FA+
Shop
My gender journey
7 months ago
Since there's so much talk from the right wing about how trans youth aren't real and it's all a big delusion, I think it's important I finally tell my story in detail. Because it flies in the face of all that, and I want it heard in whatever small capacity I can muster.
I carried a lot of shame about what I was going through and what I felt, for many years- and I regret not coming to terms with myself much earlier. I am saddened that I did not have support, younger. Moreover, I am regretful that in my period of denial I spouted opinions against my own interests out of some complex feelings of inadequacy and longing for acceptance. For normalcy.
I feel awful for the trans youth of today now that they have had the chance to be themselves, only to have it ripped away mid-process.
So here's my story. I must preface it with- I was raised Christian, conservative, and rural. Bear that in mind. It did me no favors.
I still vividly remember the first time this happened, because it was a shock to my system in a profound way. I was 13, it was somewhere around 2 in the morning, and I had gotten up to pee. I was half asleep and disoriented.
When I stumbled into the bathroom I experienced a total panic meltdown. Why? I could not find my vagina. What the hell was on me?
That sounds funny, maybe, but I am not exaggerating. At that moment, half asleep, groggy, I was terrified of my anatomy. It was wrong, and I was confused to a point of severe anxiety and a fear reaction.
I don't know how long actually passed before I stopped panicking, but eventually I woke up a little more and of course it all cleared up. I peed, and then stood there for a while pondering what the hell just happened to my brain.
The memory of that night is burned into my brain. I can remember it to insane levels of detail. That was late 2000. Autumn.
Before that had happened I liked to wear girl's clothes- and nobody forced me to do it. Nobody suggested I should. I did it in private. In secret. I felt comfortable in them. This went back as far as 9 years old to my ability to recall. I liked wearing dresses. The only person I let know was my sister, who then enjoyed dressing me- but it did not come from her.
I hadn't thought about it all that much, until after that night when I was 13.
From that point until around 17 I had moments like that night recur. I would wake up, be in a sleepy stupor, and have a momentary panic about why my body was not how my brain expected it to be.
As I got older it wasn't just happening when I went to use the toilet, it would also happen if I felt like masturbating. As a teen, I often did. I'd touch past what I had, and wonder where what I thought I had was.
Over time I got accustom to my brain doing this to me and for many years I wrote it off as me being insane.
When I was still in public school I hated the locker rooms. I was bullied a lot, but that's not actually why I hated them. I hated the locker rooms because around that age my sexual feelings had begun to make themselves known, quite forcibly, and I wasn't looking at girls. Even though I was sure I should be.
That, coupled with something else I was grappling with. Something I did not understand then, but I understand now. I was ashamed of my body and did not want to show myself, because I did not feel male. Being exposed around other nude or mostly nude boys, whom I was attracted to on top of it all, while feeling as though I were not meant to be there- was a horrid feeling.
I would get written up over and over for not changing. I would find a corner, and literally curl up and hide until everybody else left.
The school I went to was very old, and the locker rooms were somewhat like a dungeon, even partially underground. There were corners to find.
Throughout my teens I would often be mistaken for a girl from behind, or over the phone- and it always felt good. I wasn't upset about it. It confused me a little, but it didn't upset me.
As I navigated my 20's I decided I was just a gay man, and an effeminate one, to boot. A femboy, if you will. I lived that life for a while, with my first boyfriend- who had driven all way up to the mountains from Baton Rouge, to take me back south with him. He did, and we lived together for many years, in Louisiana.
The south was a bad place for me to be. There was an overwhelming influence of religion and normative pressures. I was still very impressionable and had not gone through therapy to deal with the abuse I had been through, being Autistic or Bipolar, and I had never let anybody in on what I now know to be gender dysphoria.
I was still a lost soul, essentially. It got to me at some point.
Living as a femboy, I got closer and closer to that realization that I was, in fact, a woman. Just at the last minute, before I made that breakthrough- I had what I call a total religious meltdown.
In 2008, I had this day where I completely collapsed in on myself. I threw away everything feminine I owned. I went hard-line Christian, rebuked everything about myself, shaved my head- the whole nine yards. I lost my fucking mind.
I just could not accept being one of those "crazy trannies".
