Transmasculinity: The Signs I Missed

[@neon-kq6wz]

"my issue was with fat distribution, not so much fat itself" exactly bro, like I was so insecure about how I looked in photos when I was a kid, and I thought it was because I was overweight, but really it was just the distribution like you said. After I realized that my insecurity over being overweight went down a ton :)

[@hexonyou]

right? I took years overcoming my internalized misogyny and fatphobia, and then arrived on the other side of them going "...but I know it's a good body now, why don't I like it still?". Amazing how much I love my body now that I've been 3 years into transitioning; don't mind my tummy or being a portly lil gent, because I love being -me-. Trans masc NB living the best part of my life so far.

[@strawb3r_]

i weigh 40 lbs more than i did and feel SO COMFORTABLE because it distributes straight up and down. my problem wasn't fat it was curves lol

[@Anzy.99]

I've always been fat, since I was born, and I never had a problem with it, mostly other people have a problem with me being fat, my biggest problems are the pain that comes with it, but as a transmasc non binary, ALSO THE HIPS, THIGHTS and, there I say, impressive tits. I look like my mom, and I'm sure my very skinny sister, she would appreciate it, but I would rather look like a Polynesian wrestler for example, than my goddamn mother

[@stetson_newsie2600]

@@neon-kq6wz This. I didn't realize until he said it and it just clicked. Reason number 83 for me to consider hormone therapy, lol

[@brontesaurusrex7235]

Also why not--I'm cis, but here's some signs of transmasculinity I saw in other people before they came out. Seen these in common from ages 8 to 30-something. 1. Playing mostly male characters in roleplay. 2. Not caring when people don't use she/her pronouns. (this is probably the big one; I've noticed cis girls and women of all ages go into fight mode when misgendered) 3. "Augh I hate my boobs. No, they don't hurt, they're just-- *insert frustrated gesture here*" (or dread of puberty in children) 4. Gender-neutral/masculine nicknames, often combined with "do not call me by my full name." 5. Wanting to sing like a man is absolutely a thing I've noticed, that one made me smile. 6. "I'm just/I've always been a tomboy." Any one of these alone doesn't signify much, but all the folks I have in mind did most of these.

[@lunarfish_003]

I cried when i was told my voice wouldn't drop during puberty. Might seem really obvious, but my mum still swears i can't be trans, because i didn't show any signs in childhood.

[@JonahIronstone]

Middle-aged trans guy here, about a year and four months into my transition. So much of this is extremely relatable. Not being comfortable around all-girl groups, cosplaying male characters, singing the male parts (I can still nail most of Meat Loaf's work), wearing body-hiding clothes (in my case, huge t-shirts, long sweaters later on), hating my infernal organs... yeah, it was all there. Thank you for sharing this.

[@brontesaurusrex7235]

I'm aroace. Relationships in general always just felt like, "I'll get to that later." Because middle school boys were gross. Because high school boys were animals. Because college boys were pathetic. Because grad school was too much work. Because work is exhausting. I didn't think it could be that I was asexual because I still found guys attractive, I just didn't want to do anything! And then I was 30 and realizing that I had friends who were already divorced while I'd never been on a date. Oh. Ohhhhh. I went through like two weeks of intense mental rewiring when I finally figured it out, putting together all the little signs I'd missed, but that was the big one. If I'd been interested, I would have found a way. It's almost like when no one knows about aesthetic, sensual, platonic, or alterous attraction and you try to describe those to people to figure out if your feelings are normal, the response you get is, "yep, that sounds like normal sexual and romantic attraction all right" but wow no. No it is not.

[@meh-maid6221]

It took a fellow transmasc to tell me that "wanting to steal a character's gender" was not a very cis thing to do in order for me to recognise i might’ve needed to do some thinking. A couple years down the line and being referred to in the masculine is one of my favourite things in the world ❤

[@Invalidcas]

I've been so terrified of getting pregnant for a long time, and i actually hoped i would get some sort of cancer or something so i could lose my fertility- i always got confused at people being sad about being infertile- both of those sound very insensitive, but it just explains exactly how terrified of getting pregnant i was.

[@GBLtheMOTH]

Me too. I always dreamed that i'd be one of those "lucky" people that just happen to be infertile. Now i realise how bad that actually sounds

[@M4t_P4tGT]

This is actually so me

[@eatplastic9133]

Why people don't understand that if I want kids I will adopt... they act like it's something wrong

[@fayfay_meow]

same but I'm probably enby

[@CryptidCritter]

Many of these signs are very relatable to me, especially the one about the fat distribution and the pregnancy fear. Some other signs I had while growing up: 1) Believing that my "more masculine personality traits" were a result of my "Bisexuality". This was back in middle school when I was just kind of coming to terms with being queer and believing I liked women (turns out all the "women" I had liked and dated were just nb and transmasc eggs themselves). Which leads to 2) Vehemently hated the idea of being precieved as potentially "straight" when I definitely was interested in men. I always knew I loved in a queer way, but before I knew I was a trans guy, I hated the idea that someone would see my relationship with a man as being "in a straight way".

[@loverrlee]

Yep. I’m bisexual and I never equated any of what was said in this video to trans masc. I just thought I had a “normal” fear of pregnancy (that a lot of other women share) and all that other stuff was just somewhat a phase I grew out of. This video really opened my eyes.

[@esharp48]

I'm a trans woman who transitioned later in the life and got the "there were no signs" talk from my parents... I've almost exclusively worn girl clothes since I was 17. I "played it off" as punk, but i literally wore skinny jeans, baby doll cut skin-tight shirts, and significantly oversized military jackets

[@RaeD-u8y]

Literally same but trans masc. I had a Mohawk lmao

[@rejectfalseicons]

im a nonbinary transmasc and i used to ask my mother if i could run around shirtless like the boys when i was a kid, and i also used to sing the male parts in the school plays i did in primary school and get really happy about it! and i had people including my mother tell/ask me if i was a trans man. its so funny to me that for ages my answer to that was "no". its also funny to me that now i dont want to go on hrt because i dont want my voice to deepen and stop sounding like my gender and personality idol toki wartooth.

[@idesireahimbo]

i joked about being a gay man trapped in a woman’s body when i was 17 - it still took me three years to reconcile what it meant. i already knew - i just couldn’t accept it.

[@S.Uranus]

Real

[@InkcapWitch]

#4 really hits home for me as a trans woman too lol. I remember HATING boy‘s talk in high school and not knowing why it made me so comfortable, but at the same time I was so terrified of being a creep that I never talked to girls at all. Other signs I had were that I never really wanted to be around my ‘crushes’, in fact I‘d actively avoid getting near them, and the more I think about it, the more it seems like I wanted to *be* them, not be *with* them. I also used to call myself ‘the biggest soyboy of all time‘ god... In the end, I only cracked when someone had a crush on me, which forced me to realise that I wasn‘t inherently unattractive and unloveable like I thought, I just hated how I looked myself, and then I had to figure out why and well, that‘s when the whole thing came crashing down

[@DorianJaekle]

I remember having a dream as a child about becoming pregnant, and I woke up in a cold sweat and felt disgusting. I also used to insist on wearing boys clothing, and would come up to strangers and ask "do I look like a boy?" And get monumentally upset when they said no. My gender dysphoria was obvious, but not everyone else's is.

[@Imagisweet]

"Gay man in a woman's body," is exactly how I had described myself, too! 😂 (non-binary trans-masc)

[@P3PS1GirlRukia]

Omg I claimed "gay guy in a girl's body" before I realized/transitioned too!

[@P3PS1GirlRukia]

(Also yes my KZbin handle thing is old af, and at some point I really need to make a new one)

[@stonedrei]

fellow transmasc bleach fan 🤝

[@sage.81]

I disassociated from my body so much during puberty I didn't notice it changing. It was like I went from barely needing a training bra to having a full adult body

[@pandora0771]

This. The dysphoria that is often talked about never related to me. I went through puberty just fine. No scared of the changes. Knew what was coming but when it came to my own body, I just stopped paying attention because I hated my body and believed it was just as well whether I was a girl or a boy, so I just opted out of giving too much of a care. did go through a period of body dysmorphia where I believed I was overweight but I really wasn't and I would stop eating and exercise like crazy (Not in the right way). Eventually came to my senses and said "Nothing's working and I'm killing myself so, I'll just be the funny one and get through life that way."

[@sage.81]

@@pandora0771 Yeah people often talk about how much they hated puperty, and while I do hate the long term effects it's had on my body, during puberty I barely noticed any of the changes

[@annaharaseyko181]

"It took me decades to realize that my issue was with fat distribution, not with fat itself." Dude how did you get in my brain?

