"I always felt I was a boy/girl."

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve heard a lot of transgender folks say this, that they knew they were always really a boy or girl despite being born in the wrong body. It’s always confused me a little, because I’m not sure what a boy/girl feels like.

I’m female, and when I was a kid, I never felt particularly girly. Makeup, feminine clothes–they all seemed weird/fake. I eventually ended up being more feminine as I got older and seemed to get praise for dressing that way/looking pretty. But it was definitely learned behavior. If I’d been born male, I’d probably have just gone with it. Are there cisgender people who genuinely feel like their gender is a part of them?

2

Makeup and feminine clothes do not make a woman! You are making a very simple mistake that the trappings make the gender. No, I always felt comfortable being a woman because I was comfortable with my vagina, with my breasts, and with my internal plumbing. When I looked at myself or thought about myself, I was happy to be a girl, even when I was a big old tomboy. I may have wanted to be a man to rep the external benefits (and maybe avoid all of the sexual harassment that started ridiculously young) but I never, ever wanted a dick, and still don’t.

You don’t have to ever wear makeup or a dress to be a woman, and to be happy being a woman.

3

Never actually though about it. I suppose it’s easy when your genes, genitals and mind all align with cultural expectations. I would never dream of questioning the sincerity of anyone who felt differently.

4

I’ve always felt “meh” about my gender. It’s not that I don’t like being a woman. It’s just that I don’t really care about it.

I would be upset if I woke up tomorrow and found a penis between my legs, just because it would be a big shock. But I think I’d get used to it eventually. And I think I could eventually become used to being a “man”, if that’s what I had to be.

I score as “50-50” on the masculine/feminine scale of the MMPI-II, so I figure that I’m just one of those people who don’t give a fuck when it comes to gender because it isn’t in my nature to do so. I do give a fuck about being left alone, though. So I dress as a woman and go along with the social program. But I can easily imagine–if my personality was just a bit different and my “meh” was more intense–how I could at least feel more comfortable eschewing gender all together.

But I share your same lack of imagination about the opposite reaction–identifying strongly with either gender. I know there are cisgendered people who do identify very strongly with their gender–and they think the rest of us are the ones who are “weird”. But I can’t relate to their mentality at all.

5

**Eve **posted something, a long time ago, that stuck with me; in elementary school, the kids were divided up, and she automatically got into to girls line and not the boys’ line. That’s when I understood just how deeply this sort of thing goes.

This has come up before, and I remember a poster saying they’d kill themselves if they suddenly woke up in the wrong body. I’m not at that point, but I always knew what line to get in, so to speak.

6

The closest experience I can relate to is the “cootie” age. Obviously you’re not a boy/girl, because they’re stupid and icky and have cooties. So that provides a sense of grounding…maybe?

Cases like David Reimer show there is something to it, though. The blank slate is wrong.

7

There is something called body integration disorder (well something like that), where a person feels like a part of their body is not theirs. Some go as far as wanting limbs amputated. Not saying that is the same as cis/transgendered as described, but it may help understanding the issue.

8

The problem with these “I always felt” statements is the well-documented phenomenon of Consistency Bias, whereby people retroactively adjust past memories through selective recall in order to make them more consistent with their current viewpoints. By doing so they avoid the cognitive dissonance associated with admitting their own capriciousness.

9

I’m basically in the same position as monstro. I am neither happy nor unhappy to be a man. I don’t “feel like” a man any more than I “feel like” a brown-haired person. Both are true facts about me, but that’s as far as it goes.

10

As a child, I preferred sports and boys’ games and I couldn’t have cared less about the trappings of girlhood. But I never thought I was a boy or should have been one. I dressed up for church on Sunday - although I didn’t like it - and took the ballet lessons my mother wanted me to take - although I didn’t like those either. But when puberty came around and being a ‘girl’ became inevitable, it was more an inconvenience than a crisis. Had puberty made a boy out of me instead, I’d have been fine with that, too.

11

I don’t relate strongly to my gender, either. If you told me that tomorrow I was going to wake up a man and I’d have to live the rest of my life that way, the main problem would be that my husband would be seriously displeased. I wouldn’t care much, other than that. I understand that many or most people feel differently, and I try to empathize with that, but it’s hard for me to really understand. Of course I respect everyone’s right to be who they want to be, I just don’t quite get that particular struggle on a visceral level.

12

I know a few people (one from this board) who say that from an early age, they were often the opposite sex in dreams, and once they started having sex dreams, they were [sometimes/often/always] equipped with the other sex’s toolkit. I remember one woman in particular who said, in effect, that in her sex dreams she always has a penis and is doing the penetrating, and it feels more “right” than she feels in her own body when awake.

13

I’ve always been a tomboy, too, and never remotely interested in superficial “women” stuff. But I’m fine with my gender.

For some reason that makes me feel more empathetic to people who feel they are the wrong gender. I’m not sure why, really. Something like if I can be “so close to the edge” but not FEEL it, I’m that much better at understanding those who do.

14

So then why do transgender people typically adopt the trappings of their new chosen gender? i.e. Caitlyn Jenner isn’t just Bruce Jenner with different parts. He redid his entire appearance to look more womanly.

So it’s like being trapped in a body with your own Cooties?! What a nightmare!

