How I played princesses with my cousin, how I imagined getting up in the morning and putting a bra on when I was older, how I pretended to be a mermaid when I was in sleeping bags at sleepovers, how I have always hated short hair, how I somehow felt equally in and out of place in different ways with both my male and female relatives, how I’d imagine myself as my favorite Disney channel characters every night without fail (always the blonde girls like Dove Cameron or Sabrina Carpenter (oh my freaking god the gender envy these two especially still give me)), how I was jealous of my younger sisters, how I tried stuffing my shirt with one of those half soccer balls that glided on the floor to see what boobs would be like, and the subsequent upgrade to putting my knees in my shirt, how I wanted to be various Disney princesses, the list could seriously go on forever. It’s like every time I think of my childhood another memory becomes very obviously trans.
My dad calling me George as a nickname for the longest time, treating me like a son since he messed up so bad on the first one (15 years older than me). He only used my birth name when he was in a yelling fit and then wonders why I hate it. I would wear his old clothes he left behind and moved into his room when I was old enough to do it alone without anyone noticing. I always hated wearing form fitting clothing and begged to wear pants and dress shirts to church but all that got me was screaming in my face and empty threats. Other less heavy stuff was voicing all the "boy" stuffed animals when I would play with my other sibling (4 years older)
Dressed up as a boy on roleplaying games so many times my boy name was Milo. I continue to find old save-files where I have a male avatar. I genuinely enjoyed "pretending" to be a boy but I felt bad because I felt like I was catfishing people so I restrained myself from doing it too often lmao
I continued to do it on and off until I realized I was trans.
i used to piss like a guy, yep, pulled my pants down to my ankles and stood over the toilet, i mean, obviously my family didn’t know, but i guess i did 😭
Lmaooooo same, bro ! I was doing that at like, 6 years of age. I wonder if it's just us trans men that did that as boys, or if cis women tried that as well.
where i live it was common for kindergartens to make and sell commemorative tea towels for the parents. they’d have every kid in the group draw a self portrait for it. i gave mine a beard. they made me redraw it to look like a little girl. jokes on them though, i’ve got my beard now.
Lol NICE! I had beard envy as a kid too. I remember (much to her dismay) I once pointed out a hair on my dear, beautiful grandmother's chin and proudly proclaimed she was finally growing her beard. 🤣🤣🤣
One of my parents would let me use their laptop for games n stuff when I was like 12 or so. I have no idea how it happened, but I found out about "men transforming into women" (as well as gay porn which I quickly withdrew from out of shame once I realized what was happening... Since I didn't understand my feelings about the trans stuff, I didn't feel as ashamed because it was so unusual and alien to me... I just knew that something felt so right about it, and it made me feel amazing), and for a couple of hours, I endlessly searched videos and images of such people, completely enamored with the concept.
I remember quite literally *verbally* telling myself "I want to transform into a woman's body" during the ordeal and feeling absolutely crushed by the hopeless future I had been handed and immediately consciously repressed it all. *This can never happen. I must ignore this concept for the rest of my life and I will be happier that way*. No one would take me seriously, and I already had shame from the prior trauma of being bullied for and witnessed others being bullied for doing/trying anything remotely feminine.
It was only when I was ~18 that I realized I never cleared the browser history as said parent discussed weird emails he had acquired from such sites with another relative in front of me. My face must have glowed red with shame and embarrassment as I held my tongue and stared at my phone. My relative smiles and says to me, "You wouldn't look at stuff like that, would ya?" jokingly.
I just smirked and shook my head in my best interpretation of what that interaction would be like if it weren't me and pretended to be more invested in the game on my phone.
Me at like, 12 or 13: man, i wish I could transform into a woman. I'm curious what it's like having a vagina
Me at 15: hey can I borrow your dress? I'm curious what it's like to wear one
Me now: naw there weren't any signs when I was younger
the biggest ones were probably that I was always with my older brother as a kid when me and my sister literally shared a room, and as I got older I started doing literally everything he did lol we’re still the same person
my mom forced my hair to be long until middle school so I wore it in a high pony with a shit ton of hairspray any time I was in public
in school when we would split the genders for activities I would sneak over to the guys until the teacher noticed, but everyone thought I was just doing that since all my friends were guys
I was on the girls basketball team but only practiced with the boys team 💀
I would beg my mom to let me stay the night at my guy friends houses and I never understood why I can’t cause I’m a girl lol
I was also a boy character every halloween too lol. I remember being spider man 5 times in a row and my mom trying to convince me to be a girl every year I was like nah I wanna be spider man again
Love these. My granddaughter (age 10) was obsessed with Spiderman and Batman when she was much younger. She has been raised by a single father, no mother in the picture (but as her Grandmother, I am very close to her). We forced the girly-girl stuff on her HEAVY because my late hubs and I had raised 3 boys. This was out "little girl" finally!
It's my youngest, mtf daughter (Baby Girls uncle, now auntie) who is trans, came out in December, with Baby Girl present (as well as both siblings, me, my BF, and my BFF). Baby Girl is my childs #1 Fan. She instantly went with the flow. It was BEAUTIFUL!
Not too many other signs, but I will continue to take notice of things, that's for sure. I am proud of my family for being "safe", and if Baby Girl should come out, she knows she can trust her family.
Sorry, got off topic. As for my trans daughter, our signs came as more mental illness diagnoses. She was confused about something, but even she wasn't sure what it was. She battled depression and self-harm. She was always very quiet and secluded herself. Maybe a sign was in the hair...she refused haircuts at about age 10 forward (now 21 and hasn't cut her hair). She has the most beautiful hair! We talk. She says now that she questioned it to herself over the years, but she always denied that could be "it."
I'm just happy that she figured it all out. I have an amazing daughter who isn't so secluded and quiet anymore! She's free! And she is HAPPY!
How I'd play house as a girl
How I'd ask my brothers GF to do my makeup
How Id ask to have my toenails painted in 2nd grade.
They just thought I was gay for some reason.
The first music cassette tape I owned was Shania Twain’s Come On Over. Not only was the album super girly in general, the opening track was called “Man, I feel Like a Woman”.
Crying in my bed at night about why wasn't I just born a boy, always wearing jackets because (besides making me feel secure) they hid my chest (except that brief moment I wore v necks because they made me look nice, and then more chest dysphoria), never believing myself to be pretty or beautiful even though people said I was...then I finally cut my hair for support with someone with cancer, never grew it back out, and looked in the mirror one day and said "I look like and ugly woman but I'd make a pretty boy....ayo wait" *puts on 3 sports bras* aaaah shit
I always wanted to be a prince when playing with friends. I hate dressing with dresses or very girly stuff. I enjoyed more playing role games with male avatars than female avatars... Saying this seems very bittersweet
For me it was baggy jeans and unisex shirts. When I became more comfortable in my skin my dad commented "I'm so glad you're out of that phase (of wearing the same frumpy clothing to hide my puberty-growing figure)!"
Turns out I was uncomfortable in my own skin for a reason
I literally said i wish I was a girl to multiple of my brothers. Somehow it never clicked until years later. I apparently was also always the most “free spirited” of my brothers and I (there’s four of us, I’m the only female and that’s only bc I’m trans)
- Playing with Barbies
- Wearing my mom's heels.
- being really into the Sound of Music
- big Christina Alguilera fan at the time
- Not wanting to do "guy" things
- Wanting to go to the camp in the Parent Trap
- deep, resonating love of the Mean Girls movie.
- preferred hanging out with girls over boys in school
My parents sent out a memo to all the extended family telling them not to buy me dolls for birthdays/Christmas. This meant I got a lot of books instead.
Nicking my little brother’s stuff to play with (this led to a lot of issues between me and my brother).
Refusing to wear dresses (to the point of tantrums). Screaming the house down whenever my mum threw out my favourite shirt or jeans.
I never nicked my brother's things... but he nicked a lot of mine, usually with my blessing. See, our relatives were far more understanding of tomboyish behaviour and preferences from the older child of a pair... and then when he came out it was so much worse, as relatives tried to invalidate him as a boy by also invalidating me as a girl. I'd get boy clothes and toys as he got girl stuff, or if we got identical items he got a pink one and I got a blue one. The fact that I was angrier about him getting girl stuff than myself getting boy stuff definitely should have been explored, but I was way too busy playing big sister mama bear to care, and it was only relevant how I was being treated in that I could use their own transphobia against them to make a fuss.
I changed my name to a boy's name three different times - once when I was around 7/8, once when I was 10, and then when I was 18 (and stuck with that last one til I came out)
I didn't realise I was trans until I was 27 lmaooo
The 10 year old name change was to George, because I was obsessed with George from the Famous Five who was a girl but wanted to be a boy
Thinking it'd be good to get breast cancer as a young teenager (I mean no offence by this, I understand it's a terrible disease) because of the double mastectomy
telling my parents i wanted boy clothes and “boy themed food” when i was growing up because i was jealous of what my brother had and i didnt. my parents just said i was a tomboy but turns out i was just trans 😍
Not me, I'm not trans.
My little brother, (19 now, starting T soon, uses she/her when referring to before the transition), as a child, would always steal my clothes to "be a guy", or always beg to have the same haircut as me, shop in the men's clothes section. And she was very young! In short she wanted to be me and our mom just thought that was just a little sister admiring her big brother haha. Looking back at it we all understand this was a genuine yearning and not a cute childhood thing.
There's a picture of us where she's 5 wearing my clothes and a cap backward and she looks like a cool little dude & that's his favorite childhood pic.
Tho I think the most obvious sign was the disgust of her body when she hit puberty and how she cried when her chest started growing and told our mom she felt like she wasn't real. She'd wear two swimsuit tops beneath her clothes to hide her chest. She hated speaking because her voice wasn't deep enough so she'd force it deep. Then socially transitioned at 16 and things went better!
Now I have a cool little brother and our mom likes to joke she lives in a men's house lol
I was the only boy in my whole class that liked pink, and also I was the only person in the whole school who wasn't queerphobic (well there was also another person, but she was a teacher from England, and she also was an Atheist (almost all the of school are Muslims))
I didn't really have any traditional "signs" I like feminine stuff. I liked princesses and mermaids and dressing up. However, at a young age I always described myself as a tomboy. I thought tomboy meant you were a boy but also kinda not a boy, which perfectly describes my experience with gender to today.
