How did you get to where you are today?

[Blade]

I'm putting this in the trans zone because I don't think that most of us just woke up one day and said I'm transgender. I think we all have a story of how we got to where we are today. It's only been a few years since the first time I heard the term transgender, but as soon as I learned what it was I was like OMG yeah that's me. I was amazed that I wasn't the only person in the world that had lived this way most of my life. Fortunately with more and earlier information, I expect the younger folks here knew they were TG and knew what it was at an earlier age.

I thought of this as I watched Chaz last night. Chastity experienced some of the same things as I did. Wished and hope for some of the same things and hated some of the same things like puberty etc as I did and as I'm sure many of you did. I also think some of the folks here have experienced some of the things Chaz has experienced and might have thought at the time you must be the only person who experienced it too.

So if you feel comfortable with it, share with us how you got to where you are today. Be you TG, F2M, M2F, butch, female ID'd butch. I'm pretty sure that most of us trans folks knew we were in the wrong body at very young ages. For the butches and female ID'd butches, how did you know or when did you know that you were only butch. All are welcome, lets hear it.

[DomnNC]

I tend to agree with you. I think we were all thinking the same things as we watched that documentary.

Heck, I knew when I was 5 I was a boy. Tho my mama, bless her heart, tried her best to put me in a box. It didn't work and she finally gave up by the time I reached middle school, lol, oh man the discussions we had about what I wanted to wear, how I acted, etcetcetc.

I imagine, since you grew up in a rural area, that you thought you were the only one out there that felt the way you do. Heck, I thought Monroe was the big city, lol, stop laughing, I know you are (since you live down here too and my God it was so much smaller then and the distance between houses so much further).

Then I joined the military right out of high school and found out right quick like that you didn't divulge to anyone in a uniform that you weren't straight, much less, tell them you were a man trapped in a female body. What was I thinking??? lol. Tho I stuck it out to my term so I could get my college paid for, for the most part. Those were definitely some interesting times in my life. I got singled out once, because of my masculine appearance and mannerisms, sent to the post psychiatrist to determine if I was fit for duty, lucky for me he was gay. We talked about all sorts of things to pass the time I was required to go see him. Before we ended our required number of sessions he looked at me one day and said you know you aren't gay don't you? I said well yes I think so, he laughed and said read about transgender some time, then said well the only place they have for me to check is that you are homosexual or not, so you're not and I have to check this box. So that's how I came to hear about the word transgender and know where I fit in the grand scheme of things. So I did like he said and everything I was reading I was going yes, yes, YES, that's me! That was when I was 20 or so, that's how long I've known of the term.

I have come to accept things as they are. I am comfortable is my own skin. Will I transition? At this time I don't think so. I'm old, lol, and luckily I've had partners, family and friends who accept me for who I am. I've had several hard surgeries to recoup from in the not so distant past. I live with pain every day as a result, the thought of being cut open again right now, nope, it's not in me right now.

I know who/what I am, to me, that's all that matters.

Good Topic!

[atomiczombie]

My name is Atomiczombie and I was born a long time ago. As early as 2 years old, I hated the dresses my mom would put me in to go to church. I never liked all the girly, frilly things in my bedroom or closet. I can remember at 3 years old, my favorite shirt was a beige sweatshirt with bugs bunny on it. With that and jeans and sneakers, I was totally me. At age 5, I told my mom I wanted my hair short like Dorothy Hammil, the famous figure skater. I was allowed to get my hair cut short for the first time in my life, and I loved it.

Later that same year, (1976) I figured out that I wasn't really a girl. I had crushes on little girls in my class at school, and ran around with the boys when they let me. I coveted my brother's toys and hated the Barbie’s my folks got me for Christmas. I began announcing to anyone who would listen, that I wanted to be a boy. The reception of this news was met either by dismissal, laughter or shame. My mother told me I wasn't a boy, that I was a girl and that was that. I was silly to think otherwise, and told to stop such nonsense. My heart was broken.

