I’m sure many people are curious about the process that goes through a person’s mind as they come to the realization that their body and identity are incongruent. Every account will be different, I’m not even sure if my own process could be considered typical or if it should be considered uncommon. There is of course a stereotype regarding how this realization goes. The stereotype given to transgendered people is that from a very young age we know we are in the young bodies, insist that we are the opposite sex and will meet any opposition with great negativity and hostility, kicking and screaming, “I’m a girl! I’m not a boy!” Granted, I do know of a few trans folk who were like this as children but interestingly this, like every singe other stereotype, is mostly untrue.
I can’t speak for others, but I can certainly explain about myself. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but even as a little kid I knew that something was… off. Funny enough, I’ve even seen a series of baby pictures in which my face looks completely blank and unhappy while wearing a dress but looked ecstatic when I got to sit naked in a small aluminum tub. I never had many friends when I was a kid, but I never knew why. While I always felt that I had more in common with boys, I recognized that I was a girl and should behave as such. I watched the girls and mimicked their behaviour. I complied with wearing dresses on Sundays to go to church and I claimed that I wanted to be the Pink Power Ranger, when really Red was my favourite. On Christmas I got Barbies as gifts but I ended up chopping their hair off and pretending that my stuffed animals were eating them. I knew I was just pretending to be like a girl, but never thought much of it until I got older. I was aware of the physical differences between boys and girls and often fantasized that I had a penis, even attempting to pee standing up on numerous occasions but knew that these thoughts were abnormal and kept them completely secret.
As soon as I got to Middle school the differences between boys and girls became blindingly obvious. Cliques started appearing, and I lost many of the few friends I had from Elementary school because I didn’t dress girly enough. I made new friends and fell into a pre-teen Goth clique. We were all female, but none of us were feminine. We greeted each other by punching each other, we wore baggy black clothes every day, and we all loved listening to Metal (try listening to Psyclon Nine some time, that is what I listened to when I was 12). This lack of pressure to be feminine made me feel more comfortable in my skin, but the physical changes that came with puberty still horrified me. In the gym locker room, I had a strategy with changing my shirt so that my chest was NEVER seen, and I was overwhelmed with shame the first time I experienced MANstruation. I pilfered my mom’s hygiene products and avoided absolutely any mention of my “blossoming into womanhood”, I never even talked to my mom about it until I was a junior in high school. During my puberty I began truly hating my body and wished deeply that I had been born a boy.
One day my best friend and I were in the locker room and she mentioned that her sister was bisexual. I had been raised in a very Conservative Christian household (my mother’s first husband was a devout Catholic and my mother’s family are vocal Republicans) and was denied any knowledge of the existence of LGBT people. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as being attracted to members of the same sex. My first reaction was to say, “Huh. That’s weird.” but never for one moment in my life have I had a negative thought about LGBT folks. She then told me that she was bisexual herself. When she came out to me, I felt like less of a freak. I finally understood that my feelings were real and that I wasn’t crazy. But when I learned about what a transsexual was, I was terrified. I knew how much suffering and judgement a transsexual had to go through to gain the body they desired, and I knew I didn’t want to go through that suffering. I shoved the idea that I was trans to the back of my mind and continued to pretend I was a girl, believing that living would be easier if I just faked my way through it.
This tomboyish behaviour continued on into high school. I began developing an interest in relationships when I was about 15 and realized that it would be hard for me to get significant others unless I worked to make myself more attractive. For the first time in my life, I willingly dressed in a feminine manner. All of my friends had significant others, and I was envious of the connection that they could make with another person. I had always been extremely emotionally repressed and wanted a person I could feel comfortable sharing my feelings with in a way that I couldn’t do with my friends.
I got my first boyfriend when I was 16. He was tall, muscular, and while most girls in the school thought he was just a scary Goth boy, I thought he was beautiful. He enjoyed how masculine I actually was, and for the very first time I was able to really express myself. Unfortunately, he had his eyes on someone else and the relationship only lasted a few months before he broke up with me.
The break up devastated me and I fell into the worst depressive episode of my entire life (and to this day I haven’t experienced one as bad). My self-worth evaporated and turned into a severe self-loathing. I began starving myself in the hopes that I would be more appealing if I were thinner and became frighteningly skinny. For months there was not a single day that I didn’t wish I would die, and I worked to alleviate these feelings by hurting myself. I cut myself tens of times every day, but held the secret of my self destruction completely to myself. That is, until I got my first girlfriend.
We starred in a play together, and grew close as friends. I was the lead in The Secret Garden and she played my best friend. During the time we spent together, we developed feelings for each other. She was (and is still) gorgeous. My heart melted just seeing her, but the butterflies in my stomach flared enormously when I discovered through a mutual friend that she had feelings for me as well. She eventually asked me out (much to my excitement), but sadly she was closeted. I wanted so badly to show her off as my beautiful girlfriend but I was denied that privilege except when in the company of our mutual friends. Unfortunately I made the mistake of too quickly revealing the skeletons in my closet and told her about my severe depression and that I cut myself. It made her sad, but she still cared for me. But I assume my baggage became too much for her to handle and she too broke up with me.
This cycle of dating people, falling for them and revealing my demons lasted for some time and was unable to hold a relationship for more than a few weeks. Each time my self loathing continued to grow. While I brooded over everything I despised about myself, I realized just how much the female aspects of my body crossed my mind. At this point I had been out of the closet as a bisexual for some time was was finally okay with admitting that I was also a transsexual. There was no more denying that I was born in the wrong body and that I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life until I accepted this as fact. In a long blog on Facebook, I finally revealed myself as a transsexual. I was greatly surprised at the acceptance I received, and virtually everyone who knew was glad that I wasn’t lying to myself anymore. A large part of my depression was lifted when I discovered that being transgendered would not be as horrific as I originally thought. Self- harm had already been a cemented addiction and it was still my relief when I didn’t know how else to deal with my depression, but when I began dating again since coming out I could no longer hide my self-mutilation and had to quit. I no longer use self-harm as a coping mechanism.
Since this initial coming out I learned a lot about the Transgender community. For these past years I have been analyzing myself and judging whether or not my coming out really was true and I was terrified that I didn’t fit the mold of what a trans person was. the more time I spent socializing online with other gender variant people, the more I learned that there is no single mold of what I trans person has to be. I was okay with how I felt on the inside, I knew that I was not 100% man. I don’t always feel like a man nor do I always feel like I should behave and present as one. My gender is fluid, it changes from man, woman, to something in-between and I feel different almost every day. But that doesn’t change how much I still wish I had been born a man. Nobody else can tell me that my feelings mean nothing, and I am perfectly content with not having a concrete gender. I am a genderqueer transsexual, and I’m happy this way.
