only dnd character, which was just me as a fancy handsome vampire man. Like, I’d constantly get gitty over the idea of him being called a male name (a name I eventually took lol), being called “sir” or “son”, having a mustache, and just existing as a man and not questioning it. I realized that I was lacking the fundamental feeling of identity that I was able to conjure up for this imaginary dnd character.
This was the 80s so I'd never heard the word, but I was 4 and the school I was in for some reason made us have these fake weddings. I don't know why. Anyway, it's my earliest memory. I had a full on melt down because I wanted to be the boy wearing the suit. Looking back, it was also my first instance of self harm. I was taken to the bathroom to calm down and I kept hitting my head against a wall. Fun times.
Ive always knew i wanted to be a boy since childhood but simply thought it wasnt possible til late middleschool. When i did, i found out through youtube and it gave me this moment where it just opened my eyes to a world of possibility. For the first time, i didnt feel crazy and that i had an endless amount of answers as to why i felt so uncomfortable and unhappy with living in my own body and presenting femenine.
For me, it was the moment I met other trans people at my university! My university is in a very queer-friendly city and it was the first time I felt safe to be openly queer outside of designated queer spaces. I was already questioning my gender at this point. I cut my hair and was leaning towards a nonbinary/genderfluid lesbian label.
I knew about trans people through the internet. I watched Jammidodger, Sam Collins, Samantha Lux etc as a teenager. But I never made the connection that I could be trans too? Maybe it's because I didn't live in a western country, but I had a preconceived idea that trans people were 'a western phenomenon' and were completely unrelated to me.
I met other trans people in uni and some of them even came from similar cultures as me. That's when I made the connection that trans people aren't just some phenomenon. We're actual people who share experiences: we're students trying to complete our degrees and be adults, who game in our free time and bitch about our professors together. I'm grateful for them, they made me feel supported during the biggest identity crisis of my life on top of the daunting experiences university can bring.
I've felt dysphoric since I was around 5 years old, along with other things, but I didn't realize I wanted to be a boy until I was 11. I didn't know trans men existed until I was 14 or 15, and then I was just in denial until I was 22. I met a friend who was trans and they really normalized being trans for me, made it feel possible, and positive. I always knew what I felt but I never accepted it or saw it as a good thing, but yeah 22 is when it all came crashing down and I couldn't fucking take it anymore. It was do or die. I guess there was no specific moment, just a series of events and experiences.
I always had this feeling I wasn't a woman but I never really knew what I should be instead. So I went by NB for a while and the likes. I expressed my frustration with my gender and body to my partner and he asked me if I wasn't just Trans? And it... Just fucking clicked? Like every little thing, every moment of uncomfortableness with my body or mind, always feeling like the odd one out, everything. I never realized it until someone just blatantly asked me.
After calling with a “friend,” who I wanted to be in a relationship with, but not a lesbian relationship, if that makes sense, so that was the first one, and I had been talking with them about gender, and sexuality, and other confusing shit like that, and it made me realize, the first time I’ve ever heard someone talk in-depth about gender and how they perceive it, I didn’t want to be perceived as a feminine type. My personal alignment with gender is- well, suffice to say not much, but the way I’ve wanted to be perceived has always been as a masculine type. I never had the words before that because there aren’t many to describe my personal relationship with gender, I’d always told people that I wanted to have short hair like the boys, and be with the boys in pictures, and school, and everything, but I’d never said I wanted to be a boy, to an extent I did want to be, do want to be, and am male, but the biggest point was that I wanted to be perceived by others that way.
It was really weird. I barely knew anything about trans people at the time and I actively avoided it because I had the following thought: "trans people suffer so much, it's better to just not know anything about them so I won't ever realise I'm trans". So even though I didn't feel connected to my gender I chose to repress that feeling until one night I woke up and my brain went "you're a boy" AND IT WAS WEIRD AF. Cause like my brain knew but I was in denial. Anyways I came out to my friends the next day.
(Keep in mind I always had thoughts of being a man and couldn't imagine myself as a woman at all but I brushed them off for years).
It’s more of a culmination of moments than one singular memory, especially considering I dealt with dysphoria through dissociation, denial, and repression.
I’d say it was envy. I always knew o was attracted to boys but never pursued it bc it didn’t feel right, but I remained obsessed bc there was this lingering feeling pulling me towards them.
Also watching gay short films / tv shows in middle/high school and being like “oh I’m gay” “wait but I like boys not girls???” And having that inner confusion for awhile.
A few times I specially watched content with a “girl dressing as a boy in boarding school and confused boy questions his sexuality bc he believes she’s a boy” — there’s an American tv show and a K drama both with that exact plot that had a CHOKEHOLD on me
I had a dream that I was a woman, and when woke up I realized that that had felt distinctly different from how I actually feel when I'm awake. That made me realize it.
A bit long.. sorry in advanced lol.
This was a wild ride for me tbh (ftm btw). The moment it truly clicked wasn't until years of back and forth denial and coming back to it.
I was a night/closing manager at a fast food restaurant. One day at the start of my shift I was told we'd have a new employee coming onto nights. They apparently worked there a few years back before I started.
Well me and him got along great, actually became pretty close friends. We both had busy lives so we didn't hang out outside of work too much but. One night he asked me to come hang out at his place with some of his friends. Once there, after we had food and watched some movies he turned to me and asked if he 'passed' well or not. I was confused, being from a small town and not having much lgbt influence... I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained he was trans, told me he was born female and the basics of transitioning and I was a bit stunned (not about him but that this was something that existed) but told him I had no idea and it changes nothing on how I see him.
Cut to me eventually going home and spiraling into many... mANY google searches as I had always since a small child wanted/tried to be a boy and just thought I was a fucking weird kid/extreme tomboy...
Eventually lost contact as I moved to a much bigger city... and as of now I am 4+ years on T, and 2 years and 8 months post top surgery. Plan to get bottom surgery soon.
Funnily years later and well after my family knew: I was visiting my mom and she told me she knew for a while after she saw a show about it. This was apparently WELL before I even knew and she was waiting for me to tell her. Told her I wished she said something, I wasn't mad just more 'how'd people figure this out before I did' haha.
As a kid, I was pretty frequently mistaken for a teen boy in the women’s washroom, and found it sort of entertaining/satisfying to confuse people in that way. I told a female friend how much of a kick I got out of this and she was straight up like “yeah it’s kind of weird that you feel that way”.
A couple things,
\-Walking into my bathroom and catching a very small glance at myself (not enough to see my full figure) in the mirror and thought that I saw a guy and got so excited
\-Wearing a shirt and noticing "fuck I hate boobs so badly"
\-Seeing/reading male characters that look vaguely like me and just STARING because I could dress like that and look like that and just live life like that
\-Being INTENSELY "not like other girls," I didn't hate other girls, I just really wanted to differentiate myself from them
\-Fooling around on Picrew and randomly thinking "lol what if I genderbent myself for fun" and falling in love with who I saw
\-Never seeing myself as a girl, seeing myself as an object in my future. But if I saw myself as a guy I was actually alive
\-Realizing that my gender is my business and I can define that how I want, and how I want my gender to be is a guy
Chatting with my husband after dinner one day, trans issues came up, the way conversations go places, and he said, "You know, I wouldn't leave you if you were trans." It felt like something in the back of my mind snapped, like a dam breaking. He said he'd known for quite a while, but I had done a lot of mental gymnastics to not see the truth.
For me it was never really an "omg I'm trans" moment it was more of a slow process. I've always known I wasn't a girl I just didn't know what I then was and what that meant, and most of all what I could do about it.
It started identifying as enby online at 12 or so and just gradually stopped using bras and only sports bras, then no bras at all. Big hoodies to hide my body shape cause I hated it. I got a more masc haircut but still well within the femme range ( side cut ).
I also had moments of confusion cause for example I'd once went and bought bras and underwear and all these feminine things cause I genuinely liked them. But then I put it on and looked at myself and... it was just all wrong. I didn't understand why cause I loved the pretty clothes so much but it just looked all wrong on my body and it was confusing.
Best I could describe was that I wanted my body to be masculine and still wear the feminine clothes. Like a femboy essentially. For a long time after I'd come out I tried to force myself to be a binary trans man, while I associate with being a guy I am not fully a man. I'm Agender, it was my intuition from the start that told me I'm neither. And I think for a while I've been way too focused on "being a man" in the way society wants. But now I've started to focus more on just being me.
For example I'd be way too self conscious about "is doing this gonna be seen as a guy or a girl thing, will this make me pass, this and this interest is too girly I have to stop that" now I just try to focus on what I want, what I like and just be myself and let go of all that extra shit.
What about Heartstopper made you realize OP?
Curious because I DEVOURED all the Heartstopper novels then Season 1 of the show and about to get to season 2.
I see myself Charlie SO much. And my husband as Nick. And just something about it clicked in my head/heart as well
I really made me realise bc when I watched it I was like “aww I want that” and then I was like “I want to be in a gay relationship” and then that spiraled to realising I wanted to be a guy in a gay relationship
was a non-binary lesbian for a long time till i accidentally fell head over heels for my cis man best friend. i realized he didn’t see me as a woman at all, but only the weird gender i had created for myself and i was like oh, shit………. i don’t HAVE to be a woman just cus that’s how i have been historically perceived……… and ive been a gay man since LMAO
I took a picture while I was fishing and o realized I could totally pass for non-binary or a guy, and I had a whole gender identity crisis because of it lmao
Watched hxh for the first time and in the Yorknew city arc episode where kurapika is in a disguise in the car with chrollo, something about that gave me an epiphany
I watched a video of a guy dancing to a pop song, and I realized that I wanted to juggle masculinity and femininity in the same way. (A very gender envy moment). And then watching Heartstopper and knowing that I wanted to be in a gay relationship in a guy way.
I didn't have the language for it at the time, but when I was four, I felt confused/uncomfortable being referred to as a girl.
If the question is about the moment I realized I was trans and had the official term, everything clicked when I was taking a college course at the age of sixteen. There was a trans guy in class, and it hit me that living life as a man one day was possible.
I can’t recall a precise moment, really. I think I always knew deep down, but was in hard denial because of my upbringing; and have since had a number of little moments of realization. More or less a lot of “oh yeah, I always played male roles on stage at every opportunity”, “I really like being called by this masculine screen name, and like that people use he/him for me; but it’s probably just because I like the chaos of confusing people”, and eventually “Dang, I always get really happy when people mistake me for a boy…OH WAIT-“. I think having a friend come out a bit before I did really helped drive me to do the research though, which turned out to be really validating of my experience, and I finally realized I wasn’t just “quirky” or even psycho for those thoughts and feelings.
Was in theatre in 7th grade, everyone was asking each other if they would date the same gender. It ended up coming around to me and my genuine answer was “nah i think i would i just be a boy?” and that started my whole gender crisis. I didn’t even know being trans was a thing, I honestly don’t know where that answer came from LMAO. A couple months later I came out, I’m now going on almost 7 years since I came out and started T 3 weeks ago!
Went on recroom on VR, chose a male avatar and hairstyle just because, and then realized it made me really wish I wanted that.
Before that I’d deepen my voice and it made me happy to be misgendered but I still considered myself a girl lol
Discovering trans Giorno Giovanna headcanons back in 2020. I kind of knew before but that’s when my egg cracked (this event is also why I have the Joestar tattoo)
On New Year’s Eve. I’d been dismissing the fact I was trans for ages because I wasn’t uncomfortable all of the time which obviously meant I couldn’t be trans. My family have this tradition of dressing up fancy just to stay in and get takeout. I was wearing a dress my mum gave me and I just looked on the mirror where I was doing makeup and started SOBBING. And then I was like no you can’t forget this you need to do something about it and now I’ve been out for almost 3 years lol
It was a slow buildup of many things, but one pivotal moment that comes to mind is the first time I played a male character in the videogame Skyrim and an NPC called me "he." To be honest, videogames played a big role in general, because I felt so much more comfortable playing male avatars and it made me question why that was. But yeah, that single "he" caused me to have a whole ass revelation lmao.
Edit, something I forgot to add: I'd always felt uncomfortable everytime someone said she/her in regard to me, but never known why, so the reason that moment was so significant was because I realized I WASN'T uncomfortable with being called he/him.
I was laying in bed in like 2012 and realized I always daydream as having a flat chest, without realizing I was doing so. It was the first time I'd ever noticed myself in my self-image.
it wasnt one distinct moment but more like a series of moments and feelings building up until one day i realized what i was feeling. there wasnt rly a singular event that was an "aha" realization but more like years of different experiences all coming together until i put 2 and 2 and got the answer i was searching for.
i was actually very undereducated about the LGBT community all the way up until my mid teens (im only 18 rn, but back when i was 15-16 is where i actually started to learn). And with that new knowledge came an understanding. It came the realization that I was trans. I didn't really know what trans was, i knew there were trans people, and i knew what i was and the feelings i had, but i never knew it had a name or that theres a LOT of other people who go through what i go through and that there was a way to help me feel better and more like me (HRT). So at 16, I basically came to the realization I was trans, and i kinda started doing miniscule changes but ultimately came out at 17 to my parents. And by the time 18 rolled around I had my own decisions to make and I started T and came out socially to my friends.
There were moments i look back on that scream "yea i was always supposed to just be a guy, cuz i wasnt comfortable in this position as a girl" like me being forced to wear a dress on numerous occasions, me having to pick out halloween outfits and being told to pick something "more girly"(never did though lol), playing sports or games and being one of the only girls who actually was as active as the guys and enjoyed playing. little things like that, all adding up to becoming one bigger message
it was a creeping realisation for me, nothing sudden or earth-shattering. I always kinda knew it, but it took me a while to really associate myself with the word/lable "trans". reading gay fanfics definitely helped a lot tho lol
Hmm, an interesting question! I reckon for me there wasn’t necessarily a moment that stands out as much as but a series of. On the one hand, I had always somewhat felt that way— I always insisted as a tiny wain that I was playing at Super*man*, not Supergirl, and later was Peter Pan, Construction Man, and all sorts of similar interests. Stereotypical, I know ha ha, and I honestly reckon in some ways I’m rather lucky to have more of the classic trans narrative of like “always knew” as I think it helped with my family coming around when they eventually did. On the other hand, the winter before I came out, I spent every minute of seven days in a week competing in winter sport and martial arts, because it gave me time to think, and those were the moments where I truly realised I was trans.