I resigned myself to being a girl with great sadness when I hit puberty. I quit playing little league baseball and was pressured to conform to the gender expectations of my sex by everyone in my life. I was made fun of by other kids, particularly my older brother, and no longer tolerated as a "tomboy". So, I grew my hair out just to get people off my back.

When my body began to change, I was horrified and miserable. Growing breasts, hips widening, new body hair, menstruating; it all was sickening to me. I hated it. But there was nothing I could do. I still refused to wear dresses, and wore jeans and androgynous clothes as much as possible, but the pressure to be feminine was HUGE. I think this was the first point (but most definitely not the last) in my life when I thought about suicide. I was so depressed. But I decided that what I felt and wanted just wasn't important to anyone, and my only value in life was connected with living up to other people's expectations of me.

I tried to conform. I tried to wear make-up and act like my female friends, to fit in. I pretended to crush on guys, all the while lying to myself about my real feelings. I ignored and suppressed my true self in order to survive my teenage years. By age 15, I was drug-addicted and cutting myself. I attempted suicide unsuccessfully.

In 1985 I went to an in-patient drug rehab and psych ward, where I was diagnosed bipolar. During the next 10 years I was clean of drugs and alcohol, but miserably depressed. In my mid to late 20s, I finally saw a therapist who helped me process some of the painful things that happened in my life. At age 28, I began to talk about my feelings for girls, that I had repressed for so many years. I came out to my family and friends as gay.

In 2005, I found the butch-femme community online and in the San Francisco bay area, where I lived at the time. It was in this community, that I learned that sex and gender were not the same and that many people like myself considered themselves transgendered and preferred male pronouns. That totally resonated with me. As I began to hear the stories of other transguys, I realized that so much of their stories were my story too.

In 2006, my best femme friend Nicole picked out a new name for me - Drew. I found myself sitting at my desk at work and practicing my signature. It seemed to fit. I added my father’s middle name, Kendall. I went to court to petition for a name change, and on December 7th 2007, Drew Kendall Nelson became my legal name. I also had a hysterectomy/oopherectomy in the Spring of that year.

Six days before my court date, something happened which which interrupted my plans to transition. On December 1st 2007, my apartment caught fire and I lost everything. I developed a stress reaction and panic disorder, which left me unable to care for myself. In October of 2008, I came to live with my parents and have lived here in Rio Vista with them ever since.

Last year (2010) I started on Testosterone HRT. I was on a small dose from May to November, then bumped up to a full dose. My voice has dropped some. I have a few whiskers on my upper lip and chin. I have horrid acne, oy. I can't wait for my voice to drop more. That's something I have wanted the most from the T.

May 5th of this year I finally got my top surgery - reconstruction of a male chest. I am thrilled! My body feels 150% better. I feel like I have a new lease on life, like I have been released from prison. It can only get better from here.

[Camo Eagle]

I knew as soon as I could think. LOL As a toddler I told people I was a boy when people ask.
I remember the summer my chest started to dev. I was distraught, & thought about suicide many times. I moved a lot as a foster child, and usually spent most of my time just trying to survive, bc I ran away at a young age. That didnt leave a lot of time to really think about it.
It really was rough in the Army, watching all the guys get to do the things I wanted to do, but was denied simply bc I was in a female shell.
Yrs later in the Air Force, I was treated much more equal, and became the "first" to do many things because I "was" in a female shell.
I tried to make the most of the body I had, but I hated it. I had NO idea I would ever be able to change it.
Then in the Medical field I met my first trans person. A lovely MTF that had been in a car accident. I visited her many times and she taught me quite a lot, but this was pre internet days, so info was still hard to get.
Then I joined the "dash site" in 99, and learned a lot more, but didnt spend much time on the site.
Then I migrated to "the next" site, where I was a reg. I met a wonderful couple & many others that steered me in the right info directions. Then with the web it was easy and a no brainer decision for me to transition.
My big hurdle was getting all the medical conditions and Drs to agree that the surgeries & hormones wouldnt kill me.
1.5 - 2 yrs ago I had top surgery. I just passed my 1 yr on injectable T. Ive never been happier. I so regret not being able to do it earlier, but I do believe everything happens when its supposed too.