My ex was upset, rightfully so. To his credit he stayed with me, and tried to get me through whatever I was going through. I owe a lot to him for that, regardless of the stupid shit that went down later on.
I had some bad influences egging me on through that religious phase, but by 2011 I was finally out of it. Looking back, raggedly. I slowly started to reassemble the pieces of who I was before that day, re-embracing my femboy traits, little by little.
It was in 2012 that in private I told my ex that I thought I might be transgender. He just said, "I could see that." We shared a chuckle. I asked my personal friends in a Skype call that same night, that if I had been a woman the whole time would it have surprised them. They unanimously said, "no."
The gears started turning again.
I still had a long way to go before I finally came out and just owned myself. Because just as I was about to- the tumblr era fell upon us.
Now, bearing in mind that- politically, I was still in a Christian, rural isolation tank and we simply did not live online then as we do now, I was more centrist than left back then.
I wanted to come out, but the community I was seeing via stuff like Buzzfeed and the worst of Tumblr, and then ofc I started falling into the alt-right pipeline with Amazing Atheist, ShoeonHead, and Sargon of Akkad and all that shit- I would remain closeted for another 9 fucking years.
In that time I had accepted internally who I was. I finally came to accept that I was trans around 2012, 2013. I was just terrified to say anything about it. VERY few people knew, mostly trans friends I had.
Then finally we hit the 2020's. The moment that finally pushed me over the "I just can't live in secrecy anymore" hump, was a man calling me ma'am and talking to me as if I were a woman, because he thought I was one, in a grocery store parking lot.
By this time I was far further left, politically. I cut ties with a TON of outed neo-Nazi bronies. I had been going to therapy for many years. I had quit smoking. I was back in the north. That alt-right crap was getting exposed and I was over it. I was finally ready.
I finally came out. You know what my sister said to me?
"Yeah, duh."
I have regrets. I knew, when I was 13, that I was transgender. Even though I had not heard of the concept at the time, if I had had somebody to talk to about what I was going through, when I was a teenager, I could have been spared many years of pain and internal chaos.
I could have been spared two suicide attempts.
I could have possibly even been spared 150 pounds of stress eating.
Nobody suggested I be trans. Nobody groomed me to be trans. I did not even know what it was when I experienced Dysphoria.
Trans youth are real. I was one.
I carried a lot of shame about what I was going through and what I felt, for many years- and I regret not coming to terms with myself much earlier. I am saddened that I did not have support, younger. Moreover, I am regretful that in my period of denial I spouted opinions against my own interests out of some complex feelings of inadequacy and longing for acceptance. For normalcy.
I feel awful for the trans youth of today now that they have had the chance to be themselves, only to have it ripped away mid-process.
So here's my story. I must preface it with- I was raised Christian, conservative, and rural. Bear that in mind. It did me no favors.
I still vividly remember the first time this happened, because it was a shock to my system in a profound way. I was 13, it was somewhere around 2 in the morning, and I had gotten up to pee. I was half asleep and disoriented.
When I stumbled into the bathroom I experienced a total panic meltdown. Why? I could not find my vagina. What the hell was on me?
That sounds funny, maybe, but I am not exaggerating. At that moment, half asleep, groggy, I was terrified of my anatomy. It was wrong, and I was confused to a point of severe anxiety and a fear reaction.
I don't know how long actually passed before I stopped panicking, but eventually I woke up a little more and of course it all cleared up. I peed, and then stood there for a while pondering what the hell just happened to my brain.
The memory of that night is burned into my brain. I can remember it to insane levels of detail. That was late 2000. Autumn.
Before that had happened I liked to wear girl's clothes- and nobody forced me to do it. Nobody suggested I should. I did it in private. In secret. I felt comfortable in them. This went back as far as 9 years old to my ability to recall. I liked wearing dresses. The only person I let know was my sister, who then enjoyed dressing me- but it did not come from her.
I hadn't thought about it all that much, until after that night when I was 13.
From that point until around 17 I had moments like that night recur. I would wake up, be in a sleepy stupor, and have a momentary panic about why my body was not how my brain expected it to be.
As I got older it wasn't just happening when I went to use the toilet, it would also happen if I felt like masturbating. As a teen, I often did. I'd touch past what I had, and wonder where what I thought I had was.