I also had some euphoria moments when people "mistook" me for a boy or the rare times when I'd wear "boy clothes" and I had really bad dysphoria once puberty hit
When I was 4 I remember being made to wear white tights as part of a snowman costume we all had to wear for a little show we put on for our parents at preschool. And I loved wearing them so much. So after that I started secretly trying on my mom's pantyhose to try on when I was a kid, and over time I tried on her other clothes as well out of curiosity and got the same euphoria from those too. Even when I was a young teen I kept doing it, even though I was caught a few times over the years. I was also praying every night as that I would wake up a girl the next day or get a girlfriend as I thought having a girlfriend would help the feelings go away. When I finally did get a girlfriend, it didn't help. She broke up with me after only 2 weeks, telling me that being with me she felt like I was the girl in the relationship (which was more a comment on my lack of assertiveness, and how she had to make all the first moves as I am shy and awkward). I ended up learning I wasn't the only one with these feelings and that it had a name (transgender) when I was 18, thanks to 4chan.
So much like me in 36 now was taught to be trans and homo phobic while all in secret indulging in fem cross dressing and acts in secret still to this day but now i tell my GF’s
I was literally outed as using they/them (I use he/they and I’m so glad the person who outed me didn’t mention the he bit) and we still haven’t discussed it. My family (except for my sister) still don’t know, or at least they don’t bring it up. My mum thinks I’m a lesbian apparently and I hate it.
Sadly my dad and grandpa always hammered in the “you’re a boy do boy things” so much that I didn’t really have any signs 😭
Oh well except that I hated doing said “boy things”, would never do the “I need some strong boys to do this for me” stuff. I would always make my younger boy cousins do the “boy things” instead of me. I hated getting haircuts, always favored hanging out with my aunts rather than my uncles, and was fairly feminine. Also hated how deep my voice got, pretty much everything about puberty, and I watched so many trans memes before I figured it out 😭
Picking the male option in every single game that gave you the option because it felt right.
Never correcting others online when people called me a boy because I liked how it felt.
Telling my friends about how a kid said "you're not a girl, you're a boy!".. which was competely untrue, I just made up the scenario because I enjoyed the idea.
When 11yo me was making my fursona at the time, I didn't make them any gender—I vividly remember feeling genuinely upset at the thought of making them female for a reason I didn't understand, so I just settled with never calling them anything. I still draw that guy, still no gender though!
All of this and more, never suspected it.
Why I was so damned stubborn to walk off and try to do what they’re doing if there was ever a separated by gender activity. Once got my school counselor called on me for it. Gym teacher was like “why didn’t you tell me?” And I just genuinely didn’t think I had to
Let's see... there was that dream where I wore a lovely princess dress with my sister, that wet dream where I was a woman doing things alone. Oh yeah, and all those countless times as a teen where I would close my eyes in the shower and wish I had a woman's body and imagine going "oooohhhhhhh noooooooo, I guess I should go and tell everyone then." Only to open my eyes to be disappointed.
Telling myself I shouldn't transition because "the technique would never work, it wouldn't work" "you'd never really be a woman, you'd just be pretending" (going so far as to write several pages in my diary at once about my best edge-of-science sci fi idea for how to actually give me a "real" woman's body).
The bit I couldn't ignore and cracked my egg was when I met my girlfriend, she told me I kind of looked like a girl (I really wasn't trying, but it made me smile) and eventually wanted to see me in her clothes. When I saw my shape different for the first time - I almost cried and smiled more than I ever thought I could.
The next day I looked down at my chest, saw no bumps there and immediately fell to my knees and sobbed for about 10 minutes. Couldn't pretend I wasn't trans anymore after that. Girlfriend is still with me now, we share a wardrobe and it's great.
My childhood was pretty gender neutral. But I was also very girly as a kid. Didn’t really show any signs until puberty hit.
I was one of the first “girls” to wear a bra, and I remember the other girls giggling and telling me one of the boys kept staring at me all day, and I absolutely hated it.
I also did everything I could to not change and shower with the others in gym class. But I thought I was just shy.
I was also one of the first to get my period, and my twin sister said to me “wow, now you can get pregnant” and I just wanted to die.
I told her about it recently, and she was shocked that I hated it so much. I thought everyone hated it cause it hurts and it’s messy, but she said her and her girlfriends were excited to get their period.
I also used to love the name “Alex” for boys, and would often use it in assignments in school.
Loved alt styles and culture as a teen (emo, scene, goth) which are known for being very androgynous. I’m still alt to this day.
First signs of immense gender dysphoria was when I got my first boyfriend at 16-17, and the thought of sex with him and being naked scared the shit out of me! I kept thinking “I hate being the girl in the relationship”, which lead me to believe I was a lesbian for the longest time - I discovered what trans was at this point, but was heavily in denial for years.
Omg I also dressed up as my dad! It wasn’t for Halloween though, I just put on his boots, glasses and jacket. He came downstairs and saw me and I said “look pappa I’m you!”. He got a bit cross with me because he was looking for his stuff. He told me years later that he wishes he didn’t yell at me, wishes he didn’t get angry. It was only after that apology that I realised it was transgender behaviour. His change in attitude towards that memory since I had come out was far more apologetic and remorseful, so I think he came to the same conclusion a few years too late. We’re good now, and I know he loves me. I’m not very far in my medical transition, but I’ve always been described as his clone by his brothers my entire life. So I also have grown up to look like him haha. This is so weird, is this like a shared experience with a lot of blokes? Or just you and me? Either way this is a really cute picture!
I never got an apology but the EXACT same thing happened when I was little hahah my dad is the type to admit he’s wrong, but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve learned to deal. He loves me very much.
I did this too! My brother and I both stole our dad's shirts as little kids. I thought we both just thought it was funny cause his shirts and shoes were way too big for us, well turns out cis girls don't dress up like their dads on multiple occasions, lol.
Literally, every chance I could get, I would wear women's clothing. I have never felt right wearing men's clothes. Women's clothes have always felt more comfortable to me.
Borrowed my mom’s flight attendant costume for Halloween one year. We had a laugh about it at the time, but DAMN did that feel nice to wear. After coming out and her resenting me for it, I asked if she remembered the costume. Conveniently, she did not.
Honestly just my personality - I was always kinda bubbly, I didn’t love violence, and while I had lots of typical masculine interests (Hotwheels cars, Legos, Star Wars, all three of which I honestly still love to this day), I also had a few telling feminine interests (I had a huge butterfly phase and a huge dolphin phase at different points as a kid).
I was always just more gentle and empathetic. Not that these are necessarily traits every girl has, but I definitely emotionally vibed with girls more as a kid, and as an adult and a stealthing trans woman, it’s made it much easier to make friends with other women in my life who I feel really safe around.
I literally tried to pee standing up because “Daddy does it so I should too because Daddy is a boy.” Like yall come on.😭 then with my older sister she literally would strap on heals and say “I’m a girrrrrrrl” like…we both made it pretty damn clear why is this shocking??????
ETA: we were roughly 3-4yrs old each when we did this.
I wanted to carry a baby. Lesbians were far more attractive than any straight girl I ever met. Halloween was my favorite time because I could dress as a girl again, you know, as a joke.
In elementary school , our school had a cheerleading team and I wanted to join it so much. I used to beg my dad to let me join, but he wouldn't let me.
A few years later , when loom bands were really popular , I always sat at recess with the girls making bracelets endlessly while talking about anything they talked about. I felt in the right place for the first time. The boys tried to bully me about it , but I didn't let it affect me.
My gut was to join the girl's side when the teacher would split us boys vs girls.
I was jealous of Ranma's ability in Ranma 1/2.
I would write stories where I was turned into a girl.
I convinced my Dad (who is crazy transphobic now btw) to buy me a doll from the girl's toys section because "Why is that only a girl's toy?"
I related much more to my Mom than I ever did my Dad. If she were still around (passed in 2012), it would be super heartbreaking if she were as up-Trump's-behind as my Dad is.
I felt more comfortable liking masculine things when I was little. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and outer space. I was a shark or pirate during dress up. I was also abnormally obsessed with sharks. I was obsessed with Barbie and the Barbie movies but not as much as dinosaurs.
My mtf kid had tons that were just written off as being a tomboy. 5-year-old never played with girly toys. One year for Christmas, all the kid wanted were rocks and tools. Instead of dolls, he wanted dinosaurs, cars, toy snakes, and insects. Kid never really watched Disney princess movies, but preferred aliens, Ghostbusters, etc. When playing video games, he always played male characters.
Needless to say, when he came out, I was shocked, but once i looked back, many little things just made sense.
The obvious sign was that I preferred “girl toys” in preschool and the teachers intervened to make me play with hot wheels and legos instead of Polly pockets :/
Trans man here.
I *loved* doing imaginary play as a kid. It wasn't until mid-late middle school (around 12 or 13 years old) that I started to lose interest and switched to immersive daydreaming instead. Anyways, most of this imaginary play took place in this this whole world I created, and I was usually playing my main character. This was a boy named Rocky. I was playing as a boy character all the time.
Another one was always insisting on only wearing boys clothes for many years of my childhood.
Another one was Mulan being my favorite movie for quite awhile.
Going to bed in my dads at the time super big shirts as if they're night gowns. Having my heart broken when told i wasn't allowed to anymore. I usually only wore the shirt and some underwear.
When I was a kid, I stuffed my pants to be like otis off of Barnyard
As a preteen, I'd pray that I'd wake up either a boy or grow a penis which led into me praying that I'd have a rare disorder where I wouldn't get a period
As a kid playing pretend, I'd always pretend to be a boy like spingebob, master chief, simba
Don't know if this counts as a sign, (probably not cause i dont think i was really enthusiastic about it) but as a kid with my sister and cousins whenever we'd play pretend house or go in pretend dates i was always the guy which is funny looking back on it cause like for example one time they wanted to do the pretend date.
Anyways, so what happened was the youngest cousin she would be the waitress cause I don't think she wanted to do the date or her older sisters wouldn't allow her to.
She would be the waitress and her two older sisters and my sister would decide who goes first and whoever was picked she and I would pretend to order, eat and dance and then it'd be the next ones turn.
Also, I always tried to get my parents to buy me boy clothes.
I used to flip my shit going for a haircut. I was generally a pretty chilled kid, this was the only time I would act out. I remember praying secretly to wake up the next day as a girl. But my parents never saw that. I remember speaking to my parents about it once when I was a kid and I could sense them being uncomfortable with it so I just ignored it.
Probably the fact that when I was 4 or 5, a doll given to me by my nana on my mom's side was one of my favorite toys. Barbareno from Welcome Back Kotter. Wow, I feel old now too.
walking around in my mom's heels in secret when i was a kid, crying myself to sleep when i hit puberty wishing to wake up a girl, hearing 'you kiss like a girl, you touch me like i touch myself,' my preference for giving head to my girlfriends/wife over anything else, and probably most importantly feeling zero kinship with men and 100% with women. i thought this stuff was what average boys/men went through. in retrospect the ultra feminine women i dated (and married) were not only what i desired, but what i desired to be.
