How did you figure out your gender identity?

For me, it was something I was just consciously aware of from an early age. I don't know why, but I always knew I was a boy and being forced to be someone I wasn't made me really uncomfortable.

 

The same. When I was little I was always pretending to be different girls from tv or movies or whatever, or even actual girls I knew. Whenever I had the house to myself I raised my mom's closet. I read everything that came my way with anything related to transgender people. I probably realized I was transgender around puberty or so then tried to become a boy. Eventually I dated this one girl and in the aftermath I was able to come to terms with being a trans woman.

 

Like the two posters above, I mostly just knew that something was off at an instinctive level. I felt almost alien. I also didn't know transgenderism existed and thought I was just weird. I was a quiet kid, especially when it came to emotionality (which is mostly the same today), so I lived out most of my trans experience in my head (which, again, is still mostly true today). When I was about four years old I have my earliest memories of being very jealous of the girls around me, wanting to be just like them but not understanding quite why; when I was about five, I started considering mutilating my own genitalia, something very out of character for me; I came to the conclusion when I was young, like six or so, that I was, if I remember my own words correctly, 'more girl than boy'. To be skeptic of knowledge seems to be in my veins; that statement was, coming from me, one of highest certainty.

Then everything went to hell shortly after that for various reasons, and I got distracted. Then I became kind of self-destructive, including that I pushed this matter to the back of my mind, resolute to bury it there until such a time in the future that I might find myself in a better position to review those feelings again.

Fast forward some ten years and I'm in high school. That was my 'better position'. I started letting go of the official mask of being cis that had tormented me for all those years, started expressing myself more like I wanted, etc. After a few months (2-3?) of identifying as non-binary, I thought that, no, what feels best for me is definitely identifying as female. So I did. And here I am, a year or so later. And I couldn't be happier with my identity.

 

yeah... and from that the rest sort of made sense. I'm hesitant every now and then to use different labels, but I know that I'm not cis and there's something that feels very wrong about thinking myself in that way. I would feel more comfortable being born a guy, that's something that I just know, but I'm not going to transition either and mostly feel indifferent so I settle on non-binary. I don't feel the need to classify it more than that really. A lot of figuring it out was just recognizing what I felt uncomfortable with, and why. Examples of that can be that i always felt uncomfortable being referred to as "female", fake, and like I was in drag. basically, experiencing being a "girl" from a guys perspective. feeling frustrated that my chest isn't flat. that my voice isn't deep. Just weird. like living in a body that's only partly you, and unrecognizable at times.

 

I'd always felt out of the loop, always a bit different. I have 4 siblings, 2 brothers and 2 sisters and i never felt like i fit in with either group.

I started doing some reading on the internet and came across this word i'd never heard before...Non-binary! From there i discovered the umbrella term and identity Genderqueer!

This fit me quite well, and i was happy identifying as this until a year after i started getting really dysphoric and got really depressed, i stopped eating for a week and was self harming.

But, i got better i came out to my roommates, found a gender support group near me and discovered my real identity, Agender!
Took a while to get there, but i'm getting better!!

 

The way I figured out mine existed was by getting increasingly distressed by my assigned gender, and really not wanting to transition to live as male full time. I didn't want to go straight from one uncomfortable space I didn't fit right into another. And then I realized I had to find other options. :lol:

I just started sort of "holding words" to see if they felt like they "fit" me. I didn't find any that didn't feel constrictive and painful until "genderfluid" it was like a synonym to "free" for me. Able to be all of myself, no alterations, no shortcuts.

 

in the words of my therapist, i've "consistently failed to identify as female." when i was little, i got confused when someone tried to tell me i wasn't a boy. at puberty the dysphoria got worse (mine was pretty extreme- i faked being sick sometimes so i could stay home because i couldn't bear for anyone to see me, and i had night terrors about looking feminine sometimes). when i was 14, i found out about transgender identity, and i came out as ftm in jan 2015.

 

I heard what being trans meant and realized that it described me.

 

Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back I could see all these little things that pointed towards me being trans. I even use to tell myself that I would pretend to be trans so that I can be a guy, because I didn't think there was a chance that I was transgender since I was attracted to men and still liked a few girly things.Then I went through this sort of void period where I was alright. But eventually, while cosplaying as a dude at an anime convention, it just sort of started dawning on a little bit at a time. Eventually I looked stuff up, experimented with my gender, and came to the conclusion that I am trans.

 

I tried to think how felt. Like I imagined myself as a female and male but I just didn't feel connect to them and I just didn't feel like a male or female. When I discovered Non-Binary and what it means I realized it could be me but I wanted a more specific term. That's what I found the term agender

 

I always kinda knew that I was different from everyone else around me, but I didn't know how. I just thought I was weird xd I started doing some research and learned about the term trans.

At first, I didn't really mind that because I always thought I was a girl ( based on society and also because I had very low self-esteem and believed what others said was more accurate than what I felt inside ) but at the end of 2015, I learned about anime and conventions and I wanted to dress up as a male character. Sadly, I didn't have any costumes and couldn't afford them.

In May 2016, I had this urge to dress up with guy clothing, so I did and I really enjoyed it. That's when I started questioning my gender, and to come to the conclusion that I am quite possibly agender.

