Chukchi Husky
Lone Wolf
i've made it clear elsewhere how I came to realise how I'm transgender. I'm 35 (soon to be 36) and after years of suspecting and with the help of the Gender Dysphoria Bible in IglooDame's signature, back in June last year I finally discovered that I'm transgender. I haven't decided on a name yet but at the moment I'm leaning towards Rebecca and I go with she/her pronouns (although about a decade ago on one chatroom I did have shi/hir).
I never experimented with crossdressing when I was young (except for one time when I wore one of my sister's t-shirts). Instead, when I was a child I always had a feeling that everyone exaggerated the differences between boys and girls. I have younger sisters and they could all be described as tomboys, so all these ideas of what girls are supposed to be like and my sisters weren't like that. Then I slowly started to noticed that I wasn't like the other boys, even if I didn't want to really admit it to myself. It became a lot worse when I went to senior school (11-16 or optionally up to 18 years old). It was an all boys school and I never felt like I belonged. It didn't help that I went to a rough school and almost constantly bullied all the time. I thought I wasn't just trying hard enough to fit in. At this point I had already been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and I thought any weird feelings or obsessions that I had were because of that. Even before I entered senior school, there were moments where I thought to myself that it would make sense if I was a girl. There was one time I remember when I just started senior school where I started crying because I felt like I didn't belong. I wasn't aware that transgender was a thing back then (It really didn't help that the first transgender character I saw was in Ace Ventura Pet Detective). I guess I should mention that in my first year of senior school The Matrix came out and how I reacted after watching it was completely different to everyone else to the point that they couldn't understand why I felt that way.
When I was a teenager my life just started getting worse. I just felt completely miserable all the time and I guess if I did see a doctor I would've been diagnosed with depression but I felt I would only be wasting the doctor's time and what I was going through was nothing. When I was 18 and nearly finished with school, another student, I think he was just trying to reach out and help but I was so withdrawn and I never talked to anyone, he said that I looked depressed.
This was when I became aware that transgender people existed and that it was possible to change sex. I was watching TV late at night and there was one of those chat shows where they bring in a trans woman and everyone is amazed about how much she looks like a woman. Then they mention that she transitioned as a child and for some reason that I didn't understand at the time, I thought I was too old. I was a teenager. There was another show, a documentary, that was about a famous experiment into gender identity involving a pair of twins and after watching I came away with two thoughts. At that point I didn't think there were differences in gender or that any differences in gender were exaggerated. I now understood that gender identity was a thing. The other, which turned out to be more damaging for me, was that a transgender person was someone who resisted constantly from a young age from being misgendered. I never did that, so I thought I couldn't be transgender. If only I knew what gender dysphoria would actually be like. It might seem strange, but I didn't think wanting to be a woman was enough to make me transgender.
I left school and my life fell apart. I'm 35 and my life has barely changed since I was 18. It was at this time that I started playing RPGs with character creators and for some reason I decided to play as female characters and I didn't know why I wanted to play as female character. If I had to justify it I would've said something like "This is a fantasy world. I can play as an elf, an orc or a lizard. If I want to be a woman I can be". I always felt disappointed if a game didn't give me the option to play as a female. Many years later I would try to force myself to play as male characters, when I was becoming aware that wanted to always play as a female character might be weird. I remember when trying to play as a male character in Skyrim, I couldn't get out of the starting dungeon.
Since realising that I'm trans, I found out something weirder. I'm a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Ever since Sonic 2, I always tried to play as Tails (the cute two tailed fox). I mention this because Tails is a favourite of trans people.
I feel I should mention something else that I became aware of a lot sooner but I feel like it does relate to my own transgender journey (and liking Tails probably hints towards it). Ever since I was young I liked animals. I wrote a story in school when I was 8 years old about a boy and a girl who were stranded on an island and transformed into foxes (then I tore it up because I thought I gotten into trouble with the teacher). When I was a teenager I still liked animals, especially wolves and other similar canines and I knew that it was something that boys didn't like (and that it was something girls liked but still I didn't make the link). Then I started to wonder what these animals would be like if they had some human attributes. Maybe it's because of all the media with talking animals, especially Disney's Robin Hood. When I had internet access I slowly began to discover that I'm a furry and it made certain people angry. When I did find a small furry community they asked me for my fursona (a furry character that represents myself). I went with a female presenting hermaphrodite huskytaur (and that's how I ended up with shi/hir for a while). Even then, I created a female character to represent myself and I still wasn't aware that I'm transgender.
