Trans* Transgressions

I didn’t always know. I never felt trapped. And that’s something that makes me feel more less of a trans, but thats not true.

I’m 19 years old, I’ll be 20 this year and wow, it seems so weird. 

Most of my life I never thought twice about my gender. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I knew that I acted tomboyish because I was much rougher than the girls around me. I had guy friends that I hung with whenever my best friend wasn’t there. I identified with them well enough to call them my brothers. I remember vaguely that in childhood, I wasn’t always playing with girl toys. There were games, my younger brother’s hotwheels, and my Blue plushie.  It makes me giggle from time to time that I would act as this charcter that my sis and I created, named “Doggy” and she was “Kitty”. Funny is that, we were both boys with girlfriends. I guess I liked the idea… but it never came back to me as some sort of clue or sign. 

Getting into middle school, I had to wear boy shorts due to the lack of nice uniforms that I had. I couldn’t get the nice skirts or pants, my parents were unable to get them. It was weird, but I had gotten use to them. 

But it wasn’t until high school that I started getting use to the idea of actually identifying better with guys than girls. I started to notice that I was better around dudes, but I was shy around them because the chances of being hit on and treated more like a feminine chick. I was never feminine, at all. I was more masculine and I knew this. I never had the words for it, and tomboy just didn’t seem like the right word. 

I was introduced into the term “transgender”. I knew it existed, but I didn’t know it existed for me. I was frightened of that. I was brought up in a christian home and told that this stuff wasn’t right.I was afraid of being classified as a lesbian, but that never affected me when people assumed I was. I always thought, “I’d be better off as a gay man, cause that’s what I would be if I was a man.” It always seemed so true too. 

It wasn’t until I actually looked up what transgender was and told that I was in fact this that I accepted myself as such. I came out to Tumblr on Christmas Eve of 2011. It’s not that long in on all this, and that’s okay. All this new info is opening my eyes and emotions to other things. Now that I’ve accepted this… I feel there aren’t so many limits. I mean I think I’m crushing on my best friend, though I’ve felt this way during high school up till now. 

I already know I feel better dressing more boyish, I always try to put on Old Spice deodorant whenever I get the chance. It’s calming, it feels great. I love it. I feel so much better when the pronouns “He” and “Him” are used. When people call me “shane.” 

I can’t even fill out an application or document without cringing because I’m using my birth name and putting “female” in the check box. I hate using it and I use “shane” whenever I get the chance. I know I can’t inform my family anytime soon, and I can’t take hormones any time soon either. Really, I’m just happy to have found this all out. 

It really made the end of my year absolutely awesome. 

I didn’t always know. I never felt trapped. And that’s something that makes me feel more less of a trans, but thats not true.

I’m a transman and I hope to transition fairly soon. 

The Boy Who Liked Dresses. ♥

I was a very typical transgender child. I loved wearing dresses, and my mom let me. I always wanted my hair to be long, I collected carebears, and I played with dolls all the time. My first bicycle was pink and rusty and had ribbons, which I adored. I loved picking flowers and dressing up like a princess. I never went anywhere without my teddy bear and my baby doll and vowed one day to be the best mommy ever. My favorite game was house, and I never really wanted to be the daddy, but I had to because I was taller — by small child logic. I wanted to join the Girl Scouts, but my mother never let me. I did get to be in ballet, which was awkward for those involved — but I had fun despite being terrible. 

All-in-all, I think I was a very typical transboy.

Wait, what?  

Had I been born with your typical penis instead of the “female” version, it probably would have been completely obvious (if not stereotypical and unoriginal) that I was a flaming little gay boy. I did become more boyish and androgynous — I loved building forts and always gravitated to male relatives as friends, although usually it was because they were older. My sister played with the younger relatives. (Oddly, this has become reversed, as I prefer younger people and she prefers older.)

 I identify as a male genderqueer. As a child, if asked and given the right vocabulary to express my feelings, I would have told you I didn’t think gender actually existed. Sex, yes — I knew the difference, yet I always wondered if “the two” were all there were. But as for it actually affecting anything, I didn’t think so. People weren’t their bodies — in my opinion, they were their eyes. That was the only part of yourself you couldn’t really look at, so to me, that was the person. Their bodies were vessels of their actual selves, meant to carry them so they could learn things.