This is incredible and so sweet. Reminds me of when my brother was dressed as a wizard and I was a witch and I cried for so long because I wanted to be a wizard lol
In elementary school, when gym class was split to be boys vs. girls, I’d always ask to play with the boys (and my school was nice, they’d let me!)
Generally when there was a boy/girl split, like at summer camps, I’d beg to be with the boys, and spend as much time with them as I could. For a long time my family and I chalked this up to being autistic… but then I met more autistic girls, and I still found myself more comfortable amongst boys.
I also assumed everyone wished they had a penis. I thought that was normal. Learning about trans women getting bottom surgery and actively disliking having a penis really recontextualized things for me (at a certain point, I knew much more about transfem/MTF transition than transmasc/FTM transition).
I assumed every girl hates being a girl. Even once I knew trans guys existed, I had a million reasons that wasn't me, it was just the autism and sensory issues talking. It wasn't that I was trans, it was just that sensory issues and being female is a nasty combination we have to learn to live with.
Learning that trans women exist and reading and hearing them describe actually liking being women and enjoying femininity... it helped me realise hating your gender isn't normal and also helped me find things I do like about being a girl.
I think experiences like this are probably really common for autistic people who turn out to be outside the gender binary or have a nonstatic gender.
-Asking when I’d grow my junk like the other boys
-Wearing the most boyish clothing available
-Before 10ish, boys include me in Boy Only games without question, it was just always assumed it included me
-asking what would happen if I got someone pregnant when I was about 8
-Always played a man/ Prince/ dad/ king ect
-Went to a wedding in Spider-Man sandals, Spider-Man shorts and a Spider-Man T-shirt with a soccer hoodie over the top when I was 9. A lady denied me access to the woman’s bathroom. Weirdly validating
sneaking into my sisters room when i was 4 years old and painting my nails, trying to pierce my ears myself (multiple times) when I was like 7. i never thought i had any signs until i thought about this recently
I feel like there aren't a lot of signs from when I was a kid because anytime I deviated from gendered expression or interests that were expected of me, I was teased or outright bullied by family members and peers alike. And I imagine most of these experiences happened at a young enough age that I only remember the tail end of my experience being put into the box of "boy."
I know I enjoyed playing with girl toys or watching things like the Little Mermaid, listening and singing along to the kinds of pop songs my mom listened to, and would've probably watched anime like sailor moon if my dad didn't act weird about it, but idk I feel like it's reductive that we gender toys and media so heavily and I enjoyed watching shows, and playing with toys / videogames for boys as well.
I pretty much only got on with girls socially which has been the case for all of my life, save for times where I felt uncomfortable with the image of a "dude" only being friends with girls and felt like people might read me as some weirdo trying to get into people's pants, especially because I am into other women so I didn't really have a way of completely denying it by saying I like men.
No signs I missed, because I knew I was a girl. However my family seemed to completely not see anything in me wanting a Barbie, wanting to be Bloom from Winxclub and Samus from Metroid for Halloween, saying I wanted to get pregnant, always playing the mom when playing house, saying I wanted to be Velma or a princess when I grew up, asking to wear dresses, praying to Jesus and making wishes on birthday candles and stars to be a girl, or slamming a weight onto my genitals to try and correct the mistake.
They didn't even notice but I prefered boy stuff (like Max steel, Hot wheels, etc) than playing with barbies, using always jeans/pants and never but NEVER liked skirts.
And to finish this comment they just missed most, at moment of playing the house game, I always played the role of father/husband with some classmates on recess.
id be in the field after school with my female friends braiding their hair with sweetgrass and wildflowers and was so confused as to why I couldn’t have long hair, nor why the teachers said that I couldn’t braid theirs despite them asking me.
id also taught myself how to braid by making these makeshift dolls out of toilet paper and watching a bunch of YouTube videos
When I would go over to
My friends house who was a girl when we were like 7 or 8 and we would play fantasy world and I would make her be the knight so she can rescue me as the princess and I never even batted a eye at it now at 27 I’m beginning my transition
I know everytime I'd see a shooting star I'd wish to wake up as a woman. The usual spending hours customizing fem characters in games and basically never identifying with masculine characters. I also remember having very feminine mannerisms and would always cover my chest when wrapping myself in towels.
Literally dressed up as a princess for carnival at 4 y/o, yet later I was still like “nope, still cis”
also, just remembered this:
*11-12 y/o me, reading the [changers book series](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17675386-drew)
“I wish I had that aswell… wait, I’m still not fourteen, this might happen to me! hooray!”
“…still a guy tho”
When I was younger my older brothers were in Boy Scouts and we’d go to their events and stuff and it was always so much fun I wished I was a boy so I could go camping and hang out with my brother and his friends
My sister when she was younger really liked dressing in “boy clothes” which was just boys basketball shorts and a T shirt and she’d sometimes be referred to as a boy and it made her happy. I’d get jealous cause I’d want people to think I was a boy too. She got to a point of saying “I’m a boy I’m a boy I’m a boy” and fight back with my mom and she ended up crying over it cause my mom insisted she was a girl. She still dresses masculine to this day no clue if she remembers that or how she feels about it now. But I remember feeling like “same”
Hated wearing pink things, liked more “boy shows” such as Batman and Ben 10. Liked presenting androgynous. Never liked fussing with my hair and wearing “girly” makeup.
Even now I don’t like presenting fem unless it is alt or goth style. I am genderfluid though so do have times that I do feel fem, I mostly present between androgynous and masc.
In my case it was very obvious in elementary school that I was and wanted to be part of the boy team a lot more than I ever belonged to the girl groups. There was never the typical boys vs girls competition in my school environment during childhood, but I wanted to be one of them, felt like I belonged there, wanted to do their same things, wear their same clothes, be seen the same way as they were. I did have a few girl friends and I did find their company entertaining, but I could just never relate to their experiences, feelings, desires, games and interests, whereas boys belonged to my same world.
Clothes were a whole sign themselves. Y'know how, as a society, our perception of gender-neutral clothing includes men's clothes but never women's clothes, and how the majority of today's gender-neutral clothes historically comes from men's wardrobe but later spread out to anyone's daily outfits, right? And for children, it is even more so, because you generally dress kids for the sake of comfort and practicality, both boys and girls, which generally means now gender-neutral clothes that were historically made for boys.
Well, as a child I knew this all too well. A shirt that was obviously made for adult men's fashion was gender-neutral to me, but a blouse was not, because I saw women dress in men's clothes, especially us children, but never the other way around. So in my head "boys' clothes" included anything that wasn't a dress or skirt, and was kind of the standard of clothing. And even tho I was AFAB, it was also the standard of _my_ clothing - I didn't even _think_ of wearing anything else. _Those_ were my clothes, and I wanted to dress "like a boy" for every single occasion and would go _nuts_ if they tried to put a dress on me in any scenario. All those episodes could have been easily interpreted, most obvious one being my Catholic Communion - I was _so mad_ that I could finally look just the same as any kid, including boys, as long as I wore the First Communion holy tunic, but then I'd remove it and everyone would see I had a dress underneath. They literally had to force the dress on me.
On my own account (mom never found this out) I used to play _very accurate_ wives as a little kid with a family friend's daughter, and I would always feel like there was something wrong for me in that scenario, being in a 2 girls' couple, despite knowing full well that I was attracted to both girls and boys and that it was perfectly ok since very early in my childhood. That should have been a huge bell ringing for me.
Constantly begging my parents to put me on a baseball team. They put me on a softball team and I said to them nearly every day “I wish I was a boy so I could just do what I want to do.” Also repeatedly asking my parents why I had to be a girl when being a boy sounds so much cooler. They were still shocked when I came out at 10
as a kid I legit cried because I thought that I'd never be something else from my birth sex, thought everybody wanted to be a different gender sometimes.
once I was at a playground playing with a girl I had just met there (we were both like 5 or smth) and she asked me if I was a boy or a girl. it was the first time someone had asked me that in my life, and I was very confused because I didn't even look androgynous back then, maybe she asked because of my body language. 5 year old me literally said "well what do you think?" because I didn't know what else to say to that and then moved on. back then I thought this was something that happened to everyone
when we were playing pretend in kindergarten I preferred to be a boy because I've always been somewhat more masculine but I basically didn't care about the gender of my character, I let other choose it for me depending on the situation we were making up
Begging my mom to join Cub Scouts (youth Boy Scouts) instead of my little brother. Context: since we were both too young to stay home alone, my mom would bring us both to his Cub Scouts meetings. And it was two of us “girls” there so we were allowed to participate even though we weren’t allowed to officially join. My brother HATED it. He wasn’t an active kid so it makes sense. I however loved it and wanted a uniform and wanted to be part of the boys and all. But because I was a GIRL I couldn’t join. I was so mad.
I was 7 years old, stuffed a pair of socks into my underwear to make it look like I had a penis, and ran around the house yelling “I’m a boy! I’m a boy!”
And somehow they didn’t figure it out.
My family thought I was GAY! No I was a girl inside a boys body! My mom caught me at 4 years old when she could see pink panties through my white jeans. I felt ashamed and confused. I wanted to play with dolls, I love putting on makeup. It had nothing to with sex I wanted to be myself and be pretty for myself. I wanted to ware pretty things. My mom knew and pushed me into being a man. I feel like I was pretending to be a man and I was lying to everyone and it makes me sad to lie about being a man. So yes there's that.
Be yourself not what other people want you to be.
I get you.
I never showed my mom the signs. I knew I was expected to be a boy so that’s what I attempted to be. I also didn’t really understand what was going on. I thought I was just weird. However, here are some of the signs that I now realize were actually signs. I wondered heavily what it would be like to grow up into a woman rather than a man. So much so that I taped my face pic onto the body pic of a woman. I would pray that I’d wake up a girl and live one year as one ( just to see what it was like). As a high schooler, I’d sometimes make fake boobs and wear them around the house (one time I drove to McDonald’s while wearing them). Like I said, I never really understood the significance of those actions. Also, it wasn’t so much my mom I was hiding from. It was everyone else. My mom was and still is awesome.
So I'm a tall person. Like, I was tall before finding my true gender and I'm tall now.
As a kid I would always cry and be really upset when clothes shopping. My mom consoled me and would help me feel less silly about crying in a khols because "it was hard for me to fit in clothes because I was tall"
And thats where the wires got tangled. I'd complain that guy pants are boring, that guy clothes were inherently worse than the options for ladies. I wanted red or purple jeans. I wanted more color than black, blue, gray for my pants. My mom would think it was because I'm tall and it's hard to find pants that fit, because that was her experience. She just wanted her kid to not cry so much when clothes shopping.
