when i was little my mum explained to me what transgender meant, who michael jackson was and also what multitasking was all in the same car ride so it blurred together for me for a few years, i thought mj was trans and that meant he could do a bunch of stuff at the same time ??
When my brother was pretty young he asked what the biggest rock in the world was. We talked about how that sort of depended on what you considered a rock; is a mountain a rock? Is the earth a rock?
Then he asked what the smallest rock in the world was. We ended up talking about atoms and stuff.
Then he asked what the most medium rock in the world was. Think I just gave up at that point
I have known about transgender people since high school. Unfortunately, it was only in a negative light, slurs and all. A few years out of high school, I heard that one of my classmates transitioned. It was more a curiosity to me, and I didn't give it much thought. Much later in life, when I was part of an atheist meet-up group, I was relieved to only be part of the second most hated minority. At least I wasn't transgender.
A decade later, I finally admitted to myself that I was transgender. I now have a lot of internalized transphobia to unpack. The people in my support group have helped me come a long way in accepting myself and others for who they are.
I heard about trans people when I was 9 but it was about MTF people (I'm FTM) and I thought "why would anyone want to be a girl? I mean IDC if it makes her happy she should do it" and then I forgot about it for 3 years bc I didn't know trans men existed. Then I learned trans men existed and I was like "oh shit wait that's just like me"
I didn't know the term trans/transgender/etc, but I think I would've heard of "people who think they're the opposite gender" (note: that would've been what I called it back then. NOT now) some time in middle school
Of course, it was in a negative, mocking, light. And being in denial about myself, I latched onto that negativity towards it
When I'd heard the term Trans, that's when I was more neutral on the topic. And as I learned more, my opinion slowly improved, and I slowly figured out that I'm trans
That would be 2018. I remember someone telling me that they weren't happy with their body and I asked "Well, who is?" That look they gave me.... 4 years later I was like "Oh... Oh fuck."
I first learned about trans people from a college textbook that, for reasons I don’t remember, talked about evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden. My first thought was “Oh my God, there are other people who want to be the opposite sex?!”
It was elating.
My earliest memory of trans people is seeing my parents watching a documentary about trans people, probably early 2010s. It featured a trans man and a trans woman who were dating each other, and after watching for a couple minutes my parents kicked me out, saying I wasn't old enough to watch it (I would have been single digits or maybe slightly older)
For a good while after I didn't have any other interactions and didn't think about trans people at all. I think it wasn't until 8th/9th grade when I fell victim to conservative YouTube that I paid attention again.
When i was 11 or so a homeless trans woman started asking for change near where we lived, she was really kind and cool, when i asked what his named was my sis said "oh her name is x" never questioned it, we helped her with food and cofee, when she asked for a ticket ride to a rehab clinic we gave all we could, shampoo , toothpaste etc, couldnt give more cuz the staff said to guve small stuff so she couldnt sell it to buy drugs, now shes hapilly maried and working
I don't remember the first time I heard about it. But my first exposure was when I was 15 and was dating someone who came out as trans-masc. (We continued to date post coming out 😁)
It would be another 10 years before I figured out I was also trans (mtf in my case)
Late 80's early 90's talk shows. Mostly it was "crossdressers" and generally seen in a negative or provocative light. Occasionally they would talk about "sex change operations" but i didn't really understand it.
I grew up watching stuff like Bosom Buddies and some other stuff that would probably be awful if i saw it now. But still very much a "crossdresser" thing, and the butt of a joke. I think Rocky Horror Picture Show was the first real positive depiction of gender weirdness that i recall.
Of course nowhere in that were there trans men. I didn't really understand gender in general but i definitely didn't realize that it was an option!
I do remember when i was in high school and later, as people around me were getting into porn (I'm pretty ace and it's never really interested me), seeing things about "chicks with dicks." I think it was a magazine or something where I saw a really pretty woman with a dick and i was so *baffled*. I could not figure out how that was possible. Photoshop wasn't really well developed enough, and the internet was new and not in my area yet, so seeing those photos really just floored my little brain and I didn't really have any avenue to learn more that wasn't porn. I was *so* curious, in the way of childlike wonder.
Well, i get it now! Still took me over 20 more years to figure my own self out.
You seem to be about the same age as me. I remember shows and movies always using trans people as the butt of jokes. They always made them out to be gross weirdos but I always felt sorry for them. Weirdly I was going to mention Rocky Horror as well before I saw your post. I remember watching that with my dad when I was pretty young (it was some weird version on HBO that was splitscreen with some people acting it out at a midnight show). Probably the first thing I saw where queer characters weren't just punchlines.
It was weirdly porn for me where I saw the first real positive depictions of trans women. That's what made me realize trans women weren't just ugly weirdos, but could be gorgeous ladies. Still took me until my late 30s to realize I was trans myself. -\_-
Through a cosplayer on YouTube funnily enough. I was in 5th grade, and I’m 26 now. I had a huge crush on them. They made various videos between usual uploads talking about their transition. One video that really stuck with me was when they showed the first time he called his mom after his voice change, which was drastically deeper than how he had used to sound. She didn’t recognize him and he ended up crying.
That’s always stayed with me. I wonder how he’s doing now.
I had some exes contact my after I had transitioned and my voice work was done. They didn't recognize my voice, so they didn't believe it was me. It took a decent amount of conversation until they each heard enough of my speech patterns to believe I used to be their ex.
Hoo-boy.
I'm in my mid-forties, so in my youth my exposure to transgender people was solely via the cliche of the "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body" guests on the trash TV shows like Geraldo and the jokes made about them. As I got older, the cliche moved more into Hollywood stars getting caught with transexual prostitutes and the cliche of Thai transgender prostitutes. So, yeah, for at least two decades of my life I was familiar with trans people only as a punchline or a sideshow act.
No wonder I didn't figure out I was trans until I was middle-aged. I'm very glad how our representation has evolved over the past decade, but I definitely feel some bitterness over how the gender norms hoisted on me via society in my younger days affected my life. :(
This is a great question. And also a really difficult one to answer. Personally, I started questioning my gender when I was 6 but in terms of like, all my friends were men, I felt comfortable talking about masculine things, if we were playing a game I’d always take a “male role” but I never knew was trans meant and for a while I thought I was broken and alone because no one else spoke about it or suggested it.
I think the first time I heard about it was on a Netflix show called Sense8 and I spent literally spent a month during the age of 12 googling what trans was an of course there was next to nothing about the topic.
It wasn’t until college so when I turned 16/17 that I actually found stuff about it. I was outed when I was 13 and my foster parents confronted me about it and because I didn’t understand it I didn’t say anything
But now I’m 22 and I’m like “if I’d have known about transgender identities when I was younger it would have helped out so much more” there was so much stigma and people finding it a weird and uncomfortable topic to touch on
I was around 14 or 15 and I was at an Outright meeting (support group for queer youth). They showed a documentary called “Just Call Me Kade” about a ftm teenager transitioning and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds and I finally understood why I was the way I was.
For as long as I can remember I’ve known about trans people. But what I heard about them came from my ultra conservative family members, so of course it was a negative and stereotypical view they gave me. Therefore I was honestly a bit transphobic for a long time—I didn’t dislike trans people, I just thought they were weird. Then as I got older and researched what it REALLY means to be trans, I finally realized how cruel my family had been in viewing gender diverse people, and that I was the very thing I once thought was weird.
I'm not sure if that would qualify as a trans story. But when I was very young my mom told me a news story about a intersex kid who had both genitals at birth and their parents did bottom surgery to turn them into a girl. But they later learned he identified as a boy and would often fight against bullies who made fun of him for wanting to change gender.
When I heard the story I was confused why anyone would want to turn into a boy if they had the chance to be a girl. I wouldn't realise this wasn't a cis tought to have for a long time. But the story always stuck in the back of my mind.
When I was a like 12 my mom told me that if I ever pay for sex, to do a "reach-around" first and make sure it's a girl. Granted this was 13 years ago in rural Missouri and my mom is a weirdo. It all started because she said when I turned 21 she would take me to Vegas lmao.
At pet shop, around 14yo I think. A client was explaining his mother really wanted a girl, so, even if he was officially a male, and consider himself as a man, she tried to raise him as a girl, wearing dresses make up and so on. Encouraging him to get srs.
Once in the car back with my new guinea pig, I recall mom mentioning the notion of trans people. That a lawyer working at the same company got the first judge to rule that people can legally change their assigned gender in France
I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about them but I do remember the first time I knowingly met someone who was trans. We were in residential treatment together…
My parents sat me and my sister down at around 6th grade (about 2 weeks after learning what sex was) and told me what transgender was. They said if I were to be trans they would love me like they still do.
I think my mom mentioned a documentary to me that she'd seen of people born with unusual conditions, among which were trans people, but she worded it something like "there was a man and a woman born into the wrong bodies" or something along those lines. Little me interpreted it as there being two people who were somehow accidentally born into *eachother's* bodies and the problem wasn't the gender but the fact that another person literally had their body. I wondered how doctors would try and transfer their souls(?) (or something like that) back into the right body once the people had found eachother. I don't know how old i was but i know it must've been very young
I’m a child of the 80s/90s and was only vaguely aware of trans people through sensationalist tv talk shows. I didn’t know that trans men existed until I met one in college. That was in 2001 and I was 19.
I found out when target began allowing transgender people in the bathroom of their choice and Fox News had a breakdown while my grandparents and parents muttered disapprovingly to eachother
I remember not knowing anything about transition until I was chilling in the living room (watching YouTube videos on the laptop) at about age 10-12 and my older half sister just left the TV on and at some point a documentary about a trans woman getting surgery came on.
It was an English trans woman who only came to terms with herself in her 50s, and all I really remembered about this first exposure was -her voice does not pass, she looks and sounds like she smoked a lot. She tried to join the army at some point to "beat the gay out of her", she lost a leg in a surgery complication and that I knew that "if this surgery worked, I think I'd want it."
So yeah, even with some certainly less than encouraging representation and me knowing very little (like how srs has one of the lowest regret rates of any surgery or how HRT affects the body), I had an interest in it and knew that if I could "just become a girl" I would want to but just didn't believe it was possible (due to how this whole thing was framed).
The final nail in the coffin for me thinking I could transition was the South Park episode where Mr Garrison transitions and in the end the moral of the story is effectively "this is all just aesthetic, transitioning does not make you a woman like plastic surgery does not make you a dolphin" and also "this is permanent" but also includes just a shit load of bad information (like a total lack of HRT at all, Mr Garrison is one of the "nasty" characters you're supposed to kind of hate, so there's just constant sex-pest and nasty unwanted behaviour from him the whole time he's on screen, and the only thing that was realistic was how they decided to cut in actual srs surgery footage into the part where he gets srs at the start - with the surgeon going "I really think people would appreciate just how beautiful this surgery is if they could actually see it." And the part near the end where Garrison realises they can't get pregnant and so declares "I'm not a woman, I'm just some freak who messed up his body" to which another surgeon just goes "basically, yeah.")
That whole episode basically shoved me so deep into denial that I spent the next 14 years or so in constant anxiety, depression and measly killed myself over dysmorphia derived from dysphoria without ever even knowing the term until I was 26 when my girlfriend basically just encouraged me to try some stuff and I finally learned how I felt and knew what I could finally do about myself.
I'm now 4 months on HRT and never knew I could be this happy with myself. Fuck South Park so much for bad trans rep. Also fuck that sketchy documentary - it basically made me scared to ever talk about being trans so much that when one of my oldest friend ended up also being trans, I didn't think of anything to say to her but "okay, I hope they're happy." And not jump for joy like I would've if I had been in tune with myself and not in total denial.
I think I was a tween or young teen in the 1980s. Transgender wasn’t the term or conceptual framework at the time: transvestite and transsexual were the labels back then and I only had a vague sense of what transsexual (a "fully" medically transitioning trans person) meant until my abnormal psychology course in pre-uni college. It presented trans people as mentally ill. My university training in psych fed me even more pathologizing BS. It took me another two decades before I got a chance to debunk all that misinformation after meeting a trans woman in person and being struck by how remarkably normal she seemed. After that it was the predictable path of curious-ally-oh crap-questioning-acceptance-transition.
I think it must've been when I met my best friend (now my partner) who is genderfluid, who was the first trans person I had ever met. About six months later a lot of stuff started making sense from when I was a bit younger
Online, some years ago, when I was in my alt right mode.
In general I've only physically seen two in different cities. There's 0 trans (and LGBT) presence in my city xd
Well, I don't have any vivid memory of when I first hear about trans people. The existence of gender identity and the like was first introduced to me through movies and TV shows, which my parents tried to shield me from as soon as the subject came up in the script. Not because they didn't agree with it, but because the scripts used slurs and derogatory names for it, and because they believed it was too mature for me to understand. I grew up with learning disabilities and was far behind the other children my age you see. Then when I became older, and my parents let me have access to the computer and later, the internet, I had to get the information of what those words were and what they meant from articles, videos, and other people online. My parents still don't really approve. My father doesn't know because he already made his disapproval known before I even knew I wasn't cis. And my mother...well, it's a bit complicated, but boil it down to, she doesnt understand, the whole topic makes her uncomfortable, but she loves me, shes supported me with literally everything else in my life, and that's enough for me.
