When did you feel certain about your gender identity?

When did I feel certain? I don't think that I have arrived at a state of certainty with my gender identity yet.

I don't recall any particular moment where I felt female but I guess I never really felt at home in my body. But I never totally felt that my body was wrong.

Baristajedi, we have discussed in other threads, at length, about our phantom sensations that we feel. This is what really got me questioning my gender.

It started when I was maybe 13, all the girls around me were developing breasts and I suppose that I thought, even though I knew better, that I would grow some too. It was at this time where I felt like my male parts were out of place.

Fast forwarding to the present day, I still feel the phantom breasts and female parts, and my penis and balls seem to exist differently from the rest of my body. My exterior, what everyone sees, is a middle aged man, short, stocky, and much to my dismay, I am quite large in the male parts. This has caused many issues with self acceptance and being able to please partners, all the while still feeling all of my female parts. I did quite alot of crossdressing in my late teens and 20's, my ex wife at the time really supported it. We would go out with friends while I was presenting as female, and had good times and scary times (I will save those for another thread) but it taught me a lot about how others perceive transgender folks.

Now I have a love hate relationship with my male parts, it's there, but I also feel like I have the exterior parts of a female, clit, labia, not quite sure about an opening but I feel something there especially if I squeeze my kegal muscles. I stay tucked whenever im not home. And I wear quite large breast forms to make my body match what my mind is telling me which helps ease those feelings. I was actually propperly sized with the forms and wear a 42DDD bra, though I feel like they could be larger. I do wear them out sometimes, mostly I just wear a sports bra, and that helps too.

I am still figuring things out too, and I am ok dealing with the flux of gender feelings that I have, this is my normal. I never was convinced that I was supposed to be 100% female or 100% male. I live my life constantly trying to find a balance and deal with the gender swings.

This was a bit long winded but I am not usually able to totally express my gender issues.

Thanks for reading.

 

I apologize for any typos -I'm currently typing this up on my phone

How long did you go through a questioning phase?
A year, at least. Maybe even two. I was extremely confused from about 13 years old. If it weren't for unlimited Internet access, I'd still be very confused. I used to Google search 'I hate being a girl' a lot, desperate for any kinds of answers and anything to alleviate my suffering. Everyone said I'd get used to it and that wasn't helping, at that point in time I was having suicidal thoughts and 'getting used to it' seemed impossible. Then a very few suggested that I was trans and I actually laughed at the idea, I thought that to be trans you had to proclaim your gender at a very young age, as soon as you could talk because I thought it always had to be that obvious to you. But I ignored the idea that I could possibly be trans because the idea seemed proposterous and honestly, terrifying. Then and this probably sounds ridiculous, I started reading fanfiction from the POV of trans characters as well as actual experiences from real trans people and I realized they sounded just like me. I did a lot (four months?) of research on the actual definition and symptoms of gender dysphoria, what it meant to be trans and surgeries available. I ended up creating an EC account (after a month of contemplating :lol and figuring it out from there.

We're you uncertain about what gender you are for a long time before finally acknowledging that you're male/female?
I tried following labels: androgyne, agender, bigender, demiboy, demigirl, genderfluid, genderqueer, trigender and transmasculine before settling on FTM. The other labels never felt right to me before they didn't sound 'male enough' to describe how I was feeling...

What was it that made you say, I know my gender? Or is it something that you've always known as long as you can remember?
I didn't really 'know' that I was male from a young age but I always had an idea. Basically, from my earliest memories (3-4?) I felt very out-of-place and disconnected from the female gender. I always felt very different but I never knew what it was. When I was 8 years old, I got the idea that I was actually male but the doctors had tricked everyone into thinking I was female when I was born. I was always called a tomboy, however and thought that was normal thinking for a tomboy. I didn't start getting severe dysphoria until I hit puberty. When I was 11 years old, I knew I wanted top surgery, even though I didn't know such a thing existed. I promised myself that if I ever fell pregnant, I'd kill myself. I saw myself as 'deformed' compared to other boys. When I was 13 years old, I started wanting a penis and that's what officially started the whole 'I hate being a girl' Google searching...