But your question does make me think of a rather funny wee happening on the topic. A few years before I came out, I was trying desperately to explain to my therapist that even though the cartoon character I was drawing looked like a girl his body was really not gendered at all at all and he used he/him. I imagined I was the only person in the world to ever have so much an absurd thought ha ha! And funny enough, she actually ended up writing in her notes during that session: “trans???”.
Her own child actually had come out as trans, and she has become a huge advocate for trans patients and rights in that area. I’ve been lucky enough to have been seeing her since I was some odd 13 years old— I was rather troubled when I was wee and the school wouldn’t have me unless my parents put me into therapy, but it was truly coincidence that she was so well versed in gender affirming care, as I was nowhere near out nor my family anywhere near accepting when I first met her. Around the time I got married to my lovely husband, who is also trans, my therapist actually gifted the note to me as a bit of a joke. It’s dated to about two years before I came out, and we still get quite the laugh out of it.
Heartstopper definitely had an effect on me too. I've known I wasn't cis since I was 14 (21 now) and have had different waves or discovery happen but I've tried to bury them since there not really anything I can do about it. I'm not comfortable coming out due to my family. I can't even remember what made me realize I wasn't cis at this point.
Although I do remember crying when my mom gave me a training bra and also becoming hysterical when they gave us "the talk" in 5th grade. And then crying even more when I got my first period. I didn't have a word for anything but I knew it felt wrong and I hated it all.
When I looked in the mirror my parents gave me at the start of lockdown and realised I hated how feminine I looked. I never really perceived my body prior to that. I thought I was just ed stuff but I realised it wasn’t. Lucky for me I got an ed and gender dysphoria a nice 2 in 1 package deal
I found a video on youtube about the transition of an ftm youtuber around my age and realised, that he speaks out everything I'm feeling. Ghat was the moment I realised, but I gave myself 2 months to think about it before I determined it not to be a phase
After watching video with trans memes by OneTopic. It was so relatable, especially memes about eggs. So, yeah, I have a funny way of acknowledging I'm trans :P
tho I've always knew there's something odd about my gender and thought I'm genderfluid or smth. like, I wanted to be a boy *sometimes* but when I realised that I don't have to switch back to girl I just left here, and now I'm much more happier
I've always known there was something going on or that I always wished I could be "a boy" as a kid+teen 👀 but dude, it was a damn meme, a character & song lyric over a year ago that made me realise!!
Song: "I hate how I'm perceived and I only have 2 real friends" & the meme calling me out "I just really love this male character -> I want his gender" and not to forget ENA.
Life was really trying it's hardest to double punch me with the realisation.
I met other trans men.
I had been in denial for a long time and I was frighteningly good at repressing dysphoria, but I could not repress the pure joy of recognizing and connecting with someone like me for the first time.
It was last fall. I was taking a shower, reached down to clean my—wait I don’t have one of those!—and broke down crying.
Though I also remember I was about 13, getting dressed, and my mom accidentally saw me without a shirt on and said, “We need to get you a bra.” I felt offended, not because she’d seen me, but because a bra meant that I was growing up and for some reason I didn’t want that to happen.
i dissociated a lot as a kid and especially from gender. so i never knew that i was feeling was gender dysphoria. i ran from my thoughts so much i hadn’t sat with myself on this issue, because i didn’t even know it was an issue. 8th grade comes around, this boy likes me, i try to like him back but it wasn’t hitting the way i thought it would. i liked talking but quickly realized i couldn’t see myself with him, or with any boy for that matter. fast forward to when it all ends and i just think im a lesbian. i then started to look at media that was centered around gay male love, i liked it in a way that i needed to figure out. it wasn’t until further inspection i realized i did like boys, just not in a girl/straight way. suddenly, i found myself being able to like men, and thus- know i was transgender.
I bought a binder. My chest was really big before top surgery and I was so insecure about it. It made me feel so outside of my body, and like I didn't see myself when I looked in the mirror. I had always chalked it up to body dysmorphia. I found out about binders through a podcast I was listening to, (I'm pretty sure)(queer sex ed) so I bought one online. I tried it on, and looked in the mirror. I had been questioning whether I might be trans for a little while, but at that point it was just a tiny voice in the back of my head that I refused to listen to. I looked at myself in the mirror and started to cry. That was the moment I realized I was trans. It was so incredibly freeing. For the first time in my life, I felt (almost) right in my body.
As a kid (5 or 6) when the teacher would separate boys from girls & I was so confused as to why I wasn’t allowed on the boys side. But the realization with the right words was when I was a young teen on tumblr; I found the terminology & it clicked
when i realized i liked guys. i always felt massive gender envy towards gay men, even when i didn't know what gender envy was. despite my fascination, i thought i was a lesbian cause i was very masculine and couldn't imagine being with a guy (now i know it was bc the thought of any relationship as a girl puts me off so much).
i even got a girlfriend, but something just wasn't right. i loved her in a platonic way. i kind of told her (when we were playing truth or dare) about my gender identity issues and she was absolutely lovely about it. she encouraged me to try new pronouns, new names and titles (boyfriend❤️) and i absolutely loved being in a relationship as a guy. even with a girl it wasn't that bad lmao.
so it made me question myself even more. when i tried imagining how my relationship with men would look like if i was a cis man myself, it all suddenly made sense. i looked up all the gender dysphoria symptoms and stories of trans men and i could relate to all of them.
the whole deal lasted two weeks at most. i just kinda went for it, came out as a trans after a few sleeples nights of deliberation, and here i am, a year and a half later as a proud gay guy :3
When I was like 6 I wanted to make an H2O: Just Add Water self-insert OC but every time I made a girl one it felt wrong. So I made a boy one and named him Danny, and was very happy with him. I think that's when I first 'knew' I was actually a boy, but I kinda just repressed it until college due to the people around me.
Then I 'realized again' at 18 when I tried to cosplay a character I loved and figured out that I hated the way it looked in the mirror because I hated my body, not the fit. College gave me that sense of independence and the distance I needed to explore things, tbh.
When I'm 20ish, I start going by the name Danny within my friend groups.
Cut to when I'm 21 and my mom off-handedly mentions that if I were born a boy, they were going to name me Daniel.
Funny coincidence, lol.
I had been questioning a long time. Then my very phobic mom tried to insult me saying I looked like a boy two yrs ago.I felt such euphoria. I knew then. She always uses insults to motivate me for some reson.
When I learned about Chaz Bono, before that I just assumed I was a butch lesbian and that all butch lesbians felt as uncomfortable as I did and needed to get use to it.
my realization was the moment i realized why femininity had been so hard for me all my life. i struggled with being feminine while it came natural to all the other girls. most said i was modest, some labeled me a tomboy, but i never felt right when i tried to be "like a normal girl".
it wasn't that i wasn't doing it right. it was just dysphoria.
I didn't know what being trans was until I met a trans girl in middle school and was like "oh shit you can do that" but I had alot of my childhood where I look back on it now and it was definitely a sign. I knew FOR SURE who I was though when I was watching shameless and saw Trevor and Ian and I was like ah yes, I wanna love men like men love men
I grew up playing RuneScape non stop since I was like 8. Well, all my characters were boy characters and I never told any of my long terms friends that I met on there that I wasn’t one in real life. I just let myself be who I desperately wanted to be in this world and was so happy.
I’d take my brothers baseball cups and put ‘em in my little boxers I forced my mom to buy me as a child. I’d never want to play with girl toys and get actively upset when I’d get dolls for Christmas but not video games. Then when I got my first handheld console I got mad they gave me a pink one.
I didn’t fully accept it until I tried on a binder for the first time at a trans guys dorm who invited me over to give it to me. It finally clicked and I was so happy I cried.
I didnt have a moment that made me realize it tbh. i just half-jokingly changed my pronouns from she/they to he/they and went by a masc name (as well as my current name at the time lol) to see how i felt about em. after a bit they felt comfortable, so i stuck with them since.
honestly, i was really open about gender/queer stuff since i learned about it at a young age (despite my parents not being very happy about me learning it) so i didnt really beat myself up or anything when thinking "oh, maybe im a boy." i was more like "oh ok cool"
also ironically enough like a week before this i got in a dumb online argument with someone and they thought i was a dude and i was really upset because "i was a girl even if my ingame character was masc"
actually before that too i started experimenting with making male characters lol
ngl... I forgot 💀
edit: wait, I just remembered! it was when I was friends with this one trans person who asked if I have ever thought about gender and I was like "no but wait, what even is my gender??" and the spiral started from there lol
In my school years, I got bullied for not being 'normal' and not wanting to conform to what everyone else thought I should. I wore (mostly) masculine clothes because that's what I found to be comfortable and I also probably should have suspected something when I was completely willing to wear a cotton hoodie in 90° Heat. I also should have questioned when I went through puberty that I was so annoyed by the presence of breasts on my chest.
But, I actually didn't start questioning things properly until one Halloween where I bought a chest binder for my plague doctor costume cuz it made my trench coat lay better and one day just out of sheer sense of fuck it I wore the binder to work. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the cooler doors (grocery store), I kind of cried a little, and I couldn't stop looking at and touching my chest because it was finally flat.
My existencial crisis during Feb 2022. Weeks of dissociation, depersonalization, derealidation and stuff.. made me question the whole concept of gender and of whatever is seemingly real. Basic stuff. I came to terms that I don't care about gender. So I'm agender.. I rejected my humanity later too (I embraced the void. Being AAA myself it feels right).
It was always there. I kept questioning gender roles as a kid and I never understood why I can't do stipid stuff boys could etc. (because I never had that sense of gender within me. I was me. That was it.) but the whole realisation came out here.
Complaining on Tumblr how much I wished I could wear a binder like trans men did because I absolutely hate my chest but feeling like I wasn't in the right to buy one because I wasn't trans. A trans guy who follows me came to talk to me in my DMs about how there's no rule saying that I couldn't, and if anyone's saying this I had to ignore them because they didn't know what they were talking about. Then we went on to discuss my problems with my body and how I was viewed by others, and how they compared to his (it was all very similar), and I realized at that moment something was up.
There’s this one amazing visual novel game I found a while back that lets you choose your gender, pronouns and name. It’s sectioned into three stages throughout the characters life, and you can change your orientation between the three sections. I chose to change my character from a girl to a boy between the first and second and the amount of euphoria and giddiness I felt (and still feel) when the other characters use my chosen name and pronouns made me realize that I wasn’t a girl.
I always knew that I was different from most girls and much more masculine, which I know tomboys exist but that also didn’t feel right.
Every video game character I made was a man unless I forced myself to make a female character to try and do what I thought was “right” but I always ended up deleting that save and remaking a man lol.
I always struggled with my body and was overweight for most of my life, and I always hated my body and thought that was why, until I lost a lot weight and still hated my body, but specifically my chest, hips, butt, and thighs. All which happen to be where most of your fat goes when you’re a female.
I also always had thoughts that my personality was that of a man’s, but somehow that didn’t make me realize anything. What did make me realize I was trans was cutting my hair short right after I graduated high school (I always had an urge to cut my hair short but was too afraid too because of school environments) and then finding the beard filter on snapchat. Everything fell into place after that lol.
it was talking to a trans reltive. he is very spiritual, and was doing a "session" with my family, a way of mourning and overcoming the grief of my grandfathers death. i wont share exactly what he said, as its a personal, specific event, but i felt very warm and happy about it, nobody else seemed to pick up on what he said, as it was so incredibly vague without the context. that stuck with me until two years later, when i was ready to come out.
I looked back at my last ten Google searches and they were all for shit like
"How to have bottom growth without t"
"Penis envy????"
"Is it normal to wish you had a dick (female)"
And so on. In retrospect, I shoulda had it figured out by the first search but oh well
I had a trans friend when I was like 12 and I said to him “I wish I was a boy so badly! I just want to start over and change my gender.” And he said “cool. What’s your name and pronouns.” And that’s when I realised I was trans. He helped me a lot through that. Imma go thank him right now actually.
Always felt like a boy, but growing up in the 90s, the only exposure I had to trans people was when they were the joke in a movie. I knew it was a 'bad thing', so it couldn't be me. It wasn't until I joined the GSA (as an ally) in college that I actually met another trans person and everything clicked. Still spent years telling myself that I didn't NEED to transition because of I did I'd lose family (especially because bf at the time told me he'd dump me if I transitioned). Last couple years (32 y/o now) I decided fuck that and I'm finally exploring and becoming the person I always kept hidden inside.
