: What would a FtM transman's, who was born in 1990, life be like? I am writing a story with a trans character (female to male) set in the 1990's. My main character's parents are supportive

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For transmen the hormone treatments are steroids. They can find them through a gym, even a clever 14yo who is training harder to keep his body muscular, and probably recognize the natural boost of adrenaline and testosterone hormones from exercise as a good feeling. Being serious about athletics would fast track him to people with more experience using hormones and other methods to body enhance.

Ditto, a transwoman who has a sister on birth control or a mother who has had plastic surgery. Hormones are not difficult to figure out, and they are used for the same purposes by cisgendered so they are not at all rare.

He would relate with other young men attempting to masculinize their physique, adopting the behavior and dress of older boys, counting every hair on his lip and chin, and fantasizing about the private lives of celebrities and sports heroes. Don't forget to make him a kid.

Most of his experience would depend on his parents (a mom with the internet would have been educating herself since he was the a-typical toddler). Not all cultures react in the same way to gender variance or psychiatry, and then again neither do individual parents and family members so the home experience really could be almost anything – including having bigger problems than a teen who is picky about his clothes and what name you use in front of his friends to not embarrass him. This is all relatable family drama. If there are siblings they will each have "issues" ahead of them from the parents' point of view. To outsiders it might seem "exotic" but for this family it is a daily routine, and they have never known otherwise.

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If you go back a bit further you will find the controversial story of the tennis player and doctor Renee Richards. One aspect that made her attempt to play in the Women’s Open controversial was the belief that she would be stronger than the other contestants. It was not considered fair to the rest that she wanted to compete with women.

One question you must decide for your character - does he want the surgery or will the hormone treatment suffice and he will live his life as a male without it?

In the ‘70s hormone injections and assignment surgery were available but extremely rare.

The barriers that are more likely are those that anyone who is different would encounter.

The personality of your character could well determine how accepted he is, particularly in a time when there are many who vividly remember the Civil Rights movement. If your character is kind, he will have friends. If your character is more interested in making a point, perhaps his life would be more difficult.

1990 is not 1890 and - while prejudice exists in every time - the medical procedures existed. It was part of a protocol to have years of psychiatric treatment to ensure that the person desiring this reassignment truly wanted it, so finding a psychiatrist willing to see your protagonist could be one barrier.

Your character might not wish to undergo the psychiatric assessment that was believed necessary.

Another barrier that family might encounter is enrolling their son in school while all documents show him as other. Legal name changes are not something your average teenager is allowed to do, so his parents would have to do that for him.

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I don't recall hearing at all about Transgenders in the 90's, and I'm very much a live-and-let-live liberal on all sexual orientation issues.

I imagine the vast majority of people would just class this as homosexual behavior and discriminate on that basis, and the history of that struggle is reasonably searchable. Your 'dress like a boy' girl would just be seen as a butch female lesbian.

Then and now I had two female gay friends that lived together but closeted in public. They even told their landlord and neighbors they were just friends splitting the rent. It was still (in America) the kind of thing employers (and landlords) could discriminate against (I know at least two CEOs that explicitly did discriminate against homosexuals, male or female).

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