How old were you when you started questioning your gender identity?

Contributor: lukas24 lukas24
Quote:
Originally posted by Alx
I always kind of found myself to be 'one of the boys' but didn't know I could actually DO SOMETHING about it until my mid teens, so, yehh.
Basically this. I didn't even truly realize gender differences until I was about 7 or 8, and my mum is also a bit of a tomboy, so it was never really frowned upon or focused on in anyway.
05/23/2012
Contributor: meezerosity meezerosity
Very recently. I'm 21 and have just realized I am genderqueer. I was a tomboy in my youth and felt obliged to feminize myself throughout high school. Now I enjoy both aspects of looking feminine and masculine depending on my mood that day.
05/23/2012
Contributor: vitriolicvertigo vitriolicvertigo
I didn't REALLY realize that I wasn't cis until I was 16-17. At first I thought I was FTM binary trans, but then I realized that I'm genderqueer non-binary trans. It was and is a rough and interesting journey, and sometimes I wish I was just cis and binary or even trans and binary, but overall I love the ability to play around with my gender on a daily basis.
05/28/2012
Contributor: canislytherin canislytherin
I was maybe 10 at the time but didn't put much thought into it until I was 13 when I was actually able to start choosing my own clothes and cutting my hair to how I wanted it and not how my mum wanted it.
05/29/2012
Contributor: TheirPet TheirPet
I really didn't question my gender for a long time. I just assumed everybody saw me the way I saw myself. It wasn't until I hit my late teens early 20s that I realized that people were having issues wrapping their heads around my perceived gender.
06/15/2012
Contributor: kdlt kdlt
"Boys versus Girls" games in preschool were painful and so was everything after that. I was about 2 when I realized there were different genders and that I was not fitting into the girl role or body type.
12/15/2012
Contributor: needapacker needapacker
Quote:
Originally posted by Kaleb
People realize their gender at lots of different ages. I'd like to see when you began your journeys.
I'd known i was a boy since I was 5, maybe younger. I never really questioned anything until i was like 10, I just thought I was a boy who got marked wrong at the hospital. around 10 i realized i physically wasnt a boy and i wasnt going to be a man when i grew up. At that point things started to feel incredibly wrong. puberty was awful. I knew it was wrong. at 14 i found out about transsexualism. Things finally made sense and I started transitioning. I began medically transitioning at 15. And here I am now at 18, 2+ years on T, post top surgery, and almost entirely stealth.
12/16/2012
Contributor: So Long Ya Doofuses! So Long Ya Doofuses!
I've always been fairly feminine, but mostly because it was forced on me. I say "forced" because I grew up with two brothers (one who is a year older and one who is a year younger) and absolutely no female friends until I was about nine years old, yet my mother still insisted that I wear dresses and not do certain things because I was a girl. However, I still feel more kinship with guys than I do girls. I have absolutely no problem with my female body and I almost never experience any sort of dysphoria, but I always have stretches of time when I feel a lot more masculine than feminine.

My first major gender-questioning moment was when I was about seven years old and I dressed up in my older brother's cub scout uniform because I wanted to be a Boy Scout. That's when I realized I couldn't be like them. I loathed the idea of being a Girl Scout, so I vehemently refused to be a part of it when my mother and other mothers tried to pressure me into it, and I'm so glad I never joined. Instead, I would go to Boy Scout meetings with my brothers whenever I could (until they quit). Up until I was fifteen years old, I would always ask my father why I couldn't do the awesome things that the Boy Scouts did, and he always told me it was because I was a girl.

What I really want to know is this: Is it possible to be female and genderqueer? Because I'm perfectly satisfied with my body, but my mind never stays in one place when it comes to how I identify.
12/16/2012
Contributor: Schattenstern Schattenstern
I really was just blind to gender growing up. I didn't understand why my friend and I had different "parts" but I didn't care too much. I always wanted to pee standing up, I just thought it'd happen later.
12/21/2012
Contributor: Pink Kitty Pink Kitty
I was about 12 or 13 I started to like to dress in girls clothes, not even as a fetish. Though my parents never knew. They still dont, because... well I would not be here. It would just add kerosine to the fire for them to murder me.
They raised me Roman Catholic and dont let me forget it. They know I am not RC anymore, but still try to convert me.