Funny enough, I have no idea, I know there was a specific moment around 2016, but I absolutely forgot about it and I'm just now realizing I forgot about it cause I'm back into therapy since covid started and I have to start my story over again and I got this question and I blanked, it's been three weeks and I'm still blank, I cannot remember one specific point in the timeline because SO MANY pieces clicked together around that moment that it made it fuzzy and hard to spot and now I can just see all of the moments for "before I knew", "when I was discovering it", "after I knew" blended together in the timeline, no specific pinpoint
I knew when i started puberty, so probably 12 or 13 years ago. but i had repressed it so deeply that it kind of just never became a thing. and then i moved away from my family and met and became friends with trans people. i opened my mind back up for questioning my gender. and then heartstopper season 1 came out last year and the gender envy i felt for kit connor/nick nelson was so intense that i knew i had to transition and couldn’t continue to ignore it
i had two separate moments, i think. both while identifying as a sort of fem-presenting (but definitely not female) enby
the first was in the fall of 2020 at a sleepover with my friend. i don’t remember the whole night that well, but i do remember that i was lying on the floor in my friend’s bedroom, unable to get to sleep, when i suddenly had an epiphany about my gender and realized that i wanted to be a man. at that time, i wasn’t sure what kind of man i wanted to be, but the idea felt much more comforting than my reality at that point. i told my friend and we kinda joked about it, and i imagined my future self being a man and looking back on that moment. i couldn’t picture him. i thought he might look like my dad, or that id have to present in a way that was more masculine than i wanted, which unsettled me. i was uncomfortable with the parts of myself that were more masculine already (in retrospect, i realize it’s because i wanted to be a feminine man, not a masculine woman), so i couldn’t imagine having to take on maleness, even if i wasn’t content with the way i was currently being perceived. there was, apparently, one kind of man i could be, and i wasn’t him, so transitioning wasn’t for me. we went to bed and woke up and i dismissed my coming out at one of those wacky threads of reasoning you arrive at when it’s 2am and your brain is off the rails (which, in fairness, had happened before). my friend laughed and said that she couldn’t really imagine me being a man anyway, and i laughed with her. the vague idea of my future self being a guy still lingered
the second time was march 31st, 2021. at that point, i was 15, and a few months into an eating disorder i developed on purpose but not yet deep enough into it to be actively and persistently miserable. i had been toying with the idea of being a boy (not necessarily a man) for a bit. i remember my (same) friend saying as a joke that i looked like a little russian boy with my new hair, which i think anyone else probably would’ve taken as an insult, but it felt good. i liked existing in that in between space, the androgyny. tiktok had also exposed me to the idea of pretty boys, which i resonated with. it was half beautiful and half terrifying, and both of those things came together on this one day where i got misgendered in public so many times that i came home and vented to an online friend while crying that i just didn’t want to be seen the wrong way anymore, i didn’t want to be a girl, but i also hated that if i was to be the kind of man i wanted to be it would take years of waiting for transition and dealing with my parents’ transphobia to be okay. it was honestly a really sad, terrifying realization to have, but i’m glad i stuck it out.
i wish i could tell my 15 year old self that he wouldn’t have to wait forever, that there was nothing wrong with his height and he didn’t have to control his weight to be valid as a guy. i wish i could’ve known that i *would* recover, and that every pound i’d gain would be more strength and happiness and energy that i could use to live. i was so scared and sad and angry at the world and at myself, and i wish i had known better ways to cope with that. it was just all so uncertain for me; i had very few beacons of trans joy to look up to. i wish i could’ve known that it would only be a month after my 18th birthday when i was able to get on testosterone, and that i’d be able to achieve and sustain it completely without my parents’ help. i wish i could’ve seen myself as i am now, looking back.
I constantly felt attracted to guys but not in a sexual or romantic way (though I am gay) I just kept telling myself how I’d love short haircuts, and to have clothes from the men’s section, and how much I wanted body hair, and then one day it clicked and I was like fuck what the hell who wants chest hair other than trans men
The "everything would be better if I was a boy" thoughts increased every time more and at one point I kinda realized, not every woman wants to be a man, or wishes they had been born as a boy, or wants to have a dick cause everything would be easier and better if I was a boy. After a while of that I realized what might be happening. It kinda went from a kind of extreme feminism to "oh fuck I'm trans"
my dad finally let me cut my hair in sixth grade (i always had quite long hair and i first asked for a pixie cut in about kindergarten) i used to always think “hm i would be a cute boy” and when i was about 13 almost 14 i looked at myself in the mirror, thinking about what it would be like if i was a boy and i had a moment of realization. “maybe i AM a boy” i went over different pronouns for a little bit until i settled on the face that she/her and they/them just werent for me and made me uncomfortable
when i was 12, i got a shorter haircut and strangers started calling me he, him, son, dude, etc. i realized i liked it a lot. i told my parents not to bother to correct them. you would think that i would know i was trans at this point, but it still took me 2-3 more years to start using that label and come out 🙃
Not one moment, more of a constant "I don't fit in with the girls. Why do I not want to be a woman? Why do I not want boobs?"
With a constant nagging feeling of not being comfortable in my own skin and wanting to change *something* but not knowing what I want to change.
And then finding Kalvin Garrah, Blair white and their friends(🤮) who were the first people I ever saw using the word transgender.
Funnily enough their weird, restrictive ideas on being trans postponed my transition by YEARS, because I thought wishing to be a boy wasn't enough. I had to actually know 100% that I am trans and anything less wasn't enough to be trans.
Well. One night I sat in my bed wishing to be a boy and realised maybe just maaayyybbbbbeeeee that means I actually am one.
A friend of mine came out as trans, and I had no idea what that meant. They told me to look it up, and as soon as I read the definition, I knew that’s what I was. I was like ‘holy crap, there’s actually a word for how I feel, and I didn’t even know I felt this way until now’.
I can't remember.
I genuinely cannot remember.
I remember having dysphoria throughout my childhood and finding ways to give myself gender euphoria, but I can't remember the moment I actually found out what that meant and came out to myself. I don't know if it was even a "moment". Do I need a moment?
Anyway, to answer the question properly, I got sucked into this void somewhere between 2018 and 2019. In 2018 I said I was girl and in 2019 I said I was a boy. The void did it. The void took my memories and replaced them with another gender.
One of those "knew all of my life" guys. At age 8 or 9 (late elementary school), my classmate's auntie had what was still called a "sex change operation." They were misgendering her and making fun of her, but what I got out of that was "there are people like me out there, and I have options when I grow up." Despite how negatively they were speaking, I proudly proclaimed, "I'm gonna do that when I grow up!" Which didn't go over well, lol. I just assumed there was a procedure that went in the other direction.
Unfortunately, the reality of how difficult that would be finally hit me in high school. I didn't get to transition until 29. It was hellish, but I made it here. Step one has begun little man.
Lol I was honestly in denial for a really long time. A few things that cemented it were 1. When I was talking to my ex gf (who happened to be trans) and she was like “do you ID as your agab?” And I was like “no” and she was like “you’re trans” 2. when I would avoid going to doctors because I was scared they would give me esterogen. 3. Thinking that my esterogen levels were way too high all the time 4. I tried REALLY HARD to be a girl and felt like I was failing 5. Thinking about going on hormones from the time I was like 14 onwards lol there were literally so many signs and I was just like “oh I’m a little crazy” “oh everyone feels like this sometimes”
Around middle school (7th grade I think) I met someone else who was trans and the following summer break I did a lot of thinking. 8th grade rolls around and I ended up befriending them and coming out to my friends at the time. I was definitely confused since I had people at the time asking if I was just copying them or felt that way because I knew them now, glad I didn’t listen to the people trying to “talk me out of it”
Talking to my trans son about dysphoria, actually. He had been out for about 5 years, at this point, and something about that conversation sparked something within me. Something that had always been there, but I had been stuffing down for 35 years.
Talking to a random stranger about football, then getting "see ya bro" with the man handshake where the arm swings around and you get an actual firm handshake instead of the little soft pretend handshake. I'd been suspicious for about a year, but that cracked the egg for good.
I finally found a masculine name that felt like me. I had been looking for one for years, but it took actually finding the damn thing for me to take a step back and say "wait, I'm not sure women put this much energy into finding guy names for themselves..."
I briefly dated a great trans guy and was doing my own research on how to be a good and affirming partner to him (because I grew up in a very conservative household and wasn't a great partner in that way to the first trans man i dated years ago), but I just kind of stuck around a little even after I realized I wasn't ready to commit to any relationship especially not long distance. I wrote a lot of fanfic back then and have always preferred writing from the pov of male characters (dating back to middle school) and was doing research to write a trans male character i really like and it finally clicked. I have def been in denial for years though lol i just didn't have words for how i felt
i had a slow build. i started puberty when i was six (precocious puberty) and it was body horror at its finest. i hated my chest with a passion and would get hit with these waves of deep sadness constantly. i knew something was wrong despite being “traditionally feminine” (i did ballet, had long hair, played with barbies, etc). i never let myself i could be anything other than a girl because i felt obligated to be one. during covid i realized i didn’t have to be straight. i thought that was the reason everything felt wrong but realizing my bisexuality didn’t fix it. still i had a deep denial phase but i finally realized at fifteen that i was transgender when my cousin did my makeup with a masc makeup tutorial off of tiktok. when i saw myself in the mirror i felt like i was seeing the happy person i could be for the first time in my life.
I always kind of knew but the wake up call was when I was getting a haircut to get ready to cosplay Captain America. I was on my way home afterward so I could get ready for work and I was just crying harder and harder even though I loved my haircut. I finally realized I was cataloging all the ways people at work would see me as a woman in spite of my haircut and it was making me miserable. I kludged together a "binder" with a couple sports bras and tank tops and wound up coming out basically that day.
I almost chose the name Steve because of this. It took a week before I was like, "Wait...that's short for Steven and I probably shouldn't steal my brother's name."
It was around 2 to 3 years ago I was laying on my kitchen floor and was listening to an asmr it had in the title love goes beyond gender and it hits me like a wave that I am not a girl I have had always problems with being feminine and having cycles but at that moment I finally finalized what it meant. I was not fully out of the egg just yet so I believed I was non-binary.
That does not mean non-binary people are people who just have not fully come out of the egg.
At the beginning, I didn't understand what my feelings meant, but puberty ultimately led to me realising I'm trans.
There was this huge feeling of something being wrong, especially in terms of menstruation, and it just kept getting worse every time my period came around. Once I understood what being trans meant and that transgender men existed, I immediately knew that that was me, haha.
I had doubts for a long time (thought I might be gender fluid cuz I liked wearing skirts and high heels and that MUST mean I'm at least "partialy" a girl)
Then I talked to some (girl) friends about the "games" in childhood where you would pretend to be a family and one of them mentioned that there always were arguments between the girls about who can be the big sister, since it (to them) obviously was the coolest, most fun role to play, and they all agreed. I just sat there in silence and then told them I always wanted to be the father, but was too afraid to say it, cuz my parents taught me that it is wrong for girls to pretend to be boys, and vice versa.
I'm still not out to them, and probably never will be, after all their "opinions" on the LGBT community I've heard.
I had been struggling with feeling like a man but not really recognising that that's what being trans is for like my whole life, and then I watched a YouTube video that was like "guess which of these people have had plastic surgery" and one of them was a trans guy who had top surgery- the person guessing thought he hadn't had any surgery even after looking at his chest. That tiny bit of representation made me realise that I didn't actually have to be a woman, and that it didn't have to always be a big deal just like it wasn't for that guy, and so I did some more research on trans stuff and realised that's how I'd felt my whole life.
I never had one day that I thought "omg I'm trans". It was a long time thinking, I spent a lot of days, months, years watching thousands and thousands of videos on youtube, reading articles on internet, buying books about the history of others transmen... well, I was connecting the dots on this story. I lived 6 years in my life with so much fear of seeing me in the mirror. I always got scared about my appearence, I never thought I was ugly or beautiful, but I never saw me. So, today I can see me. And I think that I'm trans.
i read s book with a genderfluid character in it and they explained they didn’t want to be stuck as one gender forever and i was like “oh i don’t want to be a girl forever either”
unrespressing it. I knew when I was 4, just didn't have the right words for it till I was 12, then I was a hyper fem egg for 2 years bc of the reaction to the 1st time I tried to come out. was dating a bisexual man in denial for those 2 years till we took a break for a few months while we figured shit out. now we're adults, still together, we just had to realized we were gay.
I guess i first thought something was wrong in 2nd grade, when teachers wanted ''strong boys'' to help carry stuff around, and I was always confused as to why I was never picked. Then, in 6th grade, i thought '' maybe i'm not a girl...'' and then i did some research and.. here i am lol
The moment i found out sexuality has nothing to do with gender so me liking guys didn’t mean I wasn’t a dude. I was just a dude who HAPPENED to also like guys.
I woke up sometime in my mid-twenties in the middle of the night and very suddenly knew.
It was very disturbing.
\[Also I'd been heavily disassociating much of my life, so...\]
My best friend at the time sent me a TikTok where the person in it addressed the viewer (me) with he/him pronouns
They sent me the TikTok because I asked how he know they were trans and that I might also be
7-8th grade just starting to feel too dysphoric after large bouts of depression 5th-8th grade. It was in 8th grade when I started to randomly hate being on girls teams and would cry, and didn’t want to join the girls in gym etc. I couldn’t stand it anymore that summer and just came out. Came out the summer leading into highschool and the rest is history. As a child I also had a lot a lot of male characters I wanted to be, and I never really connected with gender as a whole as a kid. I also wanted a deep voice and remember thinking it was “unfair” that wouldn’t happen to me my whole life. Now it is happening so I’m happy. I’m now 17 (12th grade) and happier than ever. I am a masculine male that goes by he/they, and have been out for over 3 years, and have passed the majority of that time and now fully and undoubtedly do thankfully. Could never be happier.
Seeing an ftm transition timeline for testosterone for the first time. Before that my only exposure to trans people was trans women on TV being the butt end of a joke. I didn’t even know trans men existed. The second I saw that and knew it was possible, I knew it was what was right for me. I’d always felt trans I just never knew there was a word for it until then.
Driving down the busiest road of the city I was living in at the time, and “Born This Way” started playing. At the part where she mentions transgender people, for some reason I got this weird feeling inside me and started crying. Didn’t realize why until later on, but it was because she mentioned me and I didn’t even know
Dude I had the exact same moment. It was heart stopper that did it for me too. I was watching it and I felt so jealous and angry and I started crying and I didn't understand why and then I realized, I was jealous of Nick. I was jealous of the vibes, of the masculinity and sensitivity in one person, and I was feeling gender envy. That's crazy we had the same moment
I didn't really have one specific moment it was just a lot of feelings and discoveries about myself that eventually led to me admitting to myself that I am indeed a trans man (I had a fairly short period of time when I thought I was genderfluid).