15

I’m unmistakenly female and always have been. However, I deeply resented my breasts when they grew and always felt that they were cumbersome rather than attractive. I also always felt that having periods was an annoying, messy pain in the butt, not a blessing. I seriously considered throwing a “menopause” party when they stopped and the hot flashes came. I’m MUCH happier with hot flashes than I was with bleeding all over the place. I don’t think I should be male, but I never really enjoyed having a female body that much, either. So count me in the “meh” category, I guess.

I suspect this kind of thing is a spectrum, rather than a binary condition.

16

Because they want to be socially accepted as the gender they feel they are. At least it’s very clear that that is what is going on with Caitlyn. She has expressed a lot of concern about looking like a woman, sounding like a woman, and having people accept her as a woman. She also still enjoys more “tomboy” type activities like riding motorcycles and flying remote-controlled helicopters. She doesn’t want to be a girly person, because she’s not. She just wants people to think of her as a woman, and for that purpose, it helps to have a more conventionally female appearance.

17

My experience isn’t terribly unlike the OPs. Frankly, it’s not that I question anyone I’ve known who is transgendered, frankly, the whole idea of personal attachment to gender at all just seems a little weird to me. That is, I was born male, I definitely identify as male, I have a lot of traditionally male interests, and I’m attracted to women, but I don’t in any way feel “defined” by my maleness. I do recall when I was young having some interests that were more traditionally female that I eventually dropped because of social pressure, but as I grew older and realized that I didn’t care, I’ve picked back up some of those things, and I don’t really give a damn if people say some things I do or have interest in are somehow unmanly.

And I imagine that if I had been born with exactly the same mind, but in a female body, I imagine I’d have grown up just fine identifying myself as female, I’d have had more traditionally female interests and less male ones, and I’d probably be attracted to men. I imagine I’d be more or less as comfortable with who I am that way as I am now, except maybe instead of having some interests that aren’t particularly manly for a man, I’d have some interests that aren’t particularly feminine for a woman.

So, yeah, over all, my gender is something that is more incidental to me than anything and, in general, I don’t really notice other people’s genders all that much either unless either I find myself attracted to her, or they’re one of those sorts of people that do, to some extent, define their identity by their gender.

For those that do, obviously, for a lot of them, they match, but the idea of being particularly macho or feminine, of reveling in that just seems so… odd to me. So, while I can intellectually understand the idea that someone might have that experience, but not have the body to match, the idea of that experience at all is difficult for me to sympathize with. I imagine it’s just that I’m, in general, not very interested or conscious of my physical body as most are, often more interested in intellectual, emotional, artistic, philosophical, and spiritual experiences instead and gender just has little or nothing to do with that.

That all said, even though I don’t particularly care much one way or the other, I’m still happy with my body, how I look, and I take good care of it, but it’s because it’s my body and I’m going to take care of it, not because I’m particularly attached to being male.

18

I sometimes wonder, if we allowed all children to choose their gender, instead of assigning them one, how the gender ratio would turn out.

I have always accepted being male, and I wouldn’t choose to change it, but at the same time I’ve always been aware that there are some ways in which I do not fit the stereotype of masculinity. As a child, I cried more easily than most other kids, and I am glad I was brought up in a liberal family, and never got much of the “boys don’t cry” bullshit. Even today, I am more sensitive and empathetic than many men; the real aggressive, macho types are like an alien species to me.

If I were forced to live outwardly as a woman starting tomorrow, I could accept it, as long as other people were comfortable with me as a semi-butch lesbian. I don’t know if I could deal with having to give up my penis, though. I adore that thing. In that respect I am a typical cis-male.

19

As a cis man, I find the same issue very confusing. I’m always open to someone helping me understand better, but frankly when I read about how trans people feel, it gives me the impression they hold strongly to very rigid beliefs about gender roles. They would have to, or so it seems to me, because everybody I know has some traits or qualities that match up with their biological gender and also have some that are at odds with it, yet for most of us it’s not a big deal.

Lots of my friends and myself too are generally a lot more androgynous than the average person. We’ve all got a lot of opposite sex traits and behaviors and attitudes, etc., and to the best of my knowledge none of us have even been troubled by it.

Then you have trans folks, who are so troubled by the inconsistencies that it’s a huge part of their life, possibly to be solved with major surgery.

I wish I could make more sense of it, but it seems beyond me.

20

Er…maybe. I think not for the most part, but I do think there’s a possibility that people mistake their feelings of lifelong alienation for one thing when it’s really another thing.

A disproportionate number of people who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders identify as transgendered. This makes perfect sense to me. If you grow up always feeling “wrong” and constantly perplexed by social conventions (including a ton of gender rules), then maybe “I am the wrong gender” is your first thought as opposed to “I am neurologically different.” Of course, I think there’s a good chance that ASD and transgenderism co-occur because they are indeed related to one another. But I think it’s hard for eccentric people to understand themselves sometimes. They may try on many labels until they find the right one that fits, and that may involve re-examining their life narrative as they get new information.

It took awhile for me to come into my black female identity as a kid. As a small kid, I identified more with white males because white males were the heros I saw on TV and read about in books. I liked my GI Joes and He-Man action figure more than Barbies. The teachers liked the white boys the best, it seemed. I never drew pictures of myself. I just drew pictures of white guys (to my mother’s absolute horror, no doubt). I don’t know when I outgrew this phase, but I eventually did.

So if I can remember going through a period of “divergent” identity, then I can certainly believe that someone else went through a similar thing, except a lot stronger and persistent. I may not be able to relate to it very well, but I can believe it.