[@Rainbobirb3735]

The hanging out with girls thing is crazy looking back. I never understood the popular girls. I was like… why are you like that? I always felt uncomfortable around them because I felt like they were constantly trying so hard to fit in. I never realised they did it because they enjoyed it. I thought the makeup and dresses and stuff was all societal pressure. I thought they were ‘fake’. I had a friend group of fellow ‘weird’ girls (turns out most of us were undiagnosed autistic which definitely played a part) who accepted me for who I was but I never made the connection that part of the reason was because we just didn’t act like girls are ‘supposed to’. There wasn’t this feeling of having to follow these weird made up rules that I perceived the popular girls were trying to adhere to.

[@mtpianohearder]

You just described the first 44 years of my life in uncanny detail.

[@Sentientmatter8]

The non-binary transmasc desire to be a femme presenting man 😭

[@millakatariina64]

Oh godddd thiss, and it sucks when you actually present femme in the way you'd want and I like how it looks but because my body is female I just look like a cis womann aghhhhhhhhh

[@lizrdspice]

Only after I became a hell of a lot more comfortable in my body, but yes, saaame😅

[@fayfay_meow]

I feel called out but I'm not transmasc 🤔

[@SilverTwilight]

A major sign that I never picked up on until my egg cracked was that I've never been comfortable showing cleavage. I couldn't figure out why I felt modesty was so important when I didn't care what other women and girls wore, and didn't have any negative thoughts about them showing cleavage. ...turns out I don't want to have boobs at all. I figured that out when I was disappointed that I didn't have a BRCA mutation that would make removal medically recommended. It was also subtle things, like being excited to wear boys clothing on the rare times I shopped on the other side of the aisle, though no one ever noticed what side my buttons were on. And really liking masculine haircuts when I started going short in my 20s.

[@st0ny242]

I feel exactly the same! It's so reassuring to hear that other people have similar experiences to mine. I've only recently started questioning if I might be trans, and it scares the shit out of me because I've never even considered it before, even though I wasn't exactly uneducated on trans issues. But in hindsight, there were so many signs. I too had the thought that if I happened to get breast cancer and had to have my boobs removed, I wouldn't be sorry for a second. I almost found myself wishing I had, because then I wouldn't have to make any decision to get top surgery myself. I've also been thinking about sterilisation for a while because it just grosses me out to live in a body that is able to get pregnant. I've never been the type to show off my body with the way I dress because I never saw a reason to be proud of my femininity. And I remember quite a few situations in which I found my boobs "impractical", like when they caused my seat belt to sit in a way that cut my neck, when they make it harder to run or when they throw off my balance during climbing. I never thought of it as gender dysphoria, I just thought I was "a bit different than other girls". So yeah, quite interesting what I'm discovering about myself right now.

[@vslifeofcycles5415]

OMG, same about cleavage!

[@inkuii]

Oh my god, back when I was in high school I would do so much research on what it would take to get a double mastectomy medically mandated. This was before I found out about top surgery. I remember being so jealous of my chem teacher because she had breast cancer and got them removed. It was a horrible thought, but dysphoria is one hell of a drug

[@ThisIsAHandle456]

I relate to everyone who first heard about breast surgery though breast cancer, and the unfortunate dark thoughts related. My grandmother had breast cancer and had a breast removed. I remember learning that and thinking it’s genetic. That I might have to worry about it in the future, but excited at the prospect that I could get a my ideal chest.

[@phoebegee54]

Anyone else have the opposite, where they forget to cover it sometimes due to forgetting it's there?

[@Exsangui-nate]

For me it was like "wym not every lady wishes they had the ability to pee standing up for convenience?? "

[@satunbreeze]

I remember for many many years thinking "I don't mind if people 'mistake' me as any gender" and it only ever happening like twice being "misgendered" as a guy and it like, turning my world upside down and repressing the hell out it. Also I was maybe a little overweight growing up and I was VERY self conscious about it (not helped by my mom). I was also extremely terrified of pregnancy even though I didnt become sexually active until I was about 16. I wrote it off as insecurity due to past sexual trauma (not even from a man) and my mom commenting that I "looked pregnant" (who tf does that to their child??) after gaining some weight. After shedding a lot of my traumas and insecurities, turns out dysphoria was at the root of most of it. Im thankful every day that I made it out of that pit. I regret nothing and so far I havent regretted knowing sooner.

[@potatopepperoni]

Heyo, here from the "too girly to be transmasc" video. Thanks for linking me to this one! - re: Body Issues segment wow. y'know, it's funny. I've definitely ended up getting chubbier as the years have gone on, but I never hated my body for it because I always thought I looked fairly cute regardless. Of course, I did become concerned about it as my parents cited health concerns, but still didn't put much emphasis on it. I could never really dedicate to working out and maintaining myself, anyway. ADHD and all that... ...EXCEPT NOW, because now that I've realized I'm trans, I'm... actually motivated to take care of my body and lose weight. I'm not being excessive about it, but suddenly I find it much easier to commit to the hour of exercise I need daily because maybe if I really do lose some pounds it'll be that bit much easier to pass as a guy lol. Even if not, I have more of a reason to actually take care of myself now! I also did realize through said exercise that the way I feel about how my body SHOULD be and how it actually is is... different. The "being the wrong shape" thing. It led me to realize that the way I'd always used my imagination, and tried to distance myself from reality as much as possible, was to get away from my body. And to an extent I ALREADY KNEW THAT, I just didn't know it was tied to gender dysphoria. I've been dysphoric all this damn time! I always felt the best when I could just... forget about my physical presence and appearance. So even without outright hating my body. Even without really knowing. There was dysphoria. When I was little I'd even go as far as to reimagine what I was experiencing in real life AS IT WAS HAPPENING but in the third person with me as... Luigi. I really liked Luigi. Felt better to identify as him than as myself! This is truly cis behavior - re: pregnancy I'm ace too! I was never outright SCARED of pregnancy, but... I remember even as a kid concluding that I didn't want to be pregnant and have a kid, but that if I WAS to have a kid, I'd adopt. That felt much better. As time has gone on I've grown more negative towards the idea of ever getting pregnant. I detest that my mom says I'll change my mind, because she "thought the same, but here we are now". I hate it so much. The thought of becoming pregnant disgusts me. - re: girls groups mood AF omg especially the boys group and being the "only girl" in the group thing. nothing better than being one of the boys... agahshshsh Though actually the older I've gotten better at connecting with girls. Or maybe I'm just good at finding the nerdy girls that gel with me the best lol I have grown slightly intimidated by men though, despite loving making connections with them, because uh... I really don't want them hitting on me or doing weird things because im a cute short vulnerable girl n stuff And I hate that I have to think that at all. - re: singing At one point (~2 years ago?) I tried practicing singing and speaking in a lower register. I think I was acting on repressed gender feelings because there was really no cis reason for me to be doing that. I made up excuses but mostly I wanted to masculinize my voice and see if I even could. I remember getting excited hearing my voice become more convincing over time. But... then I stopped practicing because I grew too self conscious about it. (Still, HOW did that not crack my egg?????? I HAVE A TRANS FRIEND!! I'VE KNOWN HER FOR YEARSSSSS) I still am scared to try again and be found out and confronted about it. But I regret stopping. - re: gay dude While I never really got into dressing up, I relate to the feeling of wanting to dreas masculinely and then disappointed when it still looks feminine on you because of the way your body curves. It was rare that I'd ever bother caring about my appearance, but when I did, I was usually trying to at least loosely embody male characters. I usually only ever explored fashion in video games? And even so, it wasn't much, because boys are usually sidelined hard in favor of girl customization. ...But this one time I forced myself to play as a girl in Pokemon Ultra Sun. Because you know... I'm a girl, so it shouldn't bother me so much to play as a girl! I liked the extra customization options, but it's the most dysphoric I ever felt. I genuinely did not enjoy that playthrough largely because I was playing as a girl. You'd think that would've made me realize something, but I just thought I was overreacting... tldr; pretty relatable good video me enjoy if anyone else reads to the end of this absolute novel I've ended up writing out uhh I hope it helps and thanks for reading

[@jaxxmiller4850]

I had the same experience when it came to weight distribution. I had D cups before my surgery, and there were certain styles of dresses that I thought were cute but hated how "fat" I looked when I tried them on. Meanwhile, one of my favorite cosplays was a male crossdresser that I would bind for, and I never had that sort of body dysmorphia while dressed as him. In fact, while I had no idea at the time, looking back at it now it's incredibly obvious to me that what I was experiencing while wearing that cosplay was actually gender euphoria. I didn't dress femme again after coming out as trans until I'd had top surgery, and I remember running my hands down my chest the first time I put on a dress afterwards and feeling that same feeling of euphoria from the flatness of it. I'm really glad I found your channel. As a queer enby trans dude, it's nice to see that I'm not alone.