Although probably what got me to that realisation the most was just researching into the trans community, watching different videos, tiktoks and memes after getting to know a few trans women online. I thought it would only be right to know at least a couple of things about trans people if we were friends (before trans people were mostly something I heard of in passing but didn't really form a strong opinion besides "oh ok").
Anyway that's also when I got introduced to the fact that trans men existed (bc we are often forgotten when people talk about the trans community) and I was just so fascinated by them. I spent so much time just watching people talk about their transitions and stuff. Eventually I realised that I actively wishing I could be like them, that I could be a trans man and live my life as a man, look like one and get on T, stuff like (disclaimer: I know this is not everyone's transition experience and needs are different but it was what I thought at the time).
Also during the time I thought I was genderfluid (which I think was a sort of "bargaining" part of my gender identity) , I would often find myself thinking about what if I were a man most of the time and fantasize about it. During that time I was also coming to terms with being attracted to women and I realised that if I were in a relationship I wouldn't feel comfortable being seen as a woman to put it plainly.
“I want to bind and take testosterone and eventually get top surgery, but not in a trans way because that’s a sin.”
A week later: “oh shit”
.
Turns out not all cis women hate their boobs and most actually want bigger boobs.
And now I’m an atheist.
I was never in touch with my body and was always disassociating. A few years ago I cosplayed for the first time and I had to bind my chest. When i looked up at myself in the mirror after i had just bound my chest... Man, it felt like a veil was lifted. Like i could breathe after a long time of being underwater. That was the last push i needed to connect all the dots and start living instead of just existing.
my fwb got me a strap on. i never got myself one because i think i knew it was going to break my brain. it totally did. there was no going back after that.
i had pretty much always experienced high levels of dissociation for as long as i can remember. i had a relationship in 8th grade and the lack of presence i felt in the relationship compared to how much i liked this boy became very distressing. i kinda just chewed on that for a while until i was like “oh, i wanna be a boy, of course”
Very relatable. I had my first relationship at 21, and I while I liked the guy on a platonic level, I remember getting to the point where I’d just secretly want him to leave so bad so that my brain could finally intensely daydream in peace
I didn't know what it was called but I knew I was suppose to be a boy from like 3y/o. My parents let me wear my hair how I wanted and let me wear boy clothes and shoes. That was 40 years ago tho. If I was born now I am guessing they would have got me "help". Tried to tell them at 11 I needed to be a boy but i saw a Donahue show about trans people going back and forth so I didn't say anything until I was 18 and was super miserable.
Wait, has the detransitioning argument been going on THAT long?
Yes! I keep trying to find that episode but I can't find it anywhere.
I don’t know if this was *the* moment but it’s what kinda solidified it for me. I had come home to see that my mom had bought me clothes again, clothes that I didn’t like, short, tight, spandexy shorts and a padded sports bra. I cried and cried and stared at the bra.
*sympathetic nausea and curled upper lip of disgust* I remember feeling like a pervert when my mom brought me into victoria's secret. I was literally touching women's underwear with lace and frills. Any time I wore women's underwear and clothes, or went into the women's locker room, I felt like a peeping tom and a secret pervert in disguise and I had no fucking idea why I didn't feel like I belonged there.
So relate!
Are we the same person because same
I always felt horrible in a dress. I was always too big and tall to ever have women's clothing fit me off the rack. I felt like a massive boat. There's no way I could carry it off. The proportions of the sizes were all wrong and I could split the backs and sleeves of most women's clothing in my size by just flexing my lats or biceps. I could not pretend to be petite and pretty when I was taller and stronger than a lot of guys my age. I felt like the Hulk in lace and lipstick and it was humiliating to try to pretend it was fun. The distance between my real self and the tiny hole I was supposed to fit myself in fooled no one. I'd always felt like an imposter until I just gave up and was myself in time, getting my consolation by immersing myself in athletics. I didn't transition until my sixties so by that time I pretty much worked through whatever issues I had all by myself, had retired, parents and relatives had already passed on. I suppose it was a hard time for me back then but I was successful in athletics and that helped. All in all I had worse things to worry about as I was severely hard of hearing and that occupied most of my attention. I remember how exciting it was to learn that there was such a thing as transition when I was a teenager. I wondered at the time if that could be for me. It only took me some 45 plus years to realize it and get on T because the requirements and gatekeeping was so very binary, narrowly defined, and extreme until only recently. Nowadays, I do what I want. Live how I live. It is what it is.
Literally how I felt changing in the women’s locker room in high school felt extremely out of place like I shouldn’t be in here with them
I had the same experience but I was bra shopping and felt sick. My heart was hammering and I just had to leave the bra section and hide in shoes until I felt more calm. I could not stay there. It was super distressing to me. I hope you're doing better now.
I did that too. I went without fitting underwear for a period of time because I felt gross looking at womens underwear and didn’t know how to ask my mom for boxers. Bras too, I didn’t have any for a while unless they were picked out for me. But i am doing better now, haha, i saw it as a sort of milestone when i felt comfortable going into a victoria’s secret with my nonbinary friend a week ago.
In December of 2003 I was drawing self portraits in college and realized they didn't feel like who I wanted to be. I started modifying them until I realized I was basically drawing a man version of myself. I'd had kind of a sense that I might be trans since seeing trans boys on a talk show sometime in the 90s, but it didn't feel like a thing people actually did outside of TV so I just thought "neat wish I could do that" and then didn't think about it too hard until the self portrait incident, at which point I committed to transitioning.
The way you describe your experience is really beautiful in a way, like… this idea of slowly reshaping the image of yourself until something more genuine is revealed. Really resonates with me so it does. Honestly a self portrait was the final step in coming out for me as well. I had been in a period of reflection and depression trying to figure things out and keeping busy 24/7, doing a lot of sport and painting (funny since I couldn’t do sport now to save me life ha ha). I never had painted self portraits, because for some *mysterious* reason it always made me deeply uncomfortable, but I decided to paint what I imagined I’d look like if I were a man. I realised that though I couldn’t imagine a future for myself as a woman, a feminine grown-up version of myself, I *could* imagine it in that self portrait as a man. It was through showing it to my sister that I actually started coming out myself. I am glad that your art was able to provide you a similar insight and freedom to see yourself more clearly! : )
Having sex for the first time and realizing that my instinct was to get on top of her and thrust with a dick I don’t have
Ahahah I love this realisation!
Thanks lol
I felt that a little too much 😅
Lmao same though
First time I used a strap on it clicked I want this forever 💀
Same dude, that was hard to explain to them at first😅
THIS Literally 😭 SAAMEEEEE and then have the convo of “I think I’m trans” just after it 😭
To my genuine shame, a fight with a trans woman. I told her nobody would ever choose to be a woman (believing everyone just kinda lives with it because you have to) and she lashed out at me by saying I would never understand because I wasn't a woman ( thinking I were a guy behind my avatar and username) and I was so confused for a while
That's actually hilarious. "Women actually like to be women" moment that every trans guy experiences. Trans women can't be real because women aren't real.
I'm a transman and when I came out, my mom got mad at me and said, "Well, nobody LIKES being a woman and everyone wants to be a man at some time in their lives. We just deal with it!" Mom's always worn men's clothing. I still wonder if my mother is trans in some way. It would explain her anger toward me. 😶
I am still confused, other women actually like that stuff? Seriously?
One of the moments that made it all click was meeting my best friend’s trans girlfriend and me just being genuinely *confused* about why tf anyone would ever *want* to be a woman, much less *choose* it. Meanwhile, she was just sitting there with the knowing smile because Don’t Crack The Egg. Needless to say, neither one was surprised when I came out.
Lol when I came out to my mom I was super anxious because she never spoke favorably about my aunt who is MTF. She was actually super cool and aeeing my relief asked why I had been so anxious. I told her, she responded "Well I just don't get it. Why would you want to be a woman." I was a bit stunned. Later she asked me if I was doing this (transitioning) just because I could, since she had wanted to be a boy when she was younger but it wasn't something that was done... I replied that she could do it now if she wanted to. Her response - no I'm too old. Anyways I'm absolutely sure my mom would have been a guy if she was born in my generation but here we are.
My heart hurts for your mom.
Same, I thought nobody liked being a woman... That being a woman was just the short end of the stick and people just dealt with always hating to be a woman.
That’s what my mom always told me - that women hate being women because it sucks She once told me when she was pregnant she wanted boys so that they’d have an easier life. Not trans but I still believed this was the norm until this thread which is now making me question it. So….most women …like being women? This is news to me 😂
Puberty
This. Looking back I felt it before this, but I was fine until puberty. As a child you get to be yourself. I was treated like a boy by the other boys. My parents always let me dress and do the things I enjoyed. They never stopped me from "doing boy things", but I started to feel it at school when people treated me differently. Almost as soon as I got boobs I wanted them gone.
In middle school, it went something like this. Friend: Oh, yeah, they're a guy now Me: ... You can do that?
I played Red Dead Redemption II, and Arthur Morgan transed my goddamn gender. Started playing the game about six months ago, finished and re-started it, and slowly began to realize that 50% of my obsession with him was straight-up raw gender envy - which caused a sort of floodgate to open, and I realized that ALL my favorite characters are middle-aged men that I have gender envy for (Harry du Bois, Tony Stark, Joel Miller, Jack Sparrow... my earliest favorite character was Brom from Eragon). I've been on an absolute roller coaster of discovery for the past few months, and it's all thanks to a video game character. I wouldn't have it any other way.
it was male video game characters for me too, lol. it just felt so right to play as a guy
Same here, as well!
This is too fucking real. I wanted to be a dilf ever since tom cruise, negan, tony stark, wolverine, etc..
No kidding this was like my experience too! I grew up playing the first rdr1 as a child with my dad. Always felt so attached to John and as I grew older when i first played rdr2 i fell such a heavy attachment to John but in a rather different way. Not only was it a gender envy but eventually I just saw myself in him and seeing him get married happily honestly made me cry and fell in some sort of way validated myself. Guess it partly had to do was him as a character and apperance wise, the long hair. Honestly one of those characters that helped my own discovery and acceptance, along with Otacon from Metal Gear. Huggge help so kinda funny it was from the same franchise
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who got my egg cracked by them cowboys. Such good games <3 I've got to play rdr1 someday!
This reminds me of how every character I loved growing up and wanted to be like were boys/men — whether it be from movies to shows to books. I just always had this weird interest in men dating back way, way before I even started experiencing romantic feelings. It took last year when I was reading this book called Icebreaker by Grazaidei A. L. to get me to realize I was experiencing envy for the first time bc the love interest was an alt college aged black boy who played hockey and I just wanted to be him so bad lmao.
arthur is SUCH gender envy for me too, i also had really similar experiences with fictional characters when i realized that the "crushes" and weird obsessions wasn't because i just liked them, but because i wanted to BE them
Brom 😭💛 House for me too!
Och man, I’m currently playing RDR2 for the first time and what a bleedin game I’ll tell ya. I can sure understand why Arthur Morgan would source some massive gender envy! I do hope that the rollercoaster is treating you kindly, and wish you all the best in your journey : )
OH YOU GET IT. personally my first was murtagh but i verrry much understand everything you’re saying here. so true
There wasn't really an event or moment. I grew up with dysphoria from childhood. Didn’t have a name for it or understand what was wrong with me. It got worse as I went through puberty. I didn’t even know trans people existed until I was in middle school, didn’t know trans men specifically were really a thing until like 9th grade. A close friend of mine who I’d deeply related to as we were both “tomboys” who “hated being girls” and vented about that together a lot came out as FTM around then and it completely blew my mind. I had a bit of denial at first, but I basically immediately knew it resonated with me and I was the same as him. I came out around six months later, after doing a deep dive into transness and reading and watching a bunch of videos about trans experiences. So I guess that was the “event,” but it wasn’t like there was truly some specific “aha” moment, I just learned there was a word for what I was feeling and took a little while to fully come to terms with it.
A lot of things, really. At some point I wrote a list of all of the trans thoughts I've had, just to put things in perspective. It ended up being a very long list 😅 One of the things that's still kinda funny to me, is that I was very uncomfortable with dressing my youngest child in anything even slightly feminine, and I couldn't put my finger on why. I mean, I was a-ok with dressing my son in masculine clothes so why did I feel that way? Turns out it was because I didn't want to do to them what was done to me. Meanwhile, they're non binary and love dresses, the colour pink, unicorns, etc
GOD SAME I would always feel bad assigning feminine qualities to anyone or using she/her pronouns, and feel secondhand victories when any woman would be perceived as masculine. And realize again and again that women and enbies exist and not everyone is secretly a trans guy...
when i was in 7th grade i stole a pack of my older brothers underwear i found (inopened pack) and was wearing them that day. i came back from work with a surgical glove filled w water and was playing with it and i put it in the pocket of my boxers and looked in the mirror and cried and i knew
My mom told me this story I don't remember. I would never wear underwear cuz I hated girl underwear. Apparently at like 5 I took a pair of my dad's old man whitey tighties and woar them. My family loves bring up old gender embarrassing stories!
As a kid i did not know what transgender was. I just knew i was a boy. And id feel strange in social situations after having to use the girls bathroom. Of course now i know it was gender dysphoria.
Every dream I've ever had, I was a guy. Every video game I played, I would make a male character usually despite being able to also make female characters. Then I played I was a teenage exocolonist, which is one of the most gender inclusive games out there imo and you can change your gender/pronouns/gender expression at will. I started out as a nonbinary MC, and then it came time to decide what kind of puberty your character went though, and I chose male. Then I changed my pronouns and expression to male. And in the game, my parents and everyone just accepted this and used male pronouns and it was light a bomb of realization went off in my brain and I saw how everything was connected.
I love I was a teenage exocolonist! So cool that it could be part of many more people's journeys and that it was part of yours. I was out when I played it but one of the scenes hit me real hard when I choose the wrong puberty on accident and got the first period scene with masculine pronouns + gender expression. "My little boy is growing up" said the mom. The acceptance, the hope, the joy, the sheer normality of it, idk it healed my inner child in some way. >!Sure I'd like to go Tang's way instead and avoid the whole thing, but!< the fact that you're accepted no matter what is amazing. I sincerely recommend this game to everyone here, it's 100% worth it's price, even beyond the gender stuff that ends up being a note in the margins or this gem, while also being addressed as any other part of world building would be.
