Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.
Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.
The questions I’ve been asked IRL:
- why / how did you pick your name?
- how long have you known?
- how long before you are done transitioning?
- how long do you have to be on HRT?
- is transgender like being transracial?
- what do the surgeries involve?
For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.
If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.
When considering dating trans/NB folks, what is the best way to ask about their genital configuration, gender identity, and future planned trajectory?
In other words, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. I also strongly prefer limited or no body hair (shaved is fine). There is a set of tomboy/androgyny/boi that is my type. Is there a polite way to ask about this?
Honestly I am not sure there is a particularly perfect way to raise genital preference, but it is good to be transparent and honest about your preferences, it might be good to raise early and in a context where you are opening the floor to understanding their needs and preferences too, esp. around any dyphoria they might experience and what their needs are.
The majority of trans folks are pre- or non-op, so it’s best not to assume anything about their genitals, and if you have preferences it’s even more important to communicate about.
For transmasc folks you might need to examine your preferences and the extent to which female gentials make you see men as women (just like when men really enjoy penises on trans women), and just be honest with yourself and your partner, and be careful not to invalidate someone’s gender.
Tbh, this isn’t that far from talking about hair and sexual preferences with cis people, it’s just good to be sensitive because being misgendered can be really dehumanizing.
That’s pretty much what I figured. Wish trans folks had something like the old school hanky code.
As far as my preferences go, I was in a triad for a while with an NB. If I were stuck on a desert island and had to pick between a vanilla woman or a sub boy, I’m picking the boy. However, like I said, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. The whole tomboy/NB thing is the sweetspot for me in this spectrum.
I also have smell preferences. MtF, many NB, and cis women smell much more attractive to me. I imagine it’s related to test levels. I don’t find heavily transitioned FtM very attractive. There’s an androgynous smell that’s kind of like fallen leaves that I really like.
Not trying to fetishize here, but thought the perspective might be interesting. I’m very masculine and fall somewhere between a wolf or bear.
Do you prefer visual porn, or written erotica/smutty novels?
I don’t ask this both because of the obvious privateness, and because I don’t want to put anyone on the spot if their choice doesn’t align with what’s typical for their gender identity, but I do wonder.
Unrelated to being trans (well, at least I think it is), but I have aphantasia. Written erotica is basically useless to me, because I can’t visualise!
What are the practicality regarding sport, especially during transition? There is a big trans athlete discussion, but every sport hall I went had ladies/gentlemen changing room with communal showers. People would definitely see the extra/missing bits. Moreover, I see why other people would be uncomfortable with a person suddenly going from one gender space to another.
Ada covered this well - generally trans people are afraid to use changing rooms and communal spaces like that, being trans is very stigmatized. There are a lot of trans people that don’t even use gender-segregated public restrooms at all because of this.
So I haven’t really heard of or considered a case where a trans person was flaunting their trans / gender non-conforming body in a communal, gender-segregated space. I suspect it’s a fairly rare issue, esp. since trans people make up 0.5 - 1% of the population.
You have to also wonder what it’s like for intersex individuals who were born with ambiguous genitals or who otherwise have bodies that don’t fit into either male or female categorization, how should we handle communal showers and changing rooms for intersex folks?
But in practicality, people with bodies that aren’t “normal” tend to try to hide their bodies and are less likely to use communal spaces where nakedness exists. Even before I transitioned, when I was merely a child, and I had to change clothes for gym class, I basically couldn’t do it in the male locker room. I had no idea why I was so extremely uncomfortable with it, but I just couldn’t. So I had my grades docked in gym class because I gave up trying to change before class - I would just wear my normal clothes, and the teachers would penalize me for it. I was a good kid, and I never broke rules - this was one major exception, and it bothered me.
When I started social transition, I did start using women’s restrooms in public, but I was never bothered by anyone or accosted, and I was usually accompanied by supportive cis women.