[@vslifeofcycles5415]

Wait. Y'all. I was married to a man for seven years. I asked him so many times, "Are you sure you're not gay?" ... Never noticed my own inner gay boy though 🤦🏻

[@pandora0771]

Screaming! My husband is still with me. Married for 8 and together for nearly 13 and I would ask him all of the time "Why can't you just be a little gay?" or " I wish you had a little gay in you." Which would confuse him and, in turn, confuse me because why would I care about my STRAIGHT husband married to me, a WOMAN? He had one gay experience back in high school and I would obsess "Really?! Tell me more. Tell me everything. Tell me you would still consider it." Whelp. Didn't my weird comments about his sexuality make a hell of a lot more sense when I came out XD

[@mscatmoon]

I relate to many of your experiences. The rationale: surely *all* women think this way. Er, no actually, they don't. It's still so weird to me that they actually like these things (such as pregnancy and boobs). For Halloween one year I dressed up as a guy and later was *so* thrilled when I showed the photos to people and not only didn't recognize me but asked me who the guy was!

[@reluctant.valentine]

this has me cackling bc omg. me. i’ve never had a unique experience in my life. glad i’ve finally stopped lying to myself about who i really am

[@SystemofEleven]

When I came out to my family, my brother's response was, "I don't mind transgender people, I'm just confused that you are one, because I never saw anything like that from you." Meanwhile, my catholic uncle and cousins' response was, "Oh yeah, we figured that out years ago." No further questions or explanations needed. Apparently they figured out I was queer long before I did. Which makes sense because my mom went out of her way to make sure I didn't know transgender people exist, so I just... didn't consider that my experiences *meant* anything.

[@laurenalexander4438]

Kinda funny. I knew by 15 that I didn't want kids if I couldn't carry them. Like, I was so repulsed by the idea of being with women as a guy that I never dated. I actually thought I might be gay at one point. Turns out I'm a lesbian. Once I came out as trans, I finally started feeling attraction towards women. Now that I don't have to worry about getting anyone pregnant, even moreso. Any attraction to guys evaporated. One odd thing for me is, I HATED the idea of facial hair. Didn't want it. My dad literally tortured me by pointing out every new facial hair. Once I finally came out, I was shaving twice a day pre-HRT. But now? I'll go a month without shaving, and actually like my facial hair. Part of what made me realize I'm enby. I still have MASSIVE voice dysphoria, but I think it's (again) trauma from my dad pointing out every minute change, and internalized misandry and enbyphobia. Like, voice bothers me, yet I found it weirdly gender affirming when I got mistaken for transmasc and sent to the wrong surgeon last year. I thought for a long time that my body issues were just body dysmorphia. ...turns out I have both.

[@stetson_newsie2600]

I have had a lot of internal struggle with feeling like an imposter because I didn't "always know". This video is helping me to realize that is okay, but also that I may have known in ways I didn't really understand. Thank you for this. Oh my god you're ace too. I'm so glad this video showed up in my recommended.

[@Witchy_bab]

I think the sign I fully missed until after realizing I was gender queer, was how I would have crushes/ was envious of butch lesbians that could "pass as men" or you weren't able to really pinpoint if they were women or not. Or that I dressed up as men a lot for halloween/cosplays

[@loverrlee]

This but for gay men, especially gay men in drag

[@HectoGames]

Dude the fat distribution vs fat itself hit so hard. One of the things ive come to realize through the journey is that i really dont have an issue with fat. I dont have a lot of it, but when i spot it in the right places i think its cute. That lil man belly chub is nice actually

[@annaphallactic]

I'm agender and feel comfortable with both feminine and masculine presentations, but omg I related to so fucking much of this! Especially the fear of pregnancy and the "gay man in a lesbian's body" jokes I used to make. Having a hysterectomy for fibroids made me realize how much dysphoria my periods caused, and my quality of life has skyrocketed ever since.

[@azzyjeffs]

It took me far too long to truly take the words “don’t dream it; be it” to heart

[@AlatheD]

Not fitting in with the girls and pregnancy being a body horror are two I relate to SO strongly. I remember playing "house" with a friend at church, and I wanted to be the husband. He was cool with that ('cause he was gay, which we didn't know at that young age). I also remember playing Zorro as a child, and getting ridiculously excited when I found one of my brother's old Tonka trucks. That was way more fun than the mess of Barbies I had. I was a late bloomer, and it made things really weird. But at some point after my chest grew, I remember my mother trying to get me to stand up straight (I had poor posture) and in teaching me she said something about pulling my shoulders back, which would make my chest stick out and make my breasts look better or more prominent or something. I immediately slouched back down, and didn't start standing straight until after I got my first binder. I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me "You're such a guy." or something similar. And I responded with "I know" except I obviously didn't, did I? LOL Putting on makeup always felt like putting on drag (though it took me years to figure that out), which was a problem because of the way I was raised. Now I'm making those changes, becoming who I am. I'm about a year and 4 months on T, and all of a sudden about a month ago, strangers all started referring to me in masculine terms. It's bizarre (because I'm going through this in my late 40s), but in really good way.

[@rebelkallus]

omg finally someone else that went through the gay man in a womans body dysphoria 😭 the only reason i ended up taking that thought seriously to myself was when a trans fem friend of mine said do i want to unpack that, im forever thankful for the fact i shared that with them. i never related with the other trans guys who knew because they were lesbians and went through the not like other girls phase too lmao 😂 great video and im glad you figured it out, also wow i love your voice!!

[@pandora0771]

The trans fem friends are the best XD. My trans femme friend would make the trans hint jabs at me and go " I'm only joking" until, one day, I panic texted her girlfriend (Who I was closer to because we went to High school together) and she said "Idk about trans stuff. Ask Roxy." and "Btw she called it when she saw your recent creative projects" I didn't even get a chance to message her first. She comes in my DM with something along the lines of " So tell me how dysphoria is being a little bitch to you."

[@hexonyou]

i also knew about trans people (vaguely) by college and had been that "super ally" to the queer kids at my HS. But there was so much for me to unpack before I ever touched my gender. So much of this is very relatable and I spent a lot of time excusing most "strange" things about me as "oh it's because I'm pansexual, it's a gay thing; it just makes my experience a little different" without ehh... comparing to other queer women's experiences and realizing it didn't match up. Literally making dating profiles that said "I'm a woman with an asterisk" "I'm totally a woman but"... heh. Trans masc NB whose egg didn't crack until about age 29; 35 now and living the best years of my life with my spouse of 17 years and my 12 you kiddo who are amazing supports. Thanks for sharing your experiences!

[@sandwichqueen]

I'm a trans woman, but I fantasized about being a girl every day. Being one would of been so much better. I even had a name and everything. I also only wanted friends that were girls. But I couldn't possibly be a girl because I liked "boy stuff" like video games and superheroes. Obviously girls are allowed to like that stuff, but not me. I had a problem with not really trusting myself due to constantly being told I didn't know what I was feeling. When you are told something constantly, you start to belive it. I would have came out earlier if not for that. I cared about my mom's opion then my own. That's probably why I came out only after my Mom saw me in a dress. I still have issues, but I can trust myself by getting away from my Mom. Anyways, I'm just rambling

[@bernicethedispleasedgull]

God that hit hard. I spoke the same words but in reverse to a friend of mine “i feel like a lesbian stuck in a mans body” Not an inkling about being trans. Didnt know much about trans people then and never would have assumed that could be me.

[@naluzoniro]

Dude, SAME xD In highschool I deadass wrote "I want to be a boy so I can dress like a girl" and couldn't figure out what to make of it, struggled with heavy voice disphoria since I was 5, was obsessed with Brian Molko for a while, created myself an alter-ego cartoon character who was a gender-fuckey guy, and I still had no idea what it all meant x) My favorite part was, when I started having a vague feeling of unease about my body, in my teens, I rationalized that shit away and refused to look at that feeling because complexes and body dismorphia are "a girl thing" :' )

[@jaaaaaaaaspeer]

This...explains so much. I always hated pregnancy too, and since I figured out I was ace before figuring out I was trans, I thought that was my issue with it. Similarly, the whole hating the look of my body and having boobs I accounted for being an insecure teen. One thing I could never really justify to myself before was how much I hated being percieved as a girl. I hated going into girls' bathrooms and wearing dresses, because I would worry about being seen as a girl, despite the fact that I 'was' a girl and was percieved as one to begin with.

[@mudkip_btw]

I'm still stuck sometimes between being a gender nonconforming cis man who just wants to look/sound like a girl, or nonbinary transfem. In the end I couldn't tell you which is more accurate. Having dysphoria from my male physical features makes me lean towards nonbinary more. This makes sense to me as I've seen other GNC men who are very comfortable in their masculinity while I'm not. Gender is sooo hard to figure out when there's nobody to discuss your feelings with. Thanks for being so open, these stories make me feel so much more connected with my transmasc brothers and siblings💜

[@RONYN666]

In school going through puberty I thought once I graduate my perception of my body would change just like everyone else. It didn't.