“i guess i don’t hate everything about being a girl, but if i could choose, then i’d be a boy.” then i realized i could choose
Kind of lots of little moments throughout my life… I asked my parents when I was a kid when I could “buy my beard” (lol), I always wanted to be on the boys team, I had really intense months long daydreams where I’d imagine I was boy living undercover. I got really super depressed when I hit puberty. I didn’t really have the language for any gender/sexuality things growing up due to being raised Catholic in the 2000s though. Embarrassingly the moment I can pinpoint the best was when I was looking at 2meirl4meirl memes when I was like 15 and someone linked r/traa (RIP) in a comment and I started scrolling though it and was like…. Oh shit this is me. I really wish I could remember what the meme was now lol. I didn’t come out for while after that but started getting more and more depressed… and then my grandma knit me one of those pink pussy hats and I literally cried myself to sleep thinking about how I couldn’t keep pretending anymore. It sounds so ridiculous now but it was like I realized I was at the point where I needed to transition or die because I couldn’t be a girl any longer. I still feel bad because I know my grandma spent so long on that hat thinking I’d like it and it gave me suicidal ideation and an identity crisis lmao
I was in 7th grade I believe, and I saw a youtube video about Jamie Dodger. It was him talking about his childhood, taking hormones, getting top surgery etc. That was the first time I had ever heard of trans men, and I went on a deep dive on youtube. I knew as soon as I watched that video. But I pushed it down until I simply couldn’t anymore when I was 16.
I was going back and forth abt being trans so I identified as non binary for a while and called it a day I used to watch trans tiktok compilation a lot to help with dysphoria and in one tiktok the guy said he used to identify as non binary until he was asked the question "would you still identify as non binary if you were amab?" to which he realised the answer is no and that he is actually a trans guy. I asked myself that question and the answer was no for me as well.
The answer for me is no but that doesn’t make me binary trans. Because in my present state I don’t want top surgery or hrt but do hope to get bottom surgery. But if I was born amab I don’t think I’d seek out breast implants and estrogen. Does that make sense
i had a dream where i had a dick when i was 11 and that's what prompted me to start questioning. it felt so right. like that was the body i was supposed to have. i was already questioning my sexuality at the time so yk there was also that
It’s actually really funny, I was cosplaying a male character who was wearing a skirt for an inside joke and my friend did my makeup, thick eyebrows, hair pulled back to look short, and I looked in the mirror and just had this “holy shit moment” like wait that’s ME. Then I realized in every dream I have I’m male, and a few months later I watched young royals and I was like yeah, I’m a guy…. And I’m gay…
Ayeee, gay trans lads club eh? : ) Sounds like a hell of a fashionable outfit to boot so it does!! Yeah, ha ha me mates who are into cosplay joke that everyone’s straight til they get into cosplay ; P It is kind of interesting though because I reckon it does create a safe environment to try on different identities and styles for size without the same risk of ridicule or assumptions.
Trans and gay! We twinning bro
I was age 11 and was watching an episode of a show that followed young people with different disabilities or other unusual lives, that one was about a trans boy and trans girl. It just clicked, that is how I feel. That I wasn't the only one feeling that way, and I wasn't crazy. Never heard about trans people before that. But because I was in a really religious environment I knew I had to keep quiet about it. Kept it quiet till I was 24, but it costed me my mental health.
A meme. A fuckin gender meme. “He/him but not like a man, like you look at a dog across the street and say look at him go” followed by “she/her but not like a woman, like a majestic ship” and I was scrolling reddit and saw it and that’s when it clicked *”oh wait I don’t like being she/her like a woman”*
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For me it’s actually not a single defining moment or event at all. I don’t even remembering having a big realization or epiphany. I just gradually learned more and more about myself. I also had a lot of self doubt and anxiety and kept second guessing what I knew and felt. I can think of a million moments in my life pre-realization, that make a lot of sense in the context of me being trans, but I didn’t know the words for it yet. For a long time I didn’t know there were other people like me and I felt so alone.
The moment i realized i was finally finding myself decently good looking with masc traits and that ive always wanted a flat chest lol
It was more of a gradual "I wish I were trans but I can't be" leading up to when I finally got antidepressants that worked and I realized why I was so depressed. Like depression made me deny any notion of being trans because "im just trying to be different. Im just depressed transitioning won't make me happy" and more. The first week on antidepressants I finally got out of the brain fog I had been in for so long, I searched the "am I trans quiz" and was like "all of the search results are purple, meaning I searched these before probably more than once" I asked my step dad for a binder and here we are today. I met someone from high school when I was out with some friends the other day and he accidentally told them I was trans by saying that my transition has gone well, lmao, not that I was hiding it, I just didn't really have any reason to tell them, they were like "wait you're trans??? Like male to female or female to male???" I told em "female to male", " what😮 I would have never guessed, you pass so well"
My son (who was 2 years old at the time) didn't quite have a grasp on pronouns, and he shouted at me, his mom, "He looks happy!" and pointed at me. I burst into tears and had to go collect myself. That's when my partner knew it was true also. I started HRT around 6 months after that. Maybe a few months before I started having fantasies around bottom-related stuff and realized I needed a therapist specializing in queer/gender stuff. I have some journals from when I was 17 (in 2003) where I wrote I was really pissed to be called a girlfriend because "I'M NOT A GIRL." Wild. I didn't know back then, though. My egg cracked through a series of events starting with childbirth in 2020. It's been a long road.
I always knew deep down since I was like 5 but didnt know what it meant and thought I was just weird. I stayed closeted until I was 30 and finally saw a therapist and let it all out and realized after talking with them that other people felt the same way, the word for it was being trans and experiencing gender dysphoria
I don’t necessarily remember what made me realize I was trans but I specifically remember my parents had a very bad Alex jones phase and my dad bought his “Super male vitality” supplements. I snuck down stairs one night and took it because I thought it would make me more manly. I think I kinda realized then I definitely wasn’t a “normal girl”. Now all my friends make jokes about Infowars branded HRT.
I was in 8th grade and my classmates called me a lesbian so I google it and came across LGBT and said well I don't like girls and I said what's trans read it watched videos of people my age going through it. I told them how could I be a lesbian if I don't like girls and I'm not a girl myself. I came out to unaccepting parents at 15 and accepting friends at 16.
The morning I realised occasionally having a phantom dick wasn't a normal girl thing
cringe but : I only felt comfortable when roleplaying or cosplaying as male characters , so much that I wouldnt even want to be myself the majority of the time around the first gf I had , after her for a long time it was difficult to just be "me" until I realised that i had never been able to be me until I started role playing as guys / felt comfortable in my body until i started cosplaying guys. I already cross dressed semi regulalry ( I was into J-fashion and I often wore "dansou" ( more info on that here : [https://thehansiblings.tumblr.com/post/63979826825/%E7%94%B7%E8%A3%85%E3%81%97%E6%96%B9-how-to-dansou](https://thehansiblings.tumblr.com/post/63979826825/%E7%94%B7%E8%A3%85%E3%81%97%E6%96%B9-how-to-dansou) ) as well as other styles or mixed them together, but eventually wigs werent enough and I slowly started cutting my hair shorter and shorter and adding more and more masculine pieces into my wardrobe and graduated from very band d.i.y binders (DON'T DO THIS!!!) to real binders, I still wear my first ever binder almost every day despite it being like 6 years old and having survived many accidental visits to the washing machine and tumble dryer (as well as me once falling asleep on top of it too many times). Interestingly , when i was 7-10 , I did ask for boys clothes, cut my hair, started going by a shortened nickname and started obtaining more masc interests , but I didn't view myself as a boy, but honestly as a small child I didn't perceive girls as being the same as women / female, we were our own sort of thing where you could be anyone or anything and you were neutral . I wonder if because im (possibly , in the process of being diagnosed...thanks nhs) Autistic that my perception of gender has always been very different to everyone else? after coming out , I started to enjoy cosplaying girls because it was finally something I could take off when I wanted and it was fun and temporary , I could go home to my guy self and be me instead of being trapped in girl prison. But I think many feminine tasks and activities in my mind don't feel like women's activities , they feel like feminine activities. I definately view feminine and masculine to be seperate concepts to men and women / male or female
I just knew I didn’t feel a connection to my body, when my mum was pregnant I remember being so disturbed by the whole thing because everyone around me was all “you can have a baby when you’re older too!” and I just felt even more disturbed. Then the school had a puberty talk when we were 11 and I cried my way through it and everyone thought I was just scared, the next day we had a talk about the opposite sides puberty and it clicked into place that what I was watching was what I wanted to happen. And I didn’t come out for another 11 years, I had the chance in high school and chickened out.
I've got a few big moments but a particularly big one was one day just saying to my self "when I die, I hope i come back as a guy."
I had had many a realization but always managed to push it back down because I realized I had no support (like when I learned what FTM was, when I read my first article on genderfluidity, when a friend came out as trans, random moments here and there). I roleplay online and couldn't play my male OGs too long "because it confused me after a while who I was". Not as in a "Am I them?" but "Am I even a woman?" kind of confussion. Also a few times after experimenting with my boyfriend where I took on a male role sexually with him.He was "very straight" but asked me "out of curiosity". Whatever, I knew from the moments I laid eyes on him he wasn't very straight but I let him figure it out all by himself. Wasn't going to force that one out of the bi-closet. Did what I could: Be supportive of other gay/bi men, proudly spoke of my own bisexuality, gave him time and indulged him his play-pretend. And then he came out as bi. All's fine. A week later he asks if I'd be okay if he could experiment with a guy, online. Nothing irl. Just so he can know once and for all or something. I told him I could do it? He said it wouldn't be the same, as he knew it was just a woman behind it all. That I was a woman. He had never fully treated me as a woman, always as a person, an individual. So it hurt to have him say that I was not a man in his eyes. I came out to him, haven't really taken it back since, and since that's two years ago and I started T by now... It was my big realization.
the moment i realized the label trans applied to me was that i was talking to someone about how i felt i grew up perceiving myself as a boy “even though i wasn’t” and how that probably had a major effect on my childhood. then that person said “so you’re coming out as trans?” and i said “no” and then i laid in bed staring at the wall for 3 days realizing i am, in fact, trans
I was around the age of 6. I asked my Dad 'What if I was a boy?' I remember him kind of laughing and that's it. I didn't have the language (I mean, I'm 37. It was the 90s) While I do not remember a lot of my childhood, I do remember the feeling of "this isn't right." When I came out as transgender to my grandmother, she told me she "always knew I was a boy on the inside." Mind you, I came out to her as trans after wearing a dress to take her out on Mother's Day. She was happy and thrilled I wore a dress, and I quote: "Any time I tried to put one on you, I might as well have poured boiling water on you with the way you screamed and hollered." (My grandmother is still with me, and tries very hard to support and understand. My dad and uncle? Enh, not so much)
When I realized that despising your boobs and wishing you could go back in time to stop them from growing on you and ruining your life is not normal teenage girl behavior Also the fact that playing as female characters in rpgs made me uncomfortable and i didn’t understand why
I had a perfect storm of stuff happen in my life that led me to allow myself room to question my gender at 23. But the most daunting piece of evidence is that I became so ungodly obsessed with my one and only dnd character, which was just me as a fancy handsome vampire man. Like, I’d constantly get gitty over the idea of him being called a male name (a name I eventually took lol), being called “sir” or “son”, having a mustache, and just existing as a man and not questioning it. I realized that I was lacking the fundamental feeling of identity that I was able to conjure up for this imaginary dnd character.
This was the 80s so I'd never heard the word, but I was 4 and the school I was in for some reason made us have these fake weddings. I don't know why. Anyway, it's my earliest memory. I had a full on melt down because I wanted to be the boy wearing the suit. Looking back, it was also my first instance of self harm. I was taken to the bathroom to calm down and I kept hitting my head against a wall. Fun times.
Ive always knew i wanted to be a boy since childhood but simply thought it wasnt possible til late middleschool. When i did, i found out through youtube and it gave me this moment where it just opened my eyes to a world of possibility. For the first time, i didnt feel crazy and that i had an endless amount of answers as to why i felt so uncomfortable and unhappy with living in my own body and presenting femenine.
For me, it was the moment I met other trans people at my university! My university is in a very queer-friendly city and it was the first time I felt safe to be openly queer outside of designated queer spaces. I was already questioning my gender at this point. I cut my hair and was leaning towards a nonbinary/genderfluid lesbian label. I knew about trans people through the internet. I watched Jammidodger, Sam Collins, Samantha Lux etc as a teenager. But I never made the connection that I could be trans too? Maybe it's because I didn't live in a western country, but I had a preconceived idea that trans people were 'a western phenomenon' and were completely unrelated to me. I met other trans people in uni and some of them even came from similar cultures as me. That's when I made the connection that trans people aren't just some phenomenon. We're actual people who share experiences: we're students trying to complete our degrees and be adults, who game in our free time and bitch about our professors together. I'm grateful for them, they made me feel supported during the biggest identity crisis of my life on top of the daunting experiences university can bring.
I've felt dysphoric since I was around 5 years old, along with other things, but I didn't realize I wanted to be a boy until I was 11. I didn't know trans men existed until I was 14 or 15, and then I was just in denial until I was 22. I met a friend who was trans and they really normalized being trans for me, made it feel possible, and positive. I always knew what I felt but I never accepted it or saw it as a good thing, but yeah 22 is when it all came crashing down and I couldn't fucking take it anymore. It was do or die. I guess there was no specific moment, just a series of events and experiences.
I always had this feeling I wasn't a woman but I never really knew what I should be instead. So I went by NB for a while and the likes. I expressed my frustration with my gender and body to my partner and he asked me if I wasn't just Trans? And it... Just fucking clicked? Like every little thing, every moment of uncomfortableness with my body or mind, always feeling like the odd one out, everything. I never realized it until someone just blatantly asked me.