I would say I “guessed” I was a girl, because that was what I was told. It didn’t matter to me. People’s genders were of extremely little importance to me. I felt this way all through elementary school, and through two years of middle school. Middle school was when I began to feel empty.

Sex segregation had slowly seeped in. Instead of the free-roam of elementary school, PE was male-only and female-only in middle school. This didn’t bother me completely, it just felt a little embarrassing. I never really got along with other people; I’m quiet and stay to myself, and very socially inept and anxious.

Hormones rushed in, and suddenly I was breaking the promise I made to myself at age 8. “Never, never, never fall in love. You’ll start acting stupid like those teenagers who nearly faint at the sight of the opposite sex.” Obviously, I didn’t act as expected — I just became attracted to people, mostly girls. This didn’t really confuse me, I simply chalked it up to bisexuality. I joined an online LGBT group, where I was further introduced to the T.

I knew transgender people existed. My hero at age 6 was a transman I never met, that my mom knew. She always referred to him as a lesbian who crossdressed, but I always thought of him as a man who accomplished something — found love, even with a strange gender situation.

I read up on MTFs and FTMs. I read a lot. I thought a lot. I cried some, wondering if, since I didn’t fit the stencil, I couldn’t actually be male. I didn’t rage for boy’s clothes, parts, haircuts, name, and pronouns at conception. I didn’t always know.

I tested the waters. I bound my chest in secret, and it felt so right. My mom found out, gave me hell. Hid tape, ace, and eventually my only masculine clothes. I would layer too much and sneak around to find things to bind with. Finally, I was able to get my long hair cut into a very androgynous style. I didn’t pass quite yet, but I was getting there.

This was 8th grade. This was also the first time I came out of the closet. I understood myself as a bisexual transboy. I didn’t quite know my name yet, and pronouns were a fond idea of the future.

I had a friend who had, basically, no other friends. I took her under my wing; no one really liked her. She was weird, she didn’t quite understand people were laughing at her and not with her, and she seemed to have a very weird view of reality, often acting like a character in a tv show. I found her nice and eccentric, if not a little dense. She was always nice to me, but she abandoned me when I admitted to being male. She thought I liked her. She went and spread around that I “thought [I] was a boy” and that I liked boys and girls. But everyone seemed to already have known.

She moved away. In 9th grade, I burst in with a guy’s haircut, guys’ clothes, and insisting my name was Chris/Christopher. Don’t “she” me, bro. I found myself better, I came to consider myself a gay pansexual genderqueer transguy, who made one hell of a drag queen when he felt like it. I stopped trying so hard to be masculine, and dressed as flamboyantly as I wanted when I wanted to.

In 10th grade, I carry myself highly. I’m looking for a job to get money for a name change and hormones. There’s so many ways to be yourself, nothing can ever be “normal”.

neodad asked: hi i'm 16 and about to start therapy but i'm SO genderconfused right now, when i was little i loved my boobs and now i hate them and my curves but i like having girl parts below the waist, you know? i was fine with girl clothes when i was a kid, even though i preferred guy clothes, but i never liked sports and in middle school, i was actually fine with dressing like a girl, but now i hate wearing any female clothes but i love jewelry and nailpolish but i avoid them so i can pass...HELP ME

Hey,
I’m sorry I took so long to respond- I haven’t been checking this blog very often. I think it’s best to know that it’s OKAY to be gender-confused. Gender is incredibly confusing. Focus on doing whatever makes you feel comfortable. The point of this blog is to remind folks that everyone’s gender is unique. You don’t have to fit into any box, cis* or trans*.
Just do you, regardless of the implications attached to anything by others. Don’t worry about finding the right words for yourself. I spent forever agonizing over “Am I ‘a dude’? Am I “FTM”? Am I suddenly just weirdly butch even though I’m not masculine at all?” But that stuff all really doesn’t matter, trust me. Just do what you gotta do, and fuck the rest. :)

Growing Up Stealth

I transitioned to male at the age of 7. Due to my family moving right around the same time, I was able to transition from female to male rather quickly. I have never been seen as trans* by the world at large.