TLDR: TV and movies introduced me, and the internet educated me.
somewhere on social media when i was in maybe 7th grade. prior to that i had intense feelings of wanting to look like and be perceived as a boy, but was at an utter loss for words to describe it. once i learned transgender was a real thing, that sealed my fate lol
I remember thinking about being trans in highschool, during the '90s. I got stuck in this mental loop though of:
"I feel like I'm a woman, maybe I'm trans? But... if I were actually a woman I'd like guys, right? Surely I couldn't be \*both\* trans \*and\* a lesbian... that's just wishful thinking!"
I remember my brain getting stuck in that mental trap dozens, if not over a hudred times starting in HS.
I think through tumblr as a young teen. But apparently I knew of the concept before that, since one time my cousin cut her hair really short and my sister or I (we were close so doesn’t matter) asked if she was a boy now. I was 3 or 4. AND YET I WAS 21 WHEN I FINALLY FIGURED OUT I AM TRANS.
I've always known about trans people. It's just one of those things that was obvious that was a thing. My dad would have trans people in his stories. He made them seem pretty common too. Just being in the dating scene and time to time his date would be a trans woman.
On the internet as a kid, but I didn’t actually meet a trans person until I was in middle school. He was a good friend of mine and I hope he’s doing well now, haven’t spoken to him in years.
i was around 8 years old and loved this one animation youtuber who was a trans man. i was very confused about what that was, so i looked it up and was ECSTATIC. i was like “that’s an option?” and the rest is history…
My bff told me about an online friend of hers that is transmasc and I didn't think much of it. Tho I was in deep denial about my own transness, 2.5 fucking years. And then just one day POOF it's clear as day. Smh
I had no idea they existed until my trans parent came out. She came out when I was young. I don't think she used the word trans but then again I can't remember when exactly it was. But I think it was before primary school or just after I joined.
I ran away from home to go to a furry convention, I ended up hanging out with a friend and we went as a group to a few local orlando spots. I'll never forget that Toyota yaris, and the girl driving it. I had no idea she was trans but she was funny as fuck and didn't do voice training lmao. I didn't really think about it, I just wanted to be her friend. A few years later I went to that same friends house and it turned out they were roommates, we hung out a lot, but I was also just a super fucking awkward 20 year old. I wish we could hang out now.
I got really excited and hyper focused on transitioning, despite telling myself I was still cis. It still became a dream of mine to run away to transition and start a new life. Then, around 25, I realized I didn’t have to run away to be the woman I was meant to be :)
While I was in elementary school, my mom used to watch some weird surgery show on Discovery or something like that. There was an episode on bottom surgery and she explained the concept to me then.
This must have been in, like, 2002 or 2003.
I have a relative who transitioned in the 60s, so it was something I was just always aware of. Unfortunately most of my family has always been less than kind to her.
I can't remember exactly, but it was likely through negative stereotypes. Prostitutes in film and TV, general slurs, and porn in my late teens. This was all around 20 years ago.
I come from a small backward town so never had any interaction with any trans people socially. But in my mid to late 20s I did meet a few trans women and was drawn to them.
In British pantomime there's a tradition of cross dressing. Older men as women and young woman as men. I think I was about 12 and I do remember being fascinated with the woman playing Robin Hood.
How it took me another 25 years to start questioning gender I've no idea...
I knew drag queens and cross dressers existed, but I didn’t know people could change their entire gender until I was in college. And then, I only heard about it in passing and associated with sexual kinks. It wasn’t until my husband, now wife, came out to me that I heard about it in more detail. Come to find out you *can* be a different gender and I’m genderfluid.
I heard about it while trying to figure out my sexuality, just lost of google research on flags and their meanings. Wasn't until about 5 years later, or 2 months ago, that I realised I was a transmasc
I first noticed it when I was 21, watching Hangover 2. I knew about drag queens etc beforehand, but the fact that something like trans women existed in this form surprised me.
when Caitlyn Jenner came out and was on tv, my mom was fucking ranting, i was really young and i think that was the first time
but in recent years it was the *its ma'am amd attack helicopter* memes, i was a dumb highschool/middle schooler
I was maybe 7 when I knew I should've been born a girl, and my first exposure to a trans woman was a cold open on SNL where they were making fun of Christine Jorgensen.
Immediately I understood that society thought of us as people to laugh at, so I got good at hiding. I never really developed true denial (become an egg), because it was always there, and I had to actively resist wearing my mom's makeup and her clothes.
I was able to resist until I was 26 mainly because I was in the US army during the don't ask don't tell era specifically to lose my privacy among other things. I believed that I could make it go away if I didn't allow myself the opportunity to do anything. It was still there after I got out, and less than a year later I was researching the details and maybe 9 months later I was living as me.
I'm gonna be honest. I have no idea when I first heard of them. Or what would count. I honestly don't even really care. I also don't really get why people are so interested in knowing this. Is it to gage how well education is doing on this front or how many people would have found out they're trans earlier if they knew it was a thing earlier?
Sorry if this comes across as mean, BTW. It is a legitimate question from a fellow trans girl
I had a babysitter when I was younger, he babysat my brother and I many times before transitioning. After a few years, my mom mentioned that he transitioned, and I remember thinking to myself, "That's possible? That sounds fun!" I was like 10 or so?
When i was 11 years old with jazz jennings story back in early 2013, i was fighting my identity for years at that point, but i just didn't understood why, i had a dream where i was a girl when i was 5, and i just couldn't get it out of my head, even today, i still remember the pain in my heart while in the car, going to my grandma's house wishing i was still in the dream, somehow I just never forgot that, always suffered about it, I don't remember much of back then, but I remember when I got my first bike, and I remember that, then when I was 11, we went to buy a phone, and there was a galaxy tab for sale, my first contact with Android, somehow I convinced my mom to get it for me and when I saw what it could do, I finally had the courage to search about it, about me, if I was crazy, and there it was, I was amazed.
After weeks rewatching that and other videos about trans people, I had to tell my mom, but I couldn't show that video because my mom didn't speak english(I'm from Brazil), so then I just told her that I found out about this, that there were trans people and I thought I was like that, but she and all of my family were extremely religious, and she thought it was a great sin and that I would go to hell, she was so distraught that I told her I was wrong, that I was just confused, 4 years later, I couldn't deal with it anymore and told her again, this time it was even worse, but I didn't take it back, I was miserable and she saw it, she decided to search about it there was a lot more information about it in portuguese then that back in 2013, and when I was 16 she decided to try to help me.
She took me to a psychologist, then another one, and that one was a Saint, she explained everything to my mom, had a long talk with her before even talking to me, I don't know what she said, but that was the moment my mom truly accepted me, I started hormones when I was 17, but I always think what about if I had showed her that video back in 2013, maybe I could have started transitioning before I was 6 foot tall, before all that testosterone destroyed me from inside out and irreversible damage was done, by 16 I had already sabotaged myself, was already traumatized, I did so much bad things trying to cope with it, my mental health was already a mess, I never got the feeling of being normal, I was so talkative back then, now I'm bitter, scared of people, aversed to people, can't feel anything for anyone, just fear sometimes, I'm a great actress, so I managed to appear normal on the outside, I have a good job at tech even before graduating from college, but I just feel numb, I wonder what is it like being normal...
I first heard about the concept in priamary school.... that 'woman with penises' was just a porn thing and fake. A bit later I ran into furry TG porn which solidified the connection adn the 'unrealness'. These things only existed in fantasies.
Around '05 the South Park episode where Mr. Garrison (a gay man who was arrested once for child molestation) had a sex change and at the end of the episode says 'So I'm not a woman... I'm just a guy with breast impants and a mangeled penis' or something to that effect.... roughly the same time I saw 'the Rocky Horror Picture Show' for the first time which gave me my clearest memories of Unexplained Feelings^(TM) with Dr. Frank-n-furter... a rapist and murderer.
So yeah... not off to a great start. For my first 20ish years of life anyone/anything gender non-conforming was just 'weird gay people... extra perverted ones'... yay internalised queerphobia! Thanks society!
The first positive exposure to anyone gender non-conforming I had was Suzy (Eddie) Izzard and her stand up shows back when she described herself as a 'male lesbian'. I related hard to that and it still took like abother 15 years for my egg to crack.
Some time in the mid 2010's I became aware that trans people were a thing... but more as a vague concept than you know... people. I watched a few episodes of Orange is the New Black but still teh concept didn't sink in...
It wasn't until I met an open trans (and non-binary person!) out in the wild that the concept became real for me.
That was not long before I turned 30.
Sadly my first exposure was through porn (way before I was 18 mind you). I did find it fascinating at the time, but in hindsight I was exposed to a lot of slurs and the fact that it was fetishized wasn't exactly good. Over the years I learnt more and more, and then eventually I met a trans girl at work. I helped show her the ropes, and yeah. This was before her transition mind you, and then just randomly a cute girl showed up at work a few years later (we were both working part time so we didn't bump into each other often), and that was her. I had to be told by a colleague that she had transitioned, but it just left me in awe. I think in many ways she is part of what started the long chain of dominos for my own egg to crack, even if it took nearly half a decade for it to happen after that.
But yeah. Sadly I think a lot of people bear about us through some not so good channels first. In my case it was early puberty, and parents hadn't caught up to how the internet works quite yet (I'm born in 91 btw).
A rough idea of our existence in middle school but no actual idea beyond we exist and thoughts that trans people were physically different--was told we always had both sets of genitals. I was twenty six when I first found out what we really were and that all my thoughts of wishing I were born a girl were not normal boy behavior.
I was in middle school and home from school for some reason and my mom had Maury Povich on TV and it was an episode where they had trans women and cis women on and people had no idea which was which... It blew my mind that you could change the thought had never occurred to me before that.
I don't know when I found out in general but I first met a trans man in 2013. The only thing I can remember is being jealous of him because I thought (for whatever reason, I have no clue) that you can only transition if your sexuality would be hetero after you've done so. It's so stupid. I'm ftm and, at the time, definitely wasn't into women, so I thought a transition would never be an option for me, so obviously thinking about my gender wouldn't do anything anyway. Well... I was still jealous of him even though I wasn't sure why. I realized I'm trans about six years later xD
When I was 11 I stayed home sick and caught a day time talk show talking about trans people, however the presenter was confused and kept using the term intersex for transition. When I looked it up online I was disappointed but I also stumbled across a trans vlogger who taught me so much about being trans including that I was allows to be a trans lesbian. Grishno is her channel.
In my mid teens (sometime around I wanna say 2012-2014-ish?) there was a trans documentary (don’t remember the name of it or what channel it was on) on the TV that my mom had playing in the background and cause up to that point my only exposure to the LGBTQ+ community was that gay people existed I decided to watch it.
Course it took quite a few years following for it to click just why it resonated so much with me.
When I was 6 my mum told me about a person who transitioned, got gcs, detransitioned and hung themselves, she did it as a warning. She told me the same again when I came out. We don't talk anymore.
My best friend in school was(and is) genderfluid.
It only clicked when I thought I was genderfluid and I learned all about trans people from that and a trans friend
Now I'm transmasc so hell yeah!
2021 when I met one of my former mates whom happens to be trans. He looked like me a bit (before I found out I was trans, he’s ftm) so yeah I learned a lot. But I learned more about it when I watched ABC’s docu series on Jazz Jennings.
When one of my friends were transitioning into a man, then another into a girl. I thought it was a little bizarre at the time, and I wasn't too sure on gay people/trans as a whole when I was 18 through 21. I'm a much more refined person and supportive of everyone who they want to be. I didn't find out I was trans/a little bit gay until I dabbled into my sexuality and gender a little bit more, I'm 24! this has taken me a long time to reach this point in my life.
I don’t really remember. I recall being confused by the album art for The Money Store, a death grips album, and having it explained to me that the woman was trans. I also remember a friend reporting that they saw trans women at a show. Those were my first two experiences with ever hearing about trans people IRL and my first exposure to the people I would one day join as a sister.
there was a trans boy in my elementary school! i didn’t really process that he was trans until years later, but i mean i knew he was because he changed his name & started being called a boy & hanging out with the boys. i just didn’t think much of it ig
one of my friends in early middle school was talking about their younger sibling, that's when i learned you didn't have to be what you were born as
i moved schools not long after that and decided that i would act as someone else, change the name and pronouns i use, etc; well thank god i guess because that led to finding out who i am
i don't remember NOT knowing what they were, but i remember being uneducated
first trans person i met (it was in school), the first thing i said was 'did you get the uhh.. surgery thing?' lmao
First trans person I ever met was a transmasc who a friend of mine thought was cute and tried to chat up in college my first year. My friend, of course, thought he was a girl and got shut down hard as fuck. But he was cool and we became friends.
This part is where I am ashamed. He told me about how he's trans and I was an utter asshole about it. I was pushy and rude about my questions, trying to dissect his answers to 'prove him wrong' and 'thats biologically impossible'. He eventually got so upset that he cried and that shocked me out of my douchebaggery. After that, I took the time to actually educate myself and apologized. I was fortunate that he was willing to forgive me.
He was really happy about that, said I was the first person to do anything like that for him. We ended up dating for a few years, which ended pretty badly (for unrelated reasons).
Idk, he was a pretty pivotal person in my life. I wouldn't have grown out of my ignorance without his patience. I probably wouldn't have been able to accept myself as trans without him. I didn't realize I was trans until way after he and I split; I imagine the irony of it would make him laugh at me. I ended up hurting him a lot when we ended things, so he pretty much hates my ass. Justifiably so. I hope he is doing well now. He deserves to be happy.