The years became a decade and my life hadn't got better but by that point I no longer cared. I was starting to feel like I didn't exist. If I was a character in a film I would be the camera, just watching the other characters who go one with their lives. I felt like no one actually liked me, that the only reason why I was allowed to stay around was because people felt sorry for me. I was even beginning to feel like the world around me wasn't real. I spent most of my days playing time sinks like the Bethesda open world games, always playing as a female character. It was only with Fallout 4 when I started to notice that I wasn't playing the game as a game but as a person trying to live in the world. I was even going around collecting dresses for my character.
The only game series where I felt I had to play a male character was the Pokémon series and even then it never felt right. Back in March I started to play Pokémon Legends Arceus, again choosing to play as a male character, but I couldn't get into the game. At one point I decided to get my character long hair and say that my character was transgender but then decided to just restart the game as a female character. I only played the game for forty minutes as a male character. I played the game for 60+ hours as a female character. That was one of the moments when I started to question myself again.
Another moment happened a couple of months later. For years I've wanted to create a Sonic fan fiction, but for many reasons I didn't until a couple of years ago. I had some ideas but didn't think of how a plot could work until I started reading the rebooted Archie comics (then later read the British comics then started to research the early Archie comics to avoid the mistakes that were made then). I set it ten years after the game and I wanted to make Tails the main character. For some reason I couldn't figure out Tails and the character disappeared. Then I suddenly thought "What if Tails is trans?" then the character suddenly started making sense and I knew where to take the character. Then I thought "Why did I think to make Tails trans?" That was in April.
Another thing happened that I feel is important. For the past two years I've been growing my hair. The first time I got a hair cut I was around 5 years old. I've always wanted long hair, but my dad always kept insisting that I get hair cuts to the point where he would give me a hair cut himself. I was always bullied at school for having long hair (it wasn't actually that long, just not really short). When I was older, everyone kept telling me how after I get a haircut I now looked like a man and for some reason that always made me feel odd. The only reason why I've started growing my hair was that my dad stopped. I was asked by my mum if I wanted a hair cut and I said no. I started to wonder why and one of the thoughts I had was because I could have long hair like a woman.
In June and hearing all the increasing backlash against trans people I suddenly became aware of something that for a long time I never knew. Most people never question their identity. Most people are fully aware of their identity from a young age. I thought it was normal to question identity, I just thought I was obsessing over it because I'm autistic (I also thought that I couldn't be transgender because I'm autistic but since then it seems like it's more the opposite). I knew a few people were confident in their identity that they never felt the need to question their identity, but I didn't think it was everyone. That was when I was starting to strongly suspect that I might be transgender. Reading through the Gender Dysphoria Bible, I went in thinking I might be transgender, even kind of wanting to be transgender, but I thought I would only have one or two symptoms but wouldn't actually be transgender. I took five hours to read it all because I was crying so much. It wasn't one or two things, it was almost everything and the one thing that wasn't I'm wondering that it came out in another way (if playing as a female character in a game counts as crossdressing).
Since then, I became aware of other transgender people and they're more like me than I ever thought. It turns out there are plenty of trans woman who are just harmless nerds. I've slowly been transitioning where I can. I'm wearing woman's clothing at night (feeling like I should've tried wearing woman's clothing before). I'm sleeping in a sports bra. I've recently shaved off all my body hair (I'm aware of the irony of being a furry). So far only my mum and two of my sisters know that I'm transgender but I'm planning to come out to the rest of my family by my birthday (I need to learn how to wear makeup to try and make my appearance look more feminine). I'm hoping that it will at least show my mum that this is serious and that I need to see a doctor.
I've been waiting since August to see a doctor. Then I have the nightmare of the British gender identity clinic system to look forward to.