 

Nearly a year ago due to just feeling a lot of disconnect and confusion but no means of explaining it. Once I understood what transgender meant I questioned for a while more before coming to the conclusion.

 

I'm probably not the best person to answer this questions since I'm still pretty confused, but here's my two cents.

Basically never liked girl things, I know I'm being stereotypical, but I liked dinosaurs and wrestling and playing out doors (never a big sports fan though...), I disliked girls clothing, but put up with it reluctantly, the one thing I couldn't tolerate though was having pictures taken of me like that. Suffice to say, I would resist. I "jokingly" told my mom I wanted to grow a beard. I remember watching girls go through puberty and being absolutely terrified, hating the idea that I would become like that. As I grew up I freaked out every time my breasts grew a size, and cried in the fitting room not knowing why. As the years went by I got slowly more and more uncomfortable being called woman, girl, having my feminine features pointed out. It felt awful, even when I was being complemented. I did not know why. I've known about trans people for a good while, but the whole idea of being trans felt so strange and alien and I never considered that I could be one of them. I hated my breasts and the thought of getting pregnant was so terrifying and wrong I had to leave the room whenever someone even suggested I might have kids one day. I hated being a girl.

For a while I thought it was normal, I assumed a lot of girls must hate being girls, after all boys stuff was so much better. So I though there were tons of people like me. I even asked really strange questions that hinted at me being trans long before I considered the title. One time I asked my friend "why do girls wear feminine clothes when they like the look of boys clothes so much better?" I assumed that girls all secretly liked boys clothes because they liked seeing them on boys, I assumed that that was the reason I liked them too (even though I'm mostly attracted to girls). My friend looked at me like I had two heads and said women like wearing women's clothes because that's what women like and was really really confused.

One time I dressed up as a man for a video thing for tech class in 8th grade and I realized I wanted my hair short, so I cut it. It kept getting shorter and shorter and I got happier and happier.

I always loathed my body not knowing why. I thought it was because I was out of shape but whenever I tried to get in shape I could never find the motivation, because the idea of being an attractive "woman" made me want to vomit. So I just let myself go.

One day, when I was considering starting to work out again, instead of looking up terms like "fit women" I for some reason looked up "boyish", the results were all flat chested masculine women and I knew I wanted to look something like that. I wanted a flat chest and no hips.
And so I starved myself for a month which was not healthy. Lost 15 pounds I didn't medically need to lose (I wasn't even overweight), and rejoiced when I went down a bra and pants size.

During this whole anorexic fit my sister noticed and I told her I was losing weight because I didn't like my boobs and I wanted to get rid of them. I told her I hated being a woman and that if I could be a man I would. And then my sister told me something that confused me. She liked being a woman.

I was 16 but the concept that it was possible to be comfortable and happy with your gender /feminine features was so strange. She was HAPPY. That was when I realized that I was not happy, that that nagging feeling was dysphoria and self hatred. She asked me if I was transgender, I said no, not at the moment being able to recall that I had felt this way all my life. But the more I thought about it I realized that I'd always felt this way, that something was wrong with me, that I should be happy being a girl. I realized I did and thought things that cis people did not do and think.

And then after a while (very recently) I finally came to terms with wanting to be a boy. I'm terrified of what this means for me. I'm afraid of being stigmatized and berated and isolated for being trans, I know that if I really do decide to transition it's going to be a long and hard journey. I'm scared, and I have to question constantly if it's worth it, if my dysphoria is bad enough or if I can just suffer through it all and identify as female. I have to consider the pros and cons.

Recently I went out for the day presenting as male and I got referred to as one and it made me so inexplicably happy. And now that I know that kind of happiness is possible, it makes it difficult to continue living as female.