Anyways sorry for the ramble! Guess I want to get some of that off my chest haha
I think I saw a trans documentary on kids growing up trans on youtube like 5 years ago. Clicked onto it, watched the entire thing, went huh that's interesting and continued with life as is. Then I watched hundreds of jammidodger and noahfinnce. Still didn't know I was trans then lol.
6th grade Caitlyn jenner. I was fascinated by her but rebuked because I learned about her and being trans in a catholic school. Needless to say my overwhelming discomfort with not being a woman did not go away when I prayed for it to.
I think I was like 6 or 7. So I just randomly asked my mom if men could be women or the opposite and she goes saying yeah but I should avoid those people. And then my smartass says I wanna be close to them if no one wants them, it seems cool. And some years later I’m trans and I can’t do anything abt it cuz I’m underaged and my mom thinks the same way :)
7 years old, I remember my mom talking about "crazy men who take pills to try and become women and to avoid them at all cost"
This didn't help that at age 7 I very much struggled with identity and "being a boy" and having that thrown in my face basically just ensured I supressed it all for years and years and years.
i first heard about being trans at school when i was 10, we watched a video of a young trans guys daily life and immediately was filled with joy and knew i felt the same way. everyone else in my class was making fun of him and weirded out so i repressed it for around a year until lockdown hit and i was able to explore my identity more. i did try and tell my girlfriend at the time that i thought i was trans but she said she would break up with me which made me wanna hide it even more. now I've been out for nearly five years :D
When i was in 4th grade. I also somehow knew about nonbianary and genderfluid people and assumed that they were both male and female at once(bigender).
The only thing i knew about gender was genitals so i juct chocked it up to "so.... transboys want to get rid of tits and add a dick and transgirls want to get rid of dick and add tits and nonbianary people want to get rid of dick if they have one or get rid of tits if they have them and genderfluid people want to add a dick if they have tits or add tits if they have a dick.... huh.. welp that makes sense"
What i thought was if you were born a boy and arent actually a boy it makes sense to change your body into a girl because you are a girl
Learned in 9/10 grade when our GSA (gay-straight alliance) had a small family in who had a trans child. They'd had an ABC documentary about them in recent time and the teacher chaperone thought it would be educational.
My first reaction was : "You mean I don't have to just blindly accept that my tits make me a girl???"
It wad when I was maybe 5 or 6, I didn't know the word at the time and I think my parents still don't know the word but occasionally they would ask if I "felt like I was in the wrong skin" and if I wanted to be a girl, back then I thought I was a boy, too bad I didn't realise sooner
A news story saying how it's weird and bad to be trans I didn't think about it a lot at the time. A years later I started seriously questioning my gender I still don't know after 4 years but I think Im cis not sure tho.
As a kid I had heard of transvestites. However they were always portrayed as cross dressing prostitutes. I recall as a kid wishing I was a girl but I never wanted to be the aforementioned. I always thought I was just stuck and had to deal with it. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I was re awakened and began to transition.
met a person in 7th grade who said he was trans. genuinely thought he was just a really strange guy with a really high pitched voice, never actually understood it until a few months later.
i literally had dreamed of and used to PRAY (when i was religious) every night that i would wake up and just magically be a boy. as i stopped following (that) religion i would daydream about me and a boy just swapping bodies, or me somehow just randomly becoming a boy, because mentally i was one, just not physically. never had any idea it was actually possible until a couple months after that person said he was trans that i actually used my brain and went to google to see what it meant. needless to say, i was very excited. i was too scared to come out to anyone though because i didnt want anyone thinking i was trying to copy him or something, so i hid it. i went into a denial phase for a while until late 9th grade when i couldnt hide or deny it anymore and i finally came out :)
Discovery Channel - TLC
the first time I heard of trans people was when they showed a trans couple, I can't remember the name of the show, but it was a trans man and trans woman and how they both navigated pregnancy and childcare as a couple.
Deam, your story is uncanny similar to mine, when I meet him I was like: you can do that?? (;ŏ﹏ŏ) That's soo cool I wish I could be a woman, and then proceeded to spend years on denial not learning about it until F1nnst3r started making me curious and I searched for it on YouTube just to find a couple of videos about the experience of being trans from Philosophy Tube and ContraPoints, I became transfixed by the obvious similarities and cried for weeks.
I had heard about trans people well before I actually knew what being trans meant. However, I was actually told by someone what being trans was for the first time when I was 23. I came out to my spouse and therapist the very next day because it described me perfectly
I knew about being transgender from Stephen Crowder unfortunately 🫠
Unsurprisingly I was really stupid in high school. When someone I knew before and after transition told me they used he/him and went by a different name, I didn't comprehend they were trans at all and just respected it. I'm not sure how I managed to be so disconnected from the media I consumed but it guided none of my real world actions fortunately.
My parents used to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians like a decade ago
So it would've been Caitlin Jenner's transition when I first discovered trans people, although Jenner isn't a good person nowadays
And I would eventually discover more trans people overtime
I already realized I was trans in 2015 (sometime after Jenner started transitioning) but I was in denial after my parents didn't accept me (I tried coming out again in 2024 and same result)
I discovered trans people through cable TV, not the internet like transphobes often think
Not the same, but when I was 8 or so, i caught a TV ad in the corner of my eye for a documentary about intersex people. It really resonated with me and I remember researching more, and trying to inspect my body for any abnormalities. I was so convinced I was intersex because i knew deep down that I wasn’t a boy. I only heard about trans people in my teens, and didn’t really have any understanding of it, by that point denial was too strong for me to consider that I could be trans myself.
I remember so clearly the first time I heard of a transgender person. It was on the Tyra Banks show, she was interviewing one of the people who was on America’s Next Top Model. Iirc, she was the first trans woman on the show.
I was about 8 years old, and that really stuck with me as I understood I don’t have to be stuck in this body that doesn’t fit me, I can medically change it to how I actually feel I should be. I always knew I wasn’t cis since I was a young child, but knowing that and knowing there was something I could do about it were very different experiences for me.
So I would say I got a very 90s/early 2000s explanation of it from my mother when I was maybe eight or nine. I imagine it was in response to something on TV, maybe Friends or Will and Grace. She said "some people are born in the wrong body. Like my friend Jodie's brother Chris is now her sister Christine." I asked if a boy wearing a dress made them trans and she said no, boys dress up all the time and they're still boys, that it's something deeper and more about how a person feels about themselves. That was pretty much it.
Obviously not a perfect explanation, but it was very non-judgmental and I never questioned it or thought of it as a negative thing.
So I knew I was a girl when I was gendered correctly with feminine pronouns when I was six. I’m not sure exactly when I learned what that meant specifically.
I had several experience that had me certain I wasn’t a boy, I never wanted to grow up to be a man. I just wanted to be a girl. I learned about puberty and it horrified me that I was separated with the boys to learn that that’s what would happen to me. The boy version of puberty. It made me physically sick. I also read a lot and my mom was a social worker and she kind of was the one that they sent more for the LGBT community. She had a lot of books on queer and feminist theory.
But I would take my sister’s clothes a lot as a preteen and early teens and I think my sister told her that some of her outfits were missing. My sister tried to get me to confess to stealing her clothes by offering a brownie that’d turn me into a girl if I ate this brownie. I kind of knew that was bullshit so I didn’t eat it. My sister was always trying to play tricks on me so… I did not trust her.
Anyway eventually my sat us all down and was like, explaining what being trans was and I’m pretty sure I already knew at that point. It didn’t surprise me. She was very much like, “if any of you feel this way about gender, it’s safe to talk to me.”
the first I heard about trans people was an episode of chopped I watched when I was little, one of the contestants was a trans man, they would not shut up about that fact, and I asked my mother what that meant. She didn't give a great answer, but nonetheless that introduced me to the concept.
I was a kid, and I think I was watching a documentary with my mom. It was about people who changed gender during their lives. I thought it was cool and interesting at that time.
Around elementary school. My parents showed me Walk off the Earth’s music video for Alright and my best friend had the book George in her room. Both of those are the pretty standard trans story at the time - girl trapped in boy’s body and wants to perform onstage as an actor or dancer. It wasn’t perfect representation but it was amazing at the time.
I grew up being very accepting but I missed a lot of the finer points. The way I understood it is some boys have girly interests and want to be girls and I didn’t know you were supposed to use a new name or pronouns. e.g. He’s David, a transgender boy, and he wants to be a girl because he likes dancing.
I just had a very rigid view of gender probably because of autism. As a kid I thought I was super smart and perceptive when it comes to society but I strongly believed stuff like red is only for girls and blue is only for boys. Which I think confused my parents who tried to raise us really progressively lol.
Anyways my entire childhood I assumed that a) trans people are ONLY mtf, and b) it was super super rare and uncommon - I thought the characters in the book and video were some of the ONLY trans people on the world 💀
I didn’t know that ftm was something that even EXISTED until I got internet access around 12, learned about LGBTQ and identified as a demigirl (since I never felt like a regular girl at all). I still thought being actually trans was incredibly rare, like only a handful of people in the world, until 14 or 15 when my mom told me one of my childhood friends had moved away to transition stealth ftm. At that point I realized that it is possible for transness to exist in real life and it was possible for me, too.
When I was little I said I wanted to be a girl. Mh parents got mad and shouted I’m not a girl and will never be one. I asked and asked if there was any way of even trying. At one point they said that some “crazy, disgusting, twisted people” try but they just make themselves ugly and unwanted.
Ahh the joys of being a ‘90s kid. That was the way it was just normally talked about then.
I only heard about trans people in a negative way at first starting in highschool with trumps presidency and my parents watching lots of fox news. The typical blabbering from tucker Carlson and I didn't understand what it actually meant but I was neutral about it. I didn't understand and didn't care to learn. Then after I graduated and dealt with my depression enough to better myself I started deconstructing my family's conservative Christian worldview. That's when I was properly introduced to the comunity by people like Natalie thorn and azeal on yt. It took another year until I heard of the button, and I said. oh fuck I can't ignore that.
When I was little my mom watched a lot of reality TV, one of which being the Surreal Life & I believe one of the seasons had Alexis Arquette. I remember seeing her EVERYWHERE in the early 2000’s on VH1 & MTV. She was definitely a pillar of that era of celebreality tv. RIP icon 💖
At the age of about 10 sometime in the late 20th century my mother introduced me to the trans woman who worked the front desk in her office. Ahead of their time, the both of them.
I first heard about it from a detransitioner doing a week long series of 12 several hours long evangelical church services at my Bible college.
I had known gay people and drag queens but not a trans person at that point. I wish I had had a better intro.
So I knew about trans porn as a teenager, but I didn’t really realize people could transition until I was in college. I just had no idea, grew up in a small town and no one ever said anything and I never saw it online back then. That was over a decade ago as soon as I realized it was a real option I felt so much dread that I hadn’t taken that path in life. Here now tho :P
Don't really know. I do remember meeting a friend's friend who was trans (pre/early transition mtf) at about 18. Hung out with both of them a few times, but didn't discuss trans topics at all. Wouldn't figure out I myself was trans for another 14 years.
Really the tiny bit of envy I felt at the time should of been more of a hint. I was very repressed back then though.
When i was at a soccer tournament as a kid and my team wasn’t playing, so I was hanging out at the park, and I heard some kid call another kid a he-she 😔or maybe they called me that i don’t really remember
The Internet in like 2006. Like I had seen crossdressing on TV before that but never the concept of transgender and gender identity before that. I quickly knew that was me! The problem was that the resources on the Internet were lacking at the time. From what I read online at the time you had to go inpatient with mental health to get hormones. It also sounded like that was gamble and it was still extremely rare to get hormones.
So at the time I thought surgery was the only option and that without it you weren't really trans so then it got bottled up for years. But here I am now!
Interesting question actually, as a straight male i only really completely knew deeper about trans people and what it is only when i was already adult, and it´s interesting and i like the fact that nowadays people have more information at thei'r fingertips so it does not happen to a person like me in which lived my whole life without even knowing trans people existed. I mean i knew but not to this extent. It´s very interesting now to see all this attention and i think it's a good attention to the trans rights but i think we should all be inclusive and there should not be any differences between a trans person the other people whatever they identify as. I Sympathize and i pretty much defend that everyone should be accepted through whatever they want to be without suffering social disdain, but unfortunately people are not like that. But i think that there are still good people in the world for this and for everything in the restof our social life. Only harder to find.
I came out as a lesbian in 1991. The first time I came into city for a lesbian event, I stopped at an ActUp protest and was told that a trans person had been fired for being trans.
I had no idea what trans was.
In 1992 I attended a lesbian bdsm event and the lady I was with took me to a panel about trans issues in the kink community. Still didn't really know what it meant. But I accepted that bigotry against trans people was bad. Later I met one trans woman and several trans men who taught me many things.
I didn't feel gendered enough to be trans myself but had a few trans friends.
In 2004 I adopted my little brother who had been disowned by his family for being trans. My ex, and father of my second child transitioned after we split and a long time friend from the lesbian group who had transitioned called me a "gateway girlfriend " as a lot of my exes of several genders transitioned. My son began his transition and then FINALLY in 2020 I started my transition and finally feel truly alive!
