Printable View
I honestly think that I have been transgendered since the day I was born and its not something you can just "become". I don't mean the people who are happy to wear just one or two items of fem gear but I mean the people (like myself) who feel the need to totally present as female each time they dress.
So, do you think that you were born transgendered or have you "grown into it" as you have got older?
i think people are always transgendered. I know i am. Its a pretty safe bet that every truely transgendered person has always known inside that overwhelming feeling of thinking you were placed in the wrong body, has felt those emotions of jealousy/anger/fustration/sadness/etc just by the mere thought or image of womanhood from the time they were young children.
I know my earliest memories was racked with utter fustration that i would not be able to grow up a girl and experiance all those fun and exciting things that all girls look forward too. As much as i hoped/prayed/dreamed/etc to one day wake up the girl i always felt i was it never happened.
I think the difference is that a TG is truely a female spirit trapped in a mans body.....and i think GG's could easily get a quick understanding of what its like for us.....all they have to do is imagine if they(the exact person they are) was suddenly put into a mans body....how would they feel?? that is EXACTLY how i have felt my whole life.
my hope....
that there is such a thing as reincarnation and next time no mistakes are made! :D
edit: one thing i'd like to add....someone like myself and i can really only speak for myself who see's themself as TG i think also recognizes and finds it the most fustrating thing of all at the idea that no matter what i do in this body i will NEVER be what i truely feel i should be....meaning i will never be 100% woman and quite honestly that has always been my biggest hinderence in going full out in the CD/TS/TG world because i can never feel like a real GG. I can satisfy some of my womanly desires but i will never ever satisfy that one and it will always leave me feeling empty.
sad....but true.
Hi Gemma
I know that I was born this way, there was never any doubt. I had some evil things done to me when I was a kid, and I wondered for awhile if that's what caused it, but both my p-doc and I feel that I'm Karen in spite of what happened, not because of it.
GypsyKaren
I think that what upset my Mum the most when I told her was, not that I was TS, but that I suffered so much inside as she watched me grow up. She never knew, and she feels bad because of that.
The concencus seems to be that you start that way, and if it proves to be a brain difference that really causes it, that'd fit in just so. :)
I did not start till the ripe old age of 43...last april. Had never dressed before.
Am I really transgendered? Who knows...but when I get home tonight I'll switch over to being totally fem till monday. That will include en femme trips to a movie 'Transamerica' friday night and going clubbing Sat nite. Might even run to the grocery or other errands.
I freaking love being a female, makes me happy. Not really worried right now if I fit anyones idea of the correct way of arriving at being a Tgirl!
As others have said, I 100% believe it's something you're born with. To me, a person could more easily change the color of their skin than their sexuality by any means short of 'chopping it off' ;)
Now, the enviornment a person grows up in might influence how much of it comes to the surface and how it presents itself, but deep inside, what's there is there no matter what.
Edit: As for me, I've felt 'something was up' early on in my life, since I've been more interested in girly things than manly things for as long as I can remember. Being manly just...felt unnatural to me I guess.
I don't know. I started around 12 years old. There may have been a proclivity towards it prior to then, but I don't remember ever longing to be a girl as a young child. Girls confused me just like any other boy. All I do know is that when the floodgates opened, the water came fast.
I actually took part in a university study being conducted by the Pysch departmant at Ottawa university, and was told that they were leaning towards transgenderism being there from birth. The study was focusing in on the earliest development of the embrio, when the X and Y chromozones are being determined and that at this time more or less (depending on the sex) are assigned but not the correct ratio. And this could lead to the development of a transgendered personality, and also depending on how many of the chromozones are "misdirected" the person may become a little more of the opposite gender or want to be the opposite gender.
It's a lot to cover here, and confusing, but it does appear transgenderism is not a choice but who we are.
please forgive me if i got a few terms wrong here, I am a designer and not a doctor.
Julia
I honestly believe that this is the way we were born. The only thing is discovering who we really are and this can be a problem. I only found out about four years ago and for reasons beyond my control I'm not able to do anything about it ie, GRS. I have to make do with finally developing real breasts and I'm able to spend about 90% of the time as a woman. I'm sure that if I had found out when I was in my 20's, or even later, I would have had the surgery. But even if I have to live as I now do I'm happy with who I am. Good luck to all of you girls who think you're TG. I hope you find out about it early in life.
I'm with the "born like it" school Gemma..!...then it just develops or evolves into a more complete desire to be feminine depending on how it's allowed to grow...or not as the case may be...peoples situations differ so much..I'm so lucky that over the last few years I have been able to let this side of me "fly" and been able to fulfill a dream...many are not so lucky...but I'm sure I was TG whilst still in the womb.!!!!!
Love Nikki. xx
I first noticed my feelings around the tender age of 5... And in my household, the expectations were such that I just could not assimilate what I felt with what they expected me to be... It became easier to hide, pretend, be a loner, conform to a small extent (so as to be accepted by their norms) but hidden than to show who I was. In that environment, not conforming meant to be beaten, and well... I learned repression first hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by TGMarla
But in short, these feeling have always been with me. I just learned early that hiding myself was the way to familial acceptance.
But things are changing!!!:clap:
I am almost positive I was always tg ,it has always been easier for me to make friends with girls and I was quite often referred to as a sissy,now,it does not matter, I would rather be referred to as a sister to my siblings.
