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.
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
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
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
the first time I blacked out as a teenager (just after high school), I kissed a boy because he was talking about wanting to kill himself and I wanted him to feel better. one of my friends tried to interrogate me the day after about whether or not I was gay and I was like “no, I’m definitely straight”. I was right but not in the way he understood it lmao
that’s so cute
Lying about being a girl on the internet when I was like 12. Well, it’s confusing to look back on those days as a lie, but I certainly felt like I was lying at the time. I don’t even think I had a real justification for it at the time beyond just liking how it felt lol
you committed to the bit
The other night I was chatting with a friend of mine about how I used to have a lego figure who I played with a lot; kind of a main character in my adventures. As I was talking about some of the adventures I took this lego dude on, I remembered that they would transform from a man to a woman all the time as a sort of superpower.
Every time I played pretend as a child I was some form of shapeshifter or genderless robot. Additionally, every friend I had were girls and almost every interest I had was girly until people started to bully me about it.
Most of these are so blatant that it’s giving me imposter syndrome. Is there anyone else who realized they were trans by obsessively cataloguing trivial clues in hopes that one of them would magically give them the permission to consider that they might be trans? I realized after a certain point that the journaling was backed by an intense desire for it to be true and was like, “yeah, that sounds egg-y”
deleted by creator
what piece of fiction was that?
deleted by creator
I mean mine were only obvious in hindsight and especially if you lay them all out instead of living it over a couple decades. Pre egg crack I would’ve said none of that meant I was trans and I just never would’ve put it all together on my own (until later obviously lol). I definitely remember wishing I was trans which is like the most egg thing to think
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.
A giant tomboy, having attachment to the “weird girl” characters, pretending to be Tuxedo Mask while my friends down the street were Sailor Scouts, avoid wearing any type of bra for the longest time and not understanding why anyone would want to emphasize them, discomfort with tight clothing, picking boy characters more than girl ones, etc. Granted some of that is also the neurodivergence-- I think being autistic was a factor in my journey since I wasn’t attached to or aware of a lot of the social aspects of gender presentation, anyways. I consider myself nonbinary but also butch (butch-as-gender).
Kid me being a huge tomboy
Pre teen me wearing layers and layers of tight shirts under a loose shirt so my boobs wouldn’t show
Teen me saying I’d like to wear a binder but I’m not trans because I don’t care about having a vagina
Current non binary me being in the closet and having really bad gender feelings
Oh also an out transwoman who was a few years older than me in college taking a sudden liking to me (she knew before I did)
Telling ny older sister to buy me a skirt because I want to wear one around the house
All my friends in highschool were girls, I was obsessed with body swap movies and retain extensive knowledge of cross gender body swap movies, I loved Ranma 1/2 and dunked cold water on my head (😬), I loved doing drag and had a normal girl name as my drag name that is now my legal name, I never could look at myself in mirrors or on video nevermind having to listen to myself in recordings, I hated shopping for dude clothes, I was really passionate about trans rights and knew trans women pathways for medicine cause I researched it a lot, etc.
I try to be nice to myself about missing all these until way after being an adult, I think I needed the stability and calmness much later to actually be able to crack my egg. Considering the schools I went to, places I lived, how my dad was, I don’t know if I would have survived before I had way more emotional maturity and resilience (and stability).
dunked cold water on my head (😬)
This is a trans thing? Could you please explain?
the main character of ranma 1/2 was born a boy but turns into a girl (
)whenever splashed with cold water, and turns back with warm waterOoh, that makes so much more sense. I thought it was a list of separate things. Thank you.
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 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!
Idk if it’s egg exactly, but my best friend as a kid later turned out to be a trans man. I would go over to his house all the time, and we would do everything from painting our nails and watching early 2000s Disney to wearing camo and fighting the neighbor boys with sticks. One time his dad referred to me as his little boyfriend or something, which made us both super uncomfortable. I think his mom thought I was gay tho.
I haven’t really been in touch with him since we were at the 2020 protests together, but I found out through a mutual friend that he transitioned at about the same time I did. I tried to reach out, but he never got back to me, and honestly I didn’t know how to do it.
Also, when I was in highschool I tried dating girls or a bit, and it was terrible, but my most successful relationship was with a girl who immediately came out as a lesbian when we went to college. Obviously straight couples can have variety too, but they way we were together seemed very not straight in retrospect.
I think the tendency of queer people to find each other, even before knowing that’s what they were doing, is pretty common. I hope you end up reconnecting with your friend some day!