[@StayHappyDanny]

I used to watch these two gay dudes like blog when I was younger and always thought “I wish I could be a boy so I could like boys like they do” it is now maybe 6 or 7 years later I should’ve seen the signs I’m f2m trans and queer it’s so funny thinking back and going wow how did I not know sooner

[@elliot20201]

Duuuude. So much of this is so relatable. I hated my period and was SO scared of pregnancy. I also grew up in a religious household where having kids was expected, so there was a sort of inevitability and dread that came with it. And I also couldn't stand my body from a young age, hated how I looked in tee shirts. Always wanted hoodies. When I started testosterone and gradually started coming out to people at work (a couple years ago now), I remember one coworker expressing shock that I had started wearing short sleeved shirts instead of layers of long sleeves and jackets. I also have lost a little weight by being generally healthier, but not a *ton* -- I'm like a 23 BMI, so high end of okay -- but I'm so much happier with how I look and feel now. Much love!! ❤ Edit since I watched more. God I remember when I found out my voice wasn't going to drop with puberty. Someone even told me my voice could get *higher*. I was soooo upset. I took pride in how deep my voice was as a kid, not that it really was. Much better since it dropped, I finally like my voice 😂 I also was super jealous of a buddy of mine in 8th grade because he had a visible adam's apple, and for some unknown reason, I wanted one. AND. I also wished I could be like the gay guy characters I read about in fics and stuff. I even convinced myself I was being a problematic fujoshi with that 😂😂😂

[@Milo-hp9fw]

Signs I missed: Loving dance but hating recitals. I loved the theater portion (and still do theater now), but hated the costumes, makeup, and hair. I would be forced to be super feminine and would throw full on fits. I would scream, throw stuff, and hit stuff. This started when I wss 6. As I got older, they calmed down a little but I would still have panic attacks. I stopped doing dance at age 13. I thought it was all just nerves and stage fright, but after seeing my little sister do dance, I realized that what I did was very abnormal. In hindsight, I know it was dysphoria, but back then I had no idea. I also started puberty at 8, and it was pretty much exactly how you described your experience. But I've found that I'm okay with my weight and size as long as I'm binding. If I'm not, I just hate how I am in general. I always hated any "girl power" stuff, because it was in the girls aisle. I was fine with dresses and stuff, but I hated anything that said that because it addressed me as a girl. I was okay with some feminine stuff, but hated having that associated with being a girl. I thought that I just found it cringey, but nope it was trans again. I would use the "boys water fountain" (yes my elementary school gendered the water fountains) and just said that the water tasted better. IT TASTED WORSE. But I still used it every time. Those were some of mine. My gender stuff was pretty unnoticed (as dysphoria), but now I know why. I did show signs! They just weren't in-your-face-and-I-have-the-words-for-this-even-though-I'm-four signs. (The kind that my mom said were "real signs" when I first came out. She's better now)

[@beatrixwilliams3327]

So much of this was SO relatable to me. In particular, number 4 (feeling weird when surrounded by girls). That's what really got me to realise I couldn't be a cis woman, because I felt like my whole life I could never really understand what girls/women were talking about. Like, even my closest friends assumed I agreed with their feelings about bathrooms, when I'd been annoyed by this going to the toilet together thing since kindergarten. Thanks for sharing, it was really validating to hear someone else feels this way!

[@Lee-fi4il]

I hope it's different now, but as someone who grew up late nineties-early 2000s, it didnt matter that i knew early. From the age of four i stated definitively, i am a boy. I started voice training, begging for boys clothes, trying to figure out how to extract hormones and alter my genetics to fix myself. I was not taken seriously and my mum even convinced me I felt this way because I was a mysoginist. I had no way to know about trans people back then as web browsers weren't a thing if you even had internet at all. If the knowledge was more readily available and accepted back then, I could've been saved a lot of pain and suffering.

[@sage.81]

Even as a young kid I always thought if I had kids I would adopt them. The concept of carrying a living child inside you as it grows grossed me out (still does)

[@charliesewell7418]

I’m in a very lucky situation, I grew up with a very supportive, cultured, and educated mother Who could tell I was gay way before anyone else in my life including me. This led to my mum bringing me up with both heteronormative and queer Ideas and media, and she taught me about what being gay meant from a very young age. I’m now 20, and as I’ve made my way through life, I can’t remember a time where I ever thought I was attracted to women.However, there were some very clear signs that I didn’t pick up on, that she and others definitely did. For example, she told me about the time she first knew that I liked men. We were watching the news, and according to her I said “I like him, he looks nice” about The weatherman. there’s countless stories like this, and I think it’s really interesting to hear your point of you as someone who didn’t know that Queerness was an option! Great video! Xx

[@sagasiyunohoribe]

Probably my biggest sign that I was Trans, was when we were doing a little class play in like 2nd or 3rd grade I think and I got taken the role of playing a boy taken away cause I missed too much of class cause I was sick and I cried so much cause now I needed to play a Girl.

[@Mau_i_think]

I remember that I said "I love women but in a gay way" And though nothing of it. that was definitely a sign

[@milic5749]

I found your "Didn't show any signs" video a few months ago and it made me feel better about the fact that, as far as I could tell at the time, I hadn't shown any. I didn't fully realize that I wasn't cis until last year, and a lot of this is still really new to me. And I still feel like I distinctly did not show very many signs, and still find myself thinking of almost every potential one "But a cis person could experience that too, right?" The one childhood experience I can think of that I can say is probably a sign is also about performance and fictional characters. I would have said I always preferred female characters, but really what I most preferred were characters that weren't distinctly male or female. But those were few and far between, and very importantly: almost never human. So I thought it was just because I liked animals and mythical creatures. But that doesn't explain the characters that were closer to being human-like. And with those characters, when discussing them there was a lot of trying to decide which of the two binary genders they were *really,* even in one case where it was stated by the creator that he'd never decided on what their gender was and never thought it was important. And... I have a complicated relationship now with the way other fans see characters like that, because even though they were important to me and now I'm pretty sure it's because I'm agender, I didn't realize that was the reason I liked them so much and they were never explicitly nonbinary, so I can't get behind the way a lot of fans have declared them literal nonbinary characters. If they were, if I had had that kind of explicit representation, I might have realized it was possible for *me* to be nonbinary a lot sooner. But maybe that's making it too much about myself.

[@AM-pleistocene]

Having gay men as icons and trying to dress like them, then assuming the reason why i dont look like them is because i am not skinny enough. So i loose a lot of weight and become emaciated, but it still doesnt fix the issue. I call what i have anorexia, but it never sat right with me because i wasnt really trying to be skinny as such, instead i was trying to achieve male fat distribution. Its not that i wasnt anoriexic, i think i was, but the goal wasnt to be a skinny woman, but a skinny man. I wanted to have masculine shape, not many curves, and i would say that i wanted a breast reduction which was unusual as i had very average to small breasts. Frankly i wanted them reduced to being completely flat. I dont have anorexia now but i am still pre t, im a healthy weight and i enjoy food a lot. I think something that actually helped me heal from anorexia was realising that losing a lot of weight was actually enhancing my hips and really wasnt making any difference at all. I also tried to be a tenor! One time as a kid the teachers split the boys and girls into singing groups, and put me with the boys. I felt so proud of myself and happy, looking back i realise the teachers were trying to humiliate me and knock the trans out of me or something!

[@abnormallyawesome2062]

The whole "the internet is both a blessing and cures" is so damned real. The more i come across vids like this about the queer community, about mental health, my age group, and such... the more im discovering about myself and why i am the way i am. My experiences with people have shaped a lot of who i portrayed myself to be while simultaneously fighting the status quo... its painful and exhausting. I've gotten better throw learning, but its rough because im discovering all this much later in my life. The more i see vids like this and hear people's experiences, the more i realize that i fit more on the rainbow spectrum then i thought. I never really gave it thought when i was younger and just focused on doing my own thing despite what a woman should do... i didnt even think about it much when my trans son came out, not for myself anyway. I had settled so deep into being what society wanted me to be that i unwittingly just accepted it and rolled with it in my own way. But i find myself running into things like this and having epiphany moments where im like "holy sh*t!!! Am i really a man!?"... and then dismiss it as wishful thinking... and possibly past trauma that i trick myself into thinking might not of happened if I was a guy... i know now that saddly trauma happens to all genders, some are just "allowed" to talk about it more openly then others. Still, I find myself relating to these stories and experiences. Like "huh, is that why i never really got along with and related with other girls/women, even though I've been throw exacly the same stuff??" Or "i do like some "girl" stuff... but I've always vibed better with dudly things." OR my VERY practical way of thinking. I am a very simple person and not only enjoy simple things, but focus on things like survival in any situation, food, protecting the people i care about, chilling... i know women can like this stuff too, but i felt like it was a little different with me. For me it wasnt just a chick liking guy stuff... it was like IT WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF I WAS A DUDE! SO I CAN LIKE DUDE STUFF! and yeah women looked rad in armor with swords riding dragons... but can i be the dude rocking armor with a sick a** sword riding said dragon behind her???? please?! Or like it'd be better if it was a cute fem boyish mage... maybe i can be fem boy mage, magic is rad too! I have a very active imagination, but i never thought to think of why all my stories revolved around soft hearted dudes with a bad a** fem partner or femish boy that had a burley male partner... and how i related to the dudes more then chicks... so yeah.