Wow, a tough one. I really don't know why I am the way I am. I am. Just like GypsyKaren, I too had some unfortunate events occur to me when I was around five. I think that might have influenced my development. But even before that my two best friends were girls. I felt more comfortable with the girls than the boys. I saw a school mate dress as a girl for a school halloween parade and the image was just burned into my mind's eye. I never knew a boy could fill the role of a girl until then. My mother, God bless her always wanted a girl. I was the third attempt..if she only knew that she had three and a half boys and one half of a girl. IT is kind of weird. In my male persona, I am not femmy at all. But my mother always describes the new drapes or a new dress or shoes to me:o and never to my other brothers. WHat is up with that? Could she possibly have a clue about my femmy sensibilities. I asked her..why are you telling me about your new blouse> she says I don't know..and goes onto another subject.:bs:
I can remember from a very early age, probably 6, of wanting to be a girl. I had a re-occurring dream of going into bathroom at a certain store and coming out a girl. It grew from there and I tried on my mom's clothes several times in my teens. I stopped for a while and I tried again a few years ago. Stopped dressing again but then it has started over and the urge is stronger than ever.
Mothers have that intuition, as I suppose some of us have, depending how far along we are on the transgendered scale. If you subscribe to the theory it is part of our chromozonial/internal makeup.
J
I think like evey other avenue of this particular discussion, we are all different. I really don't believe I was born this way. I do believe that most people who are gay were born gay, so it just stands to reason that tg people could be born tg. I do not think I was. I believe I evolved. I believe that more and more each day. Life altering events can lead somebody to become something they were not necessarily "born" to be. A form of brainwashing, I suppose.
Birth or environment or whatever really doesn't matter, except as a commentary:
Of course it is easier to say "I was born this or that way" than simply "I am" whatever you think or know you are.
Hugs,
j-a:cool:
For me, I drank too much diet Pepsi when i was a child, this was considered a girly drink, so I became a girl.
I am similar to Eva, I had events in my life that caused me being transgendered, at least I think so. I never had any thoughts about wanting to dress or be like a girl until after the events in my life.
I can't say for sure that I was born being transgendered.
You know. I believe I was born this way. But, I also believe that you can be born with the personality and tendancies but not develop them due to any number of reasons... Myself, well, I remember putting on girly things at a young age as well as my sister(5 years older than me) making me wear some of her old things and I believe that may have actually inhanced these feelings at my young age as well has helped to shape my personality and the like to what it is today.
[QUOTE=MsEva] My mother, God bless her always wanted a girl. I was the third attempt..if she only knew that she had three and a half boys and one half of a girl. QUOTE]
My mother was the seventh daughter in her family, and an irishman told her she would have seven sons. But, the joke in the family is that everyone after the first was supposed to be a girl.
I was the first child with her second husband. I imagine her hopes were higher. I was pretty, had curly hair which was allowed to grow long. I liked spending time with her cooking, cleaning, sewing, embroidering, ironing, etc. (yes, I'm older than the average t!). It may seem strange, but for me gendered activities came before dressing.
So, was I born that way or did I become that way?
Regardless of myself, I think many are born that way, but I think others become that way through trauma, ridicule, emulation of a strong womanly figure, other possibilities.
In short, I think there are different ways of becoming t, and that none is wrong if that's where you are.
As far as crossdressing, I do know a few people who started late in life (30s+) and claimed to have had no interest in earlier.
As far as becoming more than "just a CD" (to transgenderist or transsexual), Richard Docter in his "Transvestites and Transsexuals" made a pretty convincing argument there are some individuals for whom the femme persona they've created ultimately becomes the dominant one, replacing their prior male persona. Although Docter's book doesn't address the autogynephilia theory, AGP would seem to dovetail as one reason this happens. Certainly the published accounts about Larry/Lana Wachowski would seem to fit this model.
(And yes, I'm aware AGP is hugely controversial, however, there are some post-ops like Anne Lawrence, who think it explains them to a tee -- and what gets forgotten in the AGP wars is that Blanchard's intend was to make GRS available to people who previously would have been rejected. I think the real problem with folks like Bailey and Blanchard is they insist there are only two types of TSs (AGP being one), instead of recognizing AGP is one of a variety of types of TSs.)
Part of the difficulty answering the question of how many people are crossdressers who take things a few more steps is that the "standard TS narrative" is so well known that people know how they're "supposed" to feel, and may retroactively recall feeling trans at an early age. But in a sense it doesn't really matter. If people firmly believe they're women (and won't have post-surgery regrets), GRS may be an appropriate solution, regardless of when that belief developed.
i believe that those feelings are there,but speaking from experience,
can be fueled by an encouraging environment.
hugs,karen.
I think its a very interesting question.
I knew I was TG from an early age - though I didn't label myself TG. I'm sure for some there is a process of feminisation through their lives but the gender dysphoria seed was there initially - and this fuelled by desire sends you down the tranny path.
But I think your question is - could a 'normal' guy become transgendered. Well we have the Alan Finch case - he had abusive father, developed a hatred for men, saw an article in a magazine about TSs, said to himself 'that's me', convinced the psychs, had GRS and lived for years as a woman including marrying. Then HE 're-awakes' and realises he's really male after all and he starts reversing the process. So that would suggest that even if the strong desire to change is there - the underlying gender force is stronger.
So I doubt that someone could become TG if they did not already have that GD seed.
Fiona xx
I know I was born this way I don’t really think you can just one day *become* a TG the only thing I can think of is if they had hid the fact that they where to them selves till one point.
I never had the desire to crossdress until last June. I admitted that I am a crossdresser and transgendered. It seemed natural to me because I was not stressed by that revelation. It may have been deep inside of me for a while. I don't believe that I was born this way, but I have always viewed myself as being different. I recently tested as androgyne. I am happy with my masculine and feminine qualities.
Gennee:angel: