Ask a trans person!

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Esme nha Maire

Thank you, Dapper. See, what puzzles me is that whilst I know it's certainly not the case for all MTF's to know, from a very early age, as I did, that they are female (I was somewhere in the range 4 to 5 - essentially, I can't recall ever having any sense of gender identity other than female), I get the impression that it's rarer for FTM's to have such strong gender dysphoria at such an early age, and if that is indeed the case, I cannot help but wonder why.

One would imagine that if it didn't take puberty for me to realise that something was horribly wrong (and at that age, I had no concept of sexuality, let alone homosexuality) that the same would hold true for FTMs. I take your point re the tomboy identity (funnily enough, that was kind of how I thought of myself, once I knew that word!) possibly seeming a 'nearest fit' , but as my gender dysphoria was a very strongly physical thing, the social stuff was very much secondary to me, I'm surprised if it isn't so in others, I guess.

I appreciate your return post.

Something that popped into my head as a possibility......

Pre puberty trans girls are looking at something between there legs that don't want there, something that doesn't belong there. They see it, they feel it. There is awareness of it every day. Every time you go to the bathroom, etc.

I think having something you don't want, something you can see and feel that is causing you dysphoria is more powerful than something NOT being there is causing dysphoria.

In puberty, trans boys get breasts. Like the trans girl wants the penis off, the trans boys wants those breasts OFF, like TODAY! Something that we don't want there is more powerful than something we feel is missing.

We hear about trans girls wanting to cut off their penis. It is when trans boys are in puberty that you hear about them wanting to cut of their breasts.

Too, it isn't that uncommon for trans guys to NOT want bottom surgery. And this isn't just about thinking that the bottom surgeries available to men are not good enough (which is a real thing). It is that they just don't have dysphoria (or much dysphoria), in that area. Or they want just minimal surgical reconstruction to ease dysphoria that does no include the creation of a penis, or the closing of the vagina.

However, I never heard a trans guy say he didn't want top surgery (unless they had super small chests...and even then there is only 1-2 times that I have heard/read that).

It's very interesting.