[@PUTHIE_MAN]

When I was a child I would play male characters in video games and I would hate to play the female characters, and I thought I was a boy all my childhood because I liked male stereotypical stuff and I would hate to wear dresses, and on April 26th 2024 I watched my first trans man video and found a lot of similarities and I'm happy to say that I am a 21 your old gay trans man 🖤🏳️‍⚧️🖤

[@arcofalex]

i’ve only known i was trans since last january. you hit the nails on the head. all of them. i’ve been so mad at myself for not knowing but this makes me feel less alone… thank you for making this

[@heddathunstrom2805]

Starting puberty at eight years old sounds like actual hell, I'm sorry.

[@ladyyoyo5418]

Wait, not everyone feels like that about pregnancy??? Just a few months ago, I read a fanfiction about an aged-up version of a child character I loved when I was a child myself. In the fanfic, she has grown up and is a mother with kids. That same night I had a vivid nightmare that I find out that I'm pregnant. In true nightmare lack of logic, I was somehow around month 7 when I find out, so the focus was the feelings of total helplessness to run away from this, and a feeling like my body has been stolen from me. I remember in the dream I even contemplated about deleting myself and my mom was trying to comfort me. Gender is way too confusing and I hate trying to define myself as anything more concrete than "human (who is just trying to make it through life somehow)" so I can't tell you what I am, but I genuinely thought pregnancy scares the heck out of everyone AFAB?

[@tallonhunter3663]

Relate to #4 so hard as an aroace agender person with a masc meatsuit. Being the only "man" in a group of women has this weird uncomfortable voyeuristic quality... But being "one of the bros" when there are no women about is uniquely unnerving and unsafe feeling. I have described my experience as uncomfortably included and excluded from gendered spaces and activities. Like women assuming im gay and being too familiar, to needing to nervously chuckle and play along with "locker room" talk until i can safely get out.

[@millakatariina64]

One sign I missed for a long time was a situation in like junior high when I was hanging out with my 2 best friends (both cis guys) and a guy just came up to us and asked me if I was a guy or a girl and I couldn't respond (I didn't know what would've been the right thing to say and I just didn't want to/couldn't bring myself to say girl even if it was supposed to be the "correct" choice) so I just remained in this state of staring at him not saying anything to this guy until one of my friends said to him I was a girl at which point I felt dissappointment and then when the guy left, my friend added "that was rude" and I just thought to myself, no, I didn't feel that way at all, still feeling dissappointed. And this whole exchange I always still registered as one of the more positive experiences from my junior high school.

[@lizrdspice]

Wow. We had the same experience. At 13-14 I presented quite ambiguous, and was asked the same question by multiple older guys. That's when i started loving confusing people but I also became a little confused bc obviously they could tell I was afab, right? Wrong.😅 I'd answer crypticly "what do you think?" And watch their faces go through all sorts of confusion, sometimes even a lil anger 😂

[@Shadow_knight2]

I guess I'm a newly cracked egg; in the middle of the video, I broke down crying as the realization hit me. I'm still in denial as I've grown up mostly a cis woman/Enby person. This kind of hit me like a soccer ball. Thank you for helping me discover a new part of myself.

[@GBLtheMOTH]

I know it's scary. I've been there too. But you will be fine, i promise. It is never too late to be born again

[@Jacob-kx8go]

Idk if these were signs: Hatred of getting dressed/being seen in any state of undress(even by myself, like I didn't like seeing what was down there so I rarely changed my underwear) Being told I was feminine... Even though I was feminine. Hating dresses Being told I had a womb and eggs inside me and silently freaking out. Hating my period even though it wasn't that bad Hating baths because I hated having to see my naked body Hating dresses that emphasised on my chest Subconsciously covering my breasts with my arms Everytime I showered

[@Koen_roe]

dude, you were in so many fandoms. The Mo Dao Zu Shi cosplays and that Pyrrha cosplay? range fr

[@lookaway5874]

I've watched a lot of videos like these out of curiosity, even after I started to indentify as genderfluid, but yours in particular really spoke to me in every single category listed, to a T! I never heard of any other transmasc yoututbers who are also asexual AND super interested in drag, but I'm glad I found this channel now. I'm realizing I may still have a lot to think about my gender identity, it's always nice when the algorithm finds me someone relatable! great video, keep up with the good work.

[@AdmiralYrrek]

Just responding as I'm listening... (RE: Puberty) Damn! Puberty at 8. Awful. It was 10 for me. It is an ongoing grief/rage point that my parents did not take me to my pediatrician for precocious puberty. The fact that puberty blockers existed at the time and I would have been a candidate for them regardless of my gender identity - but my parents didn't do the bare minimum health check-in that might have got me on them - is something I haven't figured out how to not get upset about. (RE: Swimming) I loved swimming up until about age 11 or 12. Then it was a solid NOPE. Never figured out why until 2-3 years ago (i.e. when the egg cracked). I always assumed it was the fact I couldn't find a swim suit that was acceptable. Which was, in part, accurate, since I couldn't find anything that covered all of the parts of me I didn't want people seeing. (RE: Pregnancy) Pregnancy as body horror = 100% I never really understood what people meant by body horror as a subgenre of horror for a REALLY long time. Most of the things that got called "body horror" - almost always movies, but some art and stories - I just shrugged off. Meh. Whatever. Doesn't bother me, I guess. Then at one point someone was describing what they felt internally when watching a body horror movie, and my reaction was "Oh, that's how I feel about pregnancy." Queue the confused "wait... WTF?" reactions from the other person. (RE: "Don't all girls/women hate this?" but not specifically about the reproductive tract) 100% I legit went about 30 years of conscious life assuming girls/women just hated their gendered existence to the same extent I did because that's what most media portrayed; women hating/complaining about being women. Or at the very best just going along with it. Nothing actively enjoying or celebratory. I remember reading the newspaper comics in the morning with my parents when I was little and always hating (and usually skipping) the Cathy comic strip because all it ever seemed to be was "this is the awful shit you get to look forward to." And nothing in media gave me reason to think otherwise. It wasn't until my wife explained her sense of her gender and my trans sister explained her perspective where it really clicked; yes, some women really do love and embrace it. Wild. (RE: Girls going to the bathroom in groups) Hated it. Never got it. Still don't get it. NO TALKING IN THE BATHROOM! I never tried to be part of girl groups and tended to avoid them in favor of packs of boys in school. It has been a painful thing in adulthood (rather than school) that there seems to be some unwritten social rule that men and women don't mix socially in the workplace. (RE: "I'm not like other girls") Yep. 100%. And I got kicked off a few feminist LiveJournals back in the day because I was (they said) "a self-hating woman." Retrospectively, I just hated yet more people telling me I was a woman with special woman-knowledge when, nope, NOT A WOMAN. (RE: theatre) I used to want to act going way back into childhood, but I never tried because I knew I would NEVER be cast as the characters I wanted to play; i.e. the heroes, the monsters, or the big/scary/strong/monstrous sidekick. I did get to work behind the scenes as tech and lighting at a couple theatres and as an artist in a movie in the past, but I would have (and still would) love to do more. What signs did I miss? • "Who's your favorite Disney princess?" "Mulan." • About 97% of "My Characters" (in art, in writing, in my mental screensavers, etc.) are male. • In over 20 years of playing D&D or other tabletop RPGs, frequently with several games running at the same time, I have had all of 4 female characters. Ever. • When I got pushback from a DM about playing a male character, and he asked why I wanted to "cross play," I answered "I have to play a woman everyday in my real life; why the fuck would I want to play one for fun?" • Despite never going to a school that was sex-segregated or had gendered uniforms, I still to this (middle-aged) day have nightmares of being forced into such a place. When the topics come up in casual conversation, I get nervous and irritable and argumentative to an unreasonable level. In trying to pick that reaction apart, the best I've got is that I still have "what if they try to put me there?" flavors of anxiety around the mere concept hanging around from childhood when such a thing was the worst fate I could think of.

