I have so much baggage around early life gender stuff that I sometimes forget the cis girls who befriended me and treated me as different from boys. From about ages 4-7 I didn’t see a difference between me and cis girls, except in how people reacted to me. Being included meant so much to me.
Hmm, I suppose I had something similar, but I mostly felt like gender was something only adults cared about. Almost like I was non-binary in a way. Had equal number of male and female friends.
Having cis girls recognize you in an instinctive way, tell you that you’re such nicer or easier to get along with than other boys, is probably not an unusual experience for trans girls of various ages. I think it can feel like an oasis of sanity
whew yeah... yeah This is a mood.
I'll always remember pre-transition when this one girl told me she'd thought I was gay cause I was actually listening when she talked
I was like in my mid 20s and still getting this. One of our (now married) two lady roommates was like "i really love how different you are from other guys, you're easy to talk to. You listen and always say 'omg ur soooo right that's genius'" Sure the bar is in hell, but it felt nice to step over it
I had an ex who would often ask “Are you sure you’re not gay?” As someone who loved to be right about everything, you’d think she’d have taken my coming out as a trans lesbian better. My other ex’s reaction to hearing about my transition was apparently “Oh, *that* explains it”
Boys were just so weird and scary and complicated. Often this was true even for those I liked and attached to.
yeahh
Shit yeah they were. Still are.
When you go years as a very small child thinking you simply are a girl—in a “why do I have to use a different bathroom from the other girls” way—and you the rude awakening that you’re different, it’s just such a . . . massive shock. I never really got over it, I guess.
No one prepares you for that or helps you understand it. The thing that made it feel real was how both boys and girls began treating me as more and more different as we hit ages 8+. As kind of both but kind of neither.
This kind of thing is a big reason why I see “transsexual” as my lifelong, inborn identity. Being able to look at my always complicated, non-dualistic experience of gender and realize “these are transsexual experiences, I had unmet transsexual needs” has helped me A LOT
I remember reading a trans girl on LiveJournal who talked about being out in high school, and the way she said “being transsexual really hurts.” That made me feel so suddenly part of a bigger world, so able to finally think clearly and feel deeply about who I was.
I had my transsexual girl way of talking and standing and walking and feeling and crying and laughing and everybody saw it from day one. And now I can look back and acknowledge that, say “this is a real kind of person, I actually existed” and give it a NAME
The day I started being able to do this was the day I began to feel like a future was possible for me
Yes. Being transsexual really hurts.
Reading @taliabhatt.itch.io’s writing and having convos with her earlier this year about epistemicide and the sheer horror of epistemic violence really helped me verbalize just how deep a part of our oppression this is, this culture of gaslighting and crazymaking about your own existence.
Tbh I never much got this, but that's probably because I was a closeted butch. I mostly hung out around the nerdy black kids cuz they were always the coolest group and didn't reject me for being weird and autistic. Running into those same ppl from high school now, they almost universally accept me.
So fucking true, same. My masculine traits always stuck out to Me and made Me think I couldn't be a woman because of them. It was so conflicting and shit to separate those two. I also blended in pretty easily and for the most part didn't like, get in trouble.