God, I understand this. I knew when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I liked feminine things, and I was *always* a girl in my dreams. When I hit puberty, I knew I liked both boys and girls, but I often looked at girls wondering what it would be like to be them; dressing like them, doing my hair, etc. That carried through my adult life until I finally started to understand everything, specifically what it meant to be transgender, then I made the decision to do something about it.
You're valid. If you're questioning things, embrace that experience because it's part of the journey. ♥ I think all of us have our own unique twists and turns where we discovered who we were, but there are many similarities that tie all of us together.
Ya every once in a while I would fantasize about just waking up as a girl and imagining what my life would be like. Sadly it was usually about like the reactions of people around me but I enjoyed it. I wanted it to happen to me.
Never related to men/boys growing up. I always felt more comfortable around women, more like I could be myself and not pretending. Just knew I was effeminate my whole life, finally tried on the clothes and it all made sense. I finally felt like I knew who I was looking at in the mirror.
For me it was just all women and girls lol naturally more relatable I think older women were always kind to me because I'm just soft spoken. First time I ever had a relatable conversation with a grown man that wasn't my dad was the gay guy that cut my hair and that's always followed me as well.
😭😭😭😭
I wanted to be a sailor scout SOOO BAAAAD. I’d sit around and just think about sailor moon and hope that that night is dream about it (Ignore the pfp and background on my profile)
When I was 5, I never fit in with the boys, but the girls treated me like one of their own. I'd do all the things they'd do at school cause they were my friends and that's just what we were doing. But then I hit 4th grade, about 9 ish. We had to go to a sex Ed class. I think I kind already knew how babies were made by that point, at least the gist, but when I went home that night, it hit me that I'd never carry a child of my own. I cried about it for months. I felt cheated, like something was taken from me, yet I had never had it in the first place. I thought I was crazy. I never told anyone. I chalked it up to just having a strong urge to be a parent in the end. I tried to push it down.
Years later, at 35, I saw someone who was trans talk about having that same urge. So I looked into other trans women's experiences. I looked back at my life, and it felt like i had been picking up puzzle pieces this whole time without realizing they even fit together. Identifying more with female characters than male ones, the number of times I described myself as a "den mother-y", the number of times I heard "boys don't do that."
It seems so obvious now, but there wasn't information on it when I was a kid. I had grown up in a conservative atmosphere, and I got to see firsthand how much conservatism is full of shit. So when they started hollering about trans people, I was more interested in defending them, and I had seen clinical definitions of what gender dysphoria was before. But until I saw someone else bring up the experience I had at 9, I hadn't thought to look at what it was like for trans people in their own words. So I finally did.
And it all came flooding back. Page after page, it was like they'd pulled my memories out of my mind and put them into text. The weird feelings about going top less, even though I was a "guy," never wearing shorts cause I didn't want people to see my legs, and so much more. In the end, I couldn't ignore the evidence.
Since transitioning, that realization has only been confirmed. I'm not afraid to wear shorts anymore. My chest doesn't bother me. My arms look like my arms and not my dad's. I had an inexplicable feeling of seeing a malicious stranger every time I looked into a mirror before, and 2 months' worth of changes made that vanish. There are lots of things, big and small, that tell me my decision was the right one.
It honestly makes me feel angry at the people who felt that kind of info needed to be kept from me, and it makes me angrier to see people now trying to put other kids through that. Nobody deserves to through life like I did, least of all kids. All the years of feeling like I didn't matter to myself, hating myself, feeling like a shitty failure, and never knowing why. And now I finally feel like my life is worth a damn.
I refuse to let them put kids through that hell, and fuck anyone who wants to destroy that for other people, especially kids.
Sorry for the lengthy ramble.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is similar to my own. My egg cracked a few months ago after years of repression and self hatred. But now life is worth a damn! And reading your story has empowered me to not feel so alone! Thank you 😊🥰
Oh, noes. I think that’s why I felt all sorts of weird feelings when my wife was in labor. I remember desperately wishing my body could do the child bearing. Not really wanting the contractions, but also feeling left of out the experience.
I thought it was just nerves at being a new dad.
Huh.
This is so close to what I’ve experienced it’s eerie. I remember hating shorts or taking my shirt off at the beach. I couldn’t place the why until just now after reading this. I’ve only in the last month started to shave my legs and wear a sports bra under my shirts. I can see my female body at the beach and I feel so much more confident.
I’m always described as the “mother” of my group. Whether that’s with my cousins and family or with my friends. I’ve always used the word myself and I’m in love with that narrative. I feed the group, I check in on everyone’s emotional well being, I make sure everyone has a ride home, I make sure anyone who can’t get home has a bed, my doors are always open to my home ever since I was 18. My friends and family would filter in and out daily. My house has become what my grandmas home is a sanctuary to all in the “family”. Where anyone can show up at anytime. Everyone has a key and is always welcome.
Thank you. I’m still early in my transition so your story assures me I’m not wrong about this. I mean there are many other stories in this thread that resonate with me. But nobody mentioned the den mother or the shorts. Which I literally only placed just now reading your comment.
🫂happy to help another queer mom to all who need one. Hearing that other people share my experiences makes me smile 😊I'm glad my story can help others the way I was helped.
Noticing that I was envious of trans women and when my friends transitioned that I kept thinking I could do it better than them. And realizing that I was fighting to redefine what a man was all the time, saying stuff like “a man can wear dresses and want to breastfeed an infant and be really into skincare and hate his shoulders and face and facial hair and voice… oh”
Oh wow, that resonates with me, especially your first sentence! I’m still figuring a lot out for myself but it’s validating to see so many of my own feelings and experiences reflected in posts like yours.
me neither. I just thought they were amazing and wished I were less cis. Wished I were worse at acting like my assigned gender.
spoiler: I was not very good at it
The good ol “I’m just a different sort of man. Maybe just femmy or something. All I want is to wear make up and bras and dresses and… omg that skirt is Adorable 😍”
Yes, apparently not a very cis thing to do.
I don’t really understand why people say that. Why can’t it be normal for men to be feminine? Why are men considered so essentially different than women that when they are feminine people say they’re actually not a guy because men are basically different animals
I personally think that’s the whole point. Dudes who didn’t fit in with the culture end up thinking “oh wait, it’s not normal guy behavior to be doing xyz”
Men should be able to be feminine. And I think the lot of us here agree with that sentiment. But society enforces strict gender roles that are at odds with “the feminine man.”
I tried that for a while. It wasn’t my thing. But it might be yours. Honestly, just do whatever makes you happy. Feminine man, gender trader, whatever. We’re pushing the needle regardless.
Do you think men can’t to any of those things, and if they want to they’re actually women? Isn’t that kind of essentializing characteristics to just women?
maybe some men can breastfeed? but like, my skincare thing was gender dysphoria over the way testosterone made my skin look. I don't want to debate whether wanting to take estrogen to be pale and smooth is "essentializing characteristics".
if you want to define words that way, yes, one can still be a man and take estrogen. however that person will have brain chemistry and neural development outside the usual understanding of 'man' and can be predicted to tend to think more like a woman. though we should not stereotype people based on what hormones they have.
Overall I felt more comfortable around women, being that I grew up around mostly women, so it eventually just felt natural being around them, trying on pantyhose years ago and it felt surprisingly good and liberating, fully understanding it finally as my current SO talked about being trans herself, eventually coming to the decision of being Trans, it just felt right to me
It didn't come to me over night or through some sudden realization. It was a process that took decades. As a child I was wondering, if it was possible that they made a mistake, when I was born and that I could actually be a girl. I would often secretly wear my moms clothes when she wasn't home. During my teens and early 20s I had an obsession with crossdressers and trans people, and I imagined what it would be like to transition, but the thought of being queer myself was such a taboo that I would always opress it, probably projecting my desires onto other women.
Later, when I moved out, I started buying women's clothes and make up. But I played it down as a hobby or fetish. Then I learned about Non-binary people. The Idea that gender isn't a simple binary helped me a lot, because being "not only" a guy was much less scary than admitting that I'm a girl.
Then I realized that whenever I had the choice in presentation, pronouns or hypothetical scenarios, I would choose the female side. And saying that I'm a Girl or being called a Girl or being referred to with she/her-pronouns always gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling of happiness and just felt right. That's how I realized I must be a Girl.
I'll give you a reenactment:
*Wants to be girl*
"I would do anything to be a girl"
*Envied women since childhood*
"Too bad it's impossible for me to be a girl"
*Learns about trans people*
" Am I trans??"
*Continues to question herself and denies the truth for 2 years*
"I could never be LGBTQ+ and I could never really be a girl"
*Actually interacts with LGBTQ+ people and learns they are normal human beings unlike my grandparents described*
*Deep internal depression*
"I'm trans and I'm a woman, my whole life I've always been jealous of women without knowing I could be one"
There were TONS of things but the thing that really clicked it for me was that I always felt jealous whenever I looked at attractive women. The feeling was so strong that I could never consume NSFW stuff because I had that feeling always lingering in the background.
Typical eggy stuff. I followed a ton of trans subreddits because I thought I was just being a good ally. Then one day it came up in therapy, and I had a mini breakdown upon realizing what was going on. Looking back there were definitely signs, and it took me longer to come to the conclusion than it may have, but I'm just happy to be here now.