[@redspah]

Oh man, the closing words broke a dam within me. I've been struggling with feelings in this general area for a while now, and they've been... very difficult to unravel. I'm an autistic trans woman, I came out to myself shortly after my 21st birthday, I'm 26 now. I grew up in Poland, and for the vast majority of my life, I had no idea trans people existed (or even gay people beyond the most awful slurs / stereotypes you can imagine). My relationship with the concepts of both femininity and masculinity has been fucked for almost as long as I can remember, owing mostly to my family. It's hard to not get a warped perception of them when I can only really interact with women in my family and all the men are either extremely emotionally distant and feel like strangers, or are very blatantly skeevy in one way or another. It's harder still when everyone, myself included, thought I was a boy. My primary school had a pretty even split of genders, though I was a big loner even then, on top of being a """gifted""" student, so I didn't have many friends. Then at the start of lower high, I got the triple whammy of puberty + parental divorce + going to a prestigious school where I was now solidly below average. In the class of 26 kids, there were 5 girls, and I was an even bigger loner. For high school, I opted for a less-pressure, more vocational place, which was very good for my mental health but didn't help at all with gender representation. In my class of almost thirty, there were 0 girls. Yes, **zero**, there were like 15 in total in a school of 600 students. Can't imagine how rough it must've been for them. I was more social there, but that's bcause I could blend in and become "one of the boys", the "weird, quiet and smart" one. Social interaction was nice, but it further warped my perception of masculinity when it became apparent to me (as I exited my """anti-sjw""" arc) just how bigoted they were. Nothing unusual for Poland obvs, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth and I had to grit my teeth and stay quiet through many interactions. At that point, I regarded masculinity as a grime saturating everything around myself--including myself--and femininity as something inherently superior I both longed for but which forever remained way, way outside my reach. I find it funny how one of the attitudes he mentions in the vid began forming within me at around that time--namely that of womanhood being suffering. It got even worse for me though, since I saw that suffering as being caused by masculinity, and ended up with an increasingly distorted view of them almost as good vs. evil. If all that sounds very radfem-my, then... you're entirely correct! x.x Though at that time, the resulting hatred and disgust was mostly aimed at myself, since I was after all one of the bad icky mens At around that time my english was getting good enough to actively participate in anglophone social media, and I eventually ended up in communities full of queer people, which really let me actually examine my identity beyond "guy, I guess". There was a period of identifying as agender in there, but in hindsight it was more so "I know I'm not a guy, but I'm too scared to think about it more, so 'none of the above' works for me" than anything more determined. Eventually, I finally realized I was a trans woman, but the ideas from earlier didn't really go away, sadly. My mind was already an extremely fertile ground for radfem horseshit, and I've ended up internalizing many of their junk over the years, something I'm still trying to disabuse myself from. Said queer communities had a pretty hefty share of trans women and amab enbies, but basically no trans men or afab anyone, and that observation only reinforced that earlier divide between masculinity and femininity I mentioned earlier in the worst possible way. I knew I was a woman, I knew I *wanted* to be a woman, but I was still infinitely far away from "real" women, and at times it brought on the despairing feelings of me and other trans women just collectively pretending. I knew these ideas were wrong, but they didn't *feel* wrong, sometimes. That same kind of extremely internalized transphobic warped logic also led me to give radfem positions more credence than they deserve--after all, they were *real* women in ways I could never be, and even if they were also bigoted shitheads, I found (and still sometimes find) it hard to not give vastly outsized relevance to them being cis. All this is something I've been gradually getting better at uprooting from my mind, but it's a very difficult battle, especially with my social groups still being 95% cis men and trans women. Why did I write all this? Partly shouting into the void, partly because that--after years of finding transmasc experience basically impossible to imagine or comprehend, it felt like this vid finally let me understand some of it in ways that felt very familiar at times. Thank you for that

[@Anzy.99]

did anyone went through the 1 hairstyle and 1 clothe type fase? mine was a bun, t-shirt and knee high cotton and polyester shorts. it was my uniform for being a "girl". much easier to dress the same thing everyday and not think about accessories and haircuts and clothing styles. nowadays I still dress pretty much the same thing: shirts that shows my arms (I didn't lose weight or became buff, don't even take hormones, I'm just not scared of people seeing my armpits hair anymore), beach shorts above knees (I hate stuff touching my knees and live in a tropical country) and am much more comfortable with my hair and to whatever with it (currently the classic non-binary mullet, rocking my natural curls). I still dress the same everyday like I used to as a kid, the difference is that now it doesn't feel like an uniform, I just feel comfortable. (Also ADHD -and maybe autism, we're still seeing that one has a finger in that, but not the point). I dressed the same before not to think about what to dress, I dress the same now because I'm comfortable with dressing myself the way I want.

[@phoebegee54]

I literally rotated three or four different outfits. I felt like I was a male fashion designer dressing a female model. I wasn't enjoying it very much either ...

[@e_lesko913]

Oh boy does this sound WAAAAY too familiar... Of course, it wasn't the exact same for me, but for each point, I could find a similar experience of mine. 1. I wanted to play a male character in everything. Plays, games with my brothers (we particularly loved "slaying the ememy" with brooms, mops or sticks whoever it was at the time :D) etc. 2. I didn't really have a problem with my weight, but I started to hate my body when puberty hit. I just thought "oh well, every teenage girl is insecure about her body, but in time, I will get used to these new curves". 3. I hated - and still hate - my periods more than anyone I know (aside from my trans friend, shoutout to him💙). Again, "everyone hates periods". 4. I've always felt more comfortable around guys. I just seemed to vibe with them more. Unfortunately, my school was very conservative, and there were few mixed-sex friend groups, so I mainly was an outcast. 5. I LOVED when my voice became darker and huskier because of a cold. Colds are literal hell for me since I have asthma, but this I still love about them. Also, I was super hyped when I was told to sing tenor in the church choir, cause there weren't enough boys. Man I love my deep singing voice. I was blessed with my mum's genes. 6. I often thought I could only imagine myself in a relationship with a guy as another guy. Same with girls (I'm a flamin' bisexual lol), but with guys, it felt even more confusing.

[@e_lesko913]

Oh, and Freddie Mercury! You're truly a (kinda) man of acquired taste. Nevermind my username, I'm closeted as hell (yes, even at the age of 19😒). I don't want my family to find my shit out.

[@electrocast]

Other than a few differences like being a little older than you [I'm 33] and different cosplay experiences, I almost feel like I could have written this myself. Although for me, voice acting was the emphasis instead of singing, I still had a lot of similar thoughts about my voice that you expressed here. The thing that really got me was not knowing being trans was an OPTION, I only ever knew about until I was like fucking 18 is "men that crossdress" and "lesbians that want to be called sir". If I'd KNOWN trans masculinity was a thing, I'd probably have figured it out the day I asked my mother "can I be a boy when I grow up" at like 10 years old.

[@WurdBendur]

as a trans woman, a lot of this resonates with me as well. i was never like other boys, almost like i wasn't one of them at all.

[@whitneym.9358]

I have a lot of Signs that are ridiculous in hindsight, but my favorite is one I came across recently while looking through my old facebook posts. Anyone remember that site where you could morph your face with famous people? I did that with a bunch of celebrities, men and women. But the one where I morphed my face with robert downey jr, I had commented something like "I think this will be my final form" (I also had set the one of me morphed with Tom Hanks as my profile pic for a while). Also related to a lot of the points in this video.

[@doe9000]

this reminds me of the biggest sign I missed- until I was already into a year of accepting my being trans- was that I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. of course I knew it was me, because obviously, but I couldn't really accept it. Some part of my mind was convinced that when I wake up the next morning, I would look different. i was also just uncomfortable with seeing myself. I had to train myself to get used to how I looked, and I'm still uncomfortable with it. this also links to how I can never imagine myself doing something, it's always some male oc I made. I also missed how I would only use male characters when writing stories, using females made me weirdly uncomfortable. As well as only really being comfortable around boys, though I have a feeling that this has more to do with my uncomfortbility around strong emotions and overly chatty people- and other traits that are normally linked to girls. and of course, I wanted my voice to be soooo deep, deeper than anyone. I think I actually started my selfdiscovery journey through realizing that "Hey, this is kinda abnormal".

[@Eviel1n]

Transfem here, and yeah, the mirror thing ABSOLUTELY happened to me. My reflection looked more and more like "a stranger" to me. Not "ugly" in an objective, societal sense as far as I could tell, but increasingly weird and alien to me in ways I couldn't place. The fact that dissociative states like this (no longer identifying with your own reflection, in this case) are a common aspect of gender dysphoria is something I know NOW. But like at the time I had no idea what "gender dysphoria" actually was supposed to feel like, even as I was living through it. I assumed it was that thing where you absolutely knew you wanted to be the "opposite" of your assigned gender, and that you would have "always known" from a very young age (and to be fair, a bunch of trans people DO experience something like this). But for me and a lot of other people I talk to, it was more like… more fleeting thoughts of wanting to be a girl/boy instead of what you're living as now, and meanwhile you're growing increasingly disconnected from your own life and living through this haze of "depression," but the two halves of that equation aren't necessarily obviously connecting for you.

