When you are ready.

Someone wrote…

Gender has always been a clear cut thing for me being raised in a family and community that said you are born a girl or a boy. At age twenty-two I’m really starting to question who I am, which seems pretty late. I don’t think I’ve been embracing my gender and I wonder if that’s why I feel so unbalanced. I think gender isn’t something that should be chosen for you. You should choose it yourself when you are ready.

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?


Posted by on March 28th, 2011 at 08:00 am

Category: your voice 8 comments »

8 Responses to “When you are ready.”

  1. freaxy

    I’m 25 and have been in transition for a little over 6 months. I grew up in a fairly similar situation as well so I can relate. It may seem like it’s “late” to start understanding your own gender, but I assure you it’s “better late than never.”

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  2. TomboySissie

    I’m 23, and have only just discovered my gender. Most of my life I was a boy who wanted to be a girl, but always felt that both were slightly ‘wrong’. It was only a few months ago that I really started thinking about alternatives to the binary, and found my place in the spectrum.

    All you can really is be who you are, do what feels right; for some people it might take a while to cut through the haze and fear, and find themselves.

    You have to remember, also, that people are taught from childhood that there are boys and girls; boys do this, girls do that. If you spend your entire life thinking that, it’s a bit hard to break out of the mould. When/If you have children, you can let them choose their role for themselves, because you know that there is more than black and white, but most of the people around you have never questioned their gender, and they’ve never needed to think otherwise.

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  3. Jessica

    I am an old dinosaur who was 25+ before any of you (original post and replies above) were born. I wish I had found the trans-ness of my being earlier. It would have helped me immensely and prevented me from being hurtful and harmful to others for so many years.

    If I could go back in time and be transgender in 1970, would I? Honestly, I think I lacked the emotional maturity, but it might have been a good idea nevertheless.

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  4. Meike

    I’m 21 and feeling similarly. I keep hearing or reading about people who realize who they are at 15, 16, 17, and are transitioning by college. I’m going to be a senior and I’m still not fully sure of who I am. I’m hoping by grad school I’ll have it figured out, but throughout all of this I’ve learned that there really is no one way of doing things. People come into this place at all ages, and just because some people transition earlier, or later, or even never, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Just let life take its course at the pace it wants to go at. There’s no point in rushing things, just be who you want to be and that’s all anyone should really ask of you.

    That being said, I feel that everyone should grow up with the option of how they want to identify. I think we impose our own stereotypes of gender and binarism at far too early an age.

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  5. Lane

    I’ve always wondered what it means exactly to realize you are trans. I first noticed clear-cut, there is something going on here feelings when I was ten and my breasts started growing. I assumed it was normal to hate your breasts and that I was just a tomboy until I was about fourteen and it sunk in that I wasn’t like other girls in my resentment of my own femaleness. That’s when it turned into gender confusion, but it wasn’t until I was about sixteen that I realized I felt male inside, and it wasn’t until I was twenty-one that I stopped suppressing that and started to transition. So when did I realize I was trans? When I was ten, fourteen, sixteen or twenty-one?

    Like you I was raised in a community that was very binary, like you I had feelings of being unbalanced long before I realized what they were. I love what you say at the end, that you should choose your gender for yourself when you are ready.

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  6. Karen

    I was in my mid-thirties before I began exploring how inadequate the gender binary is. It’s never too late to question these things.

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  7. Vanessa Steele

    Sometimes I feel similar, and I didn’t REALLY start exploring this part of myself until the last year or two. I’m almost 29. And yes, sometimes I feel like I’m transitioning too late. But then I meet beautiful, wonderful, and most of all… happy people who transitioned much later than me… one of my friends was 58 when she transitioned… and she’s never been happier. So put that in perspective… she lived through my lifespan TWICE as a man before taking the steps she needed to be happy. It’s never too late

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  8. Anonymous

    It’s never too late, I’m 27 at finally at peace with my gender, I’m still seen as what I don’t feel by a lot of people, but finding who I am, who I always was but suppressed is a great feeling.

    [Reply]


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