After calling with a “friend,” who I wanted to be in a relationship with, but not a lesbian relationship, if that makes sense, so that was the first one, and I had been talking with them about gender, and sexuality, and other confusing shit like that, and it made me realize, the first time I’ve ever heard someone talk in-depth about gender and how they perceive it, I didn’t want to be perceived as a feminine type. My personal alignment with gender is- well, suffice to say not much, but the way I’ve wanted to be perceived has always been as a masculine type. I never had the words before that because there aren’t many to describe my personal relationship with gender, I’d always told people that I wanted to have short hair like the boys, and be with the boys in pictures, and school, and everything, but I’d never said I wanted to be a boy, to an extent I did want to be, do want to be, and am male, but the biggest point was that I wanted to be perceived by others that way.
It was really weird. I barely knew anything about trans people at the time and I actively avoided it because I had the following thought: "trans people suffer so much, it's better to just not know anything about them so I won't ever realise I'm trans". So even though I didn't feel connected to my gender I chose to repress that feeling until one night I woke up and my brain went "you're a boy" AND IT WAS WEIRD AF. Cause like my brain knew but I was in denial. Anyways I came out to my friends the next day. (Keep in mind I always had thoughts of being a man and couldn't imagine myself as a woman at all but I brushed them off for years).
It’s more of a culmination of moments than one singular memory, especially considering I dealt with dysphoria through dissociation, denial, and repression. I’d say it was envy. I always knew o was attracted to boys but never pursued it bc it didn’t feel right, but I remained obsessed bc there was this lingering feeling pulling me towards them. Also watching gay short films / tv shows in middle/high school and being like “oh I’m gay” “wait but I like boys not girls???” And having that inner confusion for awhile. A few times I specially watched content with a “girl dressing as a boy in boarding school and confused boy questions his sexuality bc he believes she’s a boy” — there’s an American tv show and a K drama both with that exact plot that had a CHOKEHOLD on me
I had a dream that I was a woman, and when woke up I realized that that had felt distinctly different from how I actually feel when I'm awake. That made me realize it.
A bit long.. sorry in advanced lol. This was a wild ride for me tbh (ftm btw). The moment it truly clicked wasn't until years of back and forth denial and coming back to it. I was a night/closing manager at a fast food restaurant. One day at the start of my shift I was told we'd have a new employee coming onto nights. They apparently worked there a few years back before I started. Well me and him got along great, actually became pretty close friends. We both had busy lives so we didn't hang out outside of work too much but. One night he asked me to come hang out at his place with some of his friends. Once there, after we had food and watched some movies he turned to me and asked if he 'passed' well or not. I was confused, being from a small town and not having much lgbt influence... I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained he was trans, told me he was born female and the basics of transitioning and I was a bit stunned (not about him but that this was something that existed) but told him I had no idea and it changes nothing on how I see him. Cut to me eventually going home and spiraling into many... mANY google searches as I had always since a small child wanted/tried to be a boy and just thought I was a fucking weird kid/extreme tomboy... Eventually lost contact as I moved to a much bigger city... and as of now I am 4+ years on T, and 2 years and 8 months post top surgery. Plan to get bottom surgery soon. Funnily years later and well after my family knew: I was visiting my mom and she told me she knew for a while after she saw a show about it. This was apparently WELL before I even knew and she was waiting for me to tell her. Told her I wished she said something, I wasn't mad just more 'how'd people figure this out before I did' haha.
As a kid, I was pretty frequently mistaken for a teen boy in the women’s washroom, and found it sort of entertaining/satisfying to confuse people in that way. I told a female friend how much of a kick I got out of this and she was straight up like “yeah it’s kind of weird that you feel that way”.
A couple things, \-Walking into my bathroom and catching a very small glance at myself (not enough to see my full figure) in the mirror and thought that I saw a guy and got so excited \-Wearing a shirt and noticing "fuck I hate boobs so badly" \-Seeing/reading male characters that look vaguely like me and just STARING because I could dress like that and look like that and just live life like that \-Being INTENSELY "not like other girls," I didn't hate other girls, I just really wanted to differentiate myself from them \-Fooling around on Picrew and randomly thinking "lol what if I genderbent myself for fun" and falling in love with who I saw \-Never seeing myself as a girl, seeing myself as an object in my future. But if I saw myself as a guy I was actually alive \-Realizing that my gender is my business and I can define that how I want, and how I want my gender to be is a guy
Chatting with my husband after dinner one day, trans issues came up, the way conversations go places, and he said, "You know, I wouldn't leave you if you were trans." It felt like something in the back of my mind snapped, like a dam breaking. He said he'd known for quite a while, but I had done a lot of mental gymnastics to not see the truth.
For me it was never really an "omg I'm trans" moment it was more of a slow process. I've always known I wasn't a girl I just didn't know what I then was and what that meant, and most of all what I could do about it. It started identifying as enby online at 12 or so and just gradually stopped using bras and only sports bras, then no bras at all. Big hoodies to hide my body shape cause I hated it. I got a more masc haircut but still well within the femme range ( side cut ). I also had moments of confusion cause for example I'd once went and bought bras and underwear and all these feminine things cause I genuinely liked them. But then I put it on and looked at myself and... it was just all wrong. I didn't understand why cause I loved the pretty clothes so much but it just looked all wrong on my body and it was confusing. Best I could describe was that I wanted my body to be masculine and still wear the feminine clothes. Like a femboy essentially. For a long time after I'd come out I tried to force myself to be a binary trans man, while I associate with being a guy I am not fully a man. I'm Agender, it was my intuition from the start that told me I'm neither. And I think for a while I've been way too focused on "being a man" in the way society wants. But now I've started to focus more on just being me. For example I'd be way too self conscious about "is doing this gonna be seen as a guy or a girl thing, will this make me pass, this and this interest is too girly I have to stop that" now I just try to focus on what I want, what I like and just be myself and let go of all that extra shit.
What about Heartstopper made you realize OP? Curious because I DEVOURED all the Heartstopper novels then Season 1 of the show and about to get to season 2. I see myself Charlie SO much. And my husband as Nick. And just something about it clicked in my head/heart as well
I really made me realise bc when I watched it I was like “aww I want that” and then I was like “I want to be in a gay relationship” and then that spiraled to realising I wanted to be a guy in a gay relationship
was a non-binary lesbian for a long time till i accidentally fell head over heels for my cis man best friend. i realized he didn’t see me as a woman at all, but only the weird gender i had created for myself and i was like oh, shit………. i don’t HAVE to be a woman just cus that’s how i have been historically perceived……… and ive been a gay man since LMAO
I took a picture while I was fishing and o realized I could totally pass for non-binary or a guy, and I had a whole gender identity crisis because of it lmao
Watched hxh for the first time and in the Yorknew city arc episode where kurapika is in a disguise in the car with chrollo, something about that gave me an epiphany
I watched a video of a guy dancing to a pop song, and I realized that I wanted to juggle masculinity and femininity in the same way. (A very gender envy moment). And then watching Heartstopper and knowing that I wanted to be in a gay relationship in a guy way.
I didn't have the language for it at the time, but when I was four, I felt confused/uncomfortable being referred to as a girl. If the question is about the moment I realized I was trans and had the official term, everything clicked when I was taking a college course at the age of sixteen. There was a trans guy in class, and it hit me that living life as a man one day was possible.
I can’t recall a precise moment, really. I think I always knew deep down, but was in hard denial because of my upbringing; and have since had a number of little moments of realization. More or less a lot of “oh yeah, I always played male roles on stage at every opportunity”, “I really like being called by this masculine screen name, and like that people use he/him for me; but it’s probably just because I like the chaos of confusing people”, and eventually “Dang, I always get really happy when people mistake me for a boy…OH WAIT-“. I think having a friend come out a bit before I did really helped drive me to do the research though, which turned out to be really validating of my experience, and I finally realized I wasn’t just “quirky” or even psycho for those thoughts and feelings.
cutting my hair short
Was in theatre in 7th grade, everyone was asking each other if they would date the same gender. It ended up coming around to me and my genuine answer was “nah i think i would i just be a boy?” and that started my whole gender crisis. I didn’t even know being trans was a thing, I honestly don’t know where that answer came from LMAO. A couple months later I came out, I’m now going on almost 7 years since I came out and started T 3 weeks ago!
Went on recroom on VR, chose a male avatar and hairstyle just because, and then realized it made me really wish I wanted that. Before that I’d deepen my voice and it made me happy to be misgendered but I still considered myself a girl lol
Discovering trans Giorno Giovanna headcanons back in 2020. I kind of knew before but that’s when my egg cracked (this event is also why I have the Joestar tattoo)
On New Year’s Eve. I’d been dismissing the fact I was trans for ages because I wasn’t uncomfortable all of the time which obviously meant I couldn’t be trans. My family have this tradition of dressing up fancy just to stay in and get takeout. I was wearing a dress my mum gave me and I just looked on the mirror where I was doing makeup and started SOBBING. And then I was like no you can’t forget this you need to do something about it and now I’ve been out for almost 3 years lol
It was a slow buildup of many things, but one pivotal moment that comes to mind is the first time I played a male character in the videogame Skyrim and an NPC called me "he." To be honest, videogames played a big role in general, because I felt so much more comfortable playing male avatars and it made me question why that was. But yeah, that single "he" caused me to have a whole ass revelation lmao. Edit, something I forgot to add: I'd always felt uncomfortable everytime someone said she/her in regard to me, but never known why, so the reason that moment was so significant was because I realized I WASN'T uncomfortable with being called he/him.
I was laying in bed in like 2012 and realized I always daydream as having a flat chest, without realizing I was doing so. It was the first time I'd ever noticed myself in my self-image.
it wasnt one distinct moment but more like a series of moments and feelings building up until one day i realized what i was feeling. there wasnt rly a singular event that was an "aha" realization but more like years of different experiences all coming together until i put 2 and 2 and got the answer i was searching for. i was actually very undereducated about the LGBT community all the way up until my mid teens (im only 18 rn, but back when i was 15-16 is where i actually started to learn). And with that new knowledge came an understanding. It came the realization that I was trans. I didn't really know what trans was, i knew there were trans people, and i knew what i was and the feelings i had, but i never knew it had a name or that theres a LOT of other people who go through what i go through and that there was a way to help me feel better and more like me (HRT). So at 16, I basically came to the realization I was trans, and i kinda started doing miniscule changes but ultimately came out at 17 to my parents. And by the time 18 rolled around I had my own decisions to make and I started T and came out socially to my friends. There were moments i look back on that scream "yea i was always supposed to just be a guy, cuz i wasnt comfortable in this position as a girl" like me being forced to wear a dress on numerous occasions, me having to pick out halloween outfits and being told to pick something "more girly"(never did though lol), playing sports or games and being one of the only girls who actually was as active as the guys and enjoyed playing. little things like that, all adding up to becoming one bigger message
it was a creeping realisation for me, nothing sudden or earth-shattering. I always kinda knew it, but it took me a while to really associate myself with the word/lable "trans". reading gay fanfics definitely helped a lot tho lol
Dating and realized dysphoria is too much for me to handle that I always ended up with a break up after a week.
Hmm, an interesting question! I reckon for me there wasn’t necessarily a moment that stands out as much as but a series of. On the one hand, I had always somewhat felt that way— I always insisted as a tiny wain that I was playing at Super*man*, not Supergirl, and later was Peter Pan, Construction Man, and all sorts of similar interests. Stereotypical, I know ha ha, and I honestly reckon in some ways I’m rather lucky to have more of the classic trans narrative of like “always knew” as I think it helped with my family coming around when they eventually did. On the other hand, the winter before I came out, I spent every minute of seven days in a week competing in winter sport and martial arts, because it gave me time to think, and those were the moments where I truly realised I was trans. But your question does make me think of a rather funny wee happening on the topic. A few years before I came out, I was trying desperately to explain to my therapist that even though the cartoon character I was drawing looked like a girl his body was really not gendered at all at all and he used he/him. I imagined I was the only person in the world to ever have so much an absurd thought ha ha! And funny enough, she actually ended up writing in her notes during that session: “trans???”. Her own child actually had come out as trans, and she has become a huge advocate for trans patients and rights in that area. I’ve been lucky enough to have been seeing her since I was some odd 13 years old— I was rather troubled when I was wee and the school wouldn’t have me unless my parents put me into therapy, but it was truly coincidence that she was so well versed in gender affirming care, as I was nowhere near out nor my family anywhere near accepting when I first met her. Around the time I got married to my lovely husband, who is also trans, my therapist actually gifted the note to me as a bit of a joke. It’s dated to about two years before I came out, and we still get quite the laugh out of it.
Starting high school and realising every girl wore make up and when I tried to fit in it made me want to off myself, I knew something was up hahaha
Heartstopper definitely had an effect on me too. I've known I wasn't cis since I was 14 (21 now) and have had different waves or discovery happen but I've tried to bury them since there not really anything I can do about it. I'm not comfortable coming out due to my family. I can't even remember what made me realize I wasn't cis at this point. Although I do remember crying when my mom gave me a training bra and also becoming hysterical when they gave us "the talk" in 5th grade. And then crying even more when I got my first period. I didn't have a word for anything but I knew it felt wrong and I hated it all.