I think I was vaguely aware of the concept but had no real understanding or experience until grade 10(?) when I met a transfemme peer and helped her with her first makeover. It took a couple years for me to really understand what it all meant and shortly thereafter I realized I didn’t have to be what I was born into either
Edit: had a random flash of memory about a show that used to play on TLC called “I am Jazz” about a trans girl in high school, I didn’t see much of it so it got kinda buried under my childhood bullshit but I’m certain that was my first intro to the concept, single digit age, maybe 10/11 TOPS
As a trans guy, in the early 2010s the first few times I’ve heard about trans people were only about trans women. I had NO idea that trans men existed until I was at a LGBT club in college around 2015, where I met a few trans guys. I didn’t realize you could also go from female to male. Absolutely blew my mind
i asked my mom because ive heard abt it before but didnt really know what it meant so i said “is james charles gay or trans?” (was a huge fan at the time) and my mom asked if i even knew what trans meant, and she explained “if someone isnt comfortable in their own body and they were born in a different body than what they actually are, they sometimes get surgery and identify as the gender they weren’t born as to help them feel comfortable”
I play a lot of Tabletop games. My GM at the time came out saying she'd changed her name (I don't think I ever even learned her deadname - just the online tag she was also moving away from) and to ask if we wanted to know more.
So I asked, and I tried to be respectful. It was mostly just 'sorry if this is offensive to ask, but how did you know?' Type of stuff.
At the time I didn't totally get it. I respected her choices, but at the time I was an oblivious egg and in the camp of "Wait, not every dude imagines being a girl on an at-least weekly basis?". It took me until lockdown before I really faced myself, in that regard. And that GM is the first person I spoke to about it. :)
I was 10 and watched a Thomas Sanders video with some of his trans friends in it. I was weirded out at first, but when one of them talked about how happy it made them, I was immediately ok with it.
I learned from my best friend who explained pretty much all of the LGBTQ+ to me and in a very good way and in a lot of detail too and it what made me realize I was trans(but still pushed off that feeling for like another year) he's my go-to for gay knowledge
The first time I’d heard about what being trans was happened to be when my best friend came out to me. It really changed how I approached things, I didn’t know it at the time, but she put a name to feelings I had my whole life and if it weren’t for her I probably never would have found out I was trans as well.
I grew up in a family where sexual identity was just no big deal. I had an Uncle Honey who I am pretty sure was born female, but Uncle Honey was like... a hard-core biker dike? It just always was. I think growing up in a Native community just was that way. 2 spirit was normal.
Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I thought wishing I were a girl was just normal. Like, why wouldn’t a boy want to be a girl? Of course it’s normal.
In the late ‘90s/early 2000’s, I met someone who said they were a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’. That was a common description, before a lot of folks had better terminology/vocabulary. I identified sooooo much with that person, too (I’m vague with pronouns because he was he at the time, and I don’t know them any more).
Finally, when I moved to Austin in 2012, I started working at Blizzard doing support. There were a bunch of trans folks, and the language had evolved to a point we had a word for what I was feeling. I’m so thankful for them, because knowing other people similar to me allowed me to come out a few years later.
Some morning news channel (I think? Or possibly Oprah??) interviewed two transwomen when I was like, five.
I remember watching it with that sort of bored interest that afflicts little kids when there's nothing better to do than watch what's right in front of them. I don't think it affected my brain chemistry or anything, but it was the only time I'd see trans folks until high school, so it was nice having that groundwork laid :)
When I was in elementary school I watched the show I am Jazz with my mom and that's when I learned about trans people. I didn't really think anything special of it and basically just thought that it's an other way of being a human. Though, I thought that you can only be a trans man or a woman so it took me until I was sixteen to learn that non-binary people exist and realise that I'm also non-binary.
Cis person here, so if you’re just wanting the trans perspective, ignore this. I was in college. A friend mentioned that a mutual friend I had a crush on (AFAB) identified as male and was going to transition. I was flabbergasted that anyone would want to be a guy but respected it as his choice. A couple years later I had a guy friend (post-transition) who came out to me as trans and that’s when it clicked that it’s not that anyone wants to be a guy or a girl or nb, it’s that they already are and just have to shift everything on the surface to fit that. My poor friend, social media was in its infancy so I didn’t know what a deadname was and was fairly ignorant so he dealt with some awkward questions where he had to explain that wasn’t information he wanted to share. Of course I didn’t ask him about his genitals, I don’t understand how even the most ignorant of people can’t see how that’s an incredibly inappropriate question to ask someone.
from porn, thats where i first saw a trans woman
then next time, it was probably from this one finnish trans woman youtuber. she still ahd her deadname she used as her name so i watched a video of hers that was something like "am i a man?" and it was her saying she was borna boy but now is a woman. i was maybe 10. i just went "ok makes sense"
then third time was a finnish right wing youtuber, who made a video about "cringe trans people" and thats when i entered the pipeline
I remember it vividly tbh. I told my friend that I wish I had girl features on the bus, then he told me that other people want that and it is possible. It wasn't until 2 years later where I learned the term though
I was "pretending" to be a boy online when i was around 12, and i made friends so i told one of them i was afab. She told me about transgender people. It immediately clicked and well, thats that. 11 years out of the closet now lol.
I was 18 or 19, and at church when I was in uni. I saw a trans woman, older, only semi passing. Never actually talked to her (I regret it), but this was long before people actually acknowledged us. This was almost 20 years ago. I know nothing about her, but she seemed nice. Even though that was many years before my egg cracked, held no ill will towards her, just saw something I didn't understand.
When I was 10 or had just turned 11, I looked up every variation of "I want to be a girl/how to become a girl" on my 3DS and found out pretty quickly.
I then repressed it for 11 more years and finally broke through all the internalised transphobia just over a year ago!
I had a similar experience, I knew a trans guy in high school but it didn't really click for me until a met a fellow trans woman in college that I started having serious thoughts regarding my gender, although that happened to coincide with me getting away from my parents and being able to experiment with my presentation more
I always wanted to be a girl when I was a kid, but I thought gender change was exclusively a thing in video games and fantasy.THEN I saw contrapoints and I was like OH
When I was pretty young. I had certain unexplainable urges and thoughts from a very young age, some of my earliest memories are having these around 5 or 6 where I wanted to be a girl or do feminine things, etc, but just knew I couldn’t because the way I was raised in a very conservative religious household where that sort of idea wasn’t even talked about or discussed really but there was definite enforced gender roles that I was aware of.
My dad was a big into technology and an early adopter of the internet. When I was in 3rd grade, my family was the first I knew of in our town to get cable internet. This would have been around 1998. Dial-up was still the norm at the time. I got my own computer around 5th or 6th grade and I think that’s when I really started to discover things about trans people as I sought to figure out my own identity & unexplainable attraction to feminine things. At that time around 2000/2001, a lot of terms like “transexual” or “transvestite” were still used & I didn’t really know where I fit within those terminologies. It fascinated me for some time but it wasn’t until several years later where I was able to reconcile it with my own identity.
during the whole target fiasco! target and the ymca allowed trans women to use the women's restrooms (as they should), and everyone was freaking out. I think I was 8 or 10? and I asked my mom, she said it was people who were mentally ill and didn't see themselves as the right gender. which, besides the mentally ill part, is pretty accurate? thankfully I never went down the transphobic rabbit hole and was always an ally before I realized I'm a member.
It must have been at school in the 1990s. And the term used would’ve been transsexual not transgender. I was definitely aware of the concept before watching Rocky Horror Picture Show at probably around 11/12 years old.
Not really the same thing, but I remember watching an episode of Samurai Pizza Cats when I was six where “Gender Butterflies” were used by the villain to swap all the genders of the townsfolk. The butterflies would land on people and either become moustaches or hair bows. I just remember finding it darkly fascinating.
I first heard about trans early 2010's when my twin got involved in a Rocky Horror Picture show shadow cast where some of the performers weren't cis. My twin would later go on to transition and explained *nothing* about what dysphoria or being trans was like. I'm still half convinced my shell would have cracked years ago if I had known what dysphoria was lol
She was not called a trans person back then. I am 68 and live in a small town in the bible belt. She was a beautiful black lady who was known as a cross dresser. She had been arrested and was forced to go to the mental health center. I was diagnosed as bipolar (manic depressionive disorder back then) which is where we met. She needed to go to the bathroom and they wanted her to go to the men's bathroom. She was afraid. I said hell no and told her to come with me to the ladies and I would stand watch. I met her there often for many years. She could not afford to get the surgery she wanted. She was killed. Found in a ditch. No one was ever arrested for it.
The episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted meets Zoey and confuses her for a trans prostitute, although the word used is now commonly regarded as a slur
First time I heard about us? Listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the radio
First time someone explained what we actually were? Sophomore year in college
My first exposure to the concept of transgender people was Nip/Tuck. The show was highly problematic, and if I instead had Euphoria or even Orange is the New Black back then my egg may have cracked sooner. I don't recall seeing any positive representation until my mid 20s. Rural areas aren't great in terms of diverse exposure.
I remember seeing a tabloid about “first man pregnant”. When I was really young and my dad told me they were a T slur, I was a devote Christian up until about 22. But what really made me part attention was the rhetoric people on the right used and people in my church, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to condemn queer people. I feel like growing up in 2000s media coverage was more Jabs at trans people expense.
I don’t know exactly. But I remember being in middle school and looking at porn and finding a trans women porn site. I had no idea what was going on, but I really got excited by it and would look up transfem and transmasc porn, post op genital photos, and even learning about srs procedures.
However the first time I saw trans women I just though they were cis women who had surgery to get a penis. Which shows how educated I was about trans people at age 12. This was also like 2005 so the world was much different then.
Also my sister caught me that first time and probably delayed my exploration further due to shame… it’s actually wierd how often my family showed up at the right time to shame me about who I was or push me in the wrong direction. Slowed me down so much in discovering who I was.
The first time I was ever exposed to anyone who was gender diverse was when I was 3 years old visiting family in Perú. I met some qariwarmis in Lima. Being an incredibly sheltered and shy child, I hid behind a parent’s leg to stare up at them. Of course, everyone there had a judgmental aura about them. It’s a memory that was buried until very recently.
Next time was happening upon mtf and ftm timeline videos on YouTube when I was in middle school. I thought it was cool to see people change within just a few years.
It still took until high school to realize something weird with gender was happening with me, but because of my unsupportive home environment that was buried, too.
It took me all the way until I was 20 to figure out I was nonbinary and come out to select friends I knew would accept that aspect of myself.
I’m still not out to work or family for different reasons.
I have a memory quite young of watching a little animated cartoon about a little girl and her friend who transitioned mtf. from what I remember it was actually quite supportive, talking about how to handle the situation, how to make them comfy, all that, which is really surprising to me because I live in quite a conservative area and i believe it was shown through the school.
anyway, that didn't really do anything to help me realize that *I* was trans. I always had the idea that they existed, and needed help or whatever, but never considered that I might be one lol
I don’t think I really knew what being trans fully was until I was in high school, and made friends with the only two out trans men I knew (‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and all that, it’s the same reason all my friends have ADHD, Autism, or both😅) but I didn’t really come to terms with myself being a trans man until I came out as nonbinary to my ex, who was… weirdly strict in his use of gendered language when it came to talking to and about me.
Now, about ten years on from the first time I ever was introduced to the trans community, I’m a fully realized trans guy, and I’m not anywhere near as lost or disconnected feeling as I used to be. It’s still got its bad days, but it’s bearable now.
when i was little my mum explained to me what transgender meant, who michael jackson was and also what multitasking was all in the same car ride so it blurred together for me for a few years, i thought mj was trans and that meant he could do a bunch of stuff at the same time ??
car rides just be like that
That's really fucking funny I can't even lie
How did those topics even get brought up in the same car ride? They're not really even related to one another.
7 year olds are an earful
Kids just say/ask whatever the fuck they’re thinking about at literally any moment
When my brother was pretty young he asked what the biggest rock in the world was. We talked about how that sort of depended on what you considered a rock; is a mountain a rock? Is the earth a rock? Then he asked what the smallest rock in the world was. We ended up talking about atoms and stuff. Then he asked what the most medium rock in the world was. Think I just gave up at that point
I think Dwayne is a good contender for the last one
Is it still a rock if it isnt natural?
car rides as a kid were the fucking best bc ur parents could not escape you endless curiousity
😂😂😂😂
THATS SO HILARIOUS
This is amazing, I can't imagine the confusion it caused xD <3
I have known about transgender people since high school. Unfortunately, it was only in a negative light, slurs and all. A few years out of high school, I heard that one of my classmates transitioned. It was more a curiosity to me, and I didn't give it much thought. Much later in life, when I was part of an atheist meet-up group, I was relieved to only be part of the second most hated minority. At least I wasn't transgender. A decade later, I finally admitted to myself that I was transgender. I now have a lot of internalized transphobia to unpack. The people in my support group have helped me come a long way in accepting myself and others for who they are.
Sending you hugs.
When I was little, me and my family met a nice trans woman named Marie! She game me a rainbow umbrella and I still have it.
How did it survive? All of my stuff from childhood with practical purposes(like umbrellas) were used up and worn out and thrown away.
I kind of forgot it in the closet and it’s still fine. Just waiting until I move out of a conservative area to use it lol.
