People are revealing when they first knew they were transgender
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
People are revealing the moment when they first knew they were transgender.
An AskReddit thread has sparked a conversation between trans people from across the globe.
Hundreds of people from the trans community are speaking about how they came to understand their gender identity and what followed.
The stories range from beautiful to sad to horrific as folk from the trans community recount their experiences.
One person told the forum how when they were 11 and in 6th grade, they wanted to cut their hair short and wear “boys clothes”.
However, that wasn’t the point they realised they were trans because their father reacted horrifically.
“My dad beat the shit out of me and showed me the mangled bodies of trans and lesbian people who were murdered and I didn’t figure out I was trans until I was 23,” they wrote.
A separate person told the forum that they were also from a conservative family, but for the most part had received support.
“I really only started looking into it when I got my first girlfriend the spring after I turned 19 – I pretty much exclusively wore jeans and t-shirts and had my hair cut super short, so she would jokingly call me her boyfriend every once in a while.
“I started wondering why I liked that so much better than being her girlfriend, so I started googling. Found out… oh, this is a thing. this fits me. this works. I’m not a girl after all,”
However, they said that their mother had originally accepted them but now “she takes her husband’s side on things (namely that trans people “just want special attention and special privileges”) and tells me to grow a thicker skin when I ask her to correct her husband”
“This is super fucked up in hindsight, but once I hit puberty, I used to look in the mirror as I was stripping for the shower and think “as long as all they’d have to do is remove my boobs, I’d be okay with having cancer,” somebody else explained.
One trans woman wrote how when they were growing up in the 1990’s gender roles were not enforced on them.
“My male friends were cool to me but I never felt like “one of the guys”, I felt like I was trying to be “one of the guys” and failing.
“I absolutely despised wearing suits, ties, dress pants, etc. Used to get near crying when I had to but I sucked it up and eventually it just turned into the constant visceral feeling that I was ugly for no reason.
“Eventually I realised I didn’t wanna be an old man, father or any of the sort. I pictured myself continuing to age femininely like I had already,” they wrote.
They added that for a long time they were actually anti-trans, but have since come around.
“I decided to come out saying I didn’t want hormones because “oh im probably just a femboy, besides I like girls too and I wouldn’t pass as a girl”. Adopted quite an anti-trans mentality for a while.
“Was always attracted to trans men and women despite pretending I thought they were delusional. Basically, repression. First hormone shipment here in 3 weeks,” they added.
The majority of people said that they knew around the age of 10 that they were probably trans, but because of social stigma a lot of them didn’t come out until their mid-20’s.
Many wrote that there was a very specific turning point that they realised.
“The hysterical sobbing and attempting to wear 3 too-tight sports bras at a time when my breasts started coming in,” one wrote.
Another said: “I distinctly remember the Girl Scouts coming to our door to sell cookies. I begged my dad for weeks to let me join. He didn’t seem to understand that I had zero interest in joining the Boy Scouts, and couldn’t get me to understand that the Girl Scouts probably weren’t going to let me in.”
“I was a 6 year old kid playing with the neighbor girl. She said I couldn’t be a witch because I was a boy but since she was a witch she could turn me into a girl. 20 years later I decided I would transition,” somebody else added.