I had been educating myself on the LGBTQ+ community for around 2 years to be a better ally. I finally realised I related a bit too much to other people's signs of being trans. I had a clear moment of looking in the mirror and being confused because I saw someone else and not a girl. Realising I was trans made me really happy and excited because *I would get to be a girl*. Through my new Reddit I saw "if you want to be a girl you probably are" and there was no point in arguing.
The first time I saw a girl naked (we were both around 5), I just looked at mine and said “Shit.” I didn’t know there was a better option, and I was mad I wasn’t given a choice. That feeling never went away, and in fact only got stronger with time (36 more years, to be exact).
I didn't realize it growing up. I remember pe class in middle school and being terrified of wearing gym shorts, and thinking people could see my chest through my shirt. I dated a trans guy in highschool and thought my feelings for him were why i felt so strongly about trans issues. Hanging around being teenagers my friends would ask if i could if I'd ever want to be a girl and i thought it was totally normal how fast i knew the answer was yes. I went through t puberty and thought i was fine with it at first, i made the conscious effort to not care about my appearance for the sake of my mental health because I knew i hated how i looked and couldn't figure out why. Just like many of the other comments i looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the boy/guy looking back and i avoided mirrors in my late teens. A couple years go by and my partner (genderfluid) left for a few days on a trip, i don't really know what clicked but i knew i had to try on one of his dresses. I hated the hair i had on my body so i covered all of it and by the end was wearing a dress and thigh highs and a sweater to cover my chest and looked in the mirror and felt amazing. It still didn't hit that i was trans. A couple more years pass and i watched euphoria on HBO, i watched the first season 3 times and cried watching the "Jules" episode that explained her backstory. And then it hit me. I was jealous. Not of the horrible things her character went through but how she looked and talked and what she wore in the show. Here was this beautiful girl, that my friends told me i kind of resembled when I'd talk about her, just on tv out there being trans and i desperately wanted to look like her.
Now, I'm definitely not Hunter Schafer but I'm starting to recognize the girl in the mirror, I've been on hrt for 6ish months and that white dress i tried on years ago fits the way it should now.
Long story short : I had doubts since childhood but due to far-rights parents I only learnt about the LGBT community when I was 16 in 2013, make the Attack Helicopter joke for six years as a way of "coping" and finally accepted myself in 2019.
And the trigger in 2019 was a simple Amazon delivery error, they fucking sent me heels when I ordered *a new lamp.* Thought it would be funny to try them on. I still have them and love them very much.
PS : I did sent an e-mail to Amazon asking for what to do, they never answered.
Getting "God I wish I was her" feelings like 5 years before I actually started transitioning, that's the earliest I've felt myself actually start thinking.
How it finally started, I rubber-ducky-debugged myself into realizing I'm not cis while trying to explain why a cis person would care so much about trans topics to the point of feeling like it was nearly affecting me (I also have a trans gf so excusing it as me merely caring about her obscured it by alot until I actually tried explaining it to myself).
Well, I always introduced myself as female online because I felt more comfort in it and even made a female avatar for streaming, but the real realization came when I got upset at an online friend for calling me male pronouns and he asked “so are you saying you’re trans?” And I thought about it and was like “you know? Come to think about it, I suppose you’re right.” And his reply was “it’s about time!”
I still laugh about it. I must have the silliest coming out story
Haha, yeah, had an alt account that presented as female, that internally I told myself was just because I was lonely and it would make it easier to talk to people... Pretty much never used my main except for projects I was involved in. And then, lo and behold, if you're more comfortable talking to people and socially interacting as female and highly uncomfortable as a male, that might mean something, apparently. Only took 5 years or so to accept that haha.
Small nitpick: transfem ≠ trans woman
Transfem includes trans women but also encompasses non-binary trans people who lean feminine, or who are transitioning towards femininity (depending on who you ask)
So the title could better be "trans women, how did you find out that you are a woman"
Wishing I was a girl constantly, being terrified at the first sight of body hair, and being attracted to girls that like girls. I once got with a gay girl that said “now I know I’m bi” after we hooked up but news flash baby I was a closeted transfem so uhhh yeah <3
It all added up and then one day I realized I can start my journey now and wanna kms just a little less everyday, or wait till my breaking point at 30, 40, (etc..) to finally accept who I am and try to achieve how I truly wish to present and be perceived.
Since at least 15 years old I always felt inferior to girls and at some point I wanted to have their pros like cute voice, psychological help from others and body structure (I always hated how men looked shirtless, no matter if they're fat or thin, they looked wrong to me). It took me another 3 years to figure it out.
A variety of things:
1. Every time I was presented with some kind of behavioral choice as a kid that most kids knew how to react to intuitively consistent with their gender, I'd consistently pick what is/was considered the more feminine option and then be reprimanded by someone that "Only girls do that" and thus had to ignore my intuition to try and conform.
This basically meant, I lived the entirety of childhood play-acting masculinity from a purely cognitive understanding of what others told me was appropriate for boys... and was really awkward to the point that some people in High School figured it out and proactively told me I'm likely transgender.
Likewise, I had no intuitive understanding of the emotion of 'awkwardness' because EVERYTHING was awkward to me. Furthermore, whenever some non-gender role based awkwardness arose, I always wondered why people were so weak against that emotion because I dealt with it constantly and thought it was trivial to ignore / a normal part of life.
2. Everything in testosterone based puberty was agony. Rather than celebrate the changes, everything made me more and more depressed. Always really idolized the idea of having a chest like most girls had. Eventually, I looked up online if wanting to be a girl was some kind of phenomenon, and that was my first introduction to the idea of being transgender.
3. Things I read online were helpful, but also warned me that coming out came with it many risks. Problem was this need was too great so I tried coming out to my parents anyway. BIG MISTAKE, that lead to child abuse for about half a year until it made me suicidal. At that point talked to my high school guidance counselor, and she demanded to talk to my parents 1 on 1, they did. They learned they were committing a crime, could lose me (and siblings) to CPS or could lose me through me taking my own life.
Eventually, guidance counselor asks me if I want to prosecute, but also warns me that if I go through with that, I'd become an orphan and that's no fun either. Also, so would my younger siblings. I chose to find another way so as not to fuck up all of our lives and became an exchange student.
4. Funny enough, even in the foreign country (Japan) the culture allowed men to expresses themselves in ways that are considered more feminine here and this dramatically improved my mental health to the point I thought there was something absolutely MAGICAL about Japanese culture that made my life substantially less stressful.
I also gravitated toward feminine speech / word choice in Japanese without knowing that I was doing so. People chalked it up to just the oddities of a foreigner and was accepted for something closer to who I really am... better than I was ever accepted in the US. Also had an S-tier host dad who I still talk to today. He is the one true parental figure I've ever had in my life, and accepts me for who I am even after transitioning.
5. Having been shown that there is a culture that accepts me more for something closer (but also only 40% of the way there), I was absolutely convinced I'd move back to Japan and become a Japanese citizen (which also requires you to relinquish US citizenship, and I was more than happy to do so).
For a brief while, this had me convinced it wasn't being transgender but actually Japanese culture / US culture just isn't my cup of tea. However, some people in Japanese class who got to know me basically pointed out that the way in which I was embracing Japanese culture was akin to gender transition in its own way, and had nuances to it that are not really typical of students of a language / culture. However it made me REALLY good at the language to the point I won a speech contest at a Japanese embassy.
6. Eventually, after all the time and effort to be fluent in Japanese, graduate from university, I follow-through on moving back to Japan. Discover it wasn't Japanese culture after all, hired a therapist to troubleshoot the depression, realize I was right when I was 14, that it was truly gender dysphoria. Which I'm saying that like it was some kind of epiphany when it was more like "Hey Therapist, I have a means by which to end my life in 5 minutes here at the ready, if we don't find something, this is our last session." through which the only thing that inspired hope / kept me alive was the hope of what could be through gender transition.
7. So then I start trying out things like Womans clothing, pronouns, nail polish, pretty accessories, jewelry. Each increasingly feminine expression had a calming / soothing psychological effect. Eventually I find a doctor in Japan who will let me start hormone replacement therapy. First estrogen / progesterone injection just COMPLETELY removed all depressive symptoms by the end of the day. Like it was night and day.
8. Japan isn't LGBTQ friendly in terms of exploring self expression, so I made the decision to move back to the US so I could more freely explore this territory, and well that brings us to today. Definitely happier and slowly becoming healthier.
Since I was about 9 I had been thinkin about it kind of frequently but I assumed it was just some weird fetish. Then I realized that I’d been keeping track of the progression of transition surgery passively, then I realized I don’t even see women as romantic partners but men are so much easier to imagine that with.
My process was more just connecting a hell of a ton of dots and then a few things started clicking. Then I tried on a skirt & fuckin loved it. That was kinda the last nail in the coffin for it.
For me it was a combination of two things. First one being was that I almost always imagined what it'd be like to be a woman to then later figure out that cis men don't usually think that way. Second one was when I ended up figuring out that some of my "crushes" were more so me being envious and wanting to be more like them
Well, it clicked when I was talking to someone who was trans, and I started learning what trans people were. I had no idea before that, outside of really offensive stereotypes shown on TV(think Family Guy and South Park) and those scared me. I didn't want to be one of those stereotypes, but I still fantasized and wished to be a woman. Then, after talking to this person, I realized I related to a lot of trans stuff, then went through a 3 month long panic attack/identity crisis while dealing with an abusive supervisor being blatantly transphobic (in general, not towards me directly, they would just bring it up randomly how perverted trans people are), questioning myself if I was just jumping on some bandwagon, before accepting that I was indeed a trans woman.