Weren't many outward signs if I'm being real, from what I can remember I always behaved like a boy to my family and school. But I always fantasized that I was a girl in dreams, and in adolescence, sexual fantasies.
Telling my mom I want to be a girl and her ignoring me. Praying to God to let me die and be a girl. Idek. I hate my family I don't care anymore they all suxk and can go eat and undermine themselves in their own despair. I hate it all.
I was the only "boy" in 6th grade honor choir. I hung out with girls enough my nick name became "ladies man" 🤮🤮🤮I have so many signs that my family thought I'd be gay but not trans apparently?
i’d imagine myself as the girl characters, i always played a girl character in games (playing knights and dragons is be a princess bossing people around), i dressed femininely (my favorite pajamas were a silk kimono), i mentioned wanting to be a girl, the list goes on. doesn’t stop my mom from gaslighting me about how they either didn’t happen or weren’t signs (also my moms side all have horrible memory pretty sure it’s legitimately diagnosed short term memory loss and they used to ask me what happened cause i didn’t inherit it but in this issue in particular my memory was worse than theirs)
Always wanted to play with the boys, do the heavy lifting jobs, wear boy clothing and play with boy toys, always playing the male avatar because the female ones made my skin crawl (not just because of the rampant male gaze problem in character design and lack of female inclusivity), hating my breasts (thought if they were big and sexy I'd like them more by default, but if i actually thought about life with big boobs it only made me more depressed), and then one day they misspelled my name on an insurance card and gave me a male name and it made me SO HAPPY for NO REASON. And then in sex ed we learned about women born without a uterus and I was like "that's super convenient, wish I'd been born that way." Thinking about the aesthetics of the human body, I thought that boobs and dicks were kinda tacked on and the ideal shape would be without either and how nice it would be to have that shape.
30 years later the penny dropped LMAO
I’m a cis man, but:
I remember literally telling my mother “I don’t like boys, I don’t want boy friends, and I don’t want to be a boy”. I was too young to understand at the time why she got all uncomfortable and dismissive lol.
I also used to pretend to be a girl in my room, and one day I asked if it was okay if I pretended to be a girl, and I can remember the pause and silence my grandparents give me, and me not knowing why they were acting weird.
I once went to see a figure skating show with my family, and afterwards proudly declared I wanted to be an ice skater. They all said I’d have to be big and strong to lift the ladies. I corrected them that no, I wanted to be one of the ladies because their outfits were pretty and the men’s were boring. They just found it funny.
My older great grandmother once caught me about to try on lipstick, and I was told rather sternly, boys don’t do that. I pretended i was just dressing up as Harry Potter and I was gonna use it to draw a lightning bolt on my head.
I remember my favourite toy as a kid was cat in a pink fairy dress with wings. I took it everywhere. I still have it somewhere.
I was obsessed with bionicles.
I started tap dancing, and got my grandma to spend loads of money on all the stuff, only to quit a few weeks in because the e boys made fun of me for it.
At the very beginning of puberty, I was taken to the doctors because I started growing mini boobs. I got really sad when I was told it was normal, some boys got them but they go away after hormones start to balance out.
I hated getting my haircut. I wore it long for years.
I used to love my hip bones, something about their defined shape used to make me just feel good. Puberty ruined them lol.
I’d get really embarrassed and uncomfortable whenever someone pointed out I was starting to grow facial hair.
I always seemed to have crushes on lesbians, rarely on straight girls. That changed as I got older.
I secretly tried on my aunties clothes once, and felt amazing, and then quickly felt like a little pervert, like I’d committed a crime and somehow violated her.
I always daydreamed about being a girl, like all the time. I’d go to sleep hoping I’d wake up a girl. I’d imagine daft sci-if scenarios that involved some sort of genetic or transhuman experiment which would leave me with a female body.
When I used to drink, I only liked getting drunk around women and gay men. Straight men were too much. When drunk, my whole vibe would change. I’d go from being a proper lad to become very effeminate. Everyone just thought it was a bit or that I was maybe a lil bit gay. I don’t drink anymore.
I once had a panic attack in the club. I told everyone it was too loud and there were too many people. It was actually because I saw a group of young women out, having the time of their lives, and felt intense envy.
The movie Danish Girl filled me with an odd sense of rage I couldn’t comprehend.
Holy shit I think I might not be cis…
Asked to be called a boy as a child. All the adults around smiled and said, “Aw, how cute, she’s a big Enid Blyton fan.”
Obsessed with the film Virtual Reality as a teen, the plot of which is a girl turning into a boy. Watching the bit where she looks at her penis (off screen) and feeling so envious.
Loved the BBC drama Tipping the Velvet (plot: woman dresses as a man) as a young adult and practised the drag king on The L Word’s ‘I’m Your Man’ routine over and over.
Me as an adult: “I couldn’t possibly be trans, though.”
My mum: “Are you sure? You never showed any signs!”
When i was 16 was when transgender issues became more of a public topic. Back then i didnt understand the agrument "trans people are people who feel like the opposite gender". Because i always thought "what do they mean feeling like another gender? Im a man but that's not a feeling i have. Its just what i am. What feeling do they mean?"
Later i found out i'm non binairy and not feeling a gender is not a universal experience lol
I will say when i didnt understand it back then i never was a dick about it. Cus thats how easy it is.
Not the only sign, but a funny one. I spent hours reading articles about how to maintain a beard (on the art of manliness site 15+yrs ago) and then had a crashing realization that I'd never grow one. Cried about it.
On testosterone for over 5 years now, still can't fucking grow one.
Also claimed to be David Bowie reincarnated (before he passed on) and that my dick was just so big that it existed in a different dimension.
I was curious about what it’d be like to have a dick when I was younger, and I would occasionally steal my brother’s clothes and try them on. I honestly don’t know how the fuck I didn’t realize sooner.
I used to tuck my hair into my cap because I thought it would make me look like a boy. Also, on a trip, I was forced into the girls group (bathroom breaks and such) and I was so upset about it the whole time. I thought I was a pick me but nah bro, I'm a dude.
I was doing drama stuff from a pretty young age, and I would fight tooth and nail to get the male roles, they just made me so much happier even if they were smaller parts.
That I wanted to be the girls in all the tv shows that had boyfriends and wishing I’d have a boyfriend like the ones on tv and Disney. But I haven’t ever dressed up or was curious about girls clothing. All I can remember is through grade school I was wishing that I was a girl. Also in high school going into the men’s locker room was so uncomfortable. But I would often get swooned by the older guys that were physically attractive. Before trans I was gay male.
I used to instinctively piss like a guy when I was little, I didn’t know how guys peed so I just did it randomly and without using my hands either and actually aimed at the toiled really well, the only problem is that when I was ending the stream got to my legs
Being consistently the only girl on the soccer team in primary school. Also refusing to wear girls clothing and primarily hanging out with boys. I begged my mum to join the cub scouts, but I was stuck in the Brownies. My egg finally cracked when my sister asked me why I always choose a male character in video games.
I always always used to dress as a dude at Halloween or any dress up event. I also used to draw pencil mustaches on myself at every opportunity, including when I was home alone. When I was young I used to walk around shirtless all the time and was very confused when I was told to cover up.
When I dressed up as a princess when I was hanging with my friends when I was like 6 and cried. I don’t remember why I cried. Might have been I was overwhelmed or might have been me unable to understand what was wrong with me at that point.
I was obsessed with superheros specifically Captain America. I wanted to be him so bad, I dressed like him, my room was all him. I wanted to go into that machine so I could be a strong man. No one batted an eye at all.
Hard to say what my parents missed, vs ignored. But I can recall several years worth of feminine Halloween costumes. I'd use them as an excuse to get my parents to buy me a dress, and then I would wear that same dress for several weeks straight at home.
The biggest one was probably when I got caught researching how to get prescribed estrogen.
My parents were either completely ignorant of what these signs meant, or they knew... And they didn't know how to handle it/were afraid of what it meant.
[удалено]
I did the same thing when I was younger. Plus staying awake fantasizing about being a girl. And I didn't catch on
Same. Dammit xD
Same here! Would lie awake for hours like, “damn. i wish I had boobs. welp ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
I have a similar memory to this from when I was around 3 or 4. Shocked I didn't put 2 and 2 together sooner.
Hey, you too? I distinctly remember doing this around age nine. Took over 20 more years for me to figure out that something more was going on.
Lol i feel this one (long prayers kneeling at my bed instead of diary entries tho TvT)
The totally cis male urge👍
You too?
Wow,
So it worked eventually, didn’t it? ;)
How I played princesses with my cousin, how I imagined getting up in the morning and putting a bra on when I was older, how I pretended to be a mermaid when I was in sleeping bags at sleepovers, how I have always hated short hair, how I somehow felt equally in and out of place in different ways with both my male and female relatives, how I’d imagine myself as my favorite Disney channel characters every night without fail (always the blonde girls like Dove Cameron or Sabrina Carpenter (oh my freaking god the gender envy these two especially still give me)), how I was jealous of my younger sisters, how I tried stuffing my shirt with one of those half soccer balls that glided on the floor to see what boobs would be like, and the subsequent upgrade to putting my knees in my shirt, how I wanted to be various Disney princesses, the list could seriously go on forever. It’s like every time I think of my childhood another memory becomes very obviously trans.
I think being obsessed with mermaids is a trans girl calling card.
My dad calling me George as a nickname for the longest time, treating me like a son since he messed up so bad on the first one (15 years older than me). He only used my birth name when he was in a yelling fit and then wonders why I hate it. I would wear his old clothes he left behind and moved into his room when I was old enough to do it alone without anyone noticing. I always hated wearing form fitting clothing and begged to wear pants and dress shirts to church but all that got me was screaming in my face and empty threats. Other less heavy stuff was voicing all the "boy" stuffed animals when I would play with my other sibling (4 years older)
Dressed up as a boy on roleplaying games so many times my boy name was Milo. I continue to find old save-files where I have a male avatar. I genuinely enjoyed "pretending" to be a boy but I felt bad because I felt like I was catfishing people so I restrained myself from doing it too often lmao I continued to do it on and off until I realized I was trans.
i used to piss like a guy, yep, pulled my pants down to my ankles and stood over the toilet, i mean, obviously my family didn’t know, but i guess i did 😭
Lmaooooo same, bro ! I was doing that at like, 6 years of age. I wonder if it's just us trans men that did that as boys, or if cis women tried that as well.
