Would you have transitioned if you were a child today?

[isabeltydoria]

This question was asked on another forum, but I wanted to copy my answer here too and ask it here too (I hope that's okay?)

Would you have transitioned if you were a child today?

Just a yes or no would be interesting if you don't feel like commenting further; I'll put my (long!) reply into a comment.

I was called a tomboy. I would not transition. I was a horse crazy little girl and loved all animals.
I was angry about the things adults and boys said I could not do because of being a girl. Particularly when I was better at them than the boys were.
The thing is I did not exclusively like boy coded things. I didn't want to play with dolls but I loved playing with horses. Not significantly different from the ways that my grandchildren use dolls/action figures.
The act of limiting a child's imagination is an act of cruelty.

Actually, the assumptions underlying the idea that non-gender-conforming children should undergo sex reassignment procedures seem pretty backward.

A girl doesn't want to do "girly" things, is tomboyish, doesn't like pink? Then she must be a boy in a girl's body!

A boy likes playing with dolls, experimenting with makeup, and wearing tutus now and then? Then he must be a girl in a boy's body!

It's an incredibly reductionistic ideology, when you think about it.

Absolutely, it's for that reason that I feel so strongly about it. Maybe I would have been happy

Posted before I finished. Maybe I would have been happy but the thought that I would not have given "me" time to become comfortable in my skin is terrifying!

The Kinsey scale says you very much can be exclusively gay or exclusively straight Lass.

I didn't have dickwad parents who would have encouraged me onto the hormone therapy trans pathway

I don't think this is fair.
Not everyone will have an understanding of identity politics, and as such, not everyone will be able to make a truly informed choice, because the information at their hands is Mermakds or school whose protocol is to affirm the child's choices.
This is a societal issue.
When people can't be openly gender critical because it can threaten their jobs/studies/fa,ily life, the narrative that is easier to access becomes "transwomen are women" "you can change sex" etc, and as this is seen as the progressive thing to support, plenty of people will blindly accept this without question. Which is why it's so easy to peak trans people.

I think I might have done, yes.

I loved being mistaken for a boy before I started school so around age 3/4. I remember people calling me a lad/ chap etc when out with my mum shopping and being pleased about that. I refused skirts and dresses and anything 'girly', wore boys clothes, not just non-feminine girls clothes, had short hair, rode my bike around and played football.

I would say that this persisted in some form until my early 20s. I did STEM A-levels, went into a very male dominated career, dressed in trousers - all very sex non-specific but I used to do all the 'do you have a male or female brain' nonsense quizzes and I WANTED to have a male brain. I thought male was better and I dismissed everything feminine as lesser. A work colleague once inadvertently called me he and it confused both of us but I was also pleased.

Anyway, thank god I grew out of all that. Not sure why or how but I did.

I don't think I would ever have agreed to any surgery. It wasn't a body issue so much as a rejection of 'femininity' and imposed gender roles. But perhaps I might have been open to taking hormones. Who knows? Luckily it never came up.

Oh, and at the age of 40, I was diagnosed as having an autism spectrum condition so that might have been a factor all along.

Agreed Joy.

If you're told that your child will kill themselves by medical professionals and every support group, by Twitter and Facebook and the huge online community, then it takes strength to say "please wait".

(Which is probably why Mumsnet in particular is targeted - to specifically stop mums from talking about this stuff.)

Starzig, can you talk a bit more about what you mean? Someone said similar upthread but didn't come back to clarify and I'm genuinely interested as I don't understand.

Who cares what they call it if it makes easier for them to keep on that difficult path?
They can call themselves what they like. The issue arises when adults start pushing life changing drugs onto them because they follow the 'wrong' stereotypes and such.

Also when adults seem to not realise that its fairly common to not want to go through puberty. Yeah some kids look forward to it, but almost all of my girl mates were terrified.

As for the sexuality talk, I have been married to a man for 10 years. However I am still bisexual as I feel attraction to both male and female people. Not as in 'girl crush' type ways where you just appreciate how pretty someone is, but as in sexual attraction. I think that Kinsey scale thing is bollocks tbh. if you feel sexual attraction to both sexes, you are bisexual.

Having thought about it, I think the answer is probably no. But I would have wanted to.

When I was a child I wanted to be a boy. I secretly hoped to be mistaken for a boy. I lived in fantasy worlds where I was male (that continued well into adulthood). I hated, hated, hated puberty - and am eternally grateful that I grew up to be small of nork.

As an adult I did online tests that always scored me as having a male brain. And I was pleased by that. I bought into the idea that I had a male-type brain in a female body - although never made the cognitive leap that it meant my body was wrong (and I have recently been reading up on that area and realise now how weak non existent the evidence for innate male/female brains is).

But, thinking back to the person I was, I don't think I would have transitioned. I would probably have wanted to. But I didn't have the self-confidence and would never have done anything to get myself noticed.

And I am certainly grateful that I didn't. I would have missed out on having children.

Also, as someone who is now on a lifetime of medication due to a chronic condition, I hate to think that I might have chosen to have to deal with that shit from childhood. Because a lifetime of medication is shit.

I have found this thread so interesting - many thanks to everyone who is sharing their story.