[@soph4837]

Wait this is so relatable, puberty was literal body horror for me

[@maiskyjuchek267]

It made me think… I felt a lot of gender envy to some kinds of gay man. But it is a big stereotype in my head that I just fetishised them and that’s why I’m a bad person. But the more I think about it…. I even felt more sexual desire to my boyfriend when I was imagining myself as a boy in the moment we kissed. But I imagined myself a very feminine boy. I’m confused… In current moment I identify myself as a non-binary, but still searching myself. Who had similar experience?

[@folkologyproductions]

I can’t believe you named my experience word for word. Insane. You’re not alone! And I guess I’m not either!

[@LeoTheDarkAngel]

How I came to realize I'm nonbinary is actually a funny story I think. I was playing Sims and wanted to create a character that was a perfect representation of me. So I went and made an alien that was disguised as a woman and I made the human disguise look like me. But I was kinda upset that the aliens in Sims are also binary, so I vented to a friend about it, assuming that everybody feels like a nonbinary entity piloting a binary body and living by the standards that society set for this type of body. And when I finished venting, the friend was like "thank you for sharing this with me, this means a lot that you trust me with this" and I was like "??? What." and that's how I figured out I was nb. Thinking back it's kinda funny, because even as a small child, I always felt kinda icky when stuff was clearly divided into only two categories, like toilets or sometimes hairdressers have sections for men and for women and I always thought to myself "But what if you're neither?!" Also, I was relentlessly bullied in school for the way I dressed and basically for not being feminine enough. For years I tried very hard to adjust and live up to the standard but whenever I dressed up more "girly" it felt like a chore. Sure, I liked the person I saw in the mirror, women are hella attractive, but I had to consciously go to the wardrobe and purposefully put together an outfit that looked feminine and it always felt like dressing up. Wearing a hoodie, t-shirt and jeans just felt normal and it took effort to dress differently, though for a long time I didn't understand why. I liked that style of clothing, I liked how the person in the mirror looked, I liked that other people complemented me - but I just didn't feel comfortable wearing this stuff. Nowadays I just wear what I want and occasionally I like to dress up as a woman, be very feminine and have a good time, but it's more like a Halloween situation; it's nice to do it once or twice a year and it's fun to "get into character" a little, but I wouldn't want to do it on a regular basis.

[@birdmeatisbeef6519]

I'm gender fluid, i remember looking back and at times I would scream that I'm not a girl, other times I'd be perfectly happy to receive compliments. Every time I had gender dysphoria episodes, I just brushed them off thinking I was just grumpy, or had low self esteem. I only knew about binary trans like u, and didn't know genderfluid was even a thing, so I thought that if I eventually "turn back" to a girl, I really am just a girl after all and that all the dysphoric switch episodes were just my imagination, or a "phase"

[@inlesinlet]

I'm turning 29 in a month, and my egg cracked about two weeks ago. That last point really gets close to what made my egg start to crack; I started to notice a weakness for stories (in books, TV shows, and movies) about gay men. If there's a gay man romance side plot, then I'll be a lot more emotionally invested in that than in the main straight romance (thinking about Shadowhunters here). I became aware that I was even *actively seeking out* stories with gay men. And then I became really aware. And kind of ashamed? Like I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. Like, why am I so darn attracted to stories about gay men? Who do they hit me in the feels like this? I'm a straight agender AFAB person, that just seems insensitive and like... not okay. But instead of scolding myself for fetishizing gay men, I decided to watch some trans content on KZbin. Oh boy, oh man. Turns out I'm a dude. I have known for a decade now that I'm *not a woman,* but it's taken me a while to realize, or be able to admit to myself, that I'm not a nothing-gender. That I desperately want to be one of the guys because I *am* one of the guys, and I just want them to see it, too. It didn't even cross my mind either, for many, many years, that I *could* be a guy. That it was even a possibility.

[@pandora0771]

My egg cracked while writing my visual novel. I actually took one of the names of one of my main characters, but all writing is reflective, and I know there's a bit of me in all of my characters. It's no surprise that the boys get more screen time, and the girls always come out feeling a bit shallow as far as characters go. Three of my characters are eventually in a throuple. All boys (Kind of spoilers but no one here is reading anyways XD) these three characters have become replacements for my faceless inner voice, in a way. But more importantly, one of the characters, I was writing about their journey of self-discovery. they went from believing they were straight to realizing they actually fall under the Ace umbrella. Now, I'm insane so along with this novel, I do little side projects involving the characters such as making them spotify playlists. Well... I made this boy a "Side B' playlist to his main playlist and then I listened to it... and I listened to it... and I put myself in my own story as him and as his boyfriends and **Crack**

[@satunbreeze]

Not me being extremely jealous when I heard someone say "you can't be a true falsetto unless you're a man with a deep voice"

[@masterofpockets9273]

Thanks for the video. I’m just gonna vent here lol. Some of this stuff I relate to- young adult AFAB. Problem with me is that my mental illness and internalized biases interfere with my ability to understand who I really am- true for everyone, yeah. I’ve felt uncomfortable with my body since puberty started, and always thought of it as “wanting to stay a child.” I’ve known about trans people since at least 7th grade when there was an out trans boy at my school, so you’d think if I was trans I’d have considered it earlier than I did (days long unresolved panic in 9th grade). And since I stopped believing every word out of my conservative father’s mouth, I’ve tried to be an ally. My “not like other girls” streak hit new levels of misogyny and transphobia, as in, I’m not like other girls and I’m not like those “girls” who try to be trans (my derogatory view of nonbinary AFAB kids of whom I knew several)- I could imagine that they felt similar about their bodies/impending womanhood but were trying to escape in an embarrassing way. On that note, I’m always glad to meet transfemmes- helps to break down the idea that womanhood is inherently miserable and being trans is just the fate of the weird girl-child who tries to opt out. Since I’ve gotten older I’ve actually wanted to be some kind of LGBT+ to validate my experiences, so I also have to factor that in- people vastly overestimate how far people will go to join a marginalized group, but I do think that extremely online people sometimes don’t want to be a “boring” cishet.

[@malindazahnow9978]

would love to see a signs you missed you were ace video! my boyfriend had no idea what his asexuality was until like 30 years old.

[@Sentient_moss_with_mange]

I have a lot of similarities with your experiences, except for puberty. You see, I actually started quite late, around 13-14, way after the rest of my peers. Before puberty, I was really scared about going through it. All the girls had boobs, curves and period cycles, but I did not. I was happy about it, I thought I was going to be one of the “lucky few that don’t get a period” I thought. Then, it finally started, I felt so gross and sad. I still do at almost 18, it sucks really bad. I liked being flat chested, but the girls would make fun of me and I got self conscious, thinking I was even more of a freak than I already am. Then when i actually got boobs, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t want to wear a bra and shit like that. I just wanted to be me :(

[@robinw.8083]

the rat men costumes are iconic

[@Spagettigeist]

been there, can relate XD Also, being gender-fluid and never having heard of that option or even the option of non-binary made it all the harder to figure out.

[@kiaer.s]

I think the most telltale sign for me that I wasn't normal was wanting to be an obstetrician growing up. Since I was little I had said that I wanted to deliver babies only because the idea of babies was nice but having one of my own produced a very visceral icky feeling. That way, I'd get to "hug and hold all the babies without having to make one myself"

[@early_morning_sd_team]

I can say a lot of these are something I can relate to. I fully figured it out at 21 or 22, just about 2-3 years ago. The main driving point was actually D&D. Every time I went to create a character to play I ended up picking a male character. I even tried to make a female character on purpose and just didn’t want to play her. I had only just figured it out and then my mom forced me out.

[@sentienttapioca5409]

Fucking hell, are we the same person? I couldn't quite get my head around why my female characters never feel as real as my male ones do, until I stared myself down in the mirror and forced myself to really think about it.