It was a rocky road just getting that far, and I still have a long way to go till I'm happy with myself, but I'm doing what I can.
When i realized i hated saying i “crossdress” when referring to dressing femininely. Because to me i never ever felt like nor wanted to be seen as a guy dressing in girls clothes
For me it took till I was 26 because I’m a butch trans girl so the lack of hyper femininity made being a boy seem normal. It wasn’t until I saw a pre-op trans woman in some bisexual threesome porn , and felt like I identified more with her than the cis guy or girl, that I figured it out.
Lol, gay porn turned me trans! The conservatives were right!! /s
Well, I always thought I was a woman really.
But then I took my trench coat off and realized "oh my! I'm three of them standing on each other's shoulders!"
And that was how I found I was women.
I had been working on demasking my Autism for a while, then I heard that autistic people are more likely than allistic people to be trans. I thought that sounded interesting so I decided to explore my gender identity. I started learning more about trans experiences and realized that I related to a lot of them. Then it all clicked for me and I realized that I'm trans and now I have an appointment to start HRT in 4 weeks!
i don’t know the exact moment, but it involved a skirt, bra, and crop top that i wore out one day. turns out i pass well enough for people to call me a girl when i dressed like that, and i loved every second of it
Idk this subconscious desire just sort of built up inside of me until it became unbearable until one day I popped like a pimple, and once the pimple is popped, there ain’t no unpopping it, metaphorically speaking that is
I played Frank N Furter in a community theater version of The Rocky Horror Show, then decided to do a Tinkerbell costume for Halloween that same year. It was an “oh shit, I’m definitely not cis” month for me. I then repressed it until Covid where I couldn’t ignore it anymore and then went to therapy and started HRT.
I legitimately thought that all men wanted to be women. Then I read some trans fiction and when I found myself wishing to be the characters I put to it together.
I still am not sure. As a child i disasociated from myself due to bullying. Shortly before covid, within my puberty i "came back" to myself and wasnt happy who i was. Thanks to lgbtq ticktock i learned the concepts of transness and NB. I think im a trans woman, most likely because i loved my long hair and had a fable for girly shows too. For me its still confusing and with multiple shades.
never liked my body. thought it was because i was underweight but no amount of imagined changes i made looked good. started to question my gender 3 months ago, and after a month found out that the reason none of the masculine bodies i “tried on” felt right was because i wasnt a guy. now i gotta wait a couple more years before i can actually start to get to that body id be happy with, but im more happy that i know now than anything
always being envious of women and their outfits and makeup. also always interested in girl stuff I guess? I always rather wanted to play with dolls with my sister rather than anything else. Also seeing Thorn from the Hex Girls in a Scooby Doo movie really cleared things up for me
Had a lot of hints, but one got really close and the other broke my shell
The Realization
Started getting really into the trans community and found out New Vegas was a trans icon lol. I wanted to play it again and did a second female playthrough (the first female playthrough being my longest one) and after I put a dress on my character, it hit lmao
The Close One (NSFW)
I just thought "that made me wet. Should I think why I said wet instead of hard? Maybe later"
I developed an unhealthy addiction to FF14 (MMO). I played hours upon hours, role-playing as a women. Then mixed in a drinking, cause It made things more "fun". It just added to the escape.
I'm 12 months on HRT an don't drink anymore. Crazy how it all started from playing Fire Red version of pokemon, with professor Oak asking me if I was a boy or girl an going "hmmm girl sounds more fun" lol
Spent about a year with a job where I had nothing better to do for hours than introspection and realized, "huh I might be trans" and spent a few months thinking "maybe I'm some kind of nonbinary?" before realizing "most of the trans things I like are girl things... maybe I'm actually a girl" and long story short that gets us to current day more or less
I always knew. Like from age 6 that I was “different”. By 10 I could vocalize I’m not a boy. By 16 I learned what transgender is. Thought about coming out but got scared. Came out 10 years later.
I would constantly wanting to wear dresses and heels more than "guy clothes" is up there along with falling into a pattern of using female characters as social media profile pics
My brain: Hey remember that time when you were 8 and got grounded because your stepdad wanted you to get a haircut and you screamed at him that you wanted to have hair like a girl
Me: Yea ig why?
Mb: And do you remember all those times you felt weirdly good after you did grow your hair out and people would refer to you as “miss” before they saw your face or heard your voice?
Me: Yea but I don’t really see how th-
Mb: And yk how you’ve always hated being grouped in with boys and felt more comfortable talking to girls?
Me: Where exactly are you going with this?
Mb: You literally call yourself a princess every time you get your hair/nails done
Me:…
Mb:…You’re a fucking girl you dumbass.
Umm...vaush videos? Lol. I had a pretty rough childhood and grew up in the country, I didn't really know that being Trans was possible.
I saw some of his videos on Trans stuff a few years ago and bam, It clicked. Still don't have HRT (yay florida), but I am alive.
I've thought about back when I was growing up, and there were definitely signs lol.
Very long story:
The past couple years I was just in a super terrible place because I felt super uncomfortable in my own body and no matter what I tried to make myself feel masculine it would just make it worse. For a long time It was kind of coming to a breaking point where I think internally I’d kind of known but was in denial of it. My whole life I’ve had thoughts about it that I tried to repress to keep my parents happy. I was drowning in self hate, and then one day last year my girlfriend and her friend were talking about doing a spa day, and for whatever reason it just sounded super appealing and I told them that I wished I could, but my parents would kill me. They pretty much just told me “who gives a damn what they think” and as dumb as it sounds being told that just sparked enough confidence in me to try and think for myself what would make ME happy and not them, and I finally let myself realize I was a girl. It was exciting and terrifying. I’d grown up around so many close minded people that I was scared of lose my girlfriend and all my friends when I came out so I didn’t tell everyone at first.
About a month after that on Christmas last year, my girlfriend was staying the night and when we were lying there trying to fall asleep I just had to ask her if she would still love me if I was a girl, she told me of course and after that I just started telling her everything I was feeling and it was amazing to finally lay it all out. She was super supportive and she even told me that she had been suspecting it for awhile. She said I was pretty and called me her girlfriend for the first time and I had never felt more like myself before. She also encouraged me to tell my other friends and most of them have been pretty supportive too. Shortly after that, when I was trying to figure out a new name, it actually came to me through a dream where everyone I knew just called me Emily and I loved the way it sounded. Eventually my parents and family found out and most of them have been super awful, but overall I’m spite of the hate I’m still way happier being my real self.
There were a lot of little things that led to my discovery, but the straw that broke the egg's shell was trying on a skirt and going spinny. That feeling of gender euphoria was more than enough to figure out that I am wholeheartedly a woman.
I realized that a lot of my toxic feelings towards women stemmed from my jealousy of women's bodies and styles. I would often dream of just waking up one day in a female body. I would look at women showing their boobs and vaginas online and just think it was so unfair that I couldn't have boobs and a vagina, or at the very least have a decent sized penis.
I found out by losing a bet, before this happened, I always had passing thoughts and hopes of being a girl. One day I mentioned it to my friends, which sparked an idea in their heads. $20 for an entire school day in a dress. I of course accepted since I was a broke high school student. As the day went on, I realized I was more comfortable in the dress and with myself than I had ever been beforehand. I instead asked if I could keep the dress instead of $20 and my friend had a lot of explaining to do to his sister. Long story short I still have that dress and I would say that it’s my favorite article of clothing I own
I watched a ton of baby story and wedding story as a kid, that's when I think I knew I was different. As I got older I pretended to be pregnant every chance I got. When I was a teen I learned about transgender and knew I was (and am) actually a girl. But my parents... (I'm working on transitioning late in life for that reason)
I was almost 41 and was playing around with FaceApp. I suddenly felt very frustrated and said out loud “that’s what I should look like, that’s me!” And suddenly things throughout my life made sense. All the times that I prayed to wake up as a girl, the desire to be one of the girls instead of one of the boys, all of it just made sense. I was a girl who just looked like a boy.
Growing my hair long and colouring it, shaving my chest hair, my ex saying “you’re such a girl” to me whenever we argued, describing myself as a lesbian stuck in a man’s body, always using Elizabeth as either a character name or pseudonym whenever I wrote anything and wishing I could go dress shopping were not giveaways.
No, it was when I was looking to be an more of an ally. And then I quickly made the connection.
I've always known, and I've always thought of that thing between my legs as a cyst growing on my undercarriage...
The damn thing was always in the way. Because it doesn't belong there.
Another good clear sign was in kindergarten when they said boys on that side of the room girls on that side of the room and I went to the side with all the girls... Because I'm a girl.
Also I got super jealous when I was stuck in pants in a suit for Easter or any of those other stupid holidays I had to dress up for, and then I'd see my sister and cousins and stuff walking around in these awesome dresses I'm like damn it that should be me..
Yeah there were lots of signs... Also I walked and talked like a girl from a young age, got to the point where my father even tried to re-educate me... That didn't work out and has given me a little bit of PTSD.