My childhood was very typically male, almost stereotypically so. I played sports and had mostly male friends. I did not put much thought into my medical condition when I was younger. I went through puberty at the same time as my peers. At that stage, I became more self-conscious and self-aware, but that faded in and out.

I have never (knowingly) met anyone else who has transitioned, but I now know of a few trans-identified students at my college. It  is admittedly a bit funny to me to see their condescension towards all non-queer males, including myself. It is funny to me that, though we both have the same condition, our lives have gone so differently. 

Transitioning at a young age, my perspective of transsexualism as a medical condition, and my complete lack of involvement with the trans* or LGBT community has made exploring these online resources feel very alien to me. However, it does greatly interest me to read about the lives and experiences of others with the same condition.

i’m a 15 yr old queer trans girl. This is my story:

Growing up things weren’t really “boy” or “girl” things, i was a pretty feminine little kid. A messy kid, but feminine. I guess the only signs that something was different was, I didn’t really like playing all the rough games the boys did, I preferred to play “girl” games. I always imagined myself as a girl when I would play pretend, except when I was playing with other kids. 

I never hated my body, or felt trapped by it, and seeing as I was never treated badly for being feminine, except by the boys, but I didn’t really care what they thought. When I moved on to secondary school, I came out as gay a month or two in, and I was cut out by the guys again, the girls accepted me with open arms. I still didn’t really get any trouble for being feminine, so being gay seemed to fit, I mean, I was supposed to be a boy, and I liked boys. Now skip forward a year, to two “friends” trying to change my personality from feminine to masculine, which caused me to flip out and say, “I’m transgender” after a whole load of nonsense, and talking to my Mum, I put trans away and went back to being just a boy. 

Now, it wasn’t until January time of this year that these issues came back, and after that they haven’t really gone away, I told my Mum again, and her response was to go “You’re not,” so I buried it any time it came up with this excuse. So yes, I’ve stopped trying to deny it. This is who I am.

I am a girl. I am not trapped in my body, but this doesn’t mean I’m not  a girl. This is my body. 

I am Vikki, hello world.

A beginning

I thought a relatively short piece on how my own realisation (about being non-binary trans) unfolded might be appropriate.  I have a lot more living, learning and growing to do yet in this journey (I am still alive after all), but a few words about it’s beginning I can share for now.

I was 28 when I consciously realised, nearly a year ago now, and it was very sudden and abrupt.  I think my head had been working on getting this to the surface for a while subconsciously to be honest, and that probably helped.  What finally kicked it out into the open was being called a man in an emotionally charged situation (the end of an intense relationship, but that’s a different story…).  However well meant, it was like running into a brick wall. Complete brain freeze. Does not compute.  A total blue-screen-of-death moment.

Once I had a chance I sat down and tried to figure it all out.  The following emerged very quickly:  1. I’ve never been a man, EVER. 2. I’m not a woman either. 3. I think I may have been marginally female while at college without ever labelling it as such. and 4. Male does not equal man, nor does female equal woman. At least not in my head. Overlap yes, equal, no.

And I realised what I am is an Androgyne.  I was really happy to find that word.  It felt right.  Tasted right.  Felt wholesome, and still does.  Even so I spent some time deliberating, checking that I wasn’t just jumping on anything as soon as I could; but I wasn’t.  I’m an androgyne, and knowing that makes me smile.

Love, light and hope to everyone out there trying to find themselves, in whatever capacity!  <3

I’m loosely genderqueer, CAFAB, and I definitely “didn’t always know”. What does gender mean to a little kid who doesn’t feel it? How would a little kid know the words to express something as alien to our society as “not a girl or a boy”?

In fact, I was relatively comfortable to be taken as female for years. I can see now how I was a little different from other kids my age— for instance, from a very young age I just couldn’t wrap my head around the necessity of gender roles and what made me a girl. I think I started self-identifying as a feminist at about age eight as a result (not that my feminist theory was at all good)! I didn’t see what on earth about my body it was that made me have to go and play dolls with the girls when I wanted to be outside splashing in mud with the boys (which looked oh-so-much more fun). It only made me more confused about it when I was told: “You’re a little girl. This is what little girls do.” What made girls different from boys? What separated them so?

