How I Know I'm Trans: Part 2 - Childhood

Trans Awareness Week!

Hey all, it’s Transgender Awareness Week, so I’m going to be aiming to do a post every day, a little shorter, and a lot more “this is my experience and my opinion” rather than some of the heavy research I’ve been working on.

I asked for questions on Twitter, and a number of people just wanted more of my story, so I’m going to start there. You can read Part 1 of that story first, if you haven’t already seen it. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to get the rest of the story as it comes out!

Let’s talk childhood

Gender affirming care for trans youth is one of the biggest issues that is up for debate, though it really shouldn’t be. There is strong evidence for it being effective, even life-saving for the trans youth who need it. I’ll do a more thorough article on it soon, but for now, that link is a great place to start.

Today, I’m just going to talk about me.

Before I do that, I want to say that I absolutely hold nothing against my family. I grew up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, with a conservative family from the Midwest. Undoubtedly, my parents simply did the best they could, and nothing prepared them for having a daughter that looked like a son. They have handled my coming out with love and acceptance, and I am so thankful for them (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Love you!).

“When did you first know you were trans?”

I get this question a lot. When did I know I was trans? Probably a couple weeks after I started taking Hormone Replacement Therapy¹. But I also didn’t even hear of “transgender” people until I was in college, and even then, I was pretty conservative, and another 20 years would pass before I felt safe actually trying to figure out what it was that I had been feeling my whole life. I had been told by religious leaders that “transgender” wasn’t a real thing, just delusional people, etc. So, the actual thought, “Am I transgender?” just wasn’t something I could think about.

But I was probably seven or eight, I remember thinking two things very clearly:

First, something like, “it’s a shame that I could have been a girl but ended up a boy.” I didn’t know what to do about it, and knew I probably shouldn’t say it, but I absolutely felt it. I don’t even really remember what drove that thought - the idea of it just sounded so much better. I’d been in this world for a few years, and having been around boys and girls, men and women, I just felt a connection to the idea of being a girl that I never felt about being a boy.

The other thought was that I knew the concept of a tomboy existed, but I really wanted there to be the opposite concept - a boy who wanted to act like a girl. But I’d never heard of such a thing, so I just had to bury that feeling. but even that language was just the closest concept I’d heard to what I wanted. I wanted to be a girl, not just be a boy who acted more feminine.

I heard one trans YouTuber say something about how she first heard the concept of transgender when she was like 11, and instantly resonated with it and was like “that’s what I want to do - I want to be a girl.” And there is no doubt in my mind that if I’d had the choice from a young age, I would have jumped at it.

By age 12 maybe, I was watching the Power Rangers and felt a strong affinity for the Pink Ranger, and when I played Mario Kart by myself, I’d always choose Princess Peach, justifying it as “she’s the best”, even though Yoshi was exactly the same performance. I raced as Princess Peach so many times before school.

I still hung out with boys mostly, because that’s what boys do, but I never fit in. Like so much of being trans, a good way of describing it is something like always having to wear your shoes on the wrong feet.

By Junior High, I’d occasionally try on my sister’s clothes in secret, just because I wanted to see what I’d look like as a girl. And looking in a mirror, I loved it, but knew that no one could ever know. But I felt free and me for those few

I could see the script I was supposed to follow. I got into sports, video games, and nerded out on anything I could.

My fashion settled in around 8th or 9th grade: a hoodie or t-shirt, loose fitting blue jeans, and running shoes. I continued with that fashion until I started to transition last year, with just a few exceptions. It’s actually pretty common for trans people to go with something like that - it’s comfortable and doesn’t really show the form of the body in any real way. Perfect for someone who doesn’t want to think about their body.

Yeah, and…?

As I’ve said before, much of the problem with “how do you know?” questions is that there’s really nothing I can say to prove I’m trans. After all, stereotypes can’t be all of what gender is. But what I can say is this: if someone had said, “you know, some people are transgender, and that means that even though their body would say ‘boy’, they’re actually a girl, and that’s a totally ok thing,” I would have very quickly figured out that was me. The language and societal support wasn’t there yet.

I grew up in an age where pop culture made it very clear that someone “changing gender” (even if they weren’t trans, exactly) was completely unacceptable. Ace Ventura, Mrs. Doubtfire, and others were shows that played trans people for laughs. Heck, even in the 2010’s, the show Bones did an episode where the entire running gag was that they could not figure out the gender of a visiting scientist with an androgynous presentation, and their continual (inappropriate) efforts to find out, rather than just asking the scientist what pronouns they would like to have used.

Positive representation of trans people has been rare.

My first experience with positive representation of trans people was a murder victim (also in Bones) who is never seen on screen, and the writers handling was a mixed bag. But then I saw Sense8 last year and Jamie Clayton’s portrayal of Nomi Marks absolutely shook me. She is smart, beautiful, confident, compassionate, and trans. She’s just a woman, living in a world, trying to get by, who happens to be trans. And, like I said - almost as soon as I realized that trans people existed, I knew that was me.

And so, I share my story now, not to convince you of how I know, but in hope that people like me will get to see positive portrayals of trans people far younger. That parents will talk with their kids about accepting trans, non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid, and gender non-conforming people as they are, and valuing what those different identities can teach us about ourselves, even if you’re cisgender. And so that when parents have a child say, “So, you know how we were talking about transgender people? I think that’s me.” the parent can wrap that kid in a hug and say, “We love you deeply, thank you for trusting me with this, how can I help?”

In other words, I share my story to help bring awareness to one, simple fact: Transgender people exist.

Tomorrow

My plan tomorrow is to talk about some ways that you can support transgender people - I hope you’ll follow along! Feel free to leave questions in the comments below, and I’ll try to answer them, either in the comments or in follow-up blog posts!

Love y’all,

-Celeste

1. I tend to hold a high bar for the word “know”, and so even though I was like 99% sure I was trans, I saw taking HRT as something of a final test - how did my body react to it, etc? I’ll cover that more later, but in summary, my body and mind love being on estrogen instead of testosterone.