I’ve never been in a changing room or naked in front of others, though, and I wouldn’t have considered it. I also wouldn’t use gender segregated restrooms anywhere that I might run into people I knew. I only did it when I could remain anonymous and just slip in and out, and usually only because I didn’t have an alternative.
Now that I have had bottom surgery, I would be more open to using a changing room, but I would still be mortified that people would notice anyway.
I wouldn’t have even gone swimming around others pre-op, but now changing rooms and spas seem like possibilities for me. That’s part of why gender affirming care and access to surgeries is so important - it is part of how trans people are able to integrate into such a cis-normative society, it’s a way for us to fulfill the social expectations put on us, for our bodies to become more “normal”.
I’ve always found it strange that conservatives wish primarily to withhold that kind of care, since gender affirming care was originally developed around what made cis people comfortable - it used to only be offered to trans people who were likely to pass, who were straight, and who were willing to move to a new city and live a new life with a fabricated past. This erasure of transness is exactly what you would think conservatives would be on-board with …
Somewhat related: Australia’s state-funded ABC channel produced a Q&A documentary show called “You Can’t Ask That” with an episode for transgender people. It might be harder to watch outside of Australia but it’s worth the effort. The semi-related Drag episode was also fascinating. Disclaimer/CW: I haven’t watched the full episode in years and suspect there might have been transphobia in some questions.
Official 2 minute teaser question: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSilokmn8zI
(A couple of other countries had localised spin-off versions of the show but I haven’t watched them.)
That particular episode was one of the final steps in breaking down my own internal resistance to accepting myself.
I might have to try to find this, thanks!
@[email protected] mentioned the episode was particularly important, so if you can’t find a copy (Australian VPN and iView throwaway account is ideal, maybe streaming services might have it?), I finally managed to find it and other episodes in lower quality for quick and easy access 🏴☠️🦜 Let me know if you want it.
you are so sweet, thank you!
When I was younger, I assumed that trans people wanted to transition because they felt their personality wasn’t their “assigned at birth” sex. And thus, because of society’s expectations that “men should dress and act this way” and “women have to do/be this,” a lot of people who didn’t meet that would be trans. But as I met and talked to more people, both trans and agender/genderfluid/etc., it does seem like those with body dysphoria actually feel uncomfortable in their bodies, and want a different body. But I’ve never actually asked any trans friends about it, because it does feel too personal, even though some of them are very good friends.
So, my question: if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition? Would that answer change if surgery/hormones aren’t desired, and you instead do want to keep the body you were born with?
Before I got top surgery (boob removal), being alone in my room with my boobs just there would give me dysphoria. I didn’t really have a way to exist in my body without feeling dysphoria after puberty started (although I felt it at times before then as well). Other people noticing and treating me like a girl made it worse, but being away from them didn’t make it go away. Periods made me suicidal, and that’s not really a public event (unless you’re having a truly terrible day).
Some trans people don’t like the ‘I was born in the wrong body’ explanation because it’s kind of overly simplistic. Not problematic or anything, just at the level you’d explain things to a child. Like, if you were born with a clubfoot or cleft palate you wouldn’t necessarily want an entirely new body, you might just want your foot or mouth fixed, right? Some people feel that way about transition, and I think I lean closer to that myself.
I can only speculate on what I’d be OK with if I didn’t need HRT and top surgery, but I will say a decent number of trans people, even trans people on HRT and who have had/want surgery, are also gender nonconforming for their actual gender as well. Not ‘oh they don’t pass,’ but for example lesbian trans women who specifically choose a butch look, or gay trans men who choose a twink aesthetic.
Yes, HRT both improved my mood, and I also feel far more comfortable in the body it’s giving me. Fuck gender stereotypes, though.
This is super longwinded but I’m having trouble putting the ideas together concisely, apologies in advance to anyone reading.