But of course, I knew then and now that there’s no one way to be a girl (which wasn’t something taught to me by my rather conservative parents so much as something that seemed obvious to me), and still I don’t know what separates girls from boys so much, so I didn’t overthink that one. I can see the signs way back from then, that I was a very non-gender-conforming child, but I had no idea and accepted myself as a girl. It’s hardly unusual for little kids to not conform to gender roles, and up to puberty, tomboyish girls are often thought of as practically cute for how they look and act (after all, it’s much more “okay” in society’s eyes for females to be masculine than males feminine). So I was never told this stood out; after all, it didn’t.

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Call for submissions

Hey folks,

Just thought I’d post asking for some more submissions, as we haven’t received very many lately, and I’d like to try to keep this thing rolling. Thanks!

-JP

A momentous occasion, and a bit of a quandry

Today I bought my first suit.  It’s not the first suit I’ve owned, but it’s the first one I bought for myself.  Of course, I bought it second hand, but it’s a nice suit, and it fits me, and it’s mine.  I also bought a gorgeous purple shirt and a tie I think goes nicely with it.

I then went and bought some new boxers and something akin to a compression shirt (actually a Spanx tummy tucker shirt).  It doesn’t quite smooth out all my curves, but it does the job for my current purpose.  

Tomorrow I will be attending a party for crossdressers, in full “menswear”.  I am both excited and nervous about this.  Most of the people attending the party know me, and have only ever seen me in mostly femme garb.  

I know I won’t “pass”.  I’m not sure that’s possible for me.  I’m told I have a very “feminine” face.  I’m also do not have the slightest idea what to do with my very long hair.

I’m tempted to play up the femme side just a little bit, maybe by wearing a pair of heels, some earrings, and something in my hair.  I’m also considering wearing stockings, which may or may not be seen because of the type of party it is.  Basically, I’m thinking of going for more of a Genderqueer look.  That way it won’t matter that I can’t pass.  It won’t look like I’m trying to do something and failing.

But, I’m worried that I’m only tempted to do this in an effort to stay within my comfort zone, and chicken out. 

On the other hand, I don’t want to look like I’m poking fun, or just being silly.  Maybe I should try to figure out what to do with my hair and my face.

Oh, I don’t know.

The point, I guess, is … I bought a suit!  And I’m happy with it.

Thanks for letting me share.

submitted by: transfemme

I dislike my parents for a lot of things, but at least they got my name right.

Growing up I always got a weird look when I told people my name was actually Jesse, and not Jessica or Jessie or Jessy. They were always expecting a boy, but what they didn’t understand is that they were looking at one.

I never felt and still don’t feel very “trapped” about my body. It makes me very uncomfortable some days, but growing up I never felt that it was wrong. Gender stereotypes weren’t imprinted on my brain. I never thought twice about my leg hair or armpit hair being unacceptable. I never really thought my vagina was unacceptable, either. I still don’t today. It’s not what I would have chosen, but it gives me wonderful orgasms and I can’t complain much with that. Plus, the only people who see it are myself and my wonderfully supportive girlfriend. I’m very ok with that.

Although in middle school I would pack with a pair of socks sometimes. I didn’t understand why at the time, I just liked the way it felt. For reasons unknown to me I stopped. I think I was afraid my mother would find out. I knew that wasn’t “normal”.

In my first year of high school I went to a tech school and got bullied a lot because people couldn’t figure out if I was a boy or a girl. The most upsetting part was that I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t want to defend myself as female, nor exert myself as male. I didn’t know what felt right, but I did know that they wouldn’t believe me either way. Online I would pass as a boy to people to make myself feel better about not knowing exactly who or what I was. (or could be!)

In late high school I decided to just settle into the term “lesbian” because I honestly didn’t know a lot about Trans* people and transitioning. I thought living as female was something I had to accept and do for my entire life even though I always felt like a guy. It was only until I met my girlfriend Emily when that changed. She knew I was different from people and that I was unhappy. She knew I was a transman before I did, really. Emily is the person who helped break down that door and led me to a world where male and female doesn’t exist the way I thought it did, and even though it’s hard to be trans and we have our issues with it, I’m much happier knowing who I am and what I want to do with my body - and that I have someone beautiful inside and out to help me transition any way that I choose.

Submitted by morton-rainey