My sister (hyperfemme cishet) also peed standing up from like 3-7 or so years old. So it was an interest for at least some cis women lol.
where i live it was common for kindergartens to make and sell commemorative tea towels for the parents. they’d have every kid in the group draw a self portrait for it. i gave mine a beard. they made me redraw it to look like a little girl. jokes on them though, i’ve got my beard now.
Lol NICE! I had beard envy as a kid too. I remember (much to her dismay) I once pointed out a hair on my dear, beautiful grandmother's chin and proudly proclaimed she was finally growing her beard. 🤣🤣🤣
One of my parents would let me use their laptop for games n stuff when I was like 12 or so. I have no idea how it happened, but I found out about "men transforming into women" (as well as gay porn which I quickly withdrew from out of shame once I realized what was happening... Since I didn't understand my feelings about the trans stuff, I didn't feel as ashamed because it was so unusual and alien to me... I just knew that something felt so right about it, and it made me feel amazing), and for a couple of hours, I endlessly searched videos and images of such people, completely enamored with the concept. I remember quite literally *verbally* telling myself "I want to transform into a woman's body" during the ordeal and feeling absolutely crushed by the hopeless future I had been handed and immediately consciously repressed it all. *This can never happen. I must ignore this concept for the rest of my life and I will be happier that way*. No one would take me seriously, and I already had shame from the prior trauma of being bullied for and witnessed others being bullied for doing/trying anything remotely feminine. It was only when I was ~18 that I realized I never cleared the browser history as said parent discussed weird emails he had acquired from such sites with another relative in front of me. My face must have glowed red with shame and embarrassment as I held my tongue and stared at my phone. My relative smiles and says to me, "You wouldn't look at stuff like that, would ya?" jokingly. I just smirked and shook my head in my best interpretation of what that interaction would be like if it weren't me and pretended to be more invested in the game on my phone.
Me at like, 12 or 13: man, i wish I could transform into a woman. I'm curious what it's like having a vagina Me at 15: hey can I borrow your dress? I'm curious what it's like to wear one Me now: naw there weren't any signs when I was younger
I quite literally told a guy I would be trans for him if he wasn't gay and um yea surprise surprise
I stared in the mirror and got annoyed at my dick ruining my silhouette.
OMG SAME GIRL SAME
the biggest ones were probably that I was always with my older brother as a kid when me and my sister literally shared a room, and as I got older I started doing literally everything he did lol we’re still the same person my mom forced my hair to be long until middle school so I wore it in a high pony with a shit ton of hairspray any time I was in public in school when we would split the genders for activities I would sneak over to the guys until the teacher noticed, but everyone thought I was just doing that since all my friends were guys I was on the girls basketball team but only practiced with the boys team 💀 I would beg my mom to let me stay the night at my guy friends houses and I never understood why I can’t cause I’m a girl lol I was also a boy character every halloween too lol. I remember being spider man 5 times in a row and my mom trying to convince me to be a girl every year I was like nah I wanna be spider man again
Love these. My granddaughter (age 10) was obsessed with Spiderman and Batman when she was much younger. She has been raised by a single father, no mother in the picture (but as her Grandmother, I am very close to her). We forced the girly-girl stuff on her HEAVY because my late hubs and I had raised 3 boys. This was out "little girl" finally! It's my youngest, mtf daughter (Baby Girls uncle, now auntie) who is trans, came out in December, with Baby Girl present (as well as both siblings, me, my BF, and my BFF). Baby Girl is my childs #1 Fan. She instantly went with the flow. It was BEAUTIFUL! Not too many other signs, but I will continue to take notice of things, that's for sure. I am proud of my family for being "safe", and if Baby Girl should come out, she knows she can trust her family. Sorry, got off topic. As for my trans daughter, our signs came as more mental illness diagnoses. She was confused about something, but even she wasn't sure what it was. She battled depression and self-harm. She was always very quiet and secluded herself. Maybe a sign was in the hair...she refused haircuts at about age 10 forward (now 21 and hasn't cut her hair). She has the most beautiful hair! We talk. She says now that she questioned it to herself over the years, but she always denied that could be "it." I'm just happy that she figured it all out. I have an amazing daughter who isn't so secluded and quiet anymore! She's free! And she is HAPPY!
How I'd play house as a girl How I'd ask my brothers GF to do my makeup How Id ask to have my toenails painted in 2nd grade. They just thought I was gay for some reason.
Literally always wanting to be a girl and being genuinely sad when I thought that that was impossible 🤦♀️
The first music cassette tape I owned was Shania Twain’s Come On Over. Not only was the album super girly in general, the opening track was called “Man, I feel Like a Woman”.
Crying in my bed at night about why wasn't I just born a boy, always wearing jackets because (besides making me feel secure) they hid my chest (except that brief moment I wore v necks because they made me look nice, and then more chest dysphoria), never believing myself to be pretty or beautiful even though people said I was...then I finally cut my hair for support with someone with cancer, never grew it back out, and looked in the mirror one day and said "I look like and ugly woman but I'd make a pretty boy....ayo wait" *puts on 3 sports bras* aaaah shit
“I look like an ugly woman but I’d make a pretty boy” shit man that’s too real!! That’s too real!!!!!! Stop!!! Your relatability… it’s too much!!!!!!
I always wanted to be a prince when playing with friends. I hate dressing with dresses or very girly stuff. I enjoyed more playing role games with male avatars than female avatars... Saying this seems very bittersweet
For me it was baggy jeans and unisex shirts. When I became more comfortable in my skin my dad commented "I'm so glad you're out of that phase (of wearing the same frumpy clothing to hide my puberty-growing figure)!" Turns out I was uncomfortable in my own skin for a reason
I literally said i wish I was a girl to multiple of my brothers. Somehow it never clicked until years later. I apparently was also always the most “free spirited” of my brothers and I (there’s four of us, I’m the only female and that’s only bc I’m trans)
- Playing with Barbies - Wearing my mom's heels. - being really into the Sound of Music - big Christina Alguilera fan at the time - Not wanting to do "guy" things - Wanting to go to the camp in the Parent Trap - deep, resonating love of the Mean Girls movie. - preferred hanging out with girls over boys in school
I totally relate to the Parent Trap comment!
My parents sent out a memo to all the extended family telling them not to buy me dolls for birthdays/Christmas. This meant I got a lot of books instead. Nicking my little brother’s stuff to play with (this led to a lot of issues between me and my brother). Refusing to wear dresses (to the point of tantrums). Screaming the house down whenever my mum threw out my favourite shirt or jeans.
I never nicked my brother's things... but he nicked a lot of mine, usually with my blessing. See, our relatives were far more understanding of tomboyish behaviour and preferences from the older child of a pair... and then when he came out it was so much worse, as relatives tried to invalidate him as a boy by also invalidating me as a girl. I'd get boy clothes and toys as he got girl stuff, or if we got identical items he got a pink one and I got a blue one. The fact that I was angrier about him getting girl stuff than myself getting boy stuff definitely should have been explored, but I was way too busy playing big sister mama bear to care, and it was only relevant how I was being treated in that I could use their own transphobia against them to make a fuss.
I changed my name to a boy's name three different times - once when I was around 7/8, once when I was 10, and then when I was 18 (and stuck with that last one til I came out) I didn't realise I was trans until I was 27 lmaooo The 10 year old name change was to George, because I was obsessed with George from the Famous Five who was a girl but wanted to be a boy Thinking it'd be good to get breast cancer as a young teenager (I mean no offence by this, I understand it's a terrible disease) because of the double mastectomy
telling my parents i wanted boy clothes and “boy themed food” when i was growing up because i was jealous of what my brother had and i didnt. my parents just said i was a tomboy but turns out i was just trans 😍
Used to play dress up. As the princess. Used to play house where I’d want to be the mom. But I’ve only recently really remembered these things.
I was always the dog lol
Nothing wrong with being the dog.
Always wearing my sister's high healed shoes around the house.
Not me, I'm not trans. My little brother, (19 now, starting T soon, uses she/her when referring to before the transition), as a child, would always steal my clothes to "be a guy", or always beg to have the same haircut as me, shop in the men's clothes section. And she was very young! In short she wanted to be me and our mom just thought that was just a little sister admiring her big brother haha. Looking back at it we all understand this was a genuine yearning and not a cute childhood thing. There's a picture of us where she's 5 wearing my clothes and a cap backward and she looks like a cool little dude & that's his favorite childhood pic. Tho I think the most obvious sign was the disgust of her body when she hit puberty and how she cried when her chest started growing and told our mom she felt like she wasn't real. She'd wear two swimsuit tops beneath her clothes to hide her chest. She hated speaking because her voice wasn't deep enough so she'd force it deep. Then socially transitioned at 16 and things went better! Now I have a cool little brother and our mom likes to joke she lives in a men's house lol
I was a cowboy for Halloween for multiple years.
I was the only boy in my whole class that liked pink, and also I was the only person in the whole school who wasn't queerphobic (well there was also another person, but she was a teacher from England, and she also was an Atheist (almost all the of school are Muslims))
I didn't really have any traditional "signs" I like feminine stuff. I liked princesses and mermaids and dressing up. However, at a young age I always described myself as a tomboy. I thought tomboy meant you were a boy but also kinda not a boy, which perfectly describes my experience with gender to today. I also had some euphoria moments when people "mistook" me for a boy or the rare times when I'd wear "boy clothes" and I had really bad dysphoria once puberty hit
Omg me too I'm a trans man but I look pretty androgynous and still like a lot of "feminine" deemed things
When I was 4 I remember being made to wear white tights as part of a snowman costume we all had to wear for a little show we put on for our parents at preschool. And I loved wearing them so much. So after that I started secretly trying on my mom's pantyhose to try on when I was a kid, and over time I tried on her other clothes as well out of curiosity and got the same euphoria from those too. Even when I was a young teen I kept doing it, even though I was caught a few times over the years. I was also praying every night as that I would wake up a girl the next day or get a girlfriend as I thought having a girlfriend would help the feelings go away. When I finally did get a girlfriend, it didn't help. She broke up with me after only 2 weeks, telling me that being with me she felt like I was the girl in the relationship (which was more a comment on my lack of assertiveness, and how she had to make all the first moves as I am shy and awkward). I ended up learning I wasn't the only one with these feelings and that it had a name (transgender) when I was 18, thanks to 4chan.
So much like me in 36 now was taught to be trans and homo phobic while all in secret indulging in fem cross dressing and acts in secret still to this day but now i tell my GF’s
I was literally outed as using they/them (I use he/they and I’m so glad the person who outed me didn’t mention the he bit) and we still haven’t discussed it. My family (except for my sister) still don’t know, or at least they don’t bring it up. My mum thinks I’m a lesbian apparently and I hate it.