[Dude]

Originally Posted by Blade

For the butches and female ID'd butches, how did you know or when did you know that you were only butch. All are welcome, lets hear it.

I was listening pretty good until the only butch part.

Looks at the name of the site.

I am only butch and perfectly content being one.

I'll assume you have no bad intent and maybe could have used
a different word here if you had thought to.

I read the trans threads as there are more things than not that
I can relate to and I hope that I am an ally. I do try to be and have for years.
At 16, my dream was to save up to get the ultimate surgery and
have it all.
Over the years I have become more ok being me.
Woman ,she and her twist my mind while describing myself.
I would rather be called that butch or my name.
Being the first woman to do job's that before men were only
hired to do is something I'm proud of and do not want to give up.

I've thought of this a lot and would also not want to give up
being seen as queer by those that do see me.
Like the gay man at work who said it was good to see family around
and introduced me to his partner.
To not have that kind of visibilty would make me blend in and
I think I would hate that.
Plus would I want to look even more like my father than I already do?
No thank you. I'm good.
Maybe it's a bit like how femme's must feel by being seen as straight all the time?


I never try to pass and do. I wonder sometimes, do I look like a straight
man or a gay man to some of these people who call me sir.
Maybe I should swish it up some.

My final desination is butch and I'm good with that.
There likely are others who maybe just like me were wondering why
no one questioned the only butch wording. So, I had to.

[Dude]

too late to edit
final destination is butch
need to load me up some spellcheck

we can all evolve I hope without negating one another's journey.
our lives are our lives, it is not a competition.

I think it's an incredibly brave thing to go through and I say
that with respect.

[Blade]

Dude,
I said only butch in reference to how someone comes to the place where they know are only butch and not TG, or how someone comes to the place where they are male or female ID'd butch, or perhaps it doesn't matter they are just butch. I had never heard the word butch until about 1995 or so and never heard of TG until I came to these sites 3 or 4 years ago and is also the same time I ever heard of male and female ID'd butches. Hope this explains it to where you or no one else is offended by my use of just butch.

[MrSunshine]

It was a long walk...

[Dude]

Originally Posted by Blade

Dude,
I said only butch in reference to how someone comes to the place where they know are only butch and not TG, or how someone comes to the place where they are male or female ID'd butch, or perhaps it doesn't matter they are just butch. I had never heard the word butch until about 1995 or so and never heard of TG until I came to these sites 3 or 4 years ago and is also the same time I ever heard of male and female ID'd butches. Hope this explains it to where you or no one else is offended by my use of just butch.

I get where you are coming from but
only and just mean less than, atleast to me.

[BullDog]

Blade, no offense about "just butch," but I understand what Dude is saying. Also, I just watched an interview with Chazz Bono where he and the interviewer at one point talked about how he thought he was a lesbian. They talked about how that was easy and obvious, then went on to to discuss trans. I understand that it took him sometime to put the pieces together for himself, but there is nothing obvious or easy about being a lesbian. I am putting Chazz and his story aside for now.

When I was kid I thought of myself as a boy most of the time. I rode an imaginary horse and had an imaginary girlfriend named Jenny. I had crushes on little girls from as early on as I can remember and always wanted to walk girls home from school and carry their books for them. When I was a teenager I wished I was a boy so I could marry my best friend whom I was madly in love with. Then I had a very sexually explicit dream of two women together. I grew up very sexually naive- very religious family with little sex education. I was excited. Being the nerd that I am, I went to the library. The first book I found was Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. So that's what a lesbian is, I said to myself. I've happily been a lesbian ever since and not thought about being a boy or male.

Butch in and of itself of course can be a complete identity. I am butch, lesbian, female, woman and much more. They all intersect for me and lesbian, female and woman are part of being butch for me. I don't mind woman, she and her- in fact I insist on them.

