There’s so much stuff that would feel weird and stereotype-y to see someone else do and think, “they must be trans!” but when I think back on myself doing them, my only thought is, “oh, so that’s what that was about.”
SORTIR DU PLACARD
Bonuses from the thought:
-1 Authority: Exposed
-1 Composure: Volatile
+1 Pain Threshold: Been through worse
+1 Psyche: All pieces in place
You once suggested going “as a girl” for Halloween and didn’t understand why your father was so angry at the idea. Once you hit puberty, you began stuffing your shirt in secret to see what you would look like if you had breasts. You’ve penned an inordinate amount of terrible lesbian fanfiction, and always wondered why you never felt excluded when your fellow authors complained about men invading their women-only space. Your life could have been a lot easier if you’d realized this earlier — but it would have been far worse to never realize at all.
…
have you been spying on me or smth
A significant portion of people I was attracted to turned out to be lesbians and I was quite jealous of lesbians because they seemed to have gotten all the interesting girls.
Also even the thought of sex felt very uncomfortable because I would have to be the one filling the male role that I saw as quite discusting.
I was also quite heavily avoiding looking at myself in a mirror. If I accidentally happened to see myself trough a mirror I would be instantly filled with very strong negative feelings that I incorrectly attributed to wrong sources.
I knew I was upfront really early (having DID makes it hard to ignore these things or you’ll wake up with it carved into your arm), but my trans hating mom STILL has so many pics of kid me (like 3-4) constantly crossdressing scattered all over her bedroom. Apparently I wanted to be a girl teenage mutant ninja turtle lol
Earliest I remember of me acting atypically was me constantly crushing on anime boys., especially the gundam wing guys omg especially Trowa. Like I’d endlessly talk about it and having elaborate weddings (weddings are stupid, child me was stupid). I was also constantly messing around with other dudes and getting caught
I did the same when I was emo in middle and high school but all the boys then were like “that smart fox is just kissing boys and being bi to get the girls!” Like hanging around emo girls all the time did get me the girls but like if they thought it was so effective they should’ve kissed me too
ugh i remember having a huge crush on this redneck kid i grew up with and we used to cuddle a lot then he got homophobic and started bullying me :(
i remember one time little kid me asked my teacher if she could hook me up with some estrogen after she explained what it did to the body in sex ed. she laughed like it was a joke but i was dead serious
also a wild thing that happened to me is having a save for a game with my CURRENT NAME on it from like 2001 that i found recently. huge brainfuck because i didnt know i was trans at the time and i def didnt have a name decided on
lol, I booted up a laptop I hadn’t touched in 8 years and opened up a game on my desktop and saw that the save file was my current name when I’ve only been using that name for like 3 years
the past is haunting us
What was the game?
i think it was pokemon yellow
i def didnt have a name decided on
something tells me you definitely did lmao
I DIDNT THO
you were being haunted by a ghost
unironically being possessed by my nazi killing ancestors
Ignore my annoying ramblings, I’ll delete it soon anyways.
spoiler
None of these things are required history for knowing you are trans, everyone has entirely different experiences, or none at all. I’ve met ones that had no clue till late 60s, and some that’ve known since they were born.
The fact that I was internally insistent on hanging out with other women and having female body language since I was in middle school. It was some stereotypical shit yeah, but for some reason I had to be viewed as slightly feminine. I had to be viewed that way, I didn’t know why, but my attention seeking specifically wanted that to be the way I was viewed.
I was always jealous of the women’s clothing, but even the ones that could be worn by men because “its just not right thinking of it that way”. My absolute hate towards my own face, I have scars from clawing it in a fit. My complete avoidance of mirrors. Although i don’t really have memories of using womens clothes ever, I was always extremely afraid of that. I still shy away from them, not because I don’t want them, but because I was (and am) afraid of being ugly in them. Also my sister would kill me if I touched her shit and Im far more afraid of her wrath than I was displeased with myself (for good reason, im fucked in the head and she knows it)
wait there was one time recently my sister and mom helped out with some little cosplaying for our family dnd session. I wore feminine but not too feminine clothing. It was nice until my sister and I ruined after getting into an argument.
One time I freaked out when my friend told me my voice was deeper, I thought about it constantly. Still do, I need to voice train.
Oh also constantly imagining myself as female characters. I had a very active imagination, always fighting and taking over the galaxy. I would pretend to be the main character, which was always some sort of vader like thing that I didn’t want to be a man because reasons, but the formless menace was cool. I would make up female side characters that I would play as.
I have and always will be extremely jealous of my sister, shes way cooler than me and far more capable (I wish she was the marxist instead of me). She kicks ass, takes names, and is strong in body, spirit, and mind. I wanted to be her, but I don’t deserve that. She hates me for good reason. I’m not a good person.
none of these things were ever things I thought to connect until I learned that being trans was even a thing by age 16. Even then it took fucking years for me to really realize that I might be trans, a fuckton of back and forth, and even then coming to terms after knowing I had some sort of dysphoria. It took me until literally last december me finding out, and only because a bunch of trans people bullied the brainworms out of me for fuckin hours. Okay a minor stopping point was me immediately calling up my mother and her trying to be supportive but she was visibly freaking out, then when I explained how I found out she thought the commies did it (but not like a conservative way, but in a people on the internet are making my kid think they’re things they’re not kinda way) and attributing it to that weird syndrome where you think you have a disease if you read the symptoms. Which is totally something that happens for gender. I’m an adult so her opinion doesn’t really matter, but that set me back months while killing my trust in my mom. She got better, kind of, but thats something I wont forget.
These little moments and more are something I didn’t notice until within like a year or so.
Telling ny older sister to buy me a skirt because I want to wear one around the house
read a thing about how you’d turn into a girl magically if you kissed your elbow and spending hours and hours trying to manage it when i was like 7
read a bunch of webcomics (el goonish shive and rain and the like) and fanfiction about
getting stuck as a girl and getting really fixated on any gender bender or rule 63 stuff i could findgetting really grumpy about my singing voice dropping when i was like 14 and not knowing why so blaming it on the songs i liked being in a weird range that made belting a pain
read a thing about how you’d turn into a girl magically if you kissed your elbow and spending hours and hours trying to manage it when i was like 7
was it some weird kids book? I think I remember that one too
yeah, i think so
Lol found it
yeah, that was it!! i’m now vividly remembering this cover
I heard somebody call out a name and I thought “wow, Alexandra, that’s a pretty name, if I ever get the chance to name a girl I should call her that.” And then I did get the chance!
Attempting to make a proper response because I do wanna participate properly. Out of a mountain of moments, I can think of two glaring moments that are jaw-dropping obvious to me in retrospect:
High school me: “Without any pre-existing idea of what it meant to be trans, I wrote a short story that included a magical being who started existence as a woman, fragmented herself to have a male side, which I don’t remember exactly why she had to but it was for protection from some other god. So throughout the story this being had warring male and female aspects and eventually the female aspect grew so powerful that she subsumed the male side entirely and she was made whole again.”
Also high school me: “Wow I’m so creative. I pulled that idea out of absolutely nowhere and had zero subconscious input on any of my creative ideas. And I love the character so much that I’m going to use her name as my profile name in online spaces. Just because I like the name a lot, no other reason. Anyway time to needlessly suffer with unidentified dysphoria for well over a decade”
The other is the time I was group pressured into trying on a dress in middle school and I didn’t care about wearing the dress as much as it was too small and not fitted for me and looked awful. I had to pretend I had an upset stomach so I could hide in the bathroom with the fan on and quietly sob over the thought that I would never be beautiful. You know, typical cis problems.