Some of these stories are why I am still a bit conflicted about the move to "self-identifying" gender. It's a nightmare from the point of view of sex-based protection. However, for all those young people who are adamant that they have been born in the wrong body, better for them to be able to change their name and pronouns without needing to seek medical treatment. Then deciding later on that you can be comfortable as the sex you were born is a paperwork issue - no worse than getting divorced.

bd67th

Thank you for that reply, I found it very helpful. It’s interesting to hear from another woman who has a similar feelings and experiences to me, although I still don’t think they are very common ones amongst women. I usually visualise myself as a man, or as male characters when I played as a a child, and agree with you that had this been now, questions would probably be asked. As is I know I’m female and as much as I dislike it there’s not much that can be done.
I do disagree with this for me:
The periods and pregnancy risk are fixable with a frameless levonorgestrel IUD
I do not want an IUD. I have PCOS and endo and have had enough invasive, painful procedures to last me the next few years My hormones are also fairly settled now so I wouldn’t risk messing with them.
What is wrong with being a woman for me is a mixture of physical pain and problems due to my sexed body, and the way society treats me because of that sexed body. I acknowledge that had I been born a gay male that would bring about a load of problems in and of itself. If I had the choice I would have been born male and that’s the crux of why I think I would have been transed as a child now. As is I know I cannot change sex no matter what I do so I try to find the positives in being female (the clitorus being fairly high on the list )

I often thought about "what if I could become a boy" during my early childhood right through university. Often I actually went out dressed up in "boy" clothes and had my head shaved. I have a solid and bold jaw line and probably passed if I could hid my petite waist and large hips, probably even more so when I started playing rugby I built up muscle.

I always knew I couldn't though, I wasn't aware of the trans / CG debates but to me it was just science. I knew I couldn't physically get a penis and change my chromosomes.

Looking back I know its in one part because I hated how I was treated for being a girl and I was wishing to become a person different to how everyone saw me. But second part I was just so confused with my sexuality and where I fit in.

(just FYI, I identify as Bi and I cant stand the Kinsey Scale)

I also visualise myself as male, although I don't feel I fit easily into either category. If I were a child today I would probably identify as non-binary. I'm very interested to read that so many women found that some of their negative feelings about their sexed bodies resolved in adulthood - it's heartening, although at the same time I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

I've tried for months to 'peak' my sister and she's eventually 'got it.' However, it wasn't until she saw a TV show with a 5 year old 'transboy' that she really understood how barbaric it all was. 'That was you' she said - 'everything she was saying - that was you wasn't it?'

I had a supportive mum who let me wear what I want and told me I could be a girl and still climb trees. I like to think she would have seen through this BS but who knows? If somebody lied to me and said I could change sex - maybe I would have been seduced?

'That was you' she said - 'everything she was saying - that was you wasn't it?'

Exactly.

It's almost like mainstream society hasn't been used to non-confirming kids ever before.

Out of interest, do activists think that "once trans, always trans", or would they just count us in figures from days gone by?

I expect they would say once trans always trans

Though thats something else that I find interesting sometimes. I actually would not care if I did wake up in a male body one day. Beyond being a bit weirded out at first that there had been some Freaky Friday shit going on of course. And ignoring how confusing it would be for those who knew me, but assuming I knew noone and it only affected me, I wouldn't care at all. I might even enjoy it.

I only came to this realisation when I was having a discussion about this on another site, and someone who was arguing for innate gender identity said to me 'imagine how you would feel, if you were you but woke up male', after I had repeated for the 50th time that no, I actually was not 'cis' at all and they had said again that I was, just I didn't realise it because my gender identity and body align.

I've thought about this a lot, and I honestly believe that if the option had been available to me when I was younger, I'd definitely have chosen to transition.

I wrote a long post explaining why, but on reflection don't feel comfortable sharing that much detail in a public forum - it's a tale of trauma associated with having been born biologically female, variations of which far too many of us have experienced. But yes, I'd have had my breasts removed & 'identified' or disguised myself as male if it would have meant I could have escaped both the abuse and stereotypical expectations I grew up being subjected to - I absolutely HATED the limitations and objectification that came with my experience of being a girl, teenager & younger woman. It took me SO many years to finally start feeling comfortable in my own skin - the decrease of 'male gaze' as I've aged has definitely helped! I'm incredibly grateful that transactivism wasn't a thing when I was younger, before I'd come to terms with the trauma of my earlier years & understood that who & what I biologically am was never the problem, and that what was done to me, and the social/cultural expectations I was coerced to comply with was the problem.

Sorry you had such difficulties duddle.

I agree - it's saying that individuals are the problem, when society is.

I'm bumping this (with some caution) because the few people who were angry and negative on this thread, and told me this wasn't what trans meant never came back to explain more, and it's been nagging at me in the back of my head.

If anyone's still reading this with anger, what is "being trans" then, if not some (or all) of this? What would make you convinced a child was really serious about needing to transition?

Yes, I'd have been vulnerable to it. Lesbian, gender nc, unhappy, hating my body for varying reasons. One of my siblings also yes, now a happily married and very butch lesbian. Both of us very happy to be adult women, both of us happy with our bodies as adults, both of us wanted and have had pregnancies and children.

And to emphasise there, when I say 'vulnerable to it', I mean that I would have been vulnerable to believing that I could be trans, that it provided an answer and solution to my problems, and wrongly going down that pathway. There are inevitably going to be unhappy (and often gay) kids who are vulnerable to questioning their identity but later discovering that they weren't trans, that other things were the source of their unhappiness.

"The acquisition of social skills in children seems often to be bound up with passively gendering their worlds."

This was me. I was deeply susceptible to the gender narrative and in my case it was the one that tends to be imposed on my own sex rather than the opposite sex. But make no mistake it is the same narrative, the same patriarchal culture that leads to both. Girls who wear porn star make-up, have sex before they know their own minds and start saving up for a breast enlargement as soon as they get their first job are experiencing the same level of manipulation, grooming and oppression as girls who take the trans route. It is all the same thing. Trans gender IS gender.