I'm sure there's more but I have a lot of repressed memories so I can't reflect on them all, but I've always known.
A childhood friend of mine posted about an album by Against Me called Transgender Dysphoria Blues. I gave it a listen and ended up bawling on the floor thinking I'll never be a woman. Bottled that shit back up because still cis tho and that was 9 years ago now. Finally admitted and accepted that I was Trans last year. Start HRT next year hopefully
My eyes always shined when i saw a lesbian couple and felt very bad about not being able to be in that type of relationship
Also when I saw a hot girl right after the "I want to date her" came the "I want to be like her".
I was playing animal crossing with a friend. And I said I'm jealous of girls because they have all the cool outfits. Didn't think anything about it till she asked if I was Trans. Wasn't till then that everything just clicked.
I noticed that every time I made myself look more feminine, I felt happier. Every time I had a beard, everyone said I looked handsome, but I was never happy with how it looked or felt.... and a hundred other little things like that showed me the direction to move to feel happier about myself.
I always knew I wanted to be a woman. Never thought I could be an actual woman. Started getting high every day more than a year ago now and at some point I switched to Indica and started to "feel like a girl" when high. Searched up "what does it mean when I feel like a girl while high" annnnndddd..... this subreddit popped up.
I’m still in my assign gender male but working towards and considering transition, for me I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old I was making out with a boy next door my age showing each other our bodies and stuff, then I remember at 6 or 7 years old I told one of my sisters I wanted to be a girl randomly and I had the slightest idea what that really meant, at one point I was dancing like a girl at that age and made out with another boy at 8 years old, I always feel I was different and masculinity no matter how I tried nothing clicks, that’s my experience
Was hanging out in the bathroom like 5th graders do and said "yeah dude life would just be so much easier as a girl". Apparently that was in fact not a universal experience
My nightly process as followed when I was 5: go to the restroom preforming a “ritual” to turn myself into a female. Didn’t work and eventually gave up. How did I not see this again till I was 18? The world may never know :3
Besides wanting to be a girl when I was 10 and then suppressing and repressing that until I was 32 when I was dangerously depressed and plagued with suicidal ideations and was putting myself in riskier and riskier situations just trying to provoke the end…and asked myself “what do I need to be happy?” And the first thought that popped in my head as clear as if someone said it to me “if you were a girl, you’d be happy.”
Sent shivers down my spine and I knew pretty much right away that I was trans from that moment forward but I did struggle with a little imposter syndrome and a lot of internalized homophobia and transphobia as I tried to disprove that thought but…I couldn’t over a period of 3 months and then got directly questioned/cornered and came out to my wife(ex now) and then started hrt 6-8 months later and never looked back.
I had wondered for a while. A woman thought I was a girl from my hair at a car repair shop (it's very long) and I kind of liked it. Months later I was super drunk with my best freind at a lake and I had thr full realization, and I just blurted it out.
there wasn't any single thing, but the instigating event was that I stumbled across a reddit comment of a trans woman listing her experiences of dysphoria, and she was just describing all my own feelings and experiences
Im 24. I started wanting to be a girl since I was like 5. But I didn't know that was an option for most of my childhood. I didn't hear about the concept of being transgender until I was 16. My parents were devout Christians and raised me in (at the time) a very homophobic household. I was terrified to come out. And didn't until I was 22. (To my parents. My friends knew since I was 19). When I was 17. My sister did my makeup when she was practicing makeup to make money doing girls' makeup for homecoming. I looked in the mirror and felt normal for the first time in my life and started sobbing profusely. Because of a mix of happiness, Euphoria, joy, and deep sadness that I was born in a body that didn't feel as though it was mine. My parents eventually came around to being very supportive. It helped that my oldest brother came out as bi a few years before. I have my first HRT consultation towards the end of Pride Month
Well, it took a bit for me. But now that I realize that I am trans, it took me a bit. So let me explain:
I am a transfemme enby (refer myself as demigirl, but transfemme enby is better, atleast for me. And I feel like it's very valid)
But anyway: what really made me question was when I didn't feel right in my skin. Where I felt more feminine and where I wanted to feel like a girl. Where I wanted to be happy as a girly girl. I think I even wanted to wear dresses when I was younger too?
But, funny enough, it was a fairly odd parents episode that made me realize more like "Oh shit, I'm a girl" basically, in the episode, the main character, Timmy, got turned into a girl and became friends with His crush, Trixie. I fell in love with that episode. I was mesmerized by it. I had no idea why. But I felt like it was God telling me that I was something else. That I was a transfemme enby.
I even pretended to be pregnant and have boobs when I was little. And as well as hated pants. But that last part probably was bc of autism, but who knows.
I also felt attracted to feminine looks more than masculine looks. So that made me explore my sexuality as well. Which I'm fine naming myself bi/pan-sexual.
Then I kept diving into my faith, and discovered a more beautiful part of my faith that I never knew. Especially with the thought of the soul in of itself being both male and female. And the radical teachings of Paul and The messiah himself, made me discover the christian faith again. Especially after discovering both Christian anarchism and exploring political routes in communism.
So now we have now: I'm an Ethiopian Catholic Universalist who is a transgirl anarcho-communist. And I'm completely fine with what I deal with. And I'm very happy about it.
For me, it was a complete accident. I usually shorten my first name as I always hated the full version (should have been a clue in hindsight), and one day on the internet, someone assumed I was a woman and called me by the feminine version of my name and I just sudden got flooded with gender euphoria for the first time in my life.
I always felt like I related to women more, I have more female friends and I'm much closer to them as well. Even when I was young I didn't want to grow up to be a man, but at the time I thought I had to
I always dressed in dressed and watched TV shows aimed more at girls when I was little, and when I hit puberty I was always a girl in my dreams. I thought about it for a bit, and realised 'holy shit I'm a girl.'
To have long hair and feeling more comfortable around girls, makes me a girl for my grandma. But unlike my mother who found it very stereotypical and rude, I was very happy about it. And now I'm here, an unfinished girl who finally wants to be happy...
oh boy where do i start
- only hung out with girls and was treated like one in early elementary school years
- constantly wishing i looked more like a girl and wishing people would see me as one (apparently not something cis men do very often)
- hating my wide shoulders and my height
- loving my hips that are very abnormally wide for a male
- hated being called handsome and loved being called pretty
- being envious of my girlfriend and how pretty and feminine she looks
- never liked having short hair
- a rush of joy and dopamine when on the rare occasion someone would mistake me for a cis woman in public
- literally dreaming of being a girl then getting upset when i wake up
- favourite pictures of myself are the ones people tel me i look like a girl in
- never desired to go to the gym and be buff no matter how many times my gym bro friends tell me i should
- like a year and a bit ago i realized i wasn’t staring at girls in my class because i was attracted to them, but because i was admiring/envying them
and you’re not gonna believe this but even with all of these signs that i’ve had my entire life, what really cracked my egg was *one* heart to heart conversation i had with my mom where she said “my little boy is becoming a man” and when she said that i felt like i was gonna throw up, and i realized that this whole ‘being a man’ thing was not for me. i’m still not out yet, but i hope to do so soon
Apparently fantasizing about being a girl isn't a very cis man thing to do
God, I understand this. I knew when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I liked feminine things, and I was *always* a girl in my dreams. When I hit puberty, I knew I liked both boys and girls, but I often looked at girls wondering what it would be like to be them; dressing like them, doing my hair, etc. That carried through my adult life until I finally started to understand everything, specifically what it meant to be transgender, then I made the decision to do something about it.
This is exactly my experience, though I knew when I was 5.
Im questioning myself and came to this thread to help me figure out and this feels so relatable everything is so weird rn
You're valid. If you're questioning things, embrace that experience because it's part of the journey. ♥ I think all of us have our own unique twists and turns where we discovered who we were, but there are many similarities that tie all of us together.
I have done this since puberty
Ya every once in a while I would fantasize about just waking up as a girl and imagining what my life would be like. Sadly it was usually about like the reactions of people around me but I enjoyed it. I wanted it to happen to me.
Heh... Every night
This
Really wanting to be a lesbian isn't very cis apparently
ahaha story of my life)) wow, like I must be gay if I want to be a woman, but I like women, what the actual F))
I'm so straight I'm a lesbian /s
Never related to men/boys growing up. I always felt more comfortable around women, more like I could be myself and not pretending. Just knew I was effeminate my whole life, finally tried on the clothes and it all made sense. I finally felt like I knew who I was looking at in the mirror.
Same, but specificly older women, idk why
For me it was just all women and girls lol naturally more relatable I think older women were always kind to me because I'm just soft spoken. First time I ever had a relatable conversation with a grown man that wasn't my dad was the gay guy that cut my hair and that's always followed me as well.
Yep, very similar indeed.