[@pandora0771]

Dude. All of this pretty much except for the drag queen thing (kind of. I was always more drawn to drag kings and still I love to see drag queens and kings at queer events but I'm not like a RuPaul stan or anything) and the pregnancy thing (I had my kid at 20 years old and have a nuclear family that consists of my kid, me and my husband who I've been with since I was 15). I just recently cracked at 28 (I'm 29 now and waiting for insurance to accept my script for Testosterone) I was adamant on having 3 kids but immediately after my daughter was born and the doctor told me it would be okay because I could have a VBAC with my next one (Vaginal birth after Cesarian: I had an emergency C-section) I panicked internally. My brain telling me " If this ever fucking happens again, we might as well throw ourselves off of a bridge" and it wasn't because of the pregnancy or the traumatic birth even. I honestly think life has a way of making the best of a bad situation. At the time, I was devastated that I didn't have a natural birth. Now, looking back, it feels like the universe was looking out for me, telling me " You didn't want that because you didn't know who you really were back then. My pregnancy as a whole was easy and I remember saying " I would do this again and again... as long as I was doing it for someone else." Looking back, I feel like I dissociated so hard during the pregnancy. I definitely acknowledged the miracle I was growing and loved the little things like the kicks and doing the apps that tell you how big your baby is that week but the whole thing was so centered around "Haha... big incubation pod for a new life. Yeah. I did that shit". There are barely any pictures of me from then (Not like there were many back then anyway) and the one I do have from my baby shower day reminded me why... I thought I just looked fat. not pregnant. I always fantasized about having a perfect pregnant body and that just wasn't in the cards for me. Looking at that picture now, though. I was definitely pregnant and the woman in that photo was beautiful, and I would have never seen it if I kept living in a suppressed version of myself. I know this comment is long but a few more things that really stood out to me that really mirror my experience: The Soprano to Alto thing. I also went from a 1st soprano to a second Alto in high school and remember trying so hard to be the first woman to be included in the Tenor section (Never happened) I was in the Women's chorale, and it consisted of, at most 15 girls a year. A girl from my grade and I took the 2 spots for second alto, carrying the bassline for 4 years as a duo. She was better than me, but it never mattered because I could belt an octave below her and that's all that mattered to me. doing scale warmups where we tapped out when we reached our limits, and I was always the last to tap out on low scales. Always impressed the girls. I would make jokes like smirking and saying "Ladies...". Being more comfortable in a room of boys rather than girls. If I was with girls, I felt more capable of being myself as long as my dudes were there with me. Girls were only relatable to a certain extent. The sleep over guy talk never really appealed to me for a few reasons: 1. It was awkward as fuck because a lot of the time girls would mention their crushes or who they got the ick from and I felt like I was harboring secrets from them because it was likely I was friends with the guy they were talking about and I knew who they liked or why they were the way they were. and 2. Until I started dating my husband (Who, at the time, until I came out, was so sure he was straight. He doesn't label himself but more recently he's admitted to "Fuck gender. It's stupid and I just love who I love or am attracted to whoever the hell I want" (we're both poly)) I never dated but always found myself attracted to the queer or gay or seemingly gay (came out after high school) boys. Tried dating all of my guy (Straight and to my knowledge still are) friends for about a day to a week and all of them ended in a "this is weird and going to fuck up the friendship" kind of way. One boy did ask me out in 8th grade, and we dated on and off into 9th grade right before I met my husband. Surprise. He came out as gay after High School. Which brings me to the third and final thing that resonated with me from your own experience: "I feel like a gay man trapped in a woman's body"... I always hated that phrase because to me it seemed disingenuous. How could you feel like something you could never be? How could you make that a joke and not absolutely spiral at the thought of never actually being able to live that experience? At the time, I thought all girls were in on the joke and, yes, some did make it out the other side and it was just a joke to them but, for me, it really felt like i was missing something big. That along with the less popular "...in this skinsuit I was forced to live in." (at least by reception of my peers for me saying it. In hindsight it's a pretty jarring thing to say even by dark humor standards when the audience you deliver it to don't relate but how was I to know?) I said it so often how did I not see it as a cry for help? It wasn't until right before my egg cracked when I heard that old joke: A hit of nostalgia and a jarring moment. I work at a men's clothing store and, of course, we get men of all different backgrounds. That includes queer and gay men. My manager and I would talk about LGBTQ stuff from time to time because at the time I was out as Pan Poly, and she liked to learn from me some stuff. One day, a really cool gay guy came in. Happiest guy on the planet. My manager says: "I just want to be a gay guy. I've never met an unhappy one". I made the joke, and my manager said, " OMG that is so me...." But it wasn't, sweetie. It was me. Actually me. And at this point I was still a few months from the crack. But I remember her saying that and I just thought "That could be me... If I was Trans that could be me. But I'm not so the show must go on." Anyways, sorry for hijacking your comments section. As a trans individual still figuring it all out, I find it hard not to write a manuscript when allowed. It helps to see it written out and I also want to give back and leave something that maybe someone else will find useful for them. Our experiences can be similar but, they are all very different.

[@lyndeecebulla5616]

❤❤❤ your comment was not in vain. I enjoyed reading it and it was helpful

[@sofijajoksimovic418]

It feels so good to see that someone was as (or even more) oblivious as I was😂😂😂. I rarely see people talking about the fact that they never knew about trans people (and non-binary for even longer), like how was i supposed to know I'm one if I only perceived the world the way I was taught and that everyone else around me saw it as - there are two sexes and that's it. I don't think I was even taught about the concept of gender and that it's its own separate thing. And our minds and thoughts are such complicated things that sometimes we can't process even the most obvious things.

[@boingooingo3317]

Lol same, I had to come to the realization myself that trans guys existed. I remember googling trans guys after realizing I was actually more comfy as a guy.

[@Mikey-jv5fv]

12:10 Ive never had a unique experience in my LIFE omg i even would sing the boy parts too during practice and concerts and it was very obvious because there were ever only like 6 boys in the choir 💀

[@Jin-jams]

This video made me think back on my life and remember that i realized I can not be a girl after feeling weirdly happy genderbending my one tomboy oc

[@2kratM]

Oh please make the video about asexuality as well! As for me: Before I fully understand how asexuality works, I remember being confused why we had to learn those weird outdated scientific theories about sex in biology class. It literally didn't cross my mind whatsoever that the theories were actually true for most of the world's population, and instead of outdated they were just very allo-normative.

[@Justhereforthefreebar]

Sooo called out by this vid! Lol. Thanks so much for sharing this. When I was around 8 or 9, one of my two best friends and I had a secret.. That I wasn't really *deadname*, but a boy called Rodger (a name he gave me, after Rodger the Dodger from the Beano lmao). When an adult would refer to me as a boy, which happened a fair bit before puberty hit, we'd look over at each other, and grin. Honestly, he'd be so genuinely made up about it, it really was like he could feel the euphoria with me. One day, we were playing outside, and he suddenly started teasing me - saying that I'd grow breasts one day. I think I tried to argue, but there wasn't much I could say.. I knew he was right. I ended up just bursting into tears, and running away, back home.

[@JonerBell]

had the privilege of having a trans parent so i knew that that was a thing for most of my life- despite only figuring myself out later on, but i had a few different signs -used to hang out in mainly guy groups, though i wasnt too uncomfortable with girls -had a tomboy/not like other girls phase -always felt like i was disrespectful if i accidentally looked at someone else in the dressing room/was uncomfortable in dressing rooms -started to feel weird whenever people said that i looked like my mom

[@A.Nerd.]

TW! 6:31 the night of my first period, i had a nightmare about being pregnant and still remember this one part where I was lifting my giant belly that could probably contain 10 babies in it

[@sorentothesky]

guys I can't believe transmasc dantdm is real...

[@MICH3AL_THE3M0GRAP3]

9:51 Ok this is a part that I relate to this part! I never ever felt comfortable near groups of girls I can never understand the way they think, I think very masculine HINT HINT I'm a trans masculine person so

[@phoebegee54]

I've always been attracted to girls but despite being AFAB I'm not one of them. I feel like they're on a whole other level to me. I just feel like some caveman to be laughed at.

[@MICH3AL_THE3M0GRAP3]

Most of your signs are relatable!

[@MICH3AL_THE3M0GRAP3]

I'm proud of myself I wore a pride bracelet that my dad didn't realize was pride and then I complemented another queer person at a store and they said they like my jewelry 😭✨

[@Flynn-h4l]

I always used to dress up as guys for halloween and stuff. I also tried singing tenor, so when you said that my jaw dropped. Growing up, I always hated my body, and that led to a lot of harmful behaviors on my part. When I was LARPing with friends, I would play the most androgynous frickin characters ever so I could act like a guy, but my homophobic siblings would never find out. I never understood why people were happy with their gender. I would say "I wish I were a boy" and people would stare at me like I'd summoned Cthulu. It finally took having a demigirl friend (who is now my partner woot woot) to break me out of my homophobic, conservative shell and help me discover that I'm genderfluid.

[@annsh.6487]

I've never felt so seen. You've mentioned all the same signs that I grew up with!! I think I knew for a while, but I've started to believe I'm nb at around 19, last year. I'm in a country with gendered language so I'm afraid to reinforce the nonexistent "they", but in English I'm only they now. And the dreams of hysterectomy and top surgery have plagued me for years, but I'm afraid of medical misogyny making it impossible to transition - tbh I would even be okay with removing the parts I don't like, even without additional transplants. I just wanna be a ken doll and dress like Raine Whispers:((((