[Background, I'm a guy in my late 20s who was taken into care aged 7.] Everyone around me already knows that I was brought up by foster families because I had a shit early childhood. I deliberately keep it vague and say stuff like "I'd rather not go into it" so that people will just assume I was abused in some way and they'll stop asking about it. The truth is that for the first 7 years of my life, I was brought up as a girl by my pshyco birth mother who really really really wanted a daughter and didn't let the snag of giving birth to a boy stop her from trying to raise one. She was a pretty successful professional in a legal field (not entirely sure what) and had me via anonymous sperm donor from a fertility clinic. She found out i was a boy at a late ultrasound and then moved across the country. Gave birth to me at home and continued to move about until I was 5 or so. It was just the two of us all my life, we had contact with other people, of course, but they rarely got very close. I had lots of friends, but was always supervised. I found out way way after that my mother's strong puritanical christianity was a lie she used to explain why she was so strict about me being 'private' and never letting anyone see me get changed or anything. i just acccepted all of this as fact, having never been told anything different. I was sent to a religious school for girls and had a really great childhood. i was a bit of a tomboy, and played with lego and toy animals, rather than dolls and stuff, but that's not unusual and no one ever questioned i was a girl - even me. Iknew about men and women, but had never really seen much of naked people. my mother never ever spoke to me about it, but i kinda had the impression that when i grew up and got boobs and stuff, my dick would kinda fall off or something and i would be a woman, and other kids would keep their dicks and they'd be men. I dunno, to be honest, i never really thought about it Anyway, I carried on with my happy girlhood, and had a bunch of friends and everything was great until i was 7 and a teacher accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee over me at school. the liquid soaked through my clothes and was scalding me so the staff immediately stripped me out of my dress and underwar to get the hot coffee away from my skin. And then they found out. the cops were called and i got taken to speak with who i guess would be Social Services. they asked me a bunch of questions about life at home and stuff. meanwhile, my mother was taken in for questioning too. she refused to acknowledge me as male and insisted i was her daughter. because she was, y'know, delusional and stuff, i wasn't allowed to go back home but got put with a foster family and went through loads of therapy and stuff. The worst part was that literally overnight, i lost EVERYTHING. my mother, my home, all my toys, all my clothes, i moved school so lost all my friends, they cut all my hair off and told me i wasn't a girl any more. it was really really traumatic. the first forster home wasn't that great. they had three boys already and going from a sheltered 'releigious' only-child upbringing to a rough-and-tumble testosterone-filled environment was really difficult. they tried to force me to e masculine and i was just too confused about what they wanted. anything 'girly' was reprimanded and i felt so lost and alone because nothing i did was right. i tried to commit suicide when i was 11 and again at 13 becuase i didn't feel i fitted in anywhere. After the second attempt, they moved me to a different foster family who were awesome. I consider them to be my parents. they actually stood up for me, the first thing was that they et me grow my hair. from when i got taken into care, they buzzed my hair short, and i hated it. they always had to hold me down and do it forcably while i was crying and fighting. my new parents flatly refused to do it and said that "OP should have put a serious tag on."