I’ve observed that many crossdressers and transgender women recognize their gender identity at a young age. For some, it’s an early realization, while for others, it unfolds later in life.
I’m curious about your experience…
When did you first realize you were female or had a feminine side? Was this something you felt as a child, or did it develop over time?
I’d love to hear your story! Feel free share your thoughts in the comments below!
Love,
Lucille
I don’t really remember but I’ve been told I used to play dress-up with my sister when I was around five or so. I was eight or nine when I would sneak into her room and try on her clothes. By twelve I’d outgrown her and moved onto my mom’s closet. I was 19 or 20 when I decided I wasn’t crazy or broken or shameful and came to really accept myself. It was last year, just after I turned 29, that I started taking hormones and continuing my transition in the open.
I started wearing dresses at 5 as part of a game I would play with my babysitter’s daughter. Dressed off and on for many years after that. I joined the service, and got married in the hope to find a cure for my feminine needs. I guess it was about 40 that it hit me, I am a woman! My marriage was a failure, I have no desire for mal activities, although at 57, I do wish I had a female mate. Now, it feels perfectly normal to me to be dressed feminine and enjoy all those things only women can enjoy.
I probably first became aware around the age of 14. My friend had a sister who used to lay I the sun during the summer. I was always fascinated with her bikinis but was not sure why. One day she left one hanging in the bathroom and I don’t know why but I tried it on and it just felt right. I loved the way it felt on me. I soon moved on to her panties and bras and have not looked back.
By five, I knew I was not a boy, but I was punished for being (naturally) feminine.
By twelve, well-into the hell of being a marginalized gender variant child in the 70s, I discovered the word “transsexual” and wondered if that might be what I was (as I “tucked” in the bathtub)…
…Something told me I would never survive being transsexual and I tried to put it out of my mind. But I was always different, never a boy, nor a man…
…I submerged myself into computers and then as a young adult, my life as a new Christian and missionary. By this time, I had become a “special sort of man,” someone who appeared on the male-side of androgynous who was deeply feminine, but not effeminate. The gender stuff was there, but repressed along with bad things like rapes in my childhood…
…At thirty-seven, I went into therapy with clinical depression – an adult overachiever with a family, whose coping-mechanisms no longer worked. In therapy it became *save* to unpack my secrets, and the gender stuff came-out like a flash flood…so much so that I was transitioning without realizing it over the next year…
…Then I abruptly threw myself back into repression because my spouse could not manage hormones and surgery for me – I thought I would have to live the rest of my life as I was…
…Then six years ago, as I prayed that God might let me comfort others going through gender dysphoria (thinking I had it under control), as part of the answer to this prayer, God led me through a gradual gentle transition where I am today…
…Some three years ago, I crossed the blurry boundary between transgender person to transgender woman to simply woman who is transgender – I didn’t even realize it until people around me decided “she must be woman” and treated me that way.
I am psychologically, socially, legally, and increasingly in my body, a woman. I am in my fourth year of my second puberty (at 53), will be having some bottom surgery in a month, and my new (female) birth certificate arrived in the mail the other day. My spouse and I remain married, now in our 26th year, as we work through our “changed marriage,” now two women, married together, with a son who loves us both.
I am a transgender woman. For me, this means that parts of my body are male, parts of my body are female, and the rest of my body is in the overlap between the sexes. My gender identity, who I am as a person, is as it always has been, essentially female. Once I lived as a special sort of man, and now by God’s grace I live as a special sort of woman…
…By “special sort of man,” I mean that I have always been a female person, but I had to “drive” this (arguably) male body in (seemingly) masculine ways to survive as a child and “get by” as an adult…
…Now I am still a female person, but I drive my body in and into ways that are typical of other women, and I call myself a “special sort of woman” because I have *become* along a different path than my natal sisters, due to my different history and biology…
…Most female people *become* women through their girlhood and adolescence. THIS female person has *become* through her transsexuality and gender affirmation (transition)…
…At the same time, I recognize that I am not a natal female, yet I have also realized that I am not a natal male either: I was born transgender (and likely a form of intersex). Getting as close to “bare metal” about myself as I can, I recognize that I am a human being that is a mixture of sexes and genders. BUT *THIS* human is most clearly understood, experienced, revealed, and happily expressed as the woman she is.
Blessings & Joy!!!
You both are very kind, *thank you* 🙂
Hi Brettany, God is Great!! Thanks for sharing your story. You, your wife and son are a shining light in this world that can be so cruel. Peace be always with you and yours.
Yes, God is great…
…God has always been *so gentle* with me in all this process: I am being healed through the scandal of my gender affirmation. And my spouse realizes it is not the catastrophe she was expecting (or told) it would be, AND God is blessing others, cis and trans, Christians and not, through the way we are dealing with our “impossibilities.”
What a touching and very descriptive story.
I envy you as to how you have handled every obstacle that you have confronted ( only wish my life was like yours )
Thank you Laura. You’re very kind…
At the risk of boring everyone may I share some things…maybe something here will be helpful to someone?
Each of us are unique – we each have things about our selves and lives that work FOR us and AGAINST us, as we seek to be our best selves. In some ways, I have it easier; in some ways others have it easier. We each have our circumstances, and we simply have to “rock what we’ve got” and cope with our limitations.