I am also a butch woman who is a stone butch and consider getting top surgery- that would be a butch chest for me, not a male one. We had a discussion about this at the Dash site. Many butches who consider themselves to be woman and/or female also discussed this. I have a butch cock that is an extension of my body and my ideal chest would not have breasts- that is part of my butch body, my female body, but not a male one. There are also many butches who are quite fine having breasts. I know of many and they are indeed butch to the core.

I claim woman and female as my birthright. I claim butch for myself.


I think we all have complicated lives and complicated relationships to our gender.

[Blade]

Thanks Bully from your second paragraph down is exactly what I am asking and I appreciate your participation in the thread.

[Blade]

Originally Posted by Dude

I get where you are coming from but
only and just mean less than, atleast to me.

Yes someone just pointed this out to me. Again only and just doesn't mean less than to me and wasn't intended to as it was posted. It was intended as a stopping point. A point where one decides they are only going to be butch and not TG or planning to transition. Or for that matter how one decides they are male or female Id'd.

Just for the record I don't think anyone or group is less than. I have a real curiosity how we each arrived at our own comfort zone of being called butch, male ID butch, female ID butch, TG, FTM, MTF. I encouraged the discussion to include all forms of butch to see and understand where one draws their personal line, as was illustrated by Bully's post

[hpychick]

What a long strange trip it's been.

[Dude]

Originally Posted by Blade

Dude,
I said butch in reference to how someone comes to the place where they now are butch and not TG, or how someone comes to the place where they are male or female ID'd butch, or perhaps it doesn't matter they are a butch. I had never heard the word butch until about 1995 or so and never heard of TG until I came to these sites 3 or 4 years ago and is also the same time I ever heard of male and female ID'd butches. .

I took the just's and only's out of your post and I think it stills get's your point across.
Would you say eh dont listen to her ,she's only a femme?
Or oh look it's just an ftm?

[Blade]

This thread is not about dissecting words or rewriting my post. The purpose is......I have a real curiosity how we each arrived at our own comfort zone of being called butch, male ID butch, female ID butch, TG, FTM, MTF.

I had hoped we could have a sharing/learning experience about how we came into our own. Perhaps a learning venue for a new person. Obviously all they are going to learn is that different people interpret words differently which I am sure is something they don't have to come to a website to know

[Ebon]

I knew I was trans growing up. I never felt like I was in the right body, never understood why my chest couldn't be flat like it was supposed to be and wondered where my penis was(I made my own when I was little). Then I realized that apparently I'm in a girl's body. WTF?! Then I thought ok I can deal with this. This led me to being extremely unhappy, an alcoholic, abusing my body because I didn't give a shit about it, smoking (cigs), being lazy, and eating crap. I don't give a shit it's not the right body. It's not my body.

As I got older I became comfortable in this body, not happy but comfortable. Better able to deal with it by numbing myself with alcohol.
The cycle continued. Then I met a young man that I would become really good friends with. I had soooo many questions. I had no idea that I could make myself appear on the outside, like I did on the inside. Like he did. I thought it was beautiful. From that moment on it has been my goal. Recently (within the past couple of years) the Universe have put people in my life/path that accept that part of me and that also bring it out.

I thank the Universe for these people. Right now I am working on my inner self and my physical self. Once those are complete then it will be time for the last piece of the puzzle. I still have quite a way to go but at least I am on my way.

Disclaimer: When I say abusing my body and I talk about drinking and smoking and sinning and what not, that is my story for my body. I don't care or judge what anyone else does to theirs.

[SelfMadeMan]

I knew I was a boy at the age of 4. I tried to tell my Mom around that time, and I just remember for years, her telling me, "you're a tomboy, lots of little girls are tomboys" and I didn't like that answer at all. I was just a boy. I used to lay in bed at night around the age of 9-10 and daydream about growing up and having a wife. I wanted to be a Dad. It wasn't because there was anything wrong with being a girl, or being a Mom, it just didn't feel like me. It wasn't what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

When I was 10, I would go stay at a family friend's apartment on the weekends. I LOVED going there because I told all the kids there that I was a boy named Larry. I even had a "girlfriend" - and this family friend was cool with it. Even to the point of buying me boy's swim trunks and letting me swim in the pool in just my trunks like the other boys. Life was so good then! At 12, puberty struck and Larry was no more. This would be the start of some VERY traumatic years for me. Traumatic because I felt betrayed by my body, and because we moved from the neighborhood I grew up in, in Houston, to a very small East Texas town.