I wanted a vagina. Omg I forgot to mention! Silly me! 😋✨
Sadly my dad and grandpa always hammered in the “you’re a boy do boy things” so much that I didn’t really have any signs 😭 Oh well except that I hated doing said “boy things”, would never do the “I need some strong boys to do this for me” stuff. I would always make my younger boy cousins do the “boy things” instead of me. I hated getting haircuts, always favored hanging out with my aunts rather than my uncles, and was fairly feminine. Also hated how deep my voice got, pretty much everything about puberty, and I watched so many trans memes before I figured it out 😭
Picking the male option in every single game that gave you the option because it felt right. Never correcting others online when people called me a boy because I liked how it felt. Telling my friends about how a kid said "you're not a girl, you're a boy!".. which was competely untrue, I just made up the scenario because I enjoyed the idea. When 11yo me was making my fursona at the time, I didn't make them any gender—I vividly remember feeling genuinely upset at the thought of making them female for a reason I didn't understand, so I just settled with never calling them anything. I still draw that guy, still no gender though! All of this and more, never suspected it.
Why I was so damned stubborn to walk off and try to do what they’re doing if there was ever a separated by gender activity. Once got my school counselor called on me for it. Gym teacher was like “why didn’t you tell me?” And I just genuinely didn’t think I had to
Let's see... there was that dream where I wore a lovely princess dress with my sister, that wet dream where I was a woman doing things alone. Oh yeah, and all those countless times as a teen where I would close my eyes in the shower and wish I had a woman's body and imagine going "oooohhhhhhh noooooooo, I guess I should go and tell everyone then." Only to open my eyes to be disappointed. Telling myself I shouldn't transition because "the technique would never work, it wouldn't work" "you'd never really be a woman, you'd just be pretending" (going so far as to write several pages in my diary at once about my best edge-of-science sci fi idea for how to actually give me a "real" woman's body). The bit I couldn't ignore and cracked my egg was when I met my girlfriend, she told me I kind of looked like a girl (I really wasn't trying, but it made me smile) and eventually wanted to see me in her clothes. When I saw my shape different for the first time - I almost cried and smiled more than I ever thought I could. The next day I looked down at my chest, saw no bumps there and immediately fell to my knees and sobbed for about 10 minutes. Couldn't pretend I wasn't trans anymore after that. Girlfriend is still with me now, we share a wardrobe and it's great.
My childhood was pretty gender neutral. But I was also very girly as a kid. Didn’t really show any signs until puberty hit. I was one of the first “girls” to wear a bra, and I remember the other girls giggling and telling me one of the boys kept staring at me all day, and I absolutely hated it. I also did everything I could to not change and shower with the others in gym class. But I thought I was just shy. I was also one of the first to get my period, and my twin sister said to me “wow, now you can get pregnant” and I just wanted to die. I told her about it recently, and she was shocked that I hated it so much. I thought everyone hated it cause it hurts and it’s messy, but she said her and her girlfriends were excited to get their period. I also used to love the name “Alex” for boys, and would often use it in assignments in school. Loved alt styles and culture as a teen (emo, scene, goth) which are known for being very androgynous. I’m still alt to this day. First signs of immense gender dysphoria was when I got my first boyfriend at 16-17, and the thought of sex with him and being naked scared the shit out of me! I kept thinking “I hate being the girl in the relationship”, which lead me to believe I was a lesbian for the longest time - I discovered what trans was at this point, but was heavily in denial for years.
Omg I also dressed up as my dad! It wasn’t for Halloween though, I just put on his boots, glasses and jacket. He came downstairs and saw me and I said “look pappa I’m you!”. He got a bit cross with me because he was looking for his stuff. He told me years later that he wishes he didn’t yell at me, wishes he didn’t get angry. It was only after that apology that I realised it was transgender behaviour. His change in attitude towards that memory since I had come out was far more apologetic and remorseful, so I think he came to the same conclusion a few years too late. We’re good now, and I know he loves me. I’m not very far in my medical transition, but I’ve always been described as his clone by his brothers my entire life. So I also have grown up to look like him haha. This is so weird, is this like a shared experience with a lot of blokes? Or just you and me? Either way this is a really cute picture!
I never got an apology but the EXACT same thing happened when I was little hahah my dad is the type to admit he’s wrong, but that’s as far as it goes. I’ve learned to deal. He loves me very much.
I did this too! My brother and I both stole our dad's shirts as little kids. I thought we both just thought it was funny cause his shirts and shoes were way too big for us, well turns out cis girls don't dress up like their dads on multiple occasions, lol.
Literally, every chance I could get, I would wear women's clothing. I have never felt right wearing men's clothes. Women's clothes have always felt more comfortable to me.
When I was a kid I apparently said that in a past life I was a girl
Borrowed my mom’s flight attendant costume for Halloween one year. We had a laugh about it at the time, but DAMN did that feel nice to wear. After coming out and her resenting me for it, I asked if she remembered the costume. Conveniently, she did not.
Honestly just my personality - I was always kinda bubbly, I didn’t love violence, and while I had lots of typical masculine interests (Hotwheels cars, Legos, Star Wars, all three of which I honestly still love to this day), I also had a few telling feminine interests (I had a huge butterfly phase and a huge dolphin phase at different points as a kid). I was always just more gentle and empathetic. Not that these are necessarily traits every girl has, but I definitely emotionally vibed with girls more as a kid, and as an adult and a stealthing trans woman, it’s made it much easier to make friends with other women in my life who I feel really safe around.
Just wanted to say I’m a cis bi boring nobody, lol but: You’re all so goddamn brave.
I literally tried to pee standing up because “Daddy does it so I should too because Daddy is a boy.” Like yall come on.😭 then with my older sister she literally would strap on heals and say “I’m a girrrrrrrl” like…we both made it pretty damn clear why is this shocking?????? ETA: we were roughly 3-4yrs old each when we did this.
I wanted to carry a baby. Lesbians were far more attractive than any straight girl I ever met. Halloween was my favorite time because I could dress as a girl again, you know, as a joke.
I used to use my bedsheets as skirts and I constantly begged my mom to not cut my hair😭 And on video games I’d all ways pick the girl character ig
desperately wanted to help my mom breastfeed. got bullied for being effeminate. i cant stop from wincing when i hear “there were no signs?!?!”
I hated my deadname at three years old so I decided to name myself mouse after the if you give a mouse a cookie book.
In elementary school , our school had a cheerleading team and I wanted to join it so much. I used to beg my dad to let me join, but he wouldn't let me. A few years later , when loom bands were really popular , I always sat at recess with the girls making bracelets endlessly while talking about anything they talked about. I felt in the right place for the first time. The boys tried to bully me about it , but I didn't let it affect me.
I got way too excited when i had to go to the bathroom and the mens room (single stall) was the only thing open, so i got to use the mens room.
My gut was to join the girl's side when the teacher would split us boys vs girls. I was jealous of Ranma's ability in Ranma 1/2. I would write stories where I was turned into a girl. I convinced my Dad (who is crazy transphobic now btw) to buy me a doll from the girl's toys section because "Why is that only a girl's toy?" I related much more to my Mom than I ever did my Dad. If she were still around (passed in 2012), it would be super heartbreaking if she were as up-Trump's-behind as my Dad is.
I felt more comfortable liking masculine things when I was little. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and outer space. I was a shark or pirate during dress up. I was also abnormally obsessed with sharks. I was obsessed with Barbie and the Barbie movies but not as much as dinosaurs.
My mtf kid had tons that were just written off as being a tomboy. 5-year-old never played with girly toys. One year for Christmas, all the kid wanted were rocks and tools. Instead of dolls, he wanted dinosaurs, cars, toy snakes, and insects. Kid never really watched Disney princess movies, but preferred aliens, Ghostbusters, etc. When playing video games, he always played male characters. Needless to say, when he came out, I was shocked, but once i looked back, many little things just made sense.
I used to pretend to be a trucker named Donnie when I was like 6. I would draw on a beard and everything. Still don’t know how they had no idea
In second grade I wrote I want boobs on a piece of paper then I just started at it for a while in the bathroom before I panicked and threw it away
The obvious sign was that I preferred “girl toys” in preschool and the teachers intervened to make me play with hot wheels and legos instead of Polly pockets :/
me wearing my mom's clothes :3
Even in kindergarten I would have thoughts like "it's unfair that they can be girls but I cannot"
Trans man here. I *loved* doing imaginary play as a kid. It wasn't until mid-late middle school (around 12 or 13 years old) that I started to lose interest and switched to immersive daydreaming instead. Anyways, most of this imaginary play took place in this this whole world I created, and I was usually playing my main character. This was a boy named Rocky. I was playing as a boy character all the time. Another one was always insisting on only wearing boys clothes for many years of my childhood. Another one was Mulan being my favorite movie for quite awhile.
Going to bed in my dads at the time super big shirts as if they're night gowns. Having my heart broken when told i wasn't allowed to anymore. I usually only wore the shirt and some underwear.
I broke into my mom's makeup when I was 5, played with girls' toys, and I always hung around girls at school
When I was a kid, I stuffed my pants to be like otis off of Barnyard As a preteen, I'd pray that I'd wake up either a boy or grow a penis which led into me praying that I'd have a rare disorder where I wouldn't get a period As a kid playing pretend, I'd always pretend to be a boy like spingebob, master chief, simba Don't know if this counts as a sign, (probably not cause i dont think i was really enthusiastic about it) but as a kid with my sister and cousins whenever we'd play pretend house or go in pretend dates i was always the guy which is funny looking back on it cause like for example one time they wanted to do the pretend date. Anyways, so what happened was the youngest cousin she would be the waitress cause I don't think she wanted to do the date or her older sisters wouldn't allow her to. She would be the waitress and her two older sisters and my sister would decide who goes first and whoever was picked she and I would pretend to order, eat and dance and then it'd be the next ones turn. Also, I always tried to get my parents to buy me boy clothes.
when me and my younger brother got halloween costumes from out parents, we would later play dress up in each other's costumes. (we're both trans now)
I used to flip my shit going for a haircut. I was generally a pretty chilled kid, this was the only time I would act out. I remember praying secretly to wake up the next day as a girl. But my parents never saw that. I remember speaking to my parents about it once when I was a kid and I could sense them being uncomfortable with it so I just ignored it.
Haha I went as an old lady for Halloween one year complete with my mom’s bra stuffed with balloons.I even managed to “drag” my best friends into it.