I generally hear people describe being trans as feeling like you were born into the wrong body, like biologically male with a woman’s soul in some sense. But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to. I identify as a man and would feel out of place in a woman’s body, but if I had been born into a woman’s body I would feel out of place in a man’s. That’s my mental picture of what being cisgendered is. I’m not sure I’m articulating this great but hopefully it’s coherent.
That gives me the impression that being transgendered is an emotional discomfort, and I’ve wanted to hear an opinion on if the resistance to labelling it as a mental illness is because of the societal stigma against mental illnesses and how some people think successful treatment should always mean suppression and never accommodation (which would look like gender-affirming care if being trans counted).
Part of where this is coming from is I’ve been dealing with my own mental demons lately after some traumatic experiences in the past couple years, and the way I think about it is different when I’m looking inward. If it’s another person behaving strangely it is easy to say they are suffering and deserve care, but when it’s me I am a crazy person doing crazy things and I know better.
I do feel inclined to see being trans as a mental illness (for the reasons I’ve given above). I believe I’ll be open to hear what I’m getting wrong there. It’s not something I’ve ever been comfortable enough to ask though because I expect that statement to be received offensively (for the reasons given above). I get a lot less hostility in general over who I am and I still sometimes have a very strong gut reaction to perceive that stuff as an attack.
But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to
The few cases we have of cis people being medically transitioned in some way without their consent suggest that this simply isn’t the case, at least for many cis folk.
Alan Turing and David Reimer are both examples of cis folk who were medically transitioned without their consent, one as an adult, one as a child, and both experienced severe dysphoria. They ultimately both took their own lives
So my intuition is wrong there, thanks. I clarified my question to the other guy just a minute ago to hopefully make what I’m asking more clear, (I didn’t fully understand myself tbh), I’d be curious to get a response to that.
I really apologize if it came across as hurtful. I was being overly wordy trying to be sensitive to how this question would come across (hence using this thread for it) and it didn’t convey great. It just seems like it would be very similar to the mental and emotional struggles I’ve gone through and comparing and contrasting to to my own experiences helps me understand people better.
So my intuition is wrong there, thanks
Maybe, maybe not. Your own intuition about your experience of gender may not be wrong. There’s not really any way to know. What we do know though is that at least some cis people have a strong sense of their own gender, that can cause dysphoria in certain circumstances.
The current science points to gender dysphoria being caused by the brain developing as one sex while the body develops as another.
If you ask whether someone is primarily their brain or their body, I think most would say identity resides in the brain and subsequent mind. In that sense, gender dysphoria is a genetic and hormonal disorder, basically a condition of yes, having the “wrong body” for the brain they developed as a fetus. This glosses over a lot of details and sex is complicated, but that’s the rough sketch. The condition arises from the brain and the mind, and in that sense can be labelled a mental illness, but that would ignore a lot of context and evidence we have about what is going on.
It is with this understanding and with the guidance of substantial empirical evidence that transition and gender-affirming care are recommended - it is the only treatment that alleviates symptoms (conversion therapy, for example, increases risk of suicide), but also these are treatments with a very high success to failure ratio. Gender affirming surgeries have lower regret rates than practically any other surgery, much lower than knee replacement surgeries, for example.
So we deal with gender dysphoria differently than we deal with other mental illnesses because of what we know about the condition. We know that people with body dysmorphia like anorexics feel distress about their body and might seek surgery to “fix” their bodies, but we don’t have the large body of evidence that those surgeries improve patient outcomes, relieve symptoms, or are low risk. So we treat anorexia differently than gender dysphoria, because they have different causes and require different treatments.
So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer). We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.
We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.
What I was getting at with saying I wouldn’t be comfortable switching now, but I would have been fine born into it is there there’s a shock that would come with a change from what you’ve lived, and that being cisgendered wouldn’t negate that shock, it would be miserable, but I don’t feel an attachment in the sense that I feel glad I was born a man. That’s what I meant when saying if I had been born a woman I wouldn’t be happy with the idea of changing to be a man.
So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer).