From 7th grade until about 10th grade, I was bullied relentlessly. I was beat up, spit on, followed from class to class being called "dyke", "lezbo", "linebacker", "freak", etc. It was horrible. My parents tried to help but in the end, felt like I was bringing a lot of it on myself for the way I dressed and cut my hair. I remember my Mom saying that if I just TRIED dressing like a girl and wearing some make-up, that things would probably be better for me. Of course, I wasn't about to do that, bullying or not. It got better the summer before my Junior year when I tried out, and made the school (boys) baseball team. I was good at baseball, and earned my teammate's respect - then things started getting better - not great, but better.

My freshman year in college was bad - I wanted to keep playing ball but wasn't brave enough to try out for the team at my college. This started some major depression - I would go sit at practices and wish I looked like the other guys, wish I could play, but feeling like an outcast. Halfway through the 1st semester I would attempt suicide and lose a full ride Journalism scholarship and have to move home.

I moved to Houston shortly after this, and things got a bit better. I got very involved in the gay & lesbian community, and came out as a lesbian because it's the only way I knew to fit in. I knew I didn't feel like a lesbian, but it worked for awhile. After a couple of years, I was feeling very detached again and unsettled. I knew I was trans at this point, I was about 25, but still had NEVER seen or heard of a transMAN. I had seen transwomen on TV, and figured maybe there was a way for a biological female to have a sex change, but just had no clue how one would go about doing anything about it if it was possible. It was very frustrating. Then, one afternoon I was in a bookstore in Montrose (Houston's gay mecca) and found a gender section. I happened to pick up a copy of Body Alchemy by Loren Cameron - a photo book of FTMs including before & after pics - and I stood there with tears streaming down my face. I knew this was me. I knew there was a way. I sat there looking at the pictures bawling.

About 4 months or so later, I moved to Boston, MA and started my transition by changing my name. That was 1997. I started T about a year and a half later, had my hysto in 2000, and top surgery in 2005. It was a long, hard road to get to where I am now - but I wouldn't trade it for anything in this world! Where I am now is well worth all the pain. I have the wife I dreamed of when I was a little boy, and I am a Dad. I am everything I wanted to be

Thank you to everyone else who has shared their stories, I loved reading them all, and we are ALL brave - those who transition and those who don't... anyone who says FUCK YOU to gender norms and paves their own way - my hat is off to you

[CockyDude]

I've read thru this thread & come to realize we all share some commonality on more than a few things. I realized at a very young age I was a boy & having a younger brother never understood why he was different than me. It was a small town; I was expected to conform & I constantly refused. I started drinking at 12 & drugs at 13. I couldn't understand why/how God made such a huge error; I was obviously in the wrong body. I excelled at all sports & badassness. I was referred to as a " hooligan" in grade school & high school ( I was a greaser then). I fell in love with the girl of my dreams at 16. She formed the basis for what I still desire today. She couldn't take the family pressure, & moved back home after 2 years. I became involved with a Playboy Bunny @ 19. She was bi-sexual & introduced me to gay bars. But I just wasn't comfortable. I wasn't a woman, I wasn't gay, why was I here? Then I heard/found out about transsexuals. The light bulb went off, I started T, & life got better. Like most guys in my situation, the road traveled has or still does involve alcohol, drugs & thoughts of suicide. We do the best we can & hope for what everyone else does; true love.
And that's about as much as I can type with one thumb for now.

[CockyDude]

After rereading I realized it sounded way too morbid. I have indeed found love more than a few times. I have been blessed to gave been with sine amazing women. My first wife was pregnant when we married, & long story short, I got custody when she was 4 & I raised an amazing young woman (who only knows me as dad). In the end, life is what we make of it. Period.