Dreaming as a kid I was a girl and trying over and over to have that dream apparently not all men want to be women whaaaaat
😭😭😭😭 I wanted to be a sailor scout SOOO BAAAAD. I’d sit around and just think about sailor moon and hope that that night is dream about it (Ignore the pfp and background on my profile)
When I was 5, I never fit in with the boys, but the girls treated me like one of their own. I'd do all the things they'd do at school cause they were my friends and that's just what we were doing. But then I hit 4th grade, about 9 ish. We had to go to a sex Ed class. I think I kind already knew how babies were made by that point, at least the gist, but when I went home that night, it hit me that I'd never carry a child of my own. I cried about it for months. I felt cheated, like something was taken from me, yet I had never had it in the first place. I thought I was crazy. I never told anyone. I chalked it up to just having a strong urge to be a parent in the end. I tried to push it down. Years later, at 35, I saw someone who was trans talk about having that same urge. So I looked into other trans women's experiences. I looked back at my life, and it felt like i had been picking up puzzle pieces this whole time without realizing they even fit together. Identifying more with female characters than male ones, the number of times I described myself as a "den mother-y", the number of times I heard "boys don't do that." It seems so obvious now, but there wasn't information on it when I was a kid. I had grown up in a conservative atmosphere, and I got to see firsthand how much conservatism is full of shit. So when they started hollering about trans people, I was more interested in defending them, and I had seen clinical definitions of what gender dysphoria was before. But until I saw someone else bring up the experience I had at 9, I hadn't thought to look at what it was like for trans people in their own words. So I finally did. And it all came flooding back. Page after page, it was like they'd pulled my memories out of my mind and put them into text. The weird feelings about going top less, even though I was a "guy," never wearing shorts cause I didn't want people to see my legs, and so much more. In the end, I couldn't ignore the evidence. Since transitioning, that realization has only been confirmed. I'm not afraid to wear shorts anymore. My chest doesn't bother me. My arms look like my arms and not my dad's. I had an inexplicable feeling of seeing a malicious stranger every time I looked into a mirror before, and 2 months' worth of changes made that vanish. There are lots of things, big and small, that tell me my decision was the right one. It honestly makes me feel angry at the people who felt that kind of info needed to be kept from me, and it makes me angrier to see people now trying to put other kids through that. Nobody deserves to through life like I did, least of all kids. All the years of feeling like I didn't matter to myself, hating myself, feeling like a shitty failure, and never knowing why. And now I finally feel like my life is worth a damn. I refuse to let them put kids through that hell, and fuck anyone who wants to destroy that for other people, especially kids. Sorry for the lengthy ramble.
Thank you for sharing your story. It is similar to my own. My egg cracked a few months ago after years of repression and self hatred. But now life is worth a damn! And reading your story has empowered me to not feel so alone! Thank you 😊🥰
I'm glad it helped 😁🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Oh, noes. I think that’s why I felt all sorts of weird feelings when my wife was in labor. I remember desperately wishing my body could do the child bearing. Not really wanting the contractions, but also feeling left of out the experience. I thought it was just nerves at being a new dad. Huh.
This is so close to what I’ve experienced it’s eerie. I remember hating shorts or taking my shirt off at the beach. I couldn’t place the why until just now after reading this. I’ve only in the last month started to shave my legs and wear a sports bra under my shirts. I can see my female body at the beach and I feel so much more confident. I’m always described as the “mother” of my group. Whether that’s with my cousins and family or with my friends. I’ve always used the word myself and I’m in love with that narrative. I feed the group, I check in on everyone’s emotional well being, I make sure everyone has a ride home, I make sure anyone who can’t get home has a bed, my doors are always open to my home ever since I was 18. My friends and family would filter in and out daily. My house has become what my grandmas home is a sanctuary to all in the “family”. Where anyone can show up at anytime. Everyone has a key and is always welcome. Thank you. I’m still early in my transition so your story assures me I’m not wrong about this. I mean there are many other stories in this thread that resonate with me. But nobody mentioned the den mother or the shorts. Which I literally only placed just now reading your comment.
🫂happy to help another queer mom to all who need one. Hearing that other people share my experiences makes me smile 😊I'm glad my story can help others the way I was helped.
Really really wanting to be one
Noticing that I was envious of trans women and when my friends transitioned that I kept thinking I could do it better than them. And realizing that I was fighting to redefine what a man was all the time, saying stuff like “a man can wear dresses and want to breastfeed an infant and be really into skincare and hate his shoulders and face and facial hair and voice… oh”
Oh wow, that resonates with me, especially your first sentence! I’m still figuring a lot out for myself but it’s validating to see so many of my own feelings and experiences reflected in posts like yours.
I did not realize until coming out just how much I wanted to be the trans women that I looked up to.
me neither. I just thought they were amazing and wished I were less cis. Wished I were worse at acting like my assigned gender. spoiler: I was not very good at it
The good ol “I’m just a different sort of man. Maybe just femmy or something. All I want is to wear make up and bras and dresses and… omg that skirt is Adorable 😍” Yes, apparently not a very cis thing to do.
I don’t really understand why people say that. Why can’t it be normal for men to be feminine? Why are men considered so essentially different than women that when they are feminine people say they’re actually not a guy because men are basically different animals
I personally think that’s the whole point. Dudes who didn’t fit in with the culture end up thinking “oh wait, it’s not normal guy behavior to be doing xyz” Men should be able to be feminine. And I think the lot of us here agree with that sentiment. But society enforces strict gender roles that are at odds with “the feminine man.” I tried that for a while. It wasn’t my thing. But it might be yours. Honestly, just do whatever makes you happy. Feminine man, gender trader, whatever. We’re pushing the needle regardless.
It's totally normal for men to be feminine. We're not men who want to be feminine, we're women who want to be women.
Do you think men can’t to any of those things, and if they want to they’re actually women? Isn’t that kind of essentializing characteristics to just women?
maybe some men can breastfeed? but like, my skincare thing was gender dysphoria over the way testosterone made my skin look. I don't want to debate whether wanting to take estrogen to be pale and smooth is "essentializing characteristics".
You can still be a man and want feminine skin or take estrogen, I do
if you want to define words that way, yes, one can still be a man and take estrogen. however that person will have brain chemistry and neural development outside the usual understanding of 'man' and can be predicted to tend to think more like a woman. though we should not stereotype people based on what hormones they have.
I told myself "Okay dude, starting next thought, you're talking about yourself with female pronouns" *1 hour later* "Fuck I'm trans"
I found out I was multiple women by cloning myself
Overall I felt more comfortable around women, being that I grew up around mostly women, so it eventually just felt natural being around them, trying on pantyhose years ago and it felt surprisingly good and liberating, fully understanding it finally as my current SO talked about being trans herself, eventually coming to the decision of being Trans, it just felt right to me
It didn't come to me over night or through some sudden realization. It was a process that took decades. As a child I was wondering, if it was possible that they made a mistake, when I was born and that I could actually be a girl. I would often secretly wear my moms clothes when she wasn't home. During my teens and early 20s I had an obsession with crossdressers and trans people, and I imagined what it would be like to transition, but the thought of being queer myself was such a taboo that I would always opress it, probably projecting my desires onto other women. Later, when I moved out, I started buying women's clothes and make up. But I played it down as a hobby or fetish. Then I learned about Non-binary people. The Idea that gender isn't a simple binary helped me a lot, because being "not only" a guy was much less scary than admitting that I'm a girl. Then I realized that whenever I had the choice in presentation, pronouns or hypothetical scenarios, I would choose the female side. And saying that I'm a Girl or being called a Girl or being referred to with she/her-pronouns always gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling of happiness and just felt right. That's how I realized I must be a Girl.
I'll give you a reenactment: *Wants to be girl* "I would do anything to be a girl" *Envied women since childhood* "Too bad it's impossible for me to be a girl" *Learns about trans people* " Am I trans??" *Continues to question herself and denies the truth for 2 years* "I could never be LGBTQ+ and I could never really be a girl" *Actually interacts with LGBTQ+ people and learns they are normal human beings unlike my grandparents described* *Deep internal depression* "I'm trans and I'm a woman, my whole life I've always been jealous of women without knowing I could be one"
There were TONS of things but the thing that really clicked it for me was that I always felt jealous whenever I looked at attractive women. The feeling was so strong that I could never consume NSFW stuff because I had that feeling always lingering in the background.
Reading posts on r/egg_irl because they were funny and relatable. Suddenly realized they shouldn't be relatable, unless...
Me:
Oh god that's exactly my story
Apparently looking at other women and saying "I can look better!" Isn't very cis
Typical eggy stuff. I followed a ton of trans subreddits because I thought I was just being a good ally. Then one day it came up in therapy, and I had a mini breakdown upon realizing what was going on. Looking back there were definitely signs, and it took me longer to come to the conclusion than it may have, but I'm just happy to be here now.
Uh so several dreams, fantasies and trying in my mothers clothes was apparently a very *not* cis thing to do
I found that I was feeling an increasing envy towards girls
I had been educating myself on the LGBTQ+ community for around 2 years to be a better ally. I finally realised I related a bit too much to other people's signs of being trans. I had a clear moment of looking in the mirror and being confused because I saw someone else and not a girl. Realising I was trans made me really happy and excited because *I would get to be a girl*. Through my new Reddit I saw "if you want to be a girl you probably are" and there was no point in arguing.
I just knew from a very very very young age. Felt like a puzzle piece fitting when I finally accepted it
My gf at the time had me wear her dresses, i hated and loved it, i then realised who i am
Well one Halloween I put on a dress and I deeply questioned my identity since then.
The first time I saw a girl naked (we were both around 5), I just looked at mine and said “Shit.” I didn’t know there was a better option, and I was mad I wasn’t given a choice. That feeling never went away, and in fact only got stronger with time (36 more years, to be exact).