I still have no idea how to come out to my offline friends. I'm starting to wonder if one of the reasons why I took so long to realise that I'm transgender is that for over a decade they've made it clear that they're anti transgender. It seems like the rest of the country is catching up with them.
I never experimented with crossdressing when I was young (except for one time when I wore one of my sister's t-shirts). Instead, when I was a child I always had a feeling that everyone exaggerated the differences between boys and girls. I have younger sisters and they could all be described as tomboys, so all these ideas of what girls are supposed to be like and my sisters weren't like that. Then I slowly started to noticed that I wasn't like the other boys, even if I didn't want to really admit it to myself. It became a lot worse when I went to senior school (11-16 or optionally up to 18 years old). It was an all boys school and I never felt like I belonged. It didn't help that I went to a rough school and almost constantly bullied all the time. I thought I wasn't just trying hard enough to fit in. At this point I had already been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and I thought any weird feelings or obsessions that I had were because of that. Even before I entered senior school, there were moments where I thought to myself that it would make sense if I was a girl. There was one time I remember when I just started senior school where I started crying because I felt like I didn't belong. I wasn't aware that transgender was a thing back then (It really didn't help that the first transgender character I saw was in Ace Ventura Pet Detective). I guess I should mention that in my first year of senior school The Matrix came out and how I reacted after watching it was completely different to everyone else to the point that they couldn't understand why I felt that way.
When I was a teenager my life just started getting worse. I just felt completely miserable all the time and I guess if I did see a doctor I would've been diagnosed with depression but I felt I would only be wasting the doctor's time and what I was going through was nothing. When I was 18 and nearly finished with school, another student, I think he was just trying to reach out and help but I was so withdrawn and I never talked to anyone, he said that I looked depressed.
This was when I became aware that transgender people existed and that it was possible to change sex. I was watching TV late at night and there was one of those chat shows where they bring in a trans woman and everyone is amazed about how much she looks like a woman. Then they mention that she transitioned as a child and for some reason that I didn't understand at the time, I thought I was too old. I was a teenager. There was another show, a documentary, that was about a famous experiment into gender identity involving a pair of twins and after watching I came away with two thoughts. At that point I didn't think there were differences in gender or that any differences in gender were exaggerated. I now understood that gender identity was a thing. The other, which turned out to be more damaging for me, was that a transgender person was someone who resisted constantly from a young age from being misgendered. I never did that, so I thought I couldn't be transgender. If only I knew what gender dysphoria would actually be like. It might seem strange, but I didn't think wanting to be a woman was enough to make me transgender.
I left school and my life fell apart. I'm 35 and my life has barely changed since I was 18. It was at this time that I started playing RPGs with character creators and for some reason I decided to play as female characters and I didn't know why I wanted to play as female character. If I had to justify it I would've said something like "This is a fantasy world. I can play as an elf, an orc or a lizard. If I want to be a woman I can be". I always felt disappointed if a game didn't give me the option to play as a female. Many years later I would try to force myself to play as male characters, when I was becoming aware that wanted to always play as a female character might be weird. I remember when trying to play as a male character in Skyrim, I couldn't get out of the starting dungeon.
Since realising that I'm trans, I found out something weirder. I'm a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Ever since Sonic 2, I always tried to play as Tails (the cute two tailed fox). I mention this because Tails is a favourite of trans people.
I feel I should mention something else that I became aware of a lot sooner but I feel like it does relate to my own transgender journey (and liking Tails probably hints towards it). Ever since I was young I liked animals. I wrote a story in school when I was 8 years old about a boy and a girl who were stranded on an island and transformed into foxes (then I tore it up because I thought I gotten into trouble with the teacher). When I was a teenager I still liked animals, especially wolves and other similar canines and I knew that it was something that boys didn't like (and that it was something girls liked but still I didn't make the link). Then I started to wonder what these animals would be like if they had some human attributes. Maybe it's because of all the media with talking animals, especially Disney's Robin Hood. When I had internet access I slowly began to discover that I'm a furry and it made certain people angry. When I did find a small furry community they asked me for my fursona (a furry character that represents myself). I went with a female presenting hermaphrodite huskytaur (and that's how I ended up with shi/hir for a while). Even then, I created a female character to represent myself and I still wasn't aware that I'm transgender.