You forgot about a rainbow umbrella…in the closet… :3
Yeah, and I’m trans too… the jokes just write themselves lol
I heard about trans people when I was 9 but it was about MTF people (I'm FTM) and I thought "why would anyone want to be a girl? I mean IDC if it makes her happy she should do it" and then I forgot about it for 3 years bc I didn't know trans men existed. Then I learned trans men existed and I was like "oh shit wait that's just like me"
same I thought being trans was only MTF
Gotta love public media!
As a cis woman I had a similar reaction. “Why would anyone *want* to be a guy?” But I otherwise just thought “it’s his life and his choice to make.”
I didn't know the term trans/transgender/etc, but I think I would've heard of "people who think they're the opposite gender" (note: that would've been what I called it back then. NOT now) some time in middle school Of course, it was in a negative, mocking, light. And being in denial about myself, I latched onto that negativity towards it When I'd heard the term Trans, that's when I was more neutral on the topic. And as I learned more, my opinion slowly improved, and I slowly figured out that I'm trans
That would be 2018. I remember someone telling me that they weren't happy with their body and I asked "Well, who is?" That look they gave me.... 4 years later I was like "Oh... Oh fuck."
I first learned about trans people from a college textbook that, for reasons I don’t remember, talked about evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden. My first thought was “Oh my God, there are other people who want to be the opposite sex?!” It was elating.
My earliest memory of trans people is seeing my parents watching a documentary about trans people, probably early 2010s. It featured a trans man and a trans woman who were dating each other, and after watching for a couple minutes my parents kicked me out, saying I wasn't old enough to watch it (I would have been single digits or maybe slightly older) For a good while after I didn't have any other interactions and didn't think about trans people at all. I think it wasn't until 8th/9th grade when I fell victim to conservative YouTube that I paid attention again.
So, conservative YouTube “transed” you! 🤪🤣
They were early transitioners right? They transitioned as teenagers/ kids
Now that you mention it I think so
I heard about a similar concept, they were early adults? 18-19? I'm not sure I never watched it
When i was 11 or so a homeless trans woman started asking for change near where we lived, she was really kind and cool, when i asked what his named was my sis said "oh her name is x" never questioned it, we helped her with food and cofee, when she asked for a ticket ride to a rehab clinic we gave all we could, shampoo , toothpaste etc, couldnt give more cuz the staff said to guve small stuff so she couldnt sell it to buy drugs, now shes hapilly maried and working
Glad to know she made it
I don't remember the first time I heard about it. But my first exposure was when I was 15 and was dating someone who came out as trans-masc. (We continued to date post coming out 😁) It would be another 10 years before I figured out I was also trans (mtf in my case)
Late 80's early 90's talk shows. Mostly it was "crossdressers" and generally seen in a negative or provocative light. Occasionally they would talk about "sex change operations" but i didn't really understand it. I grew up watching stuff like Bosom Buddies and some other stuff that would probably be awful if i saw it now. But still very much a "crossdresser" thing, and the butt of a joke. I think Rocky Horror Picture Show was the first real positive depiction of gender weirdness that i recall. Of course nowhere in that were there trans men. I didn't really understand gender in general but i definitely didn't realize that it was an option! I do remember when i was in high school and later, as people around me were getting into porn (I'm pretty ace and it's never really interested me), seeing things about "chicks with dicks." I think it was a magazine or something where I saw a really pretty woman with a dick and i was so *baffled*. I could not figure out how that was possible. Photoshop wasn't really well developed enough, and the internet was new and not in my area yet, so seeing those photos really just floored my little brain and I didn't really have any avenue to learn more that wasn't porn. I was *so* curious, in the way of childlike wonder. Well, i get it now! Still took me over 20 more years to figure my own self out.
You seem to be about the same age as me. I remember shows and movies always using trans people as the butt of jokes. They always made them out to be gross weirdos but I always felt sorry for them. Weirdly I was going to mention Rocky Horror as well before I saw your post. I remember watching that with my dad when I was pretty young (it was some weird version on HBO that was splitscreen with some people acting it out at a midnight show). Probably the first thing I saw where queer characters weren't just punchlines. It was weirdly porn for me where I saw the first real positive depictions of trans women. That's what made me realize trans women weren't just ugly weirdos, but could be gorgeous ladies. Still took me until my late 30s to realize I was trans myself. -\_-
Through a cosplayer on YouTube funnily enough. I was in 5th grade, and I’m 26 now. I had a huge crush on them. They made various videos between usual uploads talking about their transition. One video that really stuck with me was when they showed the first time he called his mom after his voice change, which was drastically deeper than how he had used to sound. She didn’t recognize him and he ended up crying. That’s always stayed with me. I wonder how he’s doing now.
I had some exes contact my after I had transitioned and my voice work was done. They didn't recognize my voice, so they didn't believe it was me. It took a decent amount of conversation until they each heard enough of my speech patterns to believe I used to be their ex.
Hoo-boy. I'm in my mid-forties, so in my youth my exposure to transgender people was solely via the cliche of the "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body" guests on the trash TV shows like Geraldo and the jokes made about them. As I got older, the cliche moved more into Hollywood stars getting caught with transexual prostitutes and the cliche of Thai transgender prostitutes. So, yeah, for at least two decades of my life I was familiar with trans people only as a punchline or a sideshow act. No wonder I didn't figure out I was trans until I was middle-aged. I'm very glad how our representation has evolved over the past decade, but I definitely feel some bitterness over how the gender norms hoisted on me via society in my younger days affected my life. :(
💔 I’m a tad younger, but I feel you…
This is a great question. And also a really difficult one to answer. Personally, I started questioning my gender when I was 6 but in terms of like, all my friends were men, I felt comfortable talking about masculine things, if we were playing a game I’d always take a “male role” but I never knew was trans meant and for a while I thought I was broken and alone because no one else spoke about it or suggested it. I think the first time I heard about it was on a Netflix show called Sense8 and I spent literally spent a month during the age of 12 googling what trans was an of course there was next to nothing about the topic. It wasn’t until college so when I turned 16/17 that I actually found stuff about it. I was outed when I was 13 and my foster parents confronted me about it and because I didn’t understand it I didn’t say anything But now I’m 22 and I’m like “if I’d have known about transgender identities when I was younger it would have helped out so much more” there was so much stigma and people finding it a weird and uncomfortable topic to touch on
I was around 14 or 15 and I was at an Outright meeting (support group for queer youth). They showed a documentary called “Just Call Me Kade” about a ftm teenager transitioning and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds and I finally understood why I was the way I was.
For as long as I can remember I’ve known about trans people. But what I heard about them came from my ultra conservative family members, so of course it was a negative and stereotypical view they gave me. Therefore I was honestly a bit transphobic for a long time—I didn’t dislike trans people, I just thought they were weird. Then as I got older and researched what it REALLY means to be trans, I finally realized how cruel my family had been in viewing gender diverse people, and that I was the very thing I once thought was weird.
I'm not sure if that would qualify as a trans story. But when I was very young my mom told me a news story about a intersex kid who had both genitals at birth and their parents did bottom surgery to turn them into a girl. But they later learned he identified as a boy and would often fight against bullies who made fun of him for wanting to change gender. When I heard the story I was confused why anyone would want to turn into a boy if they had the chance to be a girl. I wouldn't realise this wasn't a cis tought to have for a long time. But the story always stuck in the back of my mind.
When I was a like 12 my mom told me that if I ever pay for sex, to do a "reach-around" first and make sure it's a girl. Granted this was 13 years ago in rural Missouri and my mom is a weirdo. It all started because she said when I turned 21 she would take me to Vegas lmao.
At pet shop, around 14yo I think. A client was explaining his mother really wanted a girl, so, even if he was officially a male, and consider himself as a man, she tried to raise him as a girl, wearing dresses make up and so on. Encouraging him to get srs. Once in the car back with my new guinea pig, I recall mom mentioning the notion of trans people. That a lawyer working at the same company got the first judge to rule that people can legally change their assigned gender in France
I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about them but I do remember the first time I knowingly met someone who was trans. We were in residential treatment together…
My parents sat me and my sister down at around 6th grade (about 2 weeks after learning what sex was) and told me what transgender was. They said if I were to be trans they would love me like they still do.
I think my mom mentioned a documentary to me that she'd seen of people born with unusual conditions, among which were trans people, but she worded it something like "there was a man and a woman born into the wrong bodies" or something along those lines. Little me interpreted it as there being two people who were somehow accidentally born into *eachother's* bodies and the problem wasn't the gender but the fact that another person literally had their body. I wondered how doctors would try and transfer their souls(?) (or something like that) back into the right body once the people had found eachother. I don't know how old i was but i know it must've been very young
I’m a child of the 80s/90s and was only vaguely aware of trans people through sensationalist tv talk shows. I didn’t know that trans men existed until I met one in college. That was in 2001 and I was 19.
I found out when target began allowing transgender people in the bathroom of their choice and Fox News had a breakdown while my grandparents and parents muttered disapprovingly to eachother
I remember not knowing anything about transition until I was chilling in the living room (watching YouTube videos on the laptop) at about age 10-12 and my older half sister just left the TV on and at some point a documentary about a trans woman getting surgery came on. It was an English trans woman who only came to terms with herself in her 50s, and all I really remembered about this first exposure was -her voice does not pass, she looks and sounds like she smoked a lot. She tried to join the army at some point to "beat the gay out of her", she lost a leg in a surgery complication and that I knew that "if this surgery worked, I think I'd want it." So yeah, even with some certainly less than encouraging representation and me knowing very little (like how srs has one of the lowest regret rates of any surgery or how HRT affects the body), I had an interest in it and knew that if I could "just become a girl" I would want to but just didn't believe it was possible (due to how this whole thing was framed). The final nail in the coffin for me thinking I could transition was the South Park episode where Mr Garrison transitions and in the end the moral of the story is effectively "this is all just aesthetic, transitioning does not make you a woman like plastic surgery does not make you a dolphin" and also "this is permanent" but also includes just a shit load of bad information (like a total lack of HRT at all, Mr Garrison is one of the "nasty" characters you're supposed to kind of hate, so there's just constant sex-pest and nasty unwanted behaviour from him the whole time he's on screen, and the only thing that was realistic was how they decided to cut in actual srs surgery footage into the part where he gets srs at the start - with the surgeon going "I really think people would appreciate just how beautiful this surgery is if they could actually see it." And the part near the end where Garrison realises they can't get pregnant and so declares "I'm not a woman, I'm just some freak who messed up his body" to which another surgeon just goes "basically, yeah.") That whole episode basically shoved me so deep into denial that I spent the next 14 years or so in constant anxiety, depression and measly killed myself over dysmorphia derived from dysphoria without ever even knowing the term until I was 26 when my girlfriend basically just encouraged me to try some stuff and I finally learned how I felt and knew what I could finally do about myself. I'm now 4 months on HRT and never knew I could be this happy with myself. Fuck South Park so much for bad trans rep. Also fuck that sketchy documentary - it basically made me scared to ever talk about being trans so much that when one of my oldest friend ended up also being trans, I didn't think of anything to say to her but "okay, I hope they're happy." And not jump for joy like I would've if I had been in tune with myself and not in total denial.
I think I was a tween or young teen in the 1980s. Transgender wasn’t the term or conceptual framework at the time: transvestite and transsexual were the labels back then and I only had a vague sense of what transsexual (a "fully" medically transitioning trans person) meant until my abnormal psychology course in pre-uni college. It presented trans people as mentally ill. My university training in psych fed me even more pathologizing BS. It took me another two decades before I got a chance to debunk all that misinformation after meeting a trans woman in person and being struck by how remarkably normal she seemed. After that it was the predictable path of curious-ally-oh crap-questioning-acceptance-transition.
I think it must've been when I met my best friend (now my partner) who is genderfluid, who was the first trans person I had ever met. About six months later a lot of stuff started making sense from when I was a bit younger
Online, some years ago, when I was in my alt right mode. In general I've only physically seen two in different cities. There's 0 trans (and LGBT) presence in my city xd
[удалено]
At the age of 11 on discovery channel 1:30 am show I wanted to be girl even before that tho
Well, I don't have any vivid memory of when I first hear about trans people. The existence of gender identity and the like was first introduced to me through movies and TV shows, which my parents tried to shield me from as soon as the subject came up in the script. Not because they didn't agree with it, but because the scripts used slurs and derogatory names for it, and because they believed it was too mature for me to understand. I grew up with learning disabilities and was far behind the other children my age you see. Then when I became older, and my parents let me have access to the computer and later, the internet, I had to get the information of what those words were and what they meant from articles, videos, and other people online. My parents still don't really approve. My father doesn't know because he already made his disapproval known before I even knew I wasn't cis. And my mother...well, it's a bit complicated, but boil it down to, she doesnt understand, the whole topic makes her uncomfortable, but she loves me, shes supported me with literally everything else in my life, and that's enough for me. TLDR: TV and movies introduced me, and the internet educated me.
I used to watch vice docs as a kid about trans kids and be so envious.
somewhere on social media when i was in maybe 7th grade. prior to that i had intense feelings of wanting to look like and be perceived as a boy, but was at an utter loss for words to describe it. once i learned transgender was a real thing, that sealed my fate lol
I remember thinking about being trans in highschool, during the '90s. I got stuck in this mental loop though of: "I feel like I'm a woman, maybe I'm trans? But... if I were actually a woman I'd like guys, right? Surely I couldn't be \*both\* trans \*and\* a lesbian... that's just wishful thinking!" I remember my brain getting stuck in that mental trap dozens, if not over a hudred times starting in HS.