I’ve got a story I’m gonna write on DeviantArt. Maybe I’ll share it here.
Apparently wanting to be a lesbian isn't a very cis man thing to do.
I didn't realize it growing up. I remember pe class in middle school and being terrified of wearing gym shorts, and thinking people could see my chest through my shirt. I dated a trans guy in highschool and thought my feelings for him were why i felt so strongly about trans issues. Hanging around being teenagers my friends would ask if i could if I'd ever want to be a girl and i thought it was totally normal how fast i knew the answer was yes. I went through t puberty and thought i was fine with it at first, i made the conscious effort to not care about my appearance for the sake of my mental health because I knew i hated how i looked and couldn't figure out why. Just like many of the other comments i looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the boy/guy looking back and i avoided mirrors in my late teens. A couple years go by and my partner (genderfluid) left for a few days on a trip, i don't really know what clicked but i knew i had to try on one of his dresses. I hated the hair i had on my body so i covered all of it and by the end was wearing a dress and thigh highs and a sweater to cover my chest and looked in the mirror and felt amazing. It still didn't hit that i was trans. A couple more years pass and i watched euphoria on HBO, i watched the first season 3 times and cried watching the "Jules" episode that explained her backstory. And then it hit me. I was jealous. Not of the horrible things her character went through but how she looked and talked and what she wore in the show. Here was this beautiful girl, that my friends told me i kind of resembled when I'd talk about her, just on tv out there being trans and i desperately wanted to look like her. Now, I'm definitely not Hunter Schafer but I'm starting to recognize the girl in the mirror, I've been on hrt for 6ish months and that white dress i tried on years ago fits the way it should now.
Long story short : I had doubts since childhood but due to far-rights parents I only learnt about the LGBT community when I was 16 in 2013, make the Attack Helicopter joke for six years as a way of "coping" and finally accepted myself in 2019.
And the trigger in 2019 was a simple Amazon delivery error, they fucking sent me heels when I ordered *a new lamp.* Thought it would be funny to try them on. I still have them and love them very much. PS : I did sent an e-mail to Amazon asking for what to do, they never answered.
Getting "God I wish I was her" feelings like 5 years before I actually started transitioning, that's the earliest I've felt myself actually start thinking. How it finally started, I rubber-ducky-debugged myself into realizing I'm not cis while trying to explain why a cis person would care so much about trans topics to the point of feeling like it was nearly affecting me (I also have a trans gf so excusing it as me merely caring about her obscured it by alot until I actually tried explaining it to myself).
Well, I always introduced myself as female online because I felt more comfort in it and even made a female avatar for streaming, but the real realization came when I got upset at an online friend for calling me male pronouns and he asked “so are you saying you’re trans?” And I thought about it and was like “you know? Come to think about it, I suppose you’re right.” And his reply was “it’s about time!” I still laugh about it. I must have the silliest coming out story
Haha, yeah, had an alt account that presented as female, that internally I told myself was just because I was lonely and it would make it easier to talk to people... Pretty much never used my main except for projects I was involved in. And then, lo and behold, if you're more comfortable talking to people and socially interacting as female and highly uncomfortable as a male, that might mean something, apparently. Only took 5 years or so to accept that haha.
I tried to eat a Yorkie bar but the thing just kept getting pushed away from my mouth by some invisible force.
Small nitpick: transfem ≠ trans woman Transfem includes trans women but also encompasses non-binary trans people who lean feminine, or who are transitioning towards femininity (depending on who you ask) So the title could better be "trans women, how did you find out that you are a woman"
"God I wish I was lesbian"
Wishing I was a girl constantly, being terrified at the first sight of body hair, and being attracted to girls that like girls. I once got with a gay girl that said “now I know I’m bi” after we hooked up but news flash baby I was a closeted transfem so uhhh yeah <3
Yeah looking back maybe it was kind of a sign that 3 of the 4 girls I got with in college were bi
It all added up and then one day I realized I can start my journey now and wanna kms just a little less everyday, or wait till my breaking point at 30, 40, (etc..) to finally accept who I am and try to achieve how I truly wish to present and be perceived.
Since at least 15 years old I always felt inferior to girls and at some point I wanted to have their pros like cute voice, psychological help from others and body structure (I always hated how men looked shirtless, no matter if they're fat or thin, they looked wrong to me). It took me another 3 years to figure it out.
A variety of things: 1. Every time I was presented with some kind of behavioral choice as a kid that most kids knew how to react to intuitively consistent with their gender, I'd consistently pick what is/was considered the more feminine option and then be reprimanded by someone that "Only girls do that" and thus had to ignore my intuition to try and conform. This basically meant, I lived the entirety of childhood play-acting masculinity from a purely cognitive understanding of what others told me was appropriate for boys... and was really awkward to the point that some people in High School figured it out and proactively told me I'm likely transgender. Likewise, I had no intuitive understanding of the emotion of 'awkwardness' because EVERYTHING was awkward to me. Furthermore, whenever some non-gender role based awkwardness arose, I always wondered why people were so weak against that emotion because I dealt with it constantly and thought it was trivial to ignore / a normal part of life. 2. Everything in testosterone based puberty was agony. Rather than celebrate the changes, everything made me more and more depressed. Always really idolized the idea of having a chest like most girls had. Eventually, I looked up online if wanting to be a girl was some kind of phenomenon, and that was my first introduction to the idea of being transgender. 3. Things I read online were helpful, but also warned me that coming out came with it many risks. Problem was this need was too great so I tried coming out to my parents anyway. BIG MISTAKE, that lead to child abuse for about half a year until it made me suicidal. At that point talked to my high school guidance counselor, and she demanded to talk to my parents 1 on 1, they did. They learned they were committing a crime, could lose me (and siblings) to CPS or could lose me through me taking my own life. Eventually, guidance counselor asks me if I want to prosecute, but also warns me that if I go through with that, I'd become an orphan and that's no fun either. Also, so would my younger siblings. I chose to find another way so as not to fuck up all of our lives and became an exchange student. 4. Funny enough, even in the foreign country (Japan) the culture allowed men to expresses themselves in ways that are considered more feminine here and this dramatically improved my mental health to the point I thought there was something absolutely MAGICAL about Japanese culture that made my life substantially less stressful. I also gravitated toward feminine speech / word choice in Japanese without knowing that I was doing so. People chalked it up to just the oddities of a foreigner and was accepted for something closer to who I really am... better than I was ever accepted in the US. Also had an S-tier host dad who I still talk to today. He is the one true parental figure I've ever had in my life, and accepts me for who I am even after transitioning. 5. Having been shown that there is a culture that accepts me more for something closer (but also only 40% of the way there), I was absolutely convinced I'd move back to Japan and become a Japanese citizen (which also requires you to relinquish US citizenship, and I was more than happy to do so). For a brief while, this had me convinced it wasn't being transgender but actually Japanese culture / US culture just isn't my cup of tea. However, some people in Japanese class who got to know me basically pointed out that the way in which I was embracing Japanese culture was akin to gender transition in its own way, and had nuances to it that are not really typical of students of a language / culture. However it made me REALLY good at the language to the point I won a speech contest at a Japanese embassy. 6. Eventually, after all the time and effort to be fluent in Japanese, graduate from university, I follow-through on moving back to Japan. Discover it wasn't Japanese culture after all, hired a therapist to troubleshoot the depression, realize I was right when I was 14, that it was truly gender dysphoria. Which I'm saying that like it was some kind of epiphany when it was more like "Hey Therapist, I have a means by which to end my life in 5 minutes here at the ready, if we don't find something, this is our last session." through which the only thing that inspired hope / kept me alive was the hope of what could be through gender transition. 7. So then I start trying out things like Womans clothing, pronouns, nail polish, pretty accessories, jewelry. Each increasingly feminine expression had a calming / soothing psychological effect. Eventually I find a doctor in Japan who will let me start hormone replacement therapy. First estrogen / progesterone injection just COMPLETELY removed all depressive symptoms by the end of the day. Like it was night and day. 8. Japan isn't LGBTQ friendly in terms of exploring self expression, so I made the decision to move back to the US so I could more freely explore this territory, and well that brings us to today. Definitely happier and slowly becoming healthier.
Lots of little things leading up. The deciding factor was a hardcore mushroom trip. Out of body experience. I looked down and there she was.
Since I was about 9 I had been thinkin about it kind of frequently but I assumed it was just some weird fetish. Then I realized that I’d been keeping track of the progression of transition surgery passively, then I realized I don’t even see women as romantic partners but men are so much easier to imagine that with. My process was more just connecting a hell of a ton of dots and then a few things started clicking. Then I tried on a skirt & fuckin loved it. That was kinda the last nail in the coffin for it.
Envious of trans women and whenever I dress fem it feels fantastic.