The years became a decade and my life hadn't got better but by that point I no longer cared. I was starting to feel like I didn't exist. If I was a character in a film I would be the camera, just watching the other characters who go one with their lives. I felt like no one actually liked me, that the only reason why I was allowed to stay around was because people felt sorry for me. I was even beginning to feel like the world around me wasn't real. I spent most of my days playing time sinks like the Bethesda open world games, always playing as a female character. It was only with Fallout 4 when I started to notice that I wasn't playing the game as a game but as a person trying to live in the world. I was even going around collecting dresses for my character.
The only game series where I felt I had to play a male character was the Pokémon series and even then it never felt right. Back in March I started to play Pokémon Legends Arceus, again choosing to play as a male character, but I couldn't get into the game. At one point I decided to get my character long hair and say that my character was transgender but then decided to just restart the game as a female character. I only played the game for forty minutes as a male character. I played the game for 60+ hours as a female character. That was one of the moments when I started to question myself again.
Another moment happened a couple of months later. For years I've wanted to create a Sonic fan fiction, but for many reasons I didn't until a couple of years ago. I had some ideas but didn't think of how a plot could work until I started reading the rebooted Archie comics (then later read the British comics then started to research the early Archie comics to avoid the mistakes that were made then). I set it ten years after the game and I wanted to make Tails the main character. For some reason I couldn't figure out Tails and the character disappeared. Then I suddenly thought "What if Tails is trans?" then the character suddenly started making sense and I knew where to take the character. Then I thought "Why did I think to make Tails trans?" That was in April.
Another thing happened that I feel is important. For the past two years I've been growing my hair. The first time I got a hair cut I was around 5 years old. I've always wanted long hair, but my dad always kept insisting that I get hair cuts to the point where he would give me a hair cut himself. I was always bullied at school for having long hair (it wasn't actually that long, just not really short). When I was older, everyone kept telling me how after I get a haircut I now looked like a man and for some reason that always made me feel odd. The only reason why I've started growing my hair was that my dad stopped. I was asked by my mum if I wanted a hair cut and I said no. I started to wonder why and one of the thoughts I had was because I could have long hair like a woman.
In June and hearing all the increasing backlash against trans people I suddenly became aware of something that for a long time I never knew. Most people never question their identity. Most people are fully aware of their identity from a young age. I thought it was normal to question identity, I just thought I was obsessing over it because I'm autistic (I also thought that I couldn't be transgender because I'm autistic but since then it seems like it's more the opposite). I knew a few people were confident in their identity that they never felt the need to question their identity, but I didn't think it was everyone. That was when I was starting to strongly suspect that I might be transgender. Reading through the Gender Dysphoria Bible, I went in thinking I might be transgender, even kind of wanting to be transgender, but I thought I would only have one or two symptoms but wouldn't actually be transgender. I took five hours to read it all because I was crying so much. It wasn't one or two things, it was almost everything and the one thing that wasn't I'm wondering that it came out in another way (if playing as a female character in a game counts as crossdressing).
Since then, I became aware of other transgender people and they're more like me than I ever thought. It turns out there are plenty of trans woman who are just harmless nerds. I've slowly been transitioning where I can. I'm wearing woman's clothing at night (feeling like I should've tried wearing woman's clothing before). I'm sleeping in a sports bra. I've recently shaved off all my body hair (I'm aware of the irony of being a furry). So far only my mum and two of my sisters know that I'm transgender but I'm planning to come out to the rest of my family by my birthday (I need to learn how to wear makeup to try and make my appearance look more feminine). I'm hoping that it will at least show my mum that this is serious and that I need to see a doctor.
I've been waiting since August to see a doctor. Then I have the nightmare of the British gender identity clinic system to look forward to.
I still have no idea how to come out to my offline friends. I'm starting to wonder if one of the reasons why I took so long to realise that I'm transgender is that for over a decade they've made it clear that they're anti transgender. It seems like the rest of the country is catching up with them.