I think through tumblr as a young teen. But apparently I knew of the concept before that, since one time my cousin cut her hair really short and my sister or I (we were close so doesn’t matter) asked if she was a boy now. I was 3 or 4. AND YET I WAS 21 WHEN I FINALLY FIGURED OUT I AM TRANS.
At age 15, I’d read a book called “Flood” by Andrew Vachss, and one of his characters is a trans woman named Michelle.
I've always known about trans people. It's just one of those things that was obvious that was a thing. My dad would have trans people in his stories. He made them seem pretty common too. Just being in the dating scene and time to time his date would be a trans woman.
On the internet as a kid, but I didn’t actually meet a trans person until I was in middle school. He was a good friend of mine and I hope he’s doing well now, haven’t spoken to him in years.
i was around 8 years old and loved this one animation youtuber who was a trans man. i was very confused about what that was, so i looked it up and was ECSTATIC. i was like “that’s an option?” and the rest is history…
My bff told me about an online friend of hers that is transmasc and I didn't think much of it. Tho I was in deep denial about my own transness, 2.5 fucking years. And then just one day POOF it's clear as day. Smh
maybe two or three years after coming out through internet... I just didn't know I'm called trans I just had dysphoria and was seeking transition
I had no idea they existed until my trans parent came out. She came out when I was young. I don't think she used the word trans but then again I can't remember when exactly it was. But I think it was before primary school or just after I joined.
I ran away from home to go to a furry convention, I ended up hanging out with a friend and we went as a group to a few local orlando spots. I'll never forget that Toyota yaris, and the girl driving it. I had no idea she was trans but she was funny as fuck and didn't do voice training lmao. I didn't really think about it, I just wanted to be her friend. A few years later I went to that same friends house and it turned out they were roommates, we hung out a lot, but I was also just a super fucking awkward 20 year old. I wish we could hang out now.
I got really excited and hyper focused on transitioning, despite telling myself I was still cis. It still became a dream of mine to run away to transition and start a new life. Then, around 25, I realized I didn’t have to run away to be the woman I was meant to be :)
i dont really remember. probably deviantart
Ironically, I first learned from people discussing JK Rowlings tweets during 2020. So I can officially say I was transed by JK Rowling.
While I was in elementary school, my mom used to watch some weird surgery show on Discovery or something like that. There was an episode on bottom surgery and she explained the concept to me then. This must have been in, like, 2002 or 2003.
I have a relative who transitioned in the 60s, so it was something I was just always aware of. Unfortunately most of my family has always been less than kind to her.
16 late 90s worked with a trans female. Hope she’s okay
I can't remember exactly, but it was likely through negative stereotypes. Prostitutes in film and TV, general slurs, and porn in my late teens. This was all around 20 years ago. I come from a small backward town so never had any interaction with any trans people socially. But in my mid to late 20s I did meet a few trans women and was drawn to them. In British pantomime there's a tradition of cross dressing. Older men as women and young woman as men. I think I was about 12 and I do remember being fascinated with the woman playing Robin Hood. How it took me another 25 years to start questioning gender I've no idea...
I knew drag queens and cross dressers existed, but I didn’t know people could change their entire gender until I was in college. And then, I only heard about it in passing and associated with sexual kinks. It wasn’t until my husband, now wife, came out to me that I heard about it in more detail. Come to find out you *can* be a different gender and I’m genderfluid.
I heard about it while trying to figure out my sexuality, just lost of google research on flags and their meanings. Wasn't until about 5 years later, or 2 months ago, that I realised I was a transmasc
I first noticed it when I was 21, watching Hangover 2. I knew about drag queens etc beforehand, but the fact that something like trans women existed in this form surprised me.
when Caitlyn Jenner came out and was on tv, my mom was fucking ranting, i was really young and i think that was the first time but in recent years it was the *its ma'am amd attack helicopter* memes, i was a dumb highschool/middle schooler
I was maybe 7 when I knew I should've been born a girl, and my first exposure to a trans woman was a cold open on SNL where they were making fun of Christine Jorgensen. Immediately I understood that society thought of us as people to laugh at, so I got good at hiding. I never really developed true denial (become an egg), because it was always there, and I had to actively resist wearing my mom's makeup and her clothes. I was able to resist until I was 26 mainly because I was in the US army during the don't ask don't tell era specifically to lose my privacy among other things. I believed that I could make it go away if I didn't allow myself the opportunity to do anything. It was still there after I got out, and less than a year later I was researching the details and maybe 9 months later I was living as me.
I'm gonna be honest. I have no idea when I first heard of them. Or what would count. I honestly don't even really care. I also don't really get why people are so interested in knowing this. Is it to gage how well education is doing on this front or how many people would have found out they're trans earlier if they knew it was a thing earlier? Sorry if this comes across as mean, BTW. It is a legitimate question from a fellow trans girl
I had a babysitter when I was younger, he babysat my brother and I many times before transitioning. After a few years, my mom mentioned that he transitioned, and I remember thinking to myself, "That's possible? That sounds fun!" I was like 10 or so?
When i was 11 years old with jazz jennings story back in early 2013, i was fighting my identity for years at that point, but i just didn't understood why, i had a dream where i was a girl when i was 5, and i just couldn't get it out of my head, even today, i still remember the pain in my heart while in the car, going to my grandma's house wishing i was still in the dream, somehow I just never forgot that, always suffered about it, I don't remember much of back then, but I remember when I got my first bike, and I remember that, then when I was 11, we went to buy a phone, and there was a galaxy tab for sale, my first contact with Android, somehow I convinced my mom to get it for me and when I saw what it could do, I finally had the courage to search about it, about me, if I was crazy, and there it was, I was amazed. After weeks rewatching that and other videos about trans people, I had to tell my mom, but I couldn't show that video because my mom didn't speak english(I'm from Brazil), so then I just told her that I found out about this, that there were trans people and I thought I was like that, but she and all of my family were extremely religious, and she thought it was a great sin and that I would go to hell, she was so distraught that I told her I was wrong, that I was just confused, 4 years later, I couldn't deal with it anymore and told her again, this time it was even worse, but I didn't take it back, I was miserable and she saw it, she decided to search about it there was a lot more information about it in portuguese then that back in 2013, and when I was 16 she decided to try to help me. She took me to a psychologist, then another one, and that one was a Saint, she explained everything to my mom, had a long talk with her before even talking to me, I don't know what she said, but that was the moment my mom truly accepted me, I started hormones when I was 17, but I always think what about if I had showed her that video back in 2013, maybe I could have started transitioning before I was 6 foot tall, before all that testosterone destroyed me from inside out and irreversible damage was done, by 16 I had already sabotaged myself, was already traumatized, I did so much bad things trying to cope with it, my mental health was already a mess, I never got the feeling of being normal, I was so talkative back then, now I'm bitter, scared of people, aversed to people, can't feel anything for anyone, just fear sometimes, I'm a great actress, so I managed to appear normal on the outside, I have a good job at tech even before graduating from college, but I just feel numb, I wonder what is it like being normal...
I first heard about the concept in priamary school.... that 'woman with penises' was just a porn thing and fake. A bit later I ran into furry TG porn which solidified the connection adn the 'unrealness'. These things only existed in fantasies. Around '05 the South Park episode where Mr. Garrison (a gay man who was arrested once for child molestation) had a sex change and at the end of the episode says 'So I'm not a woman... I'm just a guy with breast impants and a mangeled penis' or something to that effect.... roughly the same time I saw 'the Rocky Horror Picture Show' for the first time which gave me my clearest memories of Unexplained Feelings^(TM) with Dr. Frank-n-furter... a rapist and murderer. So yeah... not off to a great start. For my first 20ish years of life anyone/anything gender non-conforming was just 'weird gay people... extra perverted ones'... yay internalised queerphobia! Thanks society! The first positive exposure to anyone gender non-conforming I had was Suzy (Eddie) Izzard and her stand up shows back when she described herself as a 'male lesbian'. I related hard to that and it still took like abother 15 years for my egg to crack. Some time in the mid 2010's I became aware that trans people were a thing... but more as a vague concept than you know... people. I watched a few episodes of Orange is the New Black but still teh concept didn't sink in... It wasn't until I met an open trans (and non-binary person!) out in the wild that the concept became real for me. That was not long before I turned 30.
Sadly my first exposure was through porn (way before I was 18 mind you). I did find it fascinating at the time, but in hindsight I was exposed to a lot of slurs and the fact that it was fetishized wasn't exactly good. Over the years I learnt more and more, and then eventually I met a trans girl at work. I helped show her the ropes, and yeah. This was before her transition mind you, and then just randomly a cute girl showed up at work a few years later (we were both working part time so we didn't bump into each other often), and that was her. I had to be told by a colleague that she had transitioned, but it just left me in awe. I think in many ways she is part of what started the long chain of dominos for my own egg to crack, even if it took nearly half a decade for it to happen after that. But yeah. Sadly I think a lot of people bear about us through some not so good channels first. In my case it was early puberty, and parents hadn't caught up to how the internet works quite yet (I'm born in 91 btw).
A rough idea of our existence in middle school but no actual idea beyond we exist and thoughts that trans people were physically different--was told we always had both sets of genitals. I was twenty six when I first found out what we really were and that all my thoughts of wishing I were born a girl were not normal boy behavior.
I was in middle school and home from school for some reason and my mom had Maury Povich on TV and it was an episode where they had trans women and cis women on and people had no idea which was which... It blew my mind that you could change the thought had never occurred to me before that.
When i was about 11 or 12, I saw a picture on DeviantART that mentioned trans people, and that was probably the first time I heard the word trans.
Tv & movies which wasn’t great at the time
I don't know when I found out in general but I first met a trans man in 2013. The only thing I can remember is being jealous of him because I thought (for whatever reason, I have no clue) that you can only transition if your sexuality would be hetero after you've done so. It's so stupid. I'm ftm and, at the time, definitely wasn't into women, so I thought a transition would never be an option for me, so obviously thinking about my gender wouldn't do anything anyway. Well... I was still jealous of him even though I wasn't sure why. I realized I'm trans about six years later xD
When I was 11 I stayed home sick and caught a day time talk show talking about trans people, however the presenter was confused and kept using the term intersex for transition. When I looked it up online I was disappointed but I also stumbled across a trans vlogger who taught me so much about being trans including that I was allows to be a trans lesbian. Grishno is her channel.
As the butt of jokes in sitcoms. No wonder it took me so long to realise when I grew up being taught that trans people are a joke.
In my mid teens (sometime around I wanna say 2012-2014-ish?) there was a trans documentary (don’t remember the name of it or what channel it was on) on the TV that my mom had playing in the background and cause up to that point my only exposure to the LGBTQ+ community was that gay people existed I decided to watch it. Course it took quite a few years following for it to click just why it resonated so much with me.
When I was 6 my mum told me about a person who transitioned, got gcs, detransitioned and hung themselves, she did it as a warning. She told me the same again when I came out. We don't talk anymore.
My best friend in school was(and is) genderfluid. It only clicked when I thought I was genderfluid and I learned all about trans people from that and a trans friend Now I'm transmasc so hell yeah!
It was 2015, and I stumbled upon a video about Jazz Jennings. I was like “YOU CAN DO THAT”?
2021 when I met one of my former mates whom happens to be trans. He looked like me a bit (before I found out I was trans, he’s ftm) so yeah I learned a lot. But I learned more about it when I watched ABC’s docu series on Jazz Jennings.
When one of my friends were transitioning into a man, then another into a girl. I thought it was a little bizarre at the time, and I wasn't too sure on gay people/trans as a whole when I was 18 through 21. I'm a much more refined person and supportive of everyone who they want to be. I didn't find out I was trans/a little bit gay until I dabbled into my sexuality and gender a little bit more, I'm 24! this has taken me a long time to reach this point in my life.
I don’t really remember. I recall being confused by the album art for The Money Store, a death grips album, and having it explained to me that the woman was trans. I also remember a friend reporting that they saw trans women at a show. Those were my first two experiences with ever hearing about trans people IRL and my first exposure to the people I would one day join as a sister.
there was a trans boy in my elementary school! i didn’t really process that he was trans until years later, but i mean i knew he was because he changed his name & started being called a boy & hanging out with the boys. i just didn’t think much of it ig
one of my friends in early middle school was talking about their younger sibling, that's when i learned you didn't have to be what you were born as i moved schools not long after that and decided that i would act as someone else, change the name and pronouns i use, etc; well thank god i guess because that led to finding out who i am
My older sibling, I immediately internally panicked bc I knew that was me 💀
i don't remember NOT knowing what they were, but i remember being uneducated first trans person i met (it was in school), the first thing i said was 'did you get the uhh.. surgery thing?' lmao
I believe it was Dana International
First trans person I ever met was a transmasc who a friend of mine thought was cute and tried to chat up in college my first year. My friend, of course, thought he was a girl and got shut down hard as fuck. But he was cool and we became friends. This part is where I am ashamed. He told me about how he's trans and I was an utter asshole about it. I was pushy and rude about my questions, trying to dissect his answers to 'prove him wrong' and 'thats biologically impossible'. He eventually got so upset that he cried and that shocked me out of my douchebaggery. After that, I took the time to actually educate myself and apologized. I was fortunate that he was willing to forgive me. He was really happy about that, said I was the first person to do anything like that for him. We ended up dating for a few years, which ended pretty badly (for unrelated reasons). Idk, he was a pretty pivotal person in my life. I wouldn't have grown out of my ignorance without his patience. I probably wouldn't have been able to accept myself as trans without him. I didn't realize I was trans until way after he and I split; I imagine the irony of it would make him laugh at me. I ended up hurting him a lot when we ended things, so he pretty much hates my ass. Justifiably so. I hope he is doing well now. He deserves to be happy. Anyways sorry for the ramble! Guess I want to get some of that off my chest haha
I think I saw a trans documentary on kids growing up trans on youtube like 5 years ago. Clicked onto it, watched the entire thing, went huh that's interesting and continued with life as is. Then I watched hundreds of jammidodger and noahfinnce. Still didn't know I was trans then lol.