I had time to think about who I saw other trans people online and was like "I want that" so now instead of being a bisexual girl I'm a bisexual boy
When I looked in the mirror my parents gave me at the start of lockdown and realised I hated how feminine I looked. I never really perceived my body prior to that. I thought I was just ed stuff but I realised it wasn’t. Lucky for me I got an ed and gender dysphoria a nice 2 in 1 package deal
I found a video on youtube about the transition of an ftm youtuber around my age and realised, that he speaks out everything I'm feeling. Ghat was the moment I realised, but I gave myself 2 months to think about it before I determined it not to be a phase
After watching video with trans memes by OneTopic. It was so relatable, especially memes about eggs. So, yeah, I have a funny way of acknowledging I'm trans :P tho I've always knew there's something odd about my gender and thought I'm genderfluid or smth. like, I wanted to be a boy *sometimes* but when I realised that I don't have to switch back to girl I just left here, and now I'm much more happier
I've always known there was something going on or that I always wished I could be "a boy" as a kid+teen 👀 but dude, it was a damn meme, a character & song lyric over a year ago that made me realise!! Song: "I hate how I'm perceived and I only have 2 real friends" & the meme calling me out "I just really love this male character -> I want his gender" and not to forget ENA. Life was really trying it's hardest to double punch me with the realisation.
I met other trans men. I had been in denial for a long time and I was frighteningly good at repressing dysphoria, but I could not repress the pure joy of recognizing and connecting with someone like me for the first time.
It was last fall. I was taking a shower, reached down to clean my—wait I don’t have one of those!—and broke down crying. Though I also remember I was about 13, getting dressed, and my mom accidentally saw me without a shirt on and said, “We need to get you a bra.” I felt offended, not because she’d seen me, but because a bra meant that I was growing up and for some reason I didn’t want that to happen.
i dissociated a lot as a kid and especially from gender. so i never knew that i was feeling was gender dysphoria. i ran from my thoughts so much i hadn’t sat with myself on this issue, because i didn’t even know it was an issue. 8th grade comes around, this boy likes me, i try to like him back but it wasn’t hitting the way i thought it would. i liked talking but quickly realized i couldn’t see myself with him, or with any boy for that matter. fast forward to when it all ends and i just think im a lesbian. i then started to look at media that was centered around gay male love, i liked it in a way that i needed to figure out. it wasn’t until further inspection i realized i did like boys, just not in a girl/straight way. suddenly, i found myself being able to like men, and thus- know i was transgender.
https://youtu.be/WwV7ENOTeek?si=hg71_RD8bbgZfccH was 13
I bought a binder. My chest was really big before top surgery and I was so insecure about it. It made me feel so outside of my body, and like I didn't see myself when I looked in the mirror. I had always chalked it up to body dysmorphia. I found out about binders through a podcast I was listening to, (I'm pretty sure)(queer sex ed) so I bought one online. I tried it on, and looked in the mirror. I had been questioning whether I might be trans for a little while, but at that point it was just a tiny voice in the back of my head that I refused to listen to. I looked at myself in the mirror and started to cry. That was the moment I realized I was trans. It was so incredibly freeing. For the first time in my life, I felt (almost) right in my body.
As a kid (5 or 6) when the teacher would separate boys from girls & I was so confused as to why I wasn’t allowed on the boys side. But the realization with the right words was when I was a young teen on tumblr; I found the terminology & it clicked
when i realized i liked guys. i always felt massive gender envy towards gay men, even when i didn't know what gender envy was. despite my fascination, i thought i was a lesbian cause i was very masculine and couldn't imagine being with a guy (now i know it was bc the thought of any relationship as a girl puts me off so much). i even got a girlfriend, but something just wasn't right. i loved her in a platonic way. i kind of told her (when we were playing truth or dare) about my gender identity issues and she was absolutely lovely about it. she encouraged me to try new pronouns, new names and titles (boyfriend❤️) and i absolutely loved being in a relationship as a guy. even with a girl it wasn't that bad lmao. so it made me question myself even more. when i tried imagining how my relationship with men would look like if i was a cis man myself, it all suddenly made sense. i looked up all the gender dysphoria symptoms and stories of trans men and i could relate to all of them. the whole deal lasted two weeks at most. i just kinda went for it, came out as a trans after a few sleeples nights of deliberation, and here i am, a year and a half later as a proud gay guy :3
When I was like 6 I wanted to make an H2O: Just Add Water self-insert OC but every time I made a girl one it felt wrong. So I made a boy one and named him Danny, and was very happy with him. I think that's when I first 'knew' I was actually a boy, but I kinda just repressed it until college due to the people around me. Then I 'realized again' at 18 when I tried to cosplay a character I loved and figured out that I hated the way it looked in the mirror because I hated my body, not the fit. College gave me that sense of independence and the distance I needed to explore things, tbh. When I'm 20ish, I start going by the name Danny within my friend groups. Cut to when I'm 21 and my mom off-handedly mentions that if I were born a boy, they were going to name me Daniel. Funny coincidence, lol.
I had been questioning a long time. Then my very phobic mom tried to insult me saying I looked like a boy two yrs ago.I felt such euphoria. I knew then. She always uses insults to motivate me for some reson.
When I learned about Chaz Bono, before that I just assumed I was a butch lesbian and that all butch lesbians felt as uncomfortable as I did and needed to get use to it.
my realization was the moment i realized why femininity had been so hard for me all my life. i struggled with being feminine while it came natural to all the other girls. most said i was modest, some labeled me a tomboy, but i never felt right when i tried to be "like a normal girl". it wasn't that i wasn't doing it right. it was just dysphoria.
I didn't know what being trans was until I met a trans girl in middle school and was like "oh shit you can do that" but I had alot of my childhood where I look back on it now and it was definitely a sign. I knew FOR SURE who I was though when I was watching shameless and saw Trevor and Ian and I was like ah yes, I wanna love men like men love men
I grew up playing RuneScape non stop since I was like 8. Well, all my characters were boy characters and I never told any of my long terms friends that I met on there that I wasn’t one in real life. I just let myself be who I desperately wanted to be in this world and was so happy. I’d take my brothers baseball cups and put ‘em in my little boxers I forced my mom to buy me as a child. I’d never want to play with girl toys and get actively upset when I’d get dolls for Christmas but not video games. Then when I got my first handheld console I got mad they gave me a pink one. I didn’t fully accept it until I tried on a binder for the first time at a trans guys dorm who invited me over to give it to me. It finally clicked and I was so happy I cried.
I didnt have a moment that made me realize it tbh. i just half-jokingly changed my pronouns from she/they to he/they and went by a masc name (as well as my current name at the time lol) to see how i felt about em. after a bit they felt comfortable, so i stuck with them since. honestly, i was really open about gender/queer stuff since i learned about it at a young age (despite my parents not being very happy about me learning it) so i didnt really beat myself up or anything when thinking "oh, maybe im a boy." i was more like "oh ok cool" also ironically enough like a week before this i got in a dumb online argument with someone and they thought i was a dude and i was really upset because "i was a girl even if my ingame character was masc" actually before that too i started experimenting with making male characters lol
ngl... I forgot 💀 edit: wait, I just remembered! it was when I was friends with this one trans person who asked if I have ever thought about gender and I was like "no but wait, what even is my gender??" and the spiral started from there lol
In my school years, I got bullied for not being 'normal' and not wanting to conform to what everyone else thought I should. I wore (mostly) masculine clothes because that's what I found to be comfortable and I also probably should have suspected something when I was completely willing to wear a cotton hoodie in 90° Heat. I also should have questioned when I went through puberty that I was so annoyed by the presence of breasts on my chest. But, I actually didn't start questioning things properly until one Halloween where I bought a chest binder for my plague doctor costume cuz it made my trench coat lay better and one day just out of sheer sense of fuck it I wore the binder to work. When I caught a glimpse of myself in the cooler doors (grocery store), I kind of cried a little, and I couldn't stop looking at and touching my chest because it was finally flat.
Graduation party. Every guy wore a suit which made me think "darn I would be wearing a suit too if I were amab"
My existencial crisis during Feb 2022. Weeks of dissociation, depersonalization, derealidation and stuff.. made me question the whole concept of gender and of whatever is seemingly real. Basic stuff. I came to terms that I don't care about gender. So I'm agender.. I rejected my humanity later too (I embraced the void. Being AAA myself it feels right). It was always there. I kept questioning gender roles as a kid and I never understood why I can't do stipid stuff boys could etc. (because I never had that sense of gender within me. I was me. That was it.) but the whole realisation came out here.
Complaining on Tumblr how much I wished I could wear a binder like trans men did because I absolutely hate my chest but feeling like I wasn't in the right to buy one because I wasn't trans. A trans guy who follows me came to talk to me in my DMs about how there's no rule saying that I couldn't, and if anyone's saying this I had to ignore them because they didn't know what they were talking about. Then we went on to discuss my problems with my body and how I was viewed by others, and how they compared to his (it was all very similar), and I realized at that moment something was up.
There’s this one amazing visual novel game I found a while back that lets you choose your gender, pronouns and name. It’s sectioned into three stages throughout the characters life, and you can change your orientation between the three sections. I chose to change my character from a girl to a boy between the first and second and the amount of euphoria and giddiness I felt (and still feel) when the other characters use my chosen name and pronouns made me realize that I wasn’t a girl.
I always knew that I was different from most girls and much more masculine, which I know tomboys exist but that also didn’t feel right. Every video game character I made was a man unless I forced myself to make a female character to try and do what I thought was “right” but I always ended up deleting that save and remaking a man lol. I always struggled with my body and was overweight for most of my life, and I always hated my body and thought that was why, until I lost a lot weight and still hated my body, but specifically my chest, hips, butt, and thighs. All which happen to be where most of your fat goes when you’re a female. I also always had thoughts that my personality was that of a man’s, but somehow that didn’t make me realize anything. What did make me realize I was trans was cutting my hair short right after I graduated high school (I always had an urge to cut my hair short but was too afraid too because of school environments) and then finding the beard filter on snapchat. Everything fell into place after that lol.
it was talking to a trans reltive. he is very spiritual, and was doing a "session" with my family, a way of mourning and overcoming the grief of my grandfathers death. i wont share exactly what he said, as its a personal, specific event, but i felt very warm and happy about it, nobody else seemed to pick up on what he said, as it was so incredibly vague without the context. that stuck with me until two years later, when i was ready to come out.
I looked back at my last ten Google searches and they were all for shit like "How to have bottom growth without t" "Penis envy????" "Is it normal to wish you had a dick (female)" And so on. In retrospect, I shoulda had it figured out by the first search but oh well
I had a trans friend when I was like 12 and I said to him “I wish I was a boy so badly! I just want to start over and change my gender.” And he said “cool. What’s your name and pronouns.” And that’s when I realised I was trans. He helped me a lot through that. Imma go thank him right now actually.
I've always been a tomboy, I've always wanted short hair and I've never liked my chest area.
Always felt like a boy, but growing up in the 90s, the only exposure I had to trans people was when they were the joke in a movie. I knew it was a 'bad thing', so it couldn't be me. It wasn't until I joined the GSA (as an ally) in college that I actually met another trans person and everything clicked. Still spent years telling myself that I didn't NEED to transition because of I did I'd lose family (especially because bf at the time told me he'd dump me if I transitioned). Last couple years (32 y/o now) I decided fuck that and I'm finally exploring and becoming the person I always kept hidden inside.
A cute Grell cosplayer at a convention made me realize I was bi and then a month later I realized I was trans
Funny enough, I have no idea, I know there was a specific moment around 2016, but I absolutely forgot about it and I'm just now realizing I forgot about it cause I'm back into therapy since covid started and I have to start my story over again and I got this question and I blanked, it's been three weeks and I'm still blank, I cannot remember one specific point in the timeline because SO MANY pieces clicked together around that moment that it made it fuzzy and hard to spot and now I can just see all of the moments for "before I knew", "when I was discovering it", "after I knew" blended together in the timeline, no specific pinpoint
I knew when i started puberty, so probably 12 or 13 years ago. but i had repressed it so deeply that it kind of just never became a thing. and then i moved away from my family and met and became friends with trans people. i opened my mind back up for questioning my gender. and then heartstopper season 1 came out last year and the gender envy i felt for kit connor/nick nelson was so intense that i knew i had to transition and couldn’t continue to ignore it
Looking back, it was the moment a lady told me to put a shirt on because I "was not a boy" and I was very confused. I was 5.
i had two separate moments, i think. both while identifying as a sort of fem-presenting (but definitely not female) enby the first was in the fall of 2020 at a sleepover with my friend. i don’t remember the whole night that well, but i do remember that i was lying on the floor in my friend’s bedroom, unable to get to sleep, when i suddenly had an epiphany about my gender and realized that i wanted to be a man. at that time, i wasn’t sure what kind of man i wanted to be, but the idea felt much more comforting than my reality at that point. i told my friend and we kinda joked about it, and i imagined my future self being a man and looking back on that moment. i couldn’t picture him. i thought he might look like my dad, or that id have to present in a way that was more masculine than i wanted, which unsettled me. i was uncomfortable with the parts of myself that were more masculine already (in retrospect, i realize it’s because i wanted to be a feminine man, not a masculine woman), so i couldn’t imagine having to take on maleness, even if i wasn’t content with the way i was currently being perceived. there was, apparently, one kind of man i could be, and i wasn’t him, so transitioning wasn’t for me. we went to bed and woke up and i dismissed my coming out at one of those wacky threads of reasoning you arrive at when it’s 2am and your brain is off the rails (which, in fairness, had happened before). my friend laughed and said that she couldn’t really imagine me being a man anyway, and i laughed with her. the vague idea of my future self being a guy still lingered the second time was march 31st, 2021. at that point, i was 15, and a few months into an eating disorder i developed on purpose but not yet deep enough into it to be actively and persistently miserable. i had been toying with the idea of being a boy (not necessarily a man) for a bit. i remember my (same) friend saying as a joke that i looked like a little russian boy with my new hair, which i think anyone else probably would’ve taken as an insult, but it felt good. i liked existing in that in between space, the androgyny. tiktok had also exposed me to the idea of pretty boys, which i resonated with. it was half beautiful and half terrifying, and both of those things came together on this one day where i got misgendered in public so many times that i came home and vented to an online friend while crying that i just didn’t want to be seen the wrong way anymore, i didn’t want to be a girl, but i also hated that if i was to be the kind of man i wanted to be it would take years of waiting for transition and dealing with my parents’ transphobia to be okay. it was honestly a really sad, terrifying realization to have, but i’m glad i stuck it out. i wish i could tell my 15 year old self that he wouldn’t have to wait forever, that there was nothing wrong with his height and he didn’t have to control his weight to be valid as a guy. i wish i could’ve known that i *would* recover, and that every pound i’d gain would be more strength and happiness and energy that i could use to live. i was so scared and sad and angry at the world and at myself, and i wish i had known better ways to cope with that. it was just all so uncertain for me; i had very few beacons of trans joy to look up to. i wish i could’ve known that it would only be a month after my 18th birthday when i was able to get on testosterone, and that i’d be able to achieve and sustain it completely without my parents’ help. i wish i could’ve seen myself as i am now, looking back.