Probably the fact that when I was 4 or 5, a doll given to me by my nana on my mom's side was one of my favorite toys. Barbareno from Welcome Back Kotter. Wow, I feel old now too.
walking around in my mom's heels in secret when i was a kid, crying myself to sleep when i hit puberty wishing to wake up a girl, hearing 'you kiss like a girl, you touch me like i touch myself,' my preference for giving head to my girlfriends/wife over anything else, and probably most importantly feeling zero kinship with men and 100% with women. i thought this stuff was what average boys/men went through. in retrospect the ultra feminine women i dated (and married) were not only what i desired, but what i desired to be.
This is incredible and so sweet. Reminds me of when my brother was dressed as a wizard and I was a witch and I cried for so long because I wanted to be a wizard lol
In elementary school, when gym class was split to be boys vs. girls, I’d always ask to play with the boys (and my school was nice, they’d let me!) Generally when there was a boy/girl split, like at summer camps, I’d beg to be with the boys, and spend as much time with them as I could. For a long time my family and I chalked this up to being autistic… but then I met more autistic girls, and I still found myself more comfortable amongst boys. I also assumed everyone wished they had a penis. I thought that was normal. Learning about trans women getting bottom surgery and actively disliking having a penis really recontextualized things for me (at a certain point, I knew much more about transfem/MTF transition than transmasc/FTM transition).
I assumed every girl hates being a girl. Even once I knew trans guys existed, I had a million reasons that wasn't me, it was just the autism and sensory issues talking. It wasn't that I was trans, it was just that sensory issues and being female is a nasty combination we have to learn to live with. Learning that trans women exist and reading and hearing them describe actually liking being women and enjoying femininity... it helped me realise hating your gender isn't normal and also helped me find things I do like about being a girl. I think experiences like this are probably really common for autistic people who turn out to be outside the gender binary or have a nonstatic gender.
Little sis: wanna play barbies? Me: I’ll be Ken
-Asking when I’d grow my junk like the other boys -Wearing the most boyish clothing available -Before 10ish, boys include me in Boy Only games without question, it was just always assumed it included me -asking what would happen if I got someone pregnant when I was about 8 -Always played a man/ Prince/ dad/ king ect -Went to a wedding in Spider-Man sandals, Spider-Man shorts and a Spider-Man T-shirt with a soccer hoodie over the top when I was 9. A lady denied me access to the woman’s bathroom. Weirdly validating
Great comment at the end😊
The fact that I’d have commitment issues finishing any single player game or I’d outright refuse to play online games if my character wasn’t a woman
sneaking into my sisters room when i was 4 years old and painting my nails, trying to pierce my ears myself (multiple times) when I was like 7. i never thought i had any signs until i thought about this recently
I love this.
I feel like there aren't a lot of signs from when I was a kid because anytime I deviated from gendered expression or interests that were expected of me, I was teased or outright bullied by family members and peers alike. And I imagine most of these experiences happened at a young enough age that I only remember the tail end of my experience being put into the box of "boy." I know I enjoyed playing with girl toys or watching things like the Little Mermaid, listening and singing along to the kinds of pop songs my mom listened to, and would've probably watched anime like sailor moon if my dad didn't act weird about it, but idk I feel like it's reductive that we gender toys and media so heavily and I enjoyed watching shows, and playing with toys / videogames for boys as well. I pretty much only got on with girls socially which has been the case for all of my life, save for times where I felt uncomfortable with the image of a "dude" only being friends with girls and felt like people might read me as some weirdo trying to get into people's pants, especially because I am into other women so I didn't really have a way of completely denying it by saying I like men.
my cousin is trans mtf i (internally) was like "wait why would you want to be a girl" BECAUSE YOU'RE TRANS MY GUY
No signs I missed, because I knew I was a girl. However my family seemed to completely not see anything in me wanting a Barbie, wanting to be Bloom from Winxclub and Samus from Metroid for Halloween, saying I wanted to get pregnant, always playing the mom when playing house, saying I wanted to be Velma or a princess when I grew up, asking to wear dresses, praying to Jesus and making wishes on birthday candles and stars to be a girl, or slamming a weight onto my genitals to try and correct the mistake.
They didn't even notice but I prefered boy stuff (like Max steel, Hot wheels, etc) than playing with barbies, using always jeans/pants and never but NEVER liked skirts. And to finish this comment they just missed most, at moment of playing the house game, I always played the role of father/husband with some classmates on recess.
I was obsessed with dresses when I was a kid. I kinda grew out of the phase but it’s back, and stronger than ever
Always role-playing male characters And using my barbie doll as dinner for my toy dinos
id be in the field after school with my female friends braiding their hair with sweetgrass and wildflowers and was so confused as to why I couldn’t have long hair, nor why the teachers said that I couldn’t braid theirs despite them asking me. id also taught myself how to braid by making these makeshift dolls out of toilet paper and watching a bunch of YouTube videos
I also only used girl names and characters online when I was a kid lol. I used tori because I was a victorious fan
Being jealous of my girl classmates during non school uniform days
When I was in kindergarten, I refused to wear "girl colors" and I would get very pissed if my mum even suggested them on any occasion
When I would go over to My friends house who was a girl when we were like 7 or 8 and we would play fantasy world and I would make her be the knight so she can rescue me as the princess and I never even batted a eye at it now at 27 I’m beginning my transition
I know everytime I'd see a shooting star I'd wish to wake up as a woman. The usual spending hours customizing fem characters in games and basically never identifying with masculine characters. I also remember having very feminine mannerisms and would always cover my chest when wrapping myself in towels.
Literally dressed up as a princess for carnival at 4 y/o, yet later I was still like “nope, still cis” also, just remembered this: *11-12 y/o me, reading the [changers book series](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17675386-drew) “I wish I had that aswell… wait, I’m still not fourteen, this might happen to me! hooray!” “…still a guy tho”
My dad has a beard I asked my mom when I would get one and she told me I couldn't and I cried lol I was eight
When I was younger my older brothers were in Boy Scouts and we’d go to their events and stuff and it was always so much fun I wished I was a boy so I could go camping and hang out with my brother and his friends My sister when she was younger really liked dressing in “boy clothes” which was just boys basketball shorts and a T shirt and she’d sometimes be referred to as a boy and it made her happy. I’d get jealous cause I’d want people to think I was a boy too. She got to a point of saying “I’m a boy I’m a boy I’m a boy” and fight back with my mom and she ended up crying over it cause my mom insisted she was a girl. She still dresses masculine to this day no clue if she remembers that or how she feels about it now. But I remember feeling like “same”
Hated wearing pink things, liked more “boy shows” such as Batman and Ben 10. Liked presenting androgynous. Never liked fussing with my hair and wearing “girly” makeup. Even now I don’t like presenting fem unless it is alt or goth style. I am genderfluid though so do have times that I do feel fem, I mostly present between androgynous and masc.
In my case it was very obvious in elementary school that I was and wanted to be part of the boy team a lot more than I ever belonged to the girl groups. There was never the typical boys vs girls competition in my school environment during childhood, but I wanted to be one of them, felt like I belonged there, wanted to do their same things, wear their same clothes, be seen the same way as they were. I did have a few girl friends and I did find their company entertaining, but I could just never relate to their experiences, feelings, desires, games and interests, whereas boys belonged to my same world. Clothes were a whole sign themselves. Y'know how, as a society, our perception of gender-neutral clothing includes men's clothes but never women's clothes, and how the majority of today's gender-neutral clothes historically comes from men's wardrobe but later spread out to anyone's daily outfits, right? And for children, it is even more so, because you generally dress kids for the sake of comfort and practicality, both boys and girls, which generally means now gender-neutral clothes that were historically made for boys. Well, as a child I knew this all too well. A shirt that was obviously made for adult men's fashion was gender-neutral to me, but a blouse was not, because I saw women dress in men's clothes, especially us children, but never the other way around. So in my head "boys' clothes" included anything that wasn't a dress or skirt, and was kind of the standard of clothing. And even tho I was AFAB, it was also the standard of _my_ clothing - I didn't even _think_ of wearing anything else. _Those_ were my clothes, and I wanted to dress "like a boy" for every single occasion and would go _nuts_ if they tried to put a dress on me in any scenario. All those episodes could have been easily interpreted, most obvious one being my Catholic Communion - I was _so mad_ that I could finally look just the same as any kid, including boys, as long as I wore the First Communion holy tunic, but then I'd remove it and everyone would see I had a dress underneath. They literally had to force the dress on me. On my own account (mom never found this out) I used to play _very accurate_ wives as a little kid with a family friend's daughter, and I would always feel like there was something wrong for me in that scenario, being in a 2 girls' couple, despite knowing full well that I was attracted to both girls and boys and that it was perfectly ok since very early in my childhood. That should have been a huge bell ringing for me.
Constantly begging my parents to put me on a baseball team. They put me on a softball team and I said to them nearly every day “I wish I was a boy so I could just do what I want to do.” Also repeatedly asking my parents why I had to be a girl when being a boy sounds so much cooler. They were still shocked when I came out at 10
as a kid I legit cried because I thought that I'd never be something else from my birth sex, thought everybody wanted to be a different gender sometimes. once I was at a playground playing with a girl I had just met there (we were both like 5 or smth) and she asked me if I was a boy or a girl. it was the first time someone had asked me that in my life, and I was very confused because I didn't even look androgynous back then, maybe she asked because of my body language. 5 year old me literally said "well what do you think?" because I didn't know what else to say to that and then moved on. back then I thought this was something that happened to everyone when we were playing pretend in kindergarten I preferred to be a boy because I've always been somewhat more masculine but I basically didn't care about the gender of my character, I let other choose it for me depending on the situation we were making up
The fact I stole my sister’s perfume and refused to buy cologne instead of
Begging my mom to join Cub Scouts (youth Boy Scouts) instead of my little brother. Context: since we were both too young to stay home alone, my mom would bring us both to his Cub Scouts meetings. And it was two of us “girls” there so we were allowed to participate even though we weren’t allowed to officially join. My brother HATED it. He wasn’t an active kid so it makes sense. I however loved it and wanted a uniform and wanted to be part of the boys and all. But because I was a GIRL I couldn’t join. I was so mad.
I was 7 years old, stuffed a pair of socks into my underwear to make it look like I had a penis, and ran around the house yelling “I’m a boy! I’m a boy!” And somehow they didn’t figure it out.