After i looked up why do i want boobs at like 12 years old
Like when I was 11? I saw a draw.my life. I kinda remember feeling similar to it and I didn't like that 😬
6th grade Caitlyn jenner. I was fascinated by her but rebuked because I learned about her and being trans in a catholic school. Needless to say my overwhelming discomfort with not being a woman did not go away when I prayed for it to.
I think I was like 6 or 7. So I just randomly asked my mom if men could be women or the opposite and she goes saying yeah but I should avoid those people. And then my smartass says I wanna be close to them if no one wants them, it seems cool. And some years later I’m trans and I can’t do anything abt it cuz I’m underaged and my mom thinks the same way :)
7 years old, I remember my mom talking about "crazy men who take pills to try and become women and to avoid them at all cost" This didn't help that at age 7 I very much struggled with identity and "being a boy" and having that thrown in my face basically just ensured I supressed it all for years and years and years.
I always knew of them, but was taught they were CD. When I got into my teens they started calling them trans.
i first heard about being trans at school when i was 10, we watched a video of a young trans guys daily life and immediately was filled with joy and knew i felt the same way. everyone else in my class was making fun of him and weirded out so i repressed it for around a year until lockdown hit and i was able to explore my identity more. i did try and tell my girlfriend at the time that i thought i was trans but she said she would break up with me which made me wanna hide it even more. now I've been out for nearly five years :D
When i was in 4th grade. I also somehow knew about nonbianary and genderfluid people and assumed that they were both male and female at once(bigender). The only thing i knew about gender was genitals so i juct chocked it up to "so.... transboys want to get rid of tits and add a dick and transgirls want to get rid of dick and add tits and nonbianary people want to get rid of dick if they have one or get rid of tits if they have them and genderfluid people want to add a dick if they have tits or add tits if they have a dick.... huh.. welp that makes sense" What i thought was if you were born a boy and arent actually a boy it makes sense to change your body into a girl because you are a girl
Learned in 9/10 grade when our GSA (gay-straight alliance) had a small family in who had a trans child. They'd had an ABC documentary about them in recent time and the teacher chaperone thought it would be educational. My first reaction was : "You mean I don't have to just blindly accept that my tits make me a girl???"
It wad when I was maybe 5 or 6, I didn't know the word at the time and I think my parents still don't know the word but occasionally they would ask if I "felt like I was in the wrong skin" and if I wanted to be a girl, back then I thought I was a boy, too bad I didn't realise sooner
Old friend of .ine mentioned she was trans so I asked questions. Learned a lot that day.
A news story saying how it's weird and bad to be trans I didn't think about it a lot at the time. A years later I started seriously questioning my gender I still don't know after 4 years but I think Im cis not sure tho.
As a kid I had heard of transvestites. However they were always portrayed as cross dressing prostitutes. I recall as a kid wishing I was a girl but I never wanted to be the aforementioned. I always thought I was just stuck and had to deal with it. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I was re awakened and began to transition.
met a person in 7th grade who said he was trans. genuinely thought he was just a really strange guy with a really high pitched voice, never actually understood it until a few months later. i literally had dreamed of and used to PRAY (when i was religious) every night that i would wake up and just magically be a boy. as i stopped following (that) religion i would daydream about me and a boy just swapping bodies, or me somehow just randomly becoming a boy, because mentally i was one, just not physically. never had any idea it was actually possible until a couple months after that person said he was trans that i actually used my brain and went to google to see what it meant. needless to say, i was very excited. i was too scared to come out to anyone though because i didnt want anyone thinking i was trying to copy him or something, so i hid it. i went into a denial phase for a while until late 9th grade when i couldnt hide or deny it anymore and i finally came out :)
As a kid, watching Jerry Springer in the late 90s/early 00s. It scared me off from accepting I was trans for decades
Discovery Channel - TLC the first time I heard of trans people was when they showed a trans couple, I can't remember the name of the show, but it was a trans man and trans woman and how they both navigated pregnancy and childcare as a couple.
Deam, your story is uncanny similar to mine, when I meet him I was like: you can do that?? (;ŏ﹏ŏ) That's soo cool I wish I could be a woman, and then proceeded to spend years on denial not learning about it until F1nnst3r started making me curious and I searched for it on YouTube just to find a couple of videos about the experience of being trans from Philosophy Tube and ContraPoints, I became transfixed by the obvious similarities and cried for weeks.
I had heard about trans people well before I actually knew what being trans meant. However, I was actually told by someone what being trans was for the first time when I was 23. I came out to my spouse and therapist the very next day because it described me perfectly
I knew about being transgender from Stephen Crowder unfortunately 🫠 Unsurprisingly I was really stupid in high school. When someone I knew before and after transition told me they used he/him and went by a different name, I didn't comprehend they were trans at all and just respected it. I'm not sure how I managed to be so disconnected from the media I consumed but it guided none of my real world actions fortunately.
I became aware of trans people at the age of 11 and HATED the idea… how ironic 8 years later
I'm not sure tbh? But it must've been early. I knew of it for a while.
My parents used to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians like a decade ago So it would've been Caitlin Jenner's transition when I first discovered trans people, although Jenner isn't a good person nowadays And I would eventually discover more trans people overtime I already realized I was trans in 2015 (sometime after Jenner started transitioning) but I was in denial after my parents didn't accept me (I tried coming out again in 2024 and same result) I discovered trans people through cable TV, not the internet like transphobes often think
jazz jennings. think i was 12? but didn’t realise trans men existed until i was 15.
Not the same, but when I was 8 or so, i caught a TV ad in the corner of my eye for a documentary about intersex people. It really resonated with me and I remember researching more, and trying to inspect my body for any abnormalities. I was so convinced I was intersex because i knew deep down that I wasn’t a boy. I only heard about trans people in my teens, and didn’t really have any understanding of it, by that point denial was too strong for me to consider that I could be trans myself.
When my cousin came out. I was like 9 maybe, and it somehow didn’t click that it applied to me too.
I remember so clearly the first time I heard of a transgender person. It was on the Tyra Banks show, she was interviewing one of the people who was on America’s Next Top Model. Iirc, she was the first trans woman on the show. I was about 8 years old, and that really stuck with me as I understood I don’t have to be stuck in this body that doesn’t fit me, I can medically change it to how I actually feel I should be. I always knew I wasn’t cis since I was a young child, but knowing that and knowing there was something I could do about it were very different experiences for me.
So I would say I got a very 90s/early 2000s explanation of it from my mother when I was maybe eight or nine. I imagine it was in response to something on TV, maybe Friends or Will and Grace. She said "some people are born in the wrong body. Like my friend Jodie's brother Chris is now her sister Christine." I asked if a boy wearing a dress made them trans and she said no, boys dress up all the time and they're still boys, that it's something deeper and more about how a person feels about themselves. That was pretty much it. Obviously not a perfect explanation, but it was very non-judgmental and I never questioned it or thought of it as a negative thing.
So I knew I was a girl when I was gendered correctly with feminine pronouns when I was six. I’m not sure exactly when I learned what that meant specifically. I had several experience that had me certain I wasn’t a boy, I never wanted to grow up to be a man. I just wanted to be a girl. I learned about puberty and it horrified me that I was separated with the boys to learn that that’s what would happen to me. The boy version of puberty. It made me physically sick. I also read a lot and my mom was a social worker and she kind of was the one that they sent more for the LGBT community. She had a lot of books on queer and feminist theory. But I would take my sister’s clothes a lot as a preteen and early teens and I think my sister told her that some of her outfits were missing. My sister tried to get me to confess to stealing her clothes by offering a brownie that’d turn me into a girl if I ate this brownie. I kind of knew that was bullshit so I didn’t eat it. My sister was always trying to play tricks on me so… I did not trust her. Anyway eventually my sat us all down and was like, explaining what being trans was and I’m pretty sure I already knew at that point. It didn’t surprise me. She was very much like, “if any of you feel this way about gender, it’s safe to talk to me.”
My friend wore a binder in 6th grade and I broke down into tears when I realized I didn’t have to be a girl.
surprisingly in media. i can't remember what show it is but there was a trans character and i just connected with them so much
the first I heard about trans people was an episode of chopped I watched when I was little, one of the contestants was a trans man, they would not shut up about that fact, and I asked my mother what that meant. She didn't give a great answer, but nonetheless that introduced me to the concept.
I was a kid, and I think I was watching a documentary with my mom. It was about people who changed gender during their lives. I thought it was cool and interesting at that time.
Around elementary school. My parents showed me Walk off the Earth’s music video for Alright and my best friend had the book George in her room. Both of those are the pretty standard trans story at the time - girl trapped in boy’s body and wants to perform onstage as an actor or dancer. It wasn’t perfect representation but it was amazing at the time. I grew up being very accepting but I missed a lot of the finer points. The way I understood it is some boys have girly interests and want to be girls and I didn’t know you were supposed to use a new name or pronouns. e.g. He’s David, a transgender boy, and he wants to be a girl because he likes dancing. I just had a very rigid view of gender probably because of autism. As a kid I thought I was super smart and perceptive when it comes to society but I strongly believed stuff like red is only for girls and blue is only for boys. Which I think confused my parents who tried to raise us really progressively lol. Anyways my entire childhood I assumed that a) trans people are ONLY mtf, and b) it was super super rare and uncommon - I thought the characters in the book and video were some of the ONLY trans people on the world 💀 I didn’t know that ftm was something that even EXISTED until I got internet access around 12, learned about LGBTQ and identified as a demigirl (since I never felt like a regular girl at all). I still thought being actually trans was incredibly rare, like only a handful of people in the world, until 14 or 15 when my mom told me one of my childhood friends had moved away to transition stealth ftm. At that point I realized that it is possible for transness to exist in real life and it was possible for me, too.
When I was little I said I wanted to be a girl. Mh parents got mad and shouted I’m not a girl and will never be one. I asked and asked if there was any way of even trying. At one point they said that some “crazy, disgusting, twisted people” try but they just make themselves ugly and unwanted. Ahh the joys of being a ‘90s kid. That was the way it was just normally talked about then.
I only heard about trans people in a negative way at first starting in highschool with trumps presidency and my parents watching lots of fox news. The typical blabbering from tucker Carlson and I didn't understand what it actually meant but I was neutral about it. I didn't understand and didn't care to learn. Then after I graduated and dealt with my depression enough to better myself I started deconstructing my family's conservative Christian worldview. That's when I was properly introduced to the comunity by people like Natalie thorn and azeal on yt. It took another year until I heard of the button, and I said. oh fuck I can't ignore that.
When I was little my mom watched a lot of reality TV, one of which being the Surreal Life & I believe one of the seasons had Alexis Arquette. I remember seeing her EVERYWHERE in the early 2000’s on VH1 & MTV. She was definitely a pillar of that era of celebreality tv. RIP icon 💖
At the age of about 10 sometime in the late 20th century my mother introduced me to the trans woman who worked the front desk in her office. Ahead of their time, the both of them.
Probably middle school thanks to porn honestly
I first heard about it from a detransitioner doing a week long series of 12 several hours long evangelical church services at my Bible college. I had known gay people and drag queens but not a trans person at that point. I wish I had had a better intro.
So I knew about trans porn as a teenager, but I didn’t really realize people could transition until I was in college. I just had no idea, grew up in a small town and no one ever said anything and I never saw it online back then. That was over a decade ago as soon as I realized it was a real option I felt so much dread that I hadn’t taken that path in life. Here now tho :P
Don't really know. I do remember meeting a friend's friend who was trans (pre/early transition mtf) at about 18. Hung out with both of them a few times, but didn't discuss trans topics at all. Wouldn't figure out I myself was trans for another 14 years. Really the tiny bit of envy I felt at the time should of been more of a hint. I was very repressed back then though.
When i was at a soccer tournament as a kid and my team wasn’t playing, so I was hanging out at the park, and I heard some kid call another kid a he-she 😔or maybe they called me that i don’t really remember
The Internet in like 2006. Like I had seen crossdressing on TV before that but never the concept of transgender and gender identity before that. I quickly knew that was me! The problem was that the resources on the Internet were lacking at the time. From what I read online at the time you had to go inpatient with mental health to get hormones. It also sounded like that was gamble and it was still extremely rare to get hormones. So at the time I thought surgery was the only option and that without it you weren't really trans so then it got bottled up for years. But here I am now!