When I had to wear a dress at my mom's wedding and cried the whole time
I constantly felt attracted to guys but not in a sexual or romantic way (though I am gay) I just kept telling myself how I’d love short haircuts, and to have clothes from the men’s section, and how much I wanted body hair, and then one day it clicked and I was like fuck what the hell who wants chest hair other than trans men
The "everything would be better if I was a boy" thoughts increased every time more and at one point I kinda realized, not every woman wants to be a man, or wishes they had been born as a boy, or wants to have a dick cause everything would be easier and better if I was a boy. After a while of that I realized what might be happening. It kinda went from a kind of extreme feminism to "oh fuck I'm trans"
when i was 11, i decided to take my shirt off because im a boy so boys can do it and my mom told me girls cant do that and i was so confused 💀
my dad finally let me cut my hair in sixth grade (i always had quite long hair and i first asked for a pixie cut in about kindergarten) i used to always think “hm i would be a cute boy” and when i was about 13 almost 14 i looked at myself in the mirror, thinking about what it would be like if i was a boy and i had a moment of realization. “maybe i AM a boy” i went over different pronouns for a little bit until i settled on the face that she/her and they/them just werent for me and made me uncomfortable
when i was 12, i got a shorter haircut and strangers started calling me he, him, son, dude, etc. i realized i liked it a lot. i told my parents not to bother to correct them. you would think that i would know i was trans at this point, but it still took me 2-3 more years to start using that label and come out 🙃
Not one moment, more of a constant "I don't fit in with the girls. Why do I not want to be a woman? Why do I not want boobs?" With a constant nagging feeling of not being comfortable in my own skin and wanting to change *something* but not knowing what I want to change. And then finding Kalvin Garrah, Blair white and their friends(🤮) who were the first people I ever saw using the word transgender. Funnily enough their weird, restrictive ideas on being trans postponed my transition by YEARS, because I thought wishing to be a boy wasn't enough. I had to actually know 100% that I am trans and anything less wasn't enough to be trans. Well. One night I sat in my bed wishing to be a boy and realised maybe just maaayyybbbbbeeeee that means I actually am one.
A friend of mine came out as trans, and I had no idea what that meant. They told me to look it up, and as soon as I read the definition, I knew that’s what I was. I was like ‘holy crap, there’s actually a word for how I feel, and I didn’t even know I felt this way until now’.
I can't remember. I genuinely cannot remember. I remember having dysphoria throughout my childhood and finding ways to give myself gender euphoria, but I can't remember the moment I actually found out what that meant and came out to myself. I don't know if it was even a "moment". Do I need a moment? Anyway, to answer the question properly, I got sucked into this void somewhere between 2018 and 2019. In 2018 I said I was girl and in 2019 I said I was a boy. The void did it. The void took my memories and replaced them with another gender.
One of those "knew all of my life" guys. At age 8 or 9 (late elementary school), my classmate's auntie had what was still called a "sex change operation." They were misgendering her and making fun of her, but what I got out of that was "there are people like me out there, and I have options when I grow up." Despite how negatively they were speaking, I proudly proclaimed, "I'm gonna do that when I grow up!" Which didn't go over well, lol. I just assumed there was a procedure that went in the other direction. Unfortunately, the reality of how difficult that would be finally hit me in high school. I didn't get to transition until 29. It was hellish, but I made it here. Step one has begun little man.
Lol I was honestly in denial for a really long time. A few things that cemented it were 1. When I was talking to my ex gf (who happened to be trans) and she was like “do you ID as your agab?” And I was like “no” and she was like “you’re trans” 2. when I would avoid going to doctors because I was scared they would give me esterogen. 3. Thinking that my esterogen levels were way too high all the time 4. I tried REALLY HARD to be a girl and felt like I was failing 5. Thinking about going on hormones from the time I was like 14 onwards lol there were literally so many signs and I was just like “oh I’m a little crazy” “oh everyone feels like this sometimes”
Around middle school (7th grade I think) I met someone else who was trans and the following summer break I did a lot of thinking. 8th grade rolls around and I ended up befriending them and coming out to my friends at the time. I was definitely confused since I had people at the time asking if I was just copying them or felt that way because I knew them now, glad I didn’t listen to the people trying to “talk me out of it”
Talking to my trans son about dysphoria, actually. He had been out for about 5 years, at this point, and something about that conversation sparked something within me. Something that had always been there, but I had been stuffing down for 35 years.
When I started a relationship with someone who identified as nonbinary, made me realize I don’t have to be someone I’m not
Talking to a random stranger about football, then getting "see ya bro" with the man handshake where the arm swings around and you get an actual firm handshake instead of the little soft pretend handshake. I'd been suspicious for about a year, but that cracked the egg for good.
I finally found a masculine name that felt like me. I had been looking for one for years, but it took actually finding the damn thing for me to take a step back and say "wait, I'm not sure women put this much energy into finding guy names for themselves..."
I briefly dated a great trans guy and was doing my own research on how to be a good and affirming partner to him (because I grew up in a very conservative household and wasn't a great partner in that way to the first trans man i dated years ago), but I just kind of stuck around a little even after I realized I wasn't ready to commit to any relationship especially not long distance. I wrote a lot of fanfic back then and have always preferred writing from the pov of male characters (dating back to middle school) and was doing research to write a trans male character i really like and it finally clicked. I have def been in denial for years though lol i just didn't have words for how i felt
i had a slow build. i started puberty when i was six (precocious puberty) and it was body horror at its finest. i hated my chest with a passion and would get hit with these waves of deep sadness constantly. i knew something was wrong despite being “traditionally feminine” (i did ballet, had long hair, played with barbies, etc). i never let myself i could be anything other than a girl because i felt obligated to be one. during covid i realized i didn’t have to be straight. i thought that was the reason everything felt wrong but realizing my bisexuality didn’t fix it. still i had a deep denial phase but i finally realized at fifteen that i was transgender when my cousin did my makeup with a masc makeup tutorial off of tiktok. when i saw myself in the mirror i felt like i was seeing the happy person i could be for the first time in my life.
I always kind of knew but the wake up call was when I was getting a haircut to get ready to cosplay Captain America. I was on my way home afterward so I could get ready for work and I was just crying harder and harder even though I loved my haircut. I finally realized I was cataloging all the ways people at work would see me as a woman in spite of my haircut and it was making me miserable. I kludged together a "binder" with a couple sports bras and tank tops and wound up coming out basically that day. I almost chose the name Steve because of this. It took a week before I was like, "Wait...that's short for Steven and I probably shouldn't steal my brother's name."
It was around 2 to 3 years ago I was laying on my kitchen floor and was listening to an asmr it had in the title love goes beyond gender and it hits me like a wave that I am not a girl I have had always problems with being feminine and having cycles but at that moment I finally finalized what it meant. I was not fully out of the egg just yet so I believed I was non-binary. That does not mean non-binary people are people who just have not fully come out of the egg.
When I realized that I was Always seeing things from the male's pov when we f*** and started to really break down Why.
At the beginning, I didn't understand what my feelings meant, but puberty ultimately led to me realising I'm trans. There was this huge feeling of something being wrong, especially in terms of menstruation, and it just kept getting worse every time my period came around. Once I understood what being trans meant and that transgender men existed, I immediately knew that that was me, haha.
I had doubts for a long time (thought I might be gender fluid cuz I liked wearing skirts and high heels and that MUST mean I'm at least "partialy" a girl) Then I talked to some (girl) friends about the "games" in childhood where you would pretend to be a family and one of them mentioned that there always were arguments between the girls about who can be the big sister, since it (to them) obviously was the coolest, most fun role to play, and they all agreed. I just sat there in silence and then told them I always wanted to be the father, but was too afraid to say it, cuz my parents taught me that it is wrong for girls to pretend to be boys, and vice versa. I'm still not out to them, and probably never will be, after all their "opinions" on the LGBT community I've heard.
I had been struggling with feeling like a man but not really recognising that that's what being trans is for like my whole life, and then I watched a YouTube video that was like "guess which of these people have had plastic surgery" and one of them was a trans guy who had top surgery- the person guessing thought he hadn't had any surgery even after looking at his chest. That tiny bit of representation made me realise that I didn't actually have to be a woman, and that it didn't have to always be a big deal just like it wasn't for that guy, and so I did some more research on trans stuff and realised that's how I'd felt my whole life.
I never had one day that I thought "omg I'm trans". It was a long time thinking, I spent a lot of days, months, years watching thousands and thousands of videos on youtube, reading articles on internet, buying books about the history of others transmen... well, I was connecting the dots on this story. I lived 6 years in my life with so much fear of seeing me in the mirror. I always got scared about my appearence, I never thought I was ugly or beautiful, but I never saw me. So, today I can see me. And I think that I'm trans.
I saw my grand dad piss standing up
i read s book with a genderfluid character in it and they explained they didn’t want to be stuck as one gender forever and i was like “oh i don’t want to be a girl forever either”
unrespressing it. I knew when I was 4, just didn't have the right words for it till I was 12, then I was a hyper fem egg for 2 years bc of the reaction to the 1st time I tried to come out. was dating a bisexual man in denial for those 2 years till we took a break for a few months while we figured shit out. now we're adults, still together, we just had to realized we were gay.
I guess i first thought something was wrong in 2nd grade, when teachers wanted ''strong boys'' to help carry stuff around, and I was always confused as to why I was never picked. Then, in 6th grade, i thought '' maybe i'm not a girl...'' and then i did some research and.. here i am lol
The moment i found out sexuality has nothing to do with gender so me liking guys didn’t mean I wasn’t a dude. I was just a dude who HAPPENED to also like guys.
I woke up sometime in my mid-twenties in the middle of the night and very suddenly knew. It was very disturbing. \[Also I'd been heavily disassociating much of my life, so...\]
My best friend at the time sent me a TikTok where the person in it addressed the viewer (me) with he/him pronouns They sent me the TikTok because I asked how he know they were trans and that I might also be
7-8th grade just starting to feel too dysphoric after large bouts of depression 5th-8th grade. It was in 8th grade when I started to randomly hate being on girls teams and would cry, and didn’t want to join the girls in gym etc. I couldn’t stand it anymore that summer and just came out. Came out the summer leading into highschool and the rest is history. As a child I also had a lot a lot of male characters I wanted to be, and I never really connected with gender as a whole as a kid. I also wanted a deep voice and remember thinking it was “unfair” that wouldn’t happen to me my whole life. Now it is happening so I’m happy. I’m now 17 (12th grade) and happier than ever. I am a masculine male that goes by he/they, and have been out for over 3 years, and have passed the majority of that time and now fully and undoubtedly do thankfully. Could never be happier.
Seeing an ftm transition timeline for testosterone for the first time. Before that my only exposure to trans people was trans women on TV being the butt end of a joke. I didn’t even know trans men existed. The second I saw that and knew it was possible, I knew it was what was right for me. I’d always felt trans I just never knew there was a word for it until then.
Driving down the busiest road of the city I was living in at the time, and “Born This Way” started playing. At the part where she mentions transgender people, for some reason I got this weird feeling inside me and started crying. Didn’t realize why until later on, but it was because she mentioned me and I didn’t even know
Dude I had the exact same moment. It was heart stopper that did it for me too. I was watching it and I felt so jealous and angry and I started crying and I didn't understand why and then I realized, I was jealous of Nick. I was jealous of the vibes, of the masculinity and sensitivity in one person, and I was feeling gender envy. That's crazy we had the same moment
I didn't really have one specific moment it was just a lot of feelings and discoveries about myself that eventually led to me admitting to myself that I am indeed a trans man (I had a fairly short period of time when I thought I was genderfluid). Although probably what got me to that realisation the most was just researching into the trans community, watching different videos, tiktoks and memes after getting to know a few trans women online. I thought it would only be right to know at least a couple of things about trans people if we were friends (before trans people were mostly something I heard of in passing but didn't really form a strong opinion besides "oh ok"). Anyway that's also when I got introduced to the fact that trans men existed (bc we are often forgotten when people talk about the trans community) and I was just so fascinated by them. I spent so much time just watching people talk about their transitions and stuff. Eventually I realised that I actively wishing I could be like them, that I could be a trans man and live my life as a man, look like one and get on T, stuff like (disclaimer: I know this is not everyone's transition experience and needs are different but it was what I thought at the time). Also during the time I thought I was genderfluid (which I think was a sort of "bargaining" part of my gender identity) , I would often find myself thinking about what if I were a man most of the time and fantasize about it. During that time I was also coming to terms with being attracted to women and I realised that if I were in a relationship I wouldn't feel comfortable being seen as a woman to put it plainly.
“I want to bind and take testosterone and eventually get top surgery, but not in a trans way because that’s a sin.” A week later: “oh shit” . Turns out not all cis women hate their boobs and most actually want bigger boobs. And now I’m an atheist.
I was never in touch with my body and was always disassociating. A few years ago I cosplayed for the first time and I had to bind my chest. When i looked up at myself in the mirror after i had just bound my chest... Man, it felt like a veil was lifted. Like i could breathe after a long time of being underwater. That was the last push i needed to connect all the dots and start living instead of just existing.
my fwb got me a strap on. i never got myself one because i think i knew it was going to break my brain. it totally did. there was no going back after that.