 

I've never really thought about being anything other than female until about a year ago. I was still coming to terms with being bi but then I also realized that I was gradually becoming less feminine and I felt a sense of disconnect with everything feminine: my name, my friends, dresses, who I wanted to be in the future and more. I started to wear my long hair shorter and would be happy whenever anyone said that I looked like a boy.

It never really became a problem until sometime in March where I had to prepare for a school dinner dance. My mum made me wear a dress and have makeup professionally done, and she wouldn't let me wear a tux or cut my hair short beforehand. She also made me wax my legs and face which felt absolutely horrible. It was painful, it was humiliating, I hated how it looked, I hated how it felt and I was angry at my mum since she was so confused about why I took it so badly.

The disillusionment got much worse after that - I became less able to wear feminine clothes and I started trying as hard as I could to become more masculine. I cut my hair a few weeks ago and noticed how good it felt when people occasionally mistook me for a guy and after a few days of googling and panicking I've decided to identify as genderqueer. Still not sure whether I'm gonna present as male or a butch female in the future though.

 

I don't have a sister, but I nevertheless found ways to dress up when I was a child.

In school, it was difficult for me to connect socially with boys. I always thought it was more appropriate for me to fit in with the girls, but society dictated that I could not do that, as I was raised in a culture that values sons over daughters. In fact, a girl of my ethnicity whom my brother knows was adopted because her biological parents abandoned her for being female. Thanks, Confucius!

In the past few years, my dysphoria has grown stronger, and I have come out to my family, which lets me see a therapist and start transitioning by growing out my hair. My happiness is now increasing.

 

After a lifetime of foreshadowing and feeling separated from everybody else by an invisible but tangible curtain, the realisation came when an adult seeing my long hair accidentally referred to me as "she". Instead of correcting him, I suddenly felt wonderful and I was like "oooohhhh, that explains it. Why was I so dumb before?"

 

After the intense hatred of myself and my body became too much I started doing things to change it like cutting my hair and I did a bit of researching I realised that the hatred towards myself and low self esteem I'd felt for years was gender dysphoria.

 

I always felt different, like an entity separated from everybody else by a glass wall and never knew why. When I was 8 years old I watched The fairly oddparents, in one episode the 3 characters turn into the opposite gender. My first reaction was 'Oh my god I WANT THAT SO BADLY, I WANT TO BE A GIRL'. And all the transgender issues, dysphoria and struggles snowballed since then.

- I was so sensitive that I could cry at the drop of a hat.
- I didn't had a self image, it was like a disconnection with my body, that it wasn't my body at all (I knew it was my body but I never feel that)
- I struggled with gender expectations a lot.
- I never pictured myself as a guy. Even when I tried to date some girl to see if I could get rid of those girly feelings, I always wanted to be the girl in the relationship.
- I fantasized about body swap stories A LOT, in obsessive way.
- I couldn't connect with other boys, in anything.
- Genital and chest dysphoria, without mention that I hated how my face changed during puberty.

And many other things but I'm lazy to write BTM...

 

There were little signs throughout my childhood and adolescence, but I think I really knew at about age eighteen. It was actually quite sudden, but I distinctly recall having this conscious thought: "What if I am trans? Shit, not ready to go down that road. Better not think about that for a while. I'm sure if I allow it I will not be able to stop thinking about it because it is too appealing and I'm not the type to let shit go. Actually now that I think about it, this is pretty much definitely happening eventually. Rewind. Rewind." and I didn't think about it again until about a year ago. It's actually surprising how well I was able to forget about it because I said it so blatantly to myself. And I've continued to have gender issues between the time I first thought about it and pushed it to the back of my mind and the time about a year ago when I finally had enough and allowed myself to think about it again. I figured I was old enough and had explored gender and just LIFE enough to let it sink in. Basically I tried to go as long as possible as female and see if I could handle it, and I handled it for five years and eventually collapsed from exhaustion. I really can't articulate how shocked I am I was able to push it back like that though. I knew well enough that I am the sort of person to not let that go, yet I let it go for five years! And I literally told myself five years ago this would happen eventually, no doubt, and totally wiped it from my mind! It's pretty crazy how good the human brain is at suppressing scary thoughts sometimes.

 

As someone who is probably a bit older than most here, I knew when I was young, my teenage years were difficult. I lived in a rural area and queerness was not in the least accepted back then. I pushed it all away, telling myself that once I got to college I'd be me (whatever that was) by then it was too late. there was some awkward dating of men/attempting to reconcile my sexual preferences, but I was all too willing to pound myself into the mold of what I was supposed to be. Eventually trying to be that person nearly killed me, and I wound up in the hospital.

I spent the next 15 years suffering from depression thinking I was broken. Then it kinda jumped back at me one morning, almost 5 years ago. I looked around online and read something that just clicked, and then everything I'd repressed rushed back in and I realized. a few days later I made an account here and slowly began the process of understanding myself better.

 

Slight correction: everything here is true, except that after a few more weeks of panicking and googling and epiphanies, I've become pretty sure that I'm trans. Still have to get used to that though.