When did you first start feeling gender dysphoria?
Most medical literature on trans people assumes that the vast majority of trans people started getting gender dysphoria since being small children. I suspect that a good portion of us got it later than that.
What was your experience with this?
It turns out I had dysphoria my entire childhood, I just hadn't identified it as that. I just kind of assumed I was innately ugly and broken.
A couple of years before puberty for me (or at least, a couple of years before the noticeable physical changes)
Puberty's what did it for me. Don't remember caring too much before, but when it hit the dysphoria also hit like a truck. Apparently I didn't "show the signs" as a small child.
The first time I can look back at growing up and pinpoint dysphoria was the onset of puberty. It felt so wrong, like it shouldn't have been happening to me. I felt trapped in someone else's body. I remember reading the diary of Ann Frank, and she was happy to get her period and be a woman. That concept was so foreign to me. Why would anyone want to be a woman if they didn't have to? I got a period, and I felt dread. I knew my mom had a hysterectomy, and I knew that's exactly what I wanted as soon as possible. I have always known that I would get sterilized. The thought of birthing children and getting pregnant made me feel sick and uneasy. I wished it weren't possible. I wished I didn't have to.
As I grew to be a "woman," I had a deep hatred for what I felt I had to be. I didn't want to be a man. I just wanted to be a default person. I didn't want to be perceived masculine or feminine. When I was a young child, I didn't feel like a pretty little girl. I felt like just a kid. A lot of girls played with other girls and boys with other boys. I never felt like I belonged anywhere, but is that dysphoria or is that growing up as an outsider?
I remember thinking about cutting out my uterus while it was bleeding. I felt it shouldn't be there, and I needed to get rid of it. That was totally dysphoria. There's nothing like that when I was younger that I can remember.
I don't actually know when, just that it clicked when I finally played as the girl option in a Pokemon game and it felt so right. Mind, part of what made it so slow is that I'm genderfluid, so there were enough times I was firm enough in my identity that, combined with going to a Christian Catholic school, made the times I switch easier to... Well, ignore
Yeah, I can kinda relate. For me, playing as a girl in games was really one of the few coping mechanisms I had before I started transitioning. Just made me feel correct, y'know? Aside from that pretty much just gender bender anime, couldn't get enough of that stuff.
That sounds like how bisexual people can be sure they're straight. Is that accurate?
Funny thing there, also bisexual and it also took a long time to figure that out for the same reasons
Catholic school, where self discovery goes to die
I've never liked my appearance until recently, nor have I liked being perceived by lots of people. Thought that's just how introversion works, but now it all makes sense.
I was 16 when I had the realization. Pretty much all the memories I have from when I was a child are me being sad or angry/frustrated. I had a lot of emotional issues as a child, which my parents and therapists I had couldn't figure out. I grew up in rural area and had zero knowledge of transgender people until I was a tween, which I discovered via porn and I honestly thought it was photoshop for a good while. I feel like my life would be so different right now if I had just been told more about gender as a kid.
Weird story, I think I started feeling it after watching a cartoon where a boy and an girl switched bodies for an episode. I would just watch that episode over and over again for a while not understanding why. (I was like maybe 10 in the deep south with no internet, makes sense i wouldn't know what it was)
Aside from that, I guess during puberty I just kinda started feeling a strong desire to wake up a girl, not sure if anything specific set that off just kinda started happening.
When did I recognize I was feeling something that turned out to be gender dysphoria? Idk some time in my mid 20s because of a friendship I had online with someone who called me his wife.
In retrospect I probably 'started' feeling dysphoria as a very young child. Maybe 8 or 10? I remember doing a few things that could be seen as early experimentation.
I've never liked how I looked. Not really.
I was able to look objectively attractive, I guess, but it never truly made me feel good about myself.
So even without realizing until a couple months ago, I've probably had dysphoria ever since I started caring about my appearance. Which was about the age when puberty did its thing.
Thinking back on it now, it's all coming together.
Can relate, I never really hated the way I looked, but I definitely did not like the way I looked. Just always felt like I was looking at a thing in the mirror, not really myself.
Those days are more or less over for me, hope you feel the same way.
There's still that guy in the mirror, but every now and then I manage to get a glimpse of how I could look in the future.
Though it's hard for me to look past the beardshadow, that one's really screwing with me