Honestly, I *never* thought I would be able to transition into life as myself, a woman: even as I was transitioning, as I lived as a transfeminine person. (One person said to me when I came-out to him: “I thought you were just an adorable hippie!”) I am as surprised as any that this is where God has taken me. And I am convinced that if God didn’t want me to be a woman, I wouldn’t be. (To people who say I should have “remained the way God made me,” I reply “God has made me a woman; it just took me longer to get here than most other women.”)
I never tried to convince anyone I am a woman; but more and more, I became myself: a woman. It’s an inside-out thing…
Time has been a crucial ingredient. AND *desperation*: I waited to transition until I could not wait anymore, even though I didn’t realize that’s where I was the day (in retrospect) I stopped living as a man, and gradually moved through androgyny to where I am today…
…Every masculine cue I subtracted and every feminine one I added, I asked myself: “Does this help me feel more congruent? Does this work for me? God, are You okay with this?”
…And by going slowly, I grew used to my changes, grew used to changing, AND people around me grew used to my changing too (and this gave my spouse and family time to adjust)…
…AND I paid attention to aesthetics: I found ways of being feminine that worked for me; many people said “I don’t like XYZ in a man, but *somehow* it just works for you.” Though I stopped dressing as a man nearly six years ago, it’s only been in the last year that I’ve felt my body has changed enough for dresses & skirts to look good on me – but until that time, I found styles that DID work for as a woman increasingly aware of her style.
For much of this six year journey, I let people gender me as they wished. Often I would be gendered male, but eventually my constellation of feminine cues made it easier** for people to gender me female, and when I realized this, I relaxed into my identity and affirmed it by changing my name and gender marker. It was only when people were consistently seeing me as a woman that I claimed my identity and then pronouns became important to me.
**Easier, meaning less or no confrontation, less potential embarrassment: for them. Put another way: increasingly, those who want to treat me like a man look foolish doing-so. I *own* who I am, and even when people recognize me as transgender, I *know* myself to be a woman and it shows; I also know myself to be a *transgender* woman, in which there is no shame.
Sometimes I would be accused of “deception” as I have changed, but I have always been always been 100% myself, but I have been continuously changing, becoming more myself. THIS helped me to be confident throughout my transition that I was being true to myself (whether my changes were visible or known only to me)…
Two other related things that have helped:
First, I made myself cast myself upon kindness of strangers; I chose to make myself vulnerable to others – most people seemed to see this as an endearing mark of authenticity.
Second, I have genuinely tried to be a nice person and I go out of my way to be kind and considerate of others. While I genuinely want to be this way, I also noticed that it helped people see me as a decent, winsome human being (even if I happened to be obviously transgender). So instead of being a “freak show,” people seemed to see me as pleasantly peculiar, relegating my trans-ness to the “so what” bin. Now, whether people recognize me as female or recognize me as transgender, I am nearly always treated as a woman, and I try to make it easy for people to do this.
Anyway, *thank you* for indulging me as I (maybe?) over-share. {very small voice}
Well. I think the first time I realised, was when I was 6, the boys things mom and dad bought me,I was never interested in, the girl that lived next door to us, that was the same age, seemed to have more interesting things, like dolls that you could dress, and other girls toys held more attraction than getting oily and dirty
As I grew a bit older, when I was in our home on my own, I started wearing, my elder sisters clothes, at the time pantyhose had not been around, so stockings and suspenders were still the norm, so as I wore them, also the underwear, that is when I can really say, I should have been born a girl
I knew when I was 7, I found some stored girl’s clothes and put them on when I was alone. Felt much more comfortable then when I was wearing my male clothes. I kept this hidden until I was 12 when I was caught dressing. At that time I was sent to a councellor at the mental health ward in the hospital who after 3 visits told my folks I needed to be in the Big Brother Program to have more male interaction. I was in the program for a year. All it taught me was how to hide it better. When I turned 15 I started reading about how I felt, found several articles about what is now known as transgendered, realized I was a transsexual and knew at that time what I truly wanted to do was to become totally female. Upon graduating from HS I was pretty much forced to go in the service by my relatives thinking that it would stop what they thought was just my being a CD.Started my transition in 2007 with therapy, complete name and document change, living completely female {home, at work and everywhere I went) and HRT. As of today my progress with physical changes has been very slow which I’m hoping to change this year with added hormones. The picture is a year after I went fulltime female.
My mom started dressing me when i was 3 yrs old never knew what was going on but it was fun and then at 5 my mom dressed me like a bride for halloween and had to wear it all day in school..so the feeling has never left and been dressing since….with your flat to femme program my breasts are growing good. since i am in my mid 50’s i will live as a woman full time but most likely i won’t have the surgery.
I always sensed that I should of been girl but it was when I hit puberty my breasts swelled up and I was excited but they soon left and I have been disappointed ever since
I would notice what girls were wearing and picture myself in them also when walking past clothing shops if I spotted a nice dress or shoes or whatever I would see myself in them.So I finally had enough and saw my doctor and all the other stakeholders and
And now I am on hormones and have b cup hoping to reach c cup
Just need a ass and hips