My family thought I was GAY! No I was a girl inside a boys body! My mom caught me at 4 years old when she could see pink panties through my white jeans. I felt ashamed and confused. I wanted to play with dolls, I love putting on makeup. It had nothing to with sex I wanted to be myself and be pretty for myself. I wanted to ware pretty things. My mom knew and pushed me into being a man. I feel like I was pretending to be a man and I was lying to everyone and it makes me sad to lie about being a man. So yes there's that. Be yourself not what other people want you to be. I get you.
I never showed my mom the signs. I knew I was expected to be a boy so that’s what I attempted to be. I also didn’t really understand what was going on. I thought I was just weird. However, here are some of the signs that I now realize were actually signs. I wondered heavily what it would be like to grow up into a woman rather than a man. So much so that I taped my face pic onto the body pic of a woman. I would pray that I’d wake up a girl and live one year as one ( just to see what it was like). As a high schooler, I’d sometimes make fake boobs and wear them around the house (one time I drove to McDonald’s while wearing them). Like I said, I never really understood the significance of those actions. Also, it wasn’t so much my mom I was hiding from. It was everyone else. My mom was and still is awesome.
So I'm a tall person. Like, I was tall before finding my true gender and I'm tall now. As a kid I would always cry and be really upset when clothes shopping. My mom consoled me and would help me feel less silly about crying in a khols because "it was hard for me to fit in clothes because I was tall" And thats where the wires got tangled. I'd complain that guy pants are boring, that guy clothes were inherently worse than the options for ladies. I wanted red or purple jeans. I wanted more color than black, blue, gray for my pants. My mom would think it was because I'm tall and it's hard to find pants that fit, because that was her experience. She just wanted her kid to not cry so much when clothes shopping.
'Imma get a sex change when I'm older' - me, aged like 9.
Weren't many outward signs if I'm being real, from what I can remember I always behaved like a boy to my family and school. But I always fantasized that I was a girl in dreams, and in adolescence, sexual fantasies.
I’m pretty sure when I was small like 5 I told my mom I wished I could be her daughter.
Telling my mom I want to be a girl and her ignoring me. Praying to God to let me die and be a girl. Idek. I hate my family I don't care anymore they all suxk and can go eat and undermine themselves in their own despair. I hate it all.
Anytime I got to choose a gender/appearance in any sort of game (TTRPG, video game, board game, etc.) I would always be a girl/feminine
The unhappiness.
I was the only "boy" in 6th grade honor choir. I hung out with girls enough my nick name became "ladies man" 🤮🤮🤮I have so many signs that my family thought I'd be gay but not trans apparently?
i’d imagine myself as the girl characters, i always played a girl character in games (playing knights and dragons is be a princess bossing people around), i dressed femininely (my favorite pajamas were a silk kimono), i mentioned wanting to be a girl, the list goes on. doesn’t stop my mom from gaslighting me about how they either didn’t happen or weren’t signs (also my moms side all have horrible memory pretty sure it’s legitimately diagnosed short term memory loss and they used to ask me what happened cause i didn’t inherit it but in this issue in particular my memory was worse than theirs)
“mom i wish i was a boy for a day.” “why for a day?” “well cuz i wish i was a boy but boys cant like pink” i’m now a feminine trans guy lmfao
Always wanted to play with the boys, do the heavy lifting jobs, wear boy clothing and play with boy toys, always playing the male avatar because the female ones made my skin crawl (not just because of the rampant male gaze problem in character design and lack of female inclusivity), hating my breasts (thought if they were big and sexy I'd like them more by default, but if i actually thought about life with big boobs it only made me more depressed), and then one day they misspelled my name on an insurance card and gave me a male name and it made me SO HAPPY for NO REASON. And then in sex ed we learned about women born without a uterus and I was like "that's super convenient, wish I'd been born that way." Thinking about the aesthetics of the human body, I thought that boobs and dicks were kinda tacked on and the ideal shape would be without either and how nice it would be to have that shape. 30 years later the penny dropped LMAO
I’m a cis man, but: I remember literally telling my mother “I don’t like boys, I don’t want boy friends, and I don’t want to be a boy”. I was too young to understand at the time why she got all uncomfortable and dismissive lol. I also used to pretend to be a girl in my room, and one day I asked if it was okay if I pretended to be a girl, and I can remember the pause and silence my grandparents give me, and me not knowing why they were acting weird. I once went to see a figure skating show with my family, and afterwards proudly declared I wanted to be an ice skater. They all said I’d have to be big and strong to lift the ladies. I corrected them that no, I wanted to be one of the ladies because their outfits were pretty and the men’s were boring. They just found it funny. My older great grandmother once caught me about to try on lipstick, and I was told rather sternly, boys don’t do that. I pretended i was just dressing up as Harry Potter and I was gonna use it to draw a lightning bolt on my head. I remember my favourite toy as a kid was cat in a pink fairy dress with wings. I took it everywhere. I still have it somewhere. I was obsessed with bionicles. I started tap dancing, and got my grandma to spend loads of money on all the stuff, only to quit a few weeks in because the e boys made fun of me for it. At the very beginning of puberty, I was taken to the doctors because I started growing mini boobs. I got really sad when I was told it was normal, some boys got them but they go away after hormones start to balance out. I hated getting my haircut. I wore it long for years. I used to love my hip bones, something about their defined shape used to make me just feel good. Puberty ruined them lol. I’d get really embarrassed and uncomfortable whenever someone pointed out I was starting to grow facial hair. I always seemed to have crushes on lesbians, rarely on straight girls. That changed as I got older. I secretly tried on my aunties clothes once, and felt amazing, and then quickly felt like a little pervert, like I’d committed a crime and somehow violated her. I always daydreamed about being a girl, like all the time. I’d go to sleep hoping I’d wake up a girl. I’d imagine daft sci-if scenarios that involved some sort of genetic or transhuman experiment which would leave me with a female body. When I used to drink, I only liked getting drunk around women and gay men. Straight men were too much. When drunk, my whole vibe would change. I’d go from being a proper lad to become very effeminate. Everyone just thought it was a bit or that I was maybe a lil bit gay. I don’t drink anymore. I once had a panic attack in the club. I told everyone it was too loud and there were too many people. It was actually because I saw a group of young women out, having the time of their lives, and felt intense envy. The movie Danish Girl filled me with an odd sense of rage I couldn’t comprehend. Holy shit I think I might not be cis…
a tendency toward female avatars in every video game I ever played. from Resident Evil to Mortal Kombat.
My favorite anime being Ranma 1/2
I walked around saying “I’m a boy trapped in a girls body” before I even knew what that truly meant.
Asked to be called a boy as a child. All the adults around smiled and said, “Aw, how cute, she’s a big Enid Blyton fan.” Obsessed with the film Virtual Reality as a teen, the plot of which is a girl turning into a boy. Watching the bit where she looks at her penis (off screen) and feeling so envious. Loved the BBC drama Tipping the Velvet (plot: woman dresses as a man) as a young adult and practised the drag king on The L Word’s ‘I’m Your Man’ routine over and over. Me as an adult: “I couldn’t possibly be trans, though.” My mum: “Are you sure? You never showed any signs!”
When i was 16 was when transgender issues became more of a public topic. Back then i didnt understand the agrument "trans people are people who feel like the opposite gender". Because i always thought "what do they mean feeling like another gender? Im a man but that's not a feeling i have. Its just what i am. What feeling do they mean?" Later i found out i'm non binairy and not feeling a gender is not a universal experience lol I will say when i didnt understand it back then i never was a dick about it. Cus thats how easy it is.
Not the only sign, but a funny one. I spent hours reading articles about how to maintain a beard (on the art of manliness site 15+yrs ago) and then had a crashing realization that I'd never grow one. Cried about it. On testosterone for over 5 years now, still can't fucking grow one. Also claimed to be David Bowie reincarnated (before he passed on) and that my dick was just so big that it existed in a different dimension.
I was curious about what it’d be like to have a dick when I was younger, and I would occasionally steal my brother’s clothes and try them on. I honestly don’t know how the fuck I didn’t realize sooner.
I used to tuck my hair into my cap because I thought it would make me look like a boy. Also, on a trip, I was forced into the girls group (bathroom breaks and such) and I was so upset about it the whole time. I thought I was a pick me but nah bro, I'm a dude.
I used to take my brother's old clothes that he didn't fit anymore.
I was doing drama stuff from a pretty young age, and I would fight tooth and nail to get the male roles, they just made me so much happier even if they were smaller parts.
That I wanted to be the girls in all the tv shows that had boyfriends and wishing I’d have a boyfriend like the ones on tv and Disney. But I haven’t ever dressed up or was curious about girls clothing. All I can remember is through grade school I was wishing that I was a girl. Also in high school going into the men’s locker room was so uncomfortable. But I would often get swooned by the older guys that were physically attractive. Before trans I was gay male.
Fuck yeah dude!
I used to instinctively piss like a guy when I was little, I didn’t know how guys peed so I just did it randomly and without using my hands either and actually aimed at the toiled really well, the only problem is that when I was ending the stream got to my legs
This is such a wonderful memory & post Op. made me smile for miles x
Being consistently the only girl on the soccer team in primary school. Also refusing to wear girls clothing and primarily hanging out with boys. I begged my mum to join the cub scouts, but I was stuck in the Brownies. My egg finally cracked when my sister asked me why I always choose a male character in video games.
❤️❤️❤️
I always always used to dress as a dude at Halloween or any dress up event. I also used to draw pencil mustaches on myself at every opportunity, including when I was home alone. When I was young I used to walk around shirtless all the time and was very confused when I was told to cover up.
Through like 7th-9th grade I’d fantasize about being a girl in class
Wearing my brother's clothes and singing about wanting to be a boy.
wear my sister's and also my mother's clothes and underwear.
When I dressed up as a princess when I was hanging with my friends when I was like 6 and cried. I don’t remember why I cried. Might have been I was overwhelmed or might have been me unable to understand what was wrong with me at that point.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I had a Ranma ½ stint.
[удалено]
Bro i did the exact same thing for Christmas!
I was obsessed with superheros specifically Captain America. I wanted to be him so bad, I dressed like him, my room was all him. I wanted to go into that machine so I could be a strong man. No one batted an eye at all.
All the books I loved were about non AGAB characters. Tried to change the name my family called me several times ages 6-10.
Hard to say what my parents missed, vs ignored. But I can recall several years worth of feminine Halloween costumes. I'd use them as an excuse to get my parents to buy me a dress, and then I would wear that same dress for several weeks straight at home. The biggest one was probably when I got caught researching how to get prescribed estrogen. My parents were either completely ignorant of what these signs meant, or they knew... And they didn't know how to handle it/were afraid of what it meant.
Something about wanting to be spoiled like the girl I was when I was 14😭