I have a girlish demeanor, just my attitude, and how I act... (I later, about age 18, found out that my homosexuality is ACTUALLY a medical thing. I have more female horomones in my body, but NOT enough to give me a fem appearance, but enough to slow down certain hair growth.)
My parents never knew about that ;D. But now I have an excuse yeah? hahaha

But around the age of about 12 or 13 I knew there was something going on...
12/21/2012
Contributor: KinkyNicki92 KinkyNicki92
i was 16 and realized i was attracted to girls while we were in the locker room undressing for gym class
12/22/2012
Contributor: Alex Apple Alex Apple
16-18. Thinking back, though, probably earlier in more subtle ways.
12/24/2012
Contributor: hanjonatan hanjonatan
i want to say pre-teens, but it was a very vague sort of feeling that i didn't really know what to do about at the time. i only started thinking about it in more concrete ways when i was about 14.
12/25/2012
Contributor: fizzygato fizzygato
I was about 3 when I realized ~only girls wear dresses~ (as untrue and cissexist as that turned out to be).

After that, I refused to wear them and generally felt as if I "wasn't a girl."

I spent from like 5-7 on thinking I "should have been a boy."

When I was like 17 I started embracing lesbianism as part of my identity, when I met a bunch of lesbians who were SUPER full of pride. I was like, "Yeah, we kind of are alike! Maybe I've just been confused all these years, and I just meant to go butch."

But at the same time when I was like 15-18 I was discovering the term "gender identity disorder" and forming my identity to be really trans* normative trans* masculine, like finding every shred of "masculinity" I could about myself and magnifying it/ using it as justification of "why I am how/who I am."

When I was 19 I met a radical trans* and queer club and from there decided I'm probably genderqueer and that I was never really questioning gender in the past, but just going along with what a cissexist, heteronormative, patriarchal, etc.oppressivethings society was saying to be like, and am still currently thinking a lot about gender but for now sympathize most with the term "genderqueer," although I feel like that too doesn't fully describe me
12/27/2012
Contributor: Boyqueen Boyqueen
It was a lifelong thing, but I couldn't really articulate my feelings until I was about 15.
01/03/2013
Contributor: LoganAshlee. LoganAshlee.
I always knew I was male, I just didn't come across the word 'transgender' until I was 19. So then?
03/07/2013
Contributor: SolasAingeal SolasAingeal
Quote:
Originally posted by Kaleb
People realize their gender at lots of different ages. I'd like to see when you began your journeys.
I realized I was in the wrong body at the age of 12, but didn't act on those feelings until the age of 20.
03/08/2013
Contributor: froggygal91 froggygal91
I think I was about 14 or 15
03/08/2013
Contributor: treehugger treehugger
I was 18 when I first started hearing about trans* stuff, but I feel like if I'd been better educated about gender before that I would have felt a lot more comfortable growing up.
04/03/2013
Contributor: ChaosBunny ChaosBunny
Let's see, when I was in middle school, around 13 or 14, I began drawing. During this stage of life while being created, I started having a heavy leaning towards males. Like they were basically what I felt most comfortable drawing and when playing pretend I was always a male character. I didn't think of it too much then, it just seemed normal.

I recently started questioning myself. I feel like now that I work and go to school I got pulled into this sort of wake up call it feels like. I think since I don't get to live in my imagination anymore, I sort of realized the actual body I'm in. Like a little part of my feels lost because my friends would refer to me by "he" or my male name while we played and now that I'm out in the world and getting called by my actual name and the gender they see.
04/25/2013
Contributor: Llewey Llewey
Probably not until Senior year in high school (18). I tried to avoid the issue for a long time.
04/28/2013
Contributor: Ly-Ra Ly-Ra
Maybe about... 13ish?
04/28/2013
Contributor: Ilmenskie Ilmenskie
at 17, shame there aren't more resources out there actually explaining that trans* people exist and what transitioning entails because otherwise it probably would have been a lot earlier.
05/07/2013
Contributor: LoneOokami LoneOokami
Ive always known I wasnt exactly right with my gender but until college I didnt figure it all out mostly cause thats when I learned more about gender and Trans issues
06/02/2013
Contributor: JinxPinx JinxPinx
I'm early to mid-20's and trying to figure things out >_<
06/08/2013