Over time I got accustom to my brain doing this to me and for many years I wrote it off as me being insane.
When I was still in public school I hated the locker rooms. I was bullied a lot, but that's not actually why I hated them. I hated the locker rooms because around that age my sexual feelings had begun to make themselves known, quite forcibly, and I wasn't looking at girls. Even though I was sure I should be.
That, coupled with something else I was grappling with. Something I did not understand then, but I understand now. I was ashamed of my body and did not want to show myself, because I did not feel male. Being exposed around other nude or mostly nude boys, whom I was attracted to on top of it all, while feeling as though I were not meant to be there- was a horrid feeling.
I would get written up over and over for not changing. I would find a corner, and literally curl up and hide until everybody else left.
The school I went to was very old, and the locker rooms were somewhat like a dungeon, even partially underground. There were corners to find.
Throughout my teens I would often be mistaken for a girl from behind, or over the phone- and it always felt good. I wasn't upset about it. It confused me a little, but it didn't upset me.
As I navigated my 20's I decided I was just a gay man, and an effeminate one, to boot. A femboy, if you will. I lived that life for a while, with my first boyfriend- who had driven all way up to the mountains from Baton Rouge, to take me back south with him. He did, and we lived together for many years, in Louisiana.
The south was a bad place for me to be. There was an overwhelming influence of religion and normative pressures. I was still very impressionable and had not gone through therapy to deal with the abuse I had been through, being Autistic or Bipolar, and I had never let anybody in on what I now know to be gender dysphoria.
I was still a lost soul, essentially. It got to me at some point.
Living as a femboy, I got closer and closer to that realization that I was, in fact, a woman. Just at the last minute, before I made that breakthrough- I had what I call a total religious meltdown.
In 2008, I had this day where I completely collapsed in on myself. I threw away everything feminine I owned. I went hard-line Christian, rebuked everything about myself, shaved my head- the whole nine yards. I lost my fucking mind.
I just could not accept being one of those "crazy trannies".
My ex was upset, rightfully so. To his credit he stayed with me, and tried to get me through whatever I was going through. I owe a lot to him for that, regardless of the stupid shit that went down later on.
I had some bad influences egging me on through that religious phase, but by 2011 I was finally out of it. Looking back, raggedly. I slowly started to reassemble the pieces of who I was before that day, re-embracing my femboy traits, little by little.
It was in 2012 that in private I told my ex that I thought I might be transgender. He just said, "I could see that." We shared a chuckle. I asked my personal friends in a Skype call that same night, that if I had been a woman the whole time would it have surprised them. They unanimously said, "no."
The gears started turning again.
I still had a long way to go before I finally came out and just owned myself. Because just as I was about to- the tumblr era fell upon us.
Now, bearing in mind that- politically, I was still in a Christian, rural isolation tank and we simply did not live online then as we do now, I was more centrist than left back then.
I wanted to come out, but the community I was seeing via stuff like Buzzfeed and the worst of Tumblr, and then ofc I started falling into the alt-right pipeline with Amazing Atheist, ShoeonHead, and Sargon of Akkad and all that shit- I would remain closeted for another 9 fucking years.
In that time I had accepted internally who I was. I finally came to accept that I was trans around 2012, 2013. I was just terrified to say anything about it. VERY few people knew, mostly trans friends I had.
Then finally we hit the 2020's. The moment that finally pushed me over the "I just can't live in secrecy anymore" hump, was a man calling me ma'am and talking to me as if I were a woman, because he thought I was one, in a grocery store parking lot.
By this time I was far further left, politically. I cut ties with a TON of outed neo-Nazi bronies. I had been going to therapy for many years. I had quit smoking. I was back in the north. That alt-right crap was getting exposed and I was over it. I was finally ready.
I finally came out. You know what my sister said to me?
"Yeah, duh."
I have regrets. I knew, when I was 13, that I was transgender. Even though I had not heard of the concept at the time, if I had had somebody to talk to about what I was going through, when I was a teenager, I could have been spared many years of pain and internal chaos.
I could have been spared two suicide attempts.
I could have possibly even been spared 150 pounds of stress eating.
Nobody suggested I be trans. Nobody groomed me to be trans. I did not even know what it was when I experienced Dysphoria.