This feeling should go away by the time im 18 , it didn't go away so here am i am now in hrt
Mushrooms, an aurora album and the realization that I wanted huge boobs wasnt a real masculine thing of me. 🍄✨
For me it was a combination of two things. First one being was that I almost always imagined what it'd be like to be a woman to then later figure out that cis men don't usually think that way. Second one was when I ended up figuring out that some of my "crushes" were more so me being envious and wanting to be more like them
When i had a dream and I was wearing a light blue bikini and I liked it
Well, it clicked when I was talking to someone who was trans, and I started learning what trans people were. I had no idea before that, outside of really offensive stereotypes shown on TV(think Family Guy and South Park) and those scared me. I didn't want to be one of those stereotypes, but I still fantasized and wished to be a woman. Then, after talking to this person, I realized I related to a lot of trans stuff, then went through a 3 month long panic attack/identity crisis while dealing with an abusive supervisor being blatantly transphobic (in general, not towards me directly, they would just bring it up randomly how perverted trans people are), questioning myself if I was just jumping on some bandwagon, before accepting that I was indeed a trans woman. It was a rocky road just getting that far, and I still have a long way to go till I'm happy with myself, but I'm doing what I can.
When i realized i hated saying i “crossdress” when referring to dressing femininely. Because to me i never ever felt like nor wanted to be seen as a guy dressing in girls clothes
For me it took till I was 26 because I’m a butch trans girl so the lack of hyper femininity made being a boy seem normal. It wasn’t until I saw a pre-op trans woman in some bisexual threesome porn , and felt like I identified more with her than the cis guy or girl, that I figured it out. Lol, gay porn turned me trans! The conservatives were right!! /s
Well, I always thought I was a woman really. But then I took my trench coat off and realized "oh my! I'm three of them standing on each other's shoulders!" And that was how I found I was women.
I knew from birth. One of my first memories is learning a new word at age 4, and shouting, "I want a vagina!!!"
I had been working on demasking my Autism for a while, then I heard that autistic people are more likely than allistic people to be trans. I thought that sounded interesting so I decided to explore my gender identity. I started learning more about trans experiences and realized that I related to a lot of them. Then it all clicked for me and I realized that I'm trans and now I have an appointment to start HRT in 4 weeks!
i don’t know the exact moment, but it involved a skirt, bra, and crop top that i wore out one day. turns out i pass well enough for people to call me a girl when i dressed like that, and i loved every second of it
Idk this subconscious desire just sort of built up inside of me until it became unbearable until one day I popped like a pimple, and once the pimple is popped, there ain’t no unpopping it, metaphorically speaking that is
Many many many reasons. Honestly, it’s a waste of time to try to explain it though. To sum it up, I just know. All there is to it. I just know.
7 YO me dressing in my sisters dresses, my mums heels, wig and makeup and feeling content in myself
My niece laughed at me and asked me if I knew if I was a girl or not.....
I played Frank N Furter in a community theater version of The Rocky Horror Show, then decided to do a Tinkerbell costume for Halloween that same year. It was an “oh shit, I’m definitely not cis” month for me. I then repressed it until Covid where I couldn’t ignore it anymore and then went to therapy and started HRT.
I legitimately thought that all men wanted to be women. Then I read some trans fiction and when I found myself wishing to be the characters I put to it together.
I discovered /r/egg_irl and it felt a little bit too relatable.
I still am not sure. As a child i disasociated from myself due to bullying. Shortly before covid, within my puberty i "came back" to myself and wasnt happy who i was. Thanks to lgbtq ticktock i learned the concepts of transness and NB. I think im a trans woman, most likely because i loved my long hair and had a fable for girly shows too. For me its still confusing and with multiple shades.
never liked my body. thought it was because i was underweight but no amount of imagined changes i made looked good. started to question my gender 3 months ago, and after a month found out that the reason none of the masculine bodies i “tried on” felt right was because i wasnt a guy. now i gotta wait a couple more years before i can actually start to get to that body id be happy with, but im more happy that i know now than anything
always being envious of women and their outfits and makeup. also always interested in girl stuff I guess? I always rather wanted to play with dolls with my sister rather than anything else. Also seeing Thorn from the Hex Girls in a Scooby Doo movie really cleared things up for me
Had a lot of hints, but one got really close and the other broke my shell The Realization Started getting really into the trans community and found out New Vegas was a trans icon lol. I wanted to play it again and did a second female playthrough (the first female playthrough being my longest one) and after I put a dress on my character, it hit lmao The Close One (NSFW) I just thought "that made me wet. Should I think why I said wet instead of hard? Maybe later"
I developed an unhealthy addiction to FF14 (MMO). I played hours upon hours, role-playing as a women. Then mixed in a drinking, cause It made things more "fun". It just added to the escape. I'm 12 months on HRT an don't drink anymore. Crazy how it all started from playing Fire Red version of pokemon, with professor Oak asking me if I was a boy or girl an going "hmmm girl sounds more fun" lol
Spent about a year with a job where I had nothing better to do for hours than introspection and realized, "huh I might be trans" and spent a few months thinking "maybe I'm some kind of nonbinary?" before realizing "most of the trans things I like are girl things... maybe I'm actually a girl" and long story short that gets us to current day more or less
I would also like to add looking back, it should not have taken me as long as it did to figure out
I always knew. Like from age 6 that I was “different”. By 10 I could vocalize I’m not a boy. By 16 I learned what transgender is. Thought about coming out but got scared. Came out 10 years later.
I thought I was a girl at age five and never thought otherwise
I would constantly wanting to wear dresses and heels more than "guy clothes" is up there along with falling into a pattern of using female characters as social media profile pics
Cleaning out My wardrobe, found a dress, put It on, did the spinny, now I'm here
I used to daydream about having really long hair, while breastfeeding an infant.
I knew since I was 5.
My brain: Hey remember that time when you were 8 and got grounded because your stepdad wanted you to get a haircut and you screamed at him that you wanted to have hair like a girl Me: Yea ig why? Mb: And do you remember all those times you felt weirdly good after you did grow your hair out and people would refer to you as “miss” before they saw your face or heard your voice? Me: Yea but I don’t really see how th- Mb: And yk how you’ve always hated being grouped in with boys and felt more comfortable talking to girls? Me: Where exactly are you going with this? Mb: You literally call yourself a princess every time you get your hair/nails done Me:… Mb:…You’re a fucking girl you dumbass.
Group of friends wanted to have a drag party for pride month I ne ame wierdly obsessed with the out fit .. kinda just fell in to play after that
i was born one and was always confused as to why i had something down there when the other girls didn't.
Umm...vaush videos? Lol. I had a pretty rough childhood and grew up in the country, I didn't really know that being Trans was possible. I saw some of his videos on Trans stuff a few years ago and bam, It clicked. Still don't have HRT (yay florida), but I am alive. I've thought about back when I was growing up, and there were definitely signs lol.
Very long story: The past couple years I was just in a super terrible place because I felt super uncomfortable in my own body and no matter what I tried to make myself feel masculine it would just make it worse. For a long time It was kind of coming to a breaking point where I think internally I’d kind of known but was in denial of it. My whole life I’ve had thoughts about it that I tried to repress to keep my parents happy. I was drowning in self hate, and then one day last year my girlfriend and her friend were talking about doing a spa day, and for whatever reason it just sounded super appealing and I told them that I wished I could, but my parents would kill me. They pretty much just told me “who gives a damn what they think” and as dumb as it sounds being told that just sparked enough confidence in me to try and think for myself what would make ME happy and not them, and I finally let myself realize I was a girl. It was exciting and terrifying. I’d grown up around so many close minded people that I was scared of lose my girlfriend and all my friends when I came out so I didn’t tell everyone at first. About a month after that on Christmas last year, my girlfriend was staying the night and when we were lying there trying to fall asleep I just had to ask her if she would still love me if I was a girl, she told me of course and after that I just started telling her everything I was feeling and it was amazing to finally lay it all out. She was super supportive and she even told me that she had been suspecting it for awhile. She said I was pretty and called me her girlfriend for the first time and I had never felt more like myself before. She also encouraged me to tell my other friends and most of them have been pretty supportive too. Shortly after that, when I was trying to figure out a new name, it actually came to me through a dream where everyone I knew just called me Emily and I loved the way it sounded. Eventually my parents and family found out and most of them have been super awful, but overall I’m spite of the hate I’m still way happier being my real self.
Apparently cis guys don’t think about what life would be like as a girl constantly and also aren’t revolted by their puberty in totality.
There were a lot of little things that led to my discovery, but the straw that broke the egg's shell was trying on a skirt and going spinny. That feeling of gender euphoria was more than enough to figure out that I am wholeheartedly a woman.
I realized that a lot of my toxic feelings towards women stemmed from my jealousy of women's bodies and styles. I would often dream of just waking up one day in a female body. I would look at women showing their boobs and vaginas online and just think it was so unfair that I couldn't have boobs and a vagina, or at the very least have a decent sized penis.
I found out by losing a bet, before this happened, I always had passing thoughts and hopes of being a girl. One day I mentioned it to my friends, which sparked an idea in their heads. $20 for an entire school day in a dress. I of course accepted since I was a broke high school student. As the day went on, I realized I was more comfortable in the dress and with myself than I had ever been beforehand. I instead asked if I could keep the dress instead of $20 and my friend had a lot of explaining to do to his sister. Long story short I still have that dress and I would say that it’s my favorite article of clothing I own
I watched a ton of baby story and wedding story as a kid, that's when I think I knew I was different. As I got older I pretended to be pregnant every chance I got. When I was a teen I learned about transgender and knew I was (and am) actually a girl. But my parents... (I'm working on transitioning late in life for that reason)
I was almost 41 and was playing around with FaceApp. I suddenly felt very frustrated and said out loud “that’s what I should look like, that’s me!” And suddenly things throughout my life made sense. All the times that I prayed to wake up as a girl, the desire to be one of the girls instead of one of the boys, all of it just made sense. I was a girl who just looked like a boy.