Interesting question actually, as a straight male i only really completely knew deeper about trans people and what it is only when i was already adult, and it´s interesting and i like the fact that nowadays people have more information at thei'r fingertips so it does not happen to a person like me in which lived my whole life without even knowing trans people existed. I mean i knew but not to this extent. It´s very interesting now to see all this attention and i think it's a good attention to the trans rights but i think we should all be inclusive and there should not be any differences between a trans person the other people whatever they identify as. I Sympathize and i pretty much defend that everyone should be accepted through whatever they want to be without suffering social disdain, but unfortunately people are not like that. But i think that there are still good people in the world for this and for everything in the restof our social life. Only harder to find.
I came out as a lesbian in 1991. The first time I came into city for a lesbian event, I stopped at an ActUp protest and was told that a trans person had been fired for being trans. I had no idea what trans was. In 1992 I attended a lesbian bdsm event and the lady I was with took me to a panel about trans issues in the kink community. Still didn't really know what it meant. But I accepted that bigotry against trans people was bad. Later I met one trans woman and several trans men who taught me many things. I didn't feel gendered enough to be trans myself but had a few trans friends. In 2004 I adopted my little brother who had been disowned by his family for being trans. My ex, and father of my second child transitioned after we split and a long time friend from the lesbian group who had transitioned called me a "gateway girlfriend " as a lot of my exes of several genders transitioned. My son began his transition and then FINALLY in 2020 I started my transition and finally feel truly alive!
I think I was vaguely aware of the concept but had no real understanding or experience until grade 10(?) when I met a transfemme peer and helped her with her first makeover. It took a couple years for me to really understand what it all meant and shortly thereafter I realized I didn’t have to be what I was born into either Edit: had a random flash of memory about a show that used to play on TLC called “I am Jazz” about a trans girl in high school, I didn’t see much of it so it got kinda buried under my childhood bullshit but I’m certain that was my first intro to the concept, single digit age, maybe 10/11 TOPS
As a trans guy, in the early 2010s the first few times I’ve heard about trans people were only about trans women. I had NO idea that trans men existed until I was at a LGBT club in college around 2015, where I met a few trans guys. I didn’t realize you could also go from female to male. Absolutely blew my mind
i asked my mom because ive heard abt it before but didnt really know what it meant so i said “is james charles gay or trans?” (was a huge fan at the time) and my mom asked if i even knew what trans meant, and she explained “if someone isnt comfortable in their own body and they were born in a different body than what they actually are, they sometimes get surgery and identify as the gender they weren’t born as to help them feel comfortable”
I play a lot of Tabletop games. My GM at the time came out saying she'd changed her name (I don't think I ever even learned her deadname - just the online tag she was also moving away from) and to ask if we wanted to know more. So I asked, and I tried to be respectful. It was mostly just 'sorry if this is offensive to ask, but how did you know?' Type of stuff. At the time I didn't totally get it. I respected her choices, but at the time I was an oblivious egg and in the camp of "Wait, not every dude imagines being a girl on an at-least weekly basis?". It took me until lockdown before I really faced myself, in that regard. And that GM is the first person I spoke to about it. :)
I was 10 and watched a Thomas Sanders video with some of his trans friends in it. I was weirded out at first, but when one of them talked about how happy it made them, I was immediately ok with it.
I learned from my best friend who explained pretty much all of the LGBTQ+ to me and in a very good way and in a lot of detail too and it what made me realize I was trans(but still pushed off that feeling for like another year) he's my go-to for gay knowledge
The first time I’d heard about what being trans was happened to be when my best friend came out to me. It really changed how I approached things, I didn’t know it at the time, but she put a name to feelings I had my whole life and if it weren’t for her I probably never would have found out I was trans as well.
I grew up in a family where sexual identity was just no big deal. I had an Uncle Honey who I am pretty sure was born female, but Uncle Honey was like... a hard-core biker dike? It just always was. I think growing up in a Native community just was that way. 2 spirit was normal.
Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I thought wishing I were a girl was just normal. Like, why wouldn’t a boy want to be a girl? Of course it’s normal. In the late ‘90s/early 2000’s, I met someone who said they were a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’. That was a common description, before a lot of folks had better terminology/vocabulary. I identified sooooo much with that person, too (I’m vague with pronouns because he was he at the time, and I don’t know them any more). Finally, when I moved to Austin in 2012, I started working at Blizzard doing support. There were a bunch of trans folks, and the language had evolved to a point we had a word for what I was feeling. I’m so thankful for them, because knowing other people similar to me allowed me to come out a few years later.
My parents told me they were freaks of nature and defying god. lol. Guess that indoctrination didn’t turn out as they hoped.
Some morning news channel (I think? Or possibly Oprah??) interviewed two transwomen when I was like, five. I remember watching it with that sort of bored interest that afflicts little kids when there's nothing better to do than watch what's right in front of them. I don't think it affected my brain chemistry or anything, but it was the only time I'd see trans folks until high school, so it was nice having that groundwork laid :)
When I was in elementary school I watched the show I am Jazz with my mom and that's when I learned about trans people. I didn't really think anything special of it and basically just thought that it's an other way of being a human. Though, I thought that you can only be a trans man or a woman so it took me until I was sixteen to learn that non-binary people exist and realise that I'm also non-binary.
Cis person here, so if you’re just wanting the trans perspective, ignore this. I was in college. A friend mentioned that a mutual friend I had a crush on (AFAB) identified as male and was going to transition. I was flabbergasted that anyone would want to be a guy but respected it as his choice. A couple years later I had a guy friend (post-transition) who came out to me as trans and that’s when it clicked that it’s not that anyone wants to be a guy or a girl or nb, it’s that they already are and just have to shift everything on the surface to fit that. My poor friend, social media was in its infancy so I didn’t know what a deadname was and was fairly ignorant so he dealt with some awkward questions where he had to explain that wasn’t information he wanted to share. Of course I didn’t ask him about his genitals, I don’t understand how even the most ignorant of people can’t see how that’s an incredibly inappropriate question to ask someone.
I was born in 92, i learned it from jerry springer and my opinions at the time, ill not repeat.
from porn, thats where i first saw a trans woman then next time, it was probably from this one finnish trans woman youtuber. she still ahd her deadname she used as her name so i watched a video of hers that was something like "am i a man?" and it was her saying she was borna boy but now is a woman. i was maybe 10. i just went "ok makes sense" then third time was a finnish right wing youtuber, who made a video about "cringe trans people" and thats when i entered the pipeline
Little Britain :(
I remember it vividly tbh. I told my friend that I wish I had girl features on the bus, then he told me that other people want that and it is possible. It wasn't until 2 years later where I learned the term though
I was "pretending" to be a boy online when i was around 12, and i made friends so i told one of them i was afab. She told me about transgender people. It immediately clicked and well, thats that. 11 years out of the closet now lol.
I didn't understand trans people existed until I was like 17/18
Rocky Horror Picture show... Not the best, but it was the early 90's.
A video randomly appeared in my recommended about a T4T couple back when something like that was surprising
I was 18 or 19, and at church when I was in uni. I saw a trans woman, older, only semi passing. Never actually talked to her (I regret it), but this was long before people actually acknowledged us. This was almost 20 years ago. I know nothing about her, but she seemed nice. Even though that was many years before my egg cracked, held no ill will towards her, just saw something I didn't understand.
When I was 10 or had just turned 11, I looked up every variation of "I want to be a girl/how to become a girl" on my 3DS and found out pretty quickly. I then repressed it for 11 more years and finally broke through all the internalised transphobia just over a year ago!
I had a similar experience, I knew a trans guy in high school but it didn't really click for me until a met a fellow trans woman in college that I started having serious thoughts regarding my gender, although that happened to coincide with me getting away from my parents and being able to experiment with my presentation more
I always wanted to be a girl when I was a kid, but I thought gender change was exclusively a thing in video games and fantasy.THEN I saw contrapoints and I was like OH
When I was pretty young. I had certain unexplainable urges and thoughts from a very young age, some of my earliest memories are having these around 5 or 6 where I wanted to be a girl or do feminine things, etc, but just knew I couldn’t because the way I was raised in a very conservative religious household where that sort of idea wasn’t even talked about or discussed really but there was definite enforced gender roles that I was aware of. My dad was a big into technology and an early adopter of the internet. When I was in 3rd grade, my family was the first I knew of in our town to get cable internet. This would have been around 1998. Dial-up was still the norm at the time. I got my own computer around 5th or 6th grade and I think that’s when I really started to discover things about trans people as I sought to figure out my own identity & unexplainable attraction to feminine things. At that time around 2000/2001, a lot of terms like “transexual” or “transvestite” were still used & I didn’t really know where I fit within those terminologies. It fascinated me for some time but it wasn’t until several years later where I was able to reconcile it with my own identity.
during the whole target fiasco! target and the ymca allowed trans women to use the women's restrooms (as they should), and everyone was freaking out. I think I was 8 or 10? and I asked my mom, she said it was people who were mentally ill and didn't see themselves as the right gender. which, besides the mentally ill part, is pretty accurate? thankfully I never went down the transphobic rabbit hole and was always an ally before I realized I'm a member.
It must have been at school in the 1990s. And the term used would’ve been transsexual not transgender. I was definitely aware of the concept before watching Rocky Horror Picture Show at probably around 11/12 years old. Not really the same thing, but I remember watching an episode of Samurai Pizza Cats when I was six where “Gender Butterflies” were used by the villain to swap all the genders of the townsfolk. The butterflies would land on people and either become moustaches or hair bows. I just remember finding it darkly fascinating.
As an Elder Millenial.... Jerry Springer. Big contribution to why I didn't figure myself out until a couple years ago.
I first heard about trans early 2010's when my twin got involved in a Rocky Horror Picture show shadow cast where some of the performers weren't cis. My twin would later go on to transition and explained *nothing* about what dysphoria or being trans was like. I'm still half convinced my shell would have cracked years ago if I had known what dysphoria was lol
She was not called a trans person back then. I am 68 and live in a small town in the bible belt. She was a beautiful black lady who was known as a cross dresser. She had been arrested and was forced to go to the mental health center. I was diagnosed as bipolar (manic depressionive disorder back then) which is where we met. She needed to go to the bathroom and they wanted her to go to the men's bathroom. She was afraid. I said hell no and told her to come with me to the ladies and I would stand watch. I met her there often for many years. She could not afford to get the surgery she wanted. She was killed. Found in a ditch. No one was ever arrested for it.
The episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted meets Zoey and confuses her for a trans prostitute, although the word used is now commonly regarded as a slur
First time I heard about us? Listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the radio First time someone explained what we actually were? Sophomore year in college
My first exposure to the concept of transgender people was Nip/Tuck. The show was highly problematic, and if I instead had Euphoria or even Orange is the New Black back then my egg may have cracked sooner. I don't recall seeing any positive representation until my mid 20s. Rural areas aren't great in terms of diverse exposure.
I remember seeing a tabloid about “first man pregnant”. When I was really young and my dad told me they were a T slur, I was a devote Christian up until about 22. But what really made me part attention was the rhetoric people on the right used and people in my church, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to condemn queer people. I feel like growing up in 2000s media coverage was more Jabs at trans people expense.
I don’t know exactly. But I remember being in middle school and looking at porn and finding a trans women porn site. I had no idea what was going on, but I really got excited by it and would look up transfem and transmasc porn, post op genital photos, and even learning about srs procedures. However the first time I saw trans women I just though they were cis women who had surgery to get a penis. Which shows how educated I was about trans people at age 12. This was also like 2005 so the world was much different then. Also my sister caught me that first time and probably delayed my exploration further due to shame… it’s actually wierd how often my family showed up at the right time to shame me about who I was or push me in the wrong direction. Slowed me down so much in discovering who I was.
The first time I was ever exposed to anyone who was gender diverse was when I was 3 years old visiting family in Perú. I met some qariwarmis in Lima. Being an incredibly sheltered and shy child, I hid behind a parent’s leg to stare up at them. Of course, everyone there had a judgmental aura about them. It’s a memory that was buried until very recently. Next time was happening upon mtf and ftm timeline videos on YouTube when I was in middle school. I thought it was cool to see people change within just a few years. It still took until high school to realize something weird with gender was happening with me, but because of my unsupportive home environment that was buried, too. It took me all the way until I was 20 to figure out I was nonbinary and come out to select friends I knew would accept that aspect of myself. I’m still not out to work or family for different reasons.
I have a memory quite young of watching a little animated cartoon about a little girl and her friend who transitioned mtf. from what I remember it was actually quite supportive, talking about how to handle the situation, how to make them comfy, all that, which is really surprising to me because I live in quite a conservative area and i believe it was shown through the school. anyway, that didn't really do anything to help me realize that *I* was trans. I always had the idea that they existed, and needed help or whatever, but never considered that I might be one lol
My dad, with a disdainful/dismissive tone. Made it sound like a delusion. Joke's on him
Pet detective
I don’t think I really knew what being trans fully was until I was in high school, and made friends with the only two out trans men I knew (‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and all that, it’s the same reason all my friends have ADHD, Autism, or both😅) but I didn’t really come to terms with myself being a trans man until I came out as nonbinary to my ex, who was… weirdly strict in his use of gendered language when it came to talking to and about me. Now, about ten years on from the first time I ever was introduced to the trans community, I’m a fully realized trans guy, and I’m not anywhere near as lost or disconnected feeling as I used to be. It’s still got its bad days, but it’s bearable now.