Trans youth are real. I was one.
I'm always impressed by the stories of kids that basically always knew. They're SO lucky if they happen to have parents that are understanding and supportive, even if it takes them a bit to get there.
Do you feel like you were born that way? Looking back, do you think you somehow knew before you were 13?
I had a trans friend when I was 9 in school in the 90s. She was aware from birth she didn't feel right in her male body. She was able to transition 25 years later finally, and has never been happier with how she feels about herself.
I definitely know I was born this way. Biologically I am intersex. XXY chromosome. So something was bound to never fall into line with gender norms, regardless.
If I say the comfort of being dressed as a girl when I was very young and my preference for female company (in the casual sense) and my natural disinterest in most typically masculine/boyish hobbies, AND my intense difficulty getting along with boys; if I say that is all a sign of being transgender then yes, I must have known in some capacity. Not with any degree of understanding on a conscious level, perhaps- but innately.
Even from my earliest memories I was just not into... boy stuff. Sure, I fell in line with a few stereotypes, but they are ones which we generally acknowledge as manufactured and not truly gendered. Video games, for example. Seen as masculine- but only because marketing and misogyny made it so.
I remember wanting to wear panties when I was really little. I am not sure how young I was, this is a tiiiiny memory. I could have been 5 or 6. My mother, to her credit, didn't mock me. I can't remember what she said, I just remember her not being nasty about it. I think she found it cute, even. I recall asking, though. I wanted to wear them, instead.
So something must have been different about me. Some would say that's just weird kid behavior, but that's the same dismissal Autism gets when you hear, "well everybody does that".
I'd guess that due to the environment you grew up in, it might have been harder to understand your feelings.
It should really go without saying that nothing anyone does can make anyone gay or trans, or if they are, to change that, but here we are...
What I did understand growing up is that nobody valued me, I was to be seen and not heard, I was worthless and a burden, I was annoying and would never make friends, and as I got older I was creepy and off putting. I also understood that nothing my parents ever said could be believed or relied upon, since they'd just change their minds daily. I understood that everything I ever said was a lie according to others. I understood that I was a sexual object for people outside the family, and if I said anything it would not be believed because "men don't touch boys". I understood that everything my father did or said to me was justified because, as he would say, "the neighbor's father was far worse". I understood that having people scream and fight and throw things every day was normal. I understood that living in filth was acceptable. I understood that unless I had a broken bone, there was never a need to go to the doctor- everything could be fixed with a little dirt and moxy.
I definitely had a lot of ideas about myself for sure. Nothing to help me understand anything true. That didn't come until I left, and realized that everything I had known and thought was normal was very much not normal.
I am absolutely floored I somehow made it to who I am today.
That's also quite the list of adverse childhood experiences, which are proven to be critical to how trauma effects people as they grow older.
A lot of people don't manage to escape or grow much, if at all, beyond that. At least you're headed in the right direction.
So I am simply cutting off the family line here. She (my sister) felt very much the same, and both of us have held to that. I ended up preferring men and unable to reproduce anyway, so no sweat.
Our older brother, on the other hand, he is a father by multiple women and is a total piece of shit.
There is of course also an element of envy and denial, and an element of predatory lust. Overall, though- power mad thuggery is driven to control wealth and sex. When they can't control wealth, they obsess on sex.
The more lonely we are, the more desperate we are. The desperate we are, the more open to propaganda we are. The more open to propaganda we are, the angrier we get. The angrier we get, the easier it is to turn us on each other.
- power.
It is no theory.
When I first started school, I much preferred hanging out (and felt kinship towards) the other girls. Yet I would get the "ew, cooties" routine and be shunned by them more often than not. So I was forced to play with the other boys and felt so out of place. That's why I didn't have many friends in those days.
Then my first puberty hit me like a brick in high school and I felt incredibly dysphoric. I would explain how uncomfortable I felt and kept hearing "oh, that's just puberty" from folks that were supposed to be "male role models" for me. I didn't have the language to accurately describe what I was feeling at that point. Yet I kept running into folks who were like "do you wish you could be a girl?" and I immediately answered yes without hesitation.
I wish humanity could actually evolve. Apparently we can't. :(