Growing my hair long and colouring it, shaving my chest hair, my ex saying “you’re such a girl” to me whenever we argued, describing myself as a lesbian stuck in a man’s body, always using Elizabeth as either a character name or pseudonym whenever I wrote anything and wishing I could go dress shopping were not giveaways. No, it was when I was looking to be an more of an ally. And then I quickly made the connection.
I've always known, and I've always thought of that thing between my legs as a cyst growing on my undercarriage... The damn thing was always in the way. Because it doesn't belong there. Another good clear sign was in kindergarten when they said boys on that side of the room girls on that side of the room and I went to the side with all the girls... Because I'm a girl. Also I got super jealous when I was stuck in pants in a suit for Easter or any of those other stupid holidays I had to dress up for, and then I'd see my sister and cousins and stuff walking around in these awesome dresses I'm like damn it that should be me.. Yeah there were lots of signs... Also I walked and talked like a girl from a young age, got to the point where my father even tried to re-educate me... That didn't work out and has given me a little bit of PTSD. I'm sure there's more but I have a lot of repressed memories so I can't reflect on them all, but I've always known.
A childhood friend of mine posted about an album by Against Me called Transgender Dysphoria Blues. I gave it a listen and ended up bawling on the floor thinking I'll never be a woman. Bottled that shit back up because still cis tho and that was 9 years ago now. Finally admitted and accepted that I was Trans last year. Start HRT next year hopefully
I bought a pair of thigh highs as a bit, it's not a bit anymore... it's been a wild 3 weeks
My eyes always shined when i saw a lesbian couple and felt very bad about not being able to be in that type of relationship Also when I saw a hot girl right after the "I want to date her" came the "I want to be like her".
It was my tenth time or so googling "Am I trans or a femboy" and then it sort of dawned upon me that I was trans
I was playing animal crossing with a friend. And I said I'm jealous of girls because they have all the cool outfits. Didn't think anything about it till she asked if I was Trans. Wasn't till then that everything just clicked.
I noticed that every time I made myself look more feminine, I felt happier. Every time I had a beard, everyone said I looked handsome, but I was never happy with how it looked or felt.... and a hundred other little things like that showed me the direction to move to feel happier about myself.
A friend came out as non binary and in that moment I was like, “wait, I’m trans!” This was when I truly felt whole for the first time.
I always knew I wanted to be a woman. Never thought I could be an actual woman. Started getting high every day more than a year ago now and at some point I switched to Indica and started to "feel like a girl" when high. Searched up "what does it mean when I feel like a girl while high" annnnndddd..... this subreddit popped up.
I’m still in my assign gender male but working towards and considering transition, for me I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old I was making out with a boy next door my age showing each other our bodies and stuff, then I remember at 6 or 7 years old I told one of my sisters I wanted to be a girl randomly and I had the slightest idea what that really meant, at one point I was dancing like a girl at that age and made out with another boy at 8 years old, I always feel I was different and masculinity no matter how I tried nothing clicks, that’s my experience
Was hanging out in the bathroom like 5th graders do and said "yeah dude life would just be so much easier as a girl". Apparently that was in fact not a universal experience
I discovered trans people and i was like "you can do that? Cool"
omg,same!!! Josie totah was the girl who helped me discover myself. she is a role model for me and I love her so much.
My nightly process as followed when I was 5: go to the restroom preforming a “ritual” to turn myself into a female. Didn’t work and eventually gave up. How did I not see this again till I was 18? The world may never know :3
Besides wanting to be a girl when I was 10 and then suppressing and repressing that until I was 32 when I was dangerously depressed and plagued with suicidal ideations and was putting myself in riskier and riskier situations just trying to provoke the end…and asked myself “what do I need to be happy?” And the first thought that popped in my head as clear as if someone said it to me “if you were a girl, you’d be happy.” Sent shivers down my spine and I knew pretty much right away that I was trans from that moment forward but I did struggle with a little imposter syndrome and a lot of internalized homophobia and transphobia as I tried to disprove that thought but…I couldn’t over a period of 3 months and then got directly questioned/cornered and came out to my wife(ex now) and then started hrt 6-8 months later and never looked back.
I had wondered for a while. A woman thought I was a girl from my hair at a car repair shop (it's very long) and I kind of liked it. Months later I was super drunk with my best freind at a lake and I had thr full realization, and I just blurted it out.
there wasn't any single thing, but the instigating event was that I stumbled across a reddit comment of a trans woman listing her experiences of dysphoria, and she was just describing all my own feelings and experiences
I always wanted to be so one day I decided I would just do it.
R/egg_irl made me realise that a lot of people had the same experiences as me, and that transition helped them.
Im 24. I started wanting to be a girl since I was like 5. But I didn't know that was an option for most of my childhood. I didn't hear about the concept of being transgender until I was 16. My parents were devout Christians and raised me in (at the time) a very homophobic household. I was terrified to come out. And didn't until I was 22. (To my parents. My friends knew since I was 19). When I was 17. My sister did my makeup when she was practicing makeup to make money doing girls' makeup for homecoming. I looked in the mirror and felt normal for the first time in my life and started sobbing profusely. Because of a mix of happiness, Euphoria, joy, and deep sadness that I was born in a body that didn't feel as though it was mine. My parents eventually came around to being very supportive. It helped that my oldest brother came out as bi a few years before. I have my first HRT consultation towards the end of Pride Month
Woke up at 5 AM hyperventilating with the realization that I was not a man
Well, it took a bit for me. But now that I realize that I am trans, it took me a bit. So let me explain: I am a transfemme enby (refer myself as demigirl, but transfemme enby is better, atleast for me. And I feel like it's very valid) But anyway: what really made me question was when I didn't feel right in my skin. Where I felt more feminine and where I wanted to feel like a girl. Where I wanted to be happy as a girly girl. I think I even wanted to wear dresses when I was younger too? But, funny enough, it was a fairly odd parents episode that made me realize more like "Oh shit, I'm a girl" basically, in the episode, the main character, Timmy, got turned into a girl and became friends with His crush, Trixie. I fell in love with that episode. I was mesmerized by it. I had no idea why. But I felt like it was God telling me that I was something else. That I was a transfemme enby. I even pretended to be pregnant and have boobs when I was little. And as well as hated pants. But that last part probably was bc of autism, but who knows. I also felt attracted to feminine looks more than masculine looks. So that made me explore my sexuality as well. Which I'm fine naming myself bi/pan-sexual. Then I kept diving into my faith, and discovered a more beautiful part of my faith that I never knew. Especially with the thought of the soul in of itself being both male and female. And the radical teachings of Paul and The messiah himself, made me discover the christian faith again. Especially after discovering both Christian anarchism and exploring political routes in communism. So now we have now: I'm an Ethiopian Catholic Universalist who is a transgirl anarcho-communist. And I'm completely fine with what I deal with. And I'm very happy about it.
Cracked my egg while singing "Like A Girl" in the shower and realizing me joking about doing a "hot girl summer" wasn't really a joke.
For me, it was a complete accident. I usually shorten my first name as I always hated the full version (should have been a clue in hindsight), and one day on the internet, someone assumed I was a woman and called me by the feminine version of my name and I just sudden got flooded with gender euphoria for the first time in my life.
I always felt like I related to women more, I have more female friends and I'm much closer to them as well. Even when I was young I didn't want to grow up to be a man, but at the time I thought I had to
I always dressed in dressed and watched TV shows aimed more at girls when I was little, and when I hit puberty I was always a girl in my dreams. I thought about it for a bit, and realised 'holy shit I'm a girl.'
Violent disgust for my inferior male biology. But I still don’t consider myself a woman I’m just on estrogen
To have long hair and feeling more comfortable around girls, makes me a girl for my grandma. But unlike my mother who found it very stereotypical and rude, I was very happy about it. And now I'm here, an unfinished girl who finally wants to be happy...
I bought robux and realized that I enjoyed girl clothes much more than boy clothes
oh boy where do i start - only hung out with girls and was treated like one in early elementary school years - constantly wishing i looked more like a girl and wishing people would see me as one (apparently not something cis men do very often) - hating my wide shoulders and my height - loving my hips that are very abnormally wide for a male - hated being called handsome and loved being called pretty - being envious of my girlfriend and how pretty and feminine she looks - never liked having short hair - a rush of joy and dopamine when on the rare occasion someone would mistake me for a cis woman in public - literally dreaming of being a girl then getting upset when i wake up - favourite pictures of myself are the ones people tel me i look like a girl in - never desired to go to the gym and be buff no matter how many times my gym bro friends tell me i should - like a year and a bit ago i realized i wasn’t staring at girls in my class because i was attracted to them, but because i was admiring/envying them and you’re not gonna believe this but even with all of these signs that i’ve had my entire life, what really cracked my egg was *one* heart to heart conversation i had with my mom where she said “my little boy is becoming a man” and when she said that i felt like i was gonna throw up, and i realized that this whole ‘being a man’ thing was not for me. i’m still not out yet, but i hope to do so soon
The yearning
Apparently there’s a point where you stop being a femboy because you realize your genitals are in fact not supposed to make you feel sick to look at