This is what I was trying to get at with the difference between suppression and accommodation, and gender-affirming care being accommodation. But I don’t think it’s fair to reduce all mental illnesses to being not biological and being “solved with therapy or anti-depressants”, I think that is part of the stigma against them. Some of them should be accommodated and not suppressed. Physical treatments are often more helpful than those things, different illnesses need to be addressed in different ways, not treated as a generic umbrella for characteristics society doesn’t approve of.
Sorry for not addressing all of it but I’m skeptical that you read what I wrote there because I explicitly spoke in favor of gender-affirming care as the treatment and your response reads to me like I was arguing against it.
What I was getting at with saying I wouldn’t be comfortable switching now, but I would have been fine born into
David Reimer was forcefully transitioned as a child, when he was young enough to not remember. It created a lifetime of dysphoria for him, and he transitioned back to his birth gender as soon as he understood what had happened to him, and was able to.
I do think a lot of cis people struggle to understand gender dysphoria. Feeling neutral about your gender because you’ve never had to think about it is not the same as knowledge that you would be totally fine being born into the opposite sex. Regardless, it’s not the best way to reason about what trans experience is like, tbh.
is there there’s a shock that would come with a change from what you’ve lived, and that being cisgendered wouldn’t negate that shock, it would be miserable, but I don’t feel an attachment in the sense that I feel glad I was born a man.
I’m having a hard time making sense of what you are trying to communicate, particularly about a shock 🤔 You should know it’s not uncommon for cis people to not have thought about their gender or to have particular attachments to their assigned gender. Usually people just haven’t thought about it and have no awareness of all the ways they are attached to their gender.
Still, most men have some attachments, they usually would say they might be unhappy if their penis and testes were lost in an accident, for example. And most men would probably feel unhappy having to wear dresses and so on. All you have to do is imagine or actually attempt to live as the opposite sex and you’ll quickly get a sense of what aspects of your gender are important to you.
That’s what I meant when saying if I had been born a woman I wouldn’t be happy with the idea of changing to be a man.
If you were born a cis woman you would be happy being as a woman, but the question is whether you, as you are now, were born into a woman’s body and then given a girl’s name, and then expected to have tea parties with your girlfriends and do braiding circles and so on. Your parents would send you to school in dresses and expect someday you would get pregnant and marry a man, and so on. It’s really hard for cis people to actually consider what this would be like, I don’t really hold this against you, it’s genuinely difficult (maybe impossible, that’s my current view - lived experience and qualia just can’t be transferred).
But I don’t think it’s fair to reduce all mental illnesses to being not biological and being “solved with therapy or anti-depressants”, I think that is part of the stigma against them.
I don’t mean to communicate that all mental illnesses are addressed that way, just that some mental illnesses are addressed that way, and as a result a common line of reasoning is that gender dysphoria should be treated that way too. This isn’t the argument you’re making, but I’m raising it because this is a relevant point in the discussion about gender dysphoria as a mental illness and you’re not the only person reading these comments.
Physical treatments are often more helpful than those things, different illnesses need to be addressed in different ways, not treated as a generic umbrella for characteristics society doesn’t approve of.
I agree with this.
Sorry for not addressing all of it but I’m skeptical that you read what I wrote there because I explicitly spoke in favor of gender-affirming care as the treatment and your response reads to me like I was arguing against it.
I did read what you wrote, but people don’t always have awareness of their views or the consequences of their views.
I think you might be missing that the trans person you’re talking to is sensitive to a conservative anti-trans talking point being raised and argued for, and that merely disclaiming the common conclusion the anti-trans point is designed to reach does not completely address this. I’m not going to answer narrowly by ignoring that larger context, that would be irresponsible.
It sounds like for you to understand the existence of trans people you probably first need to accept that other people experience gender and sexuality differently than the way you do
Took some time to reflect, I communicated my question quite poorly and that is on me but I’m gonna try to ask it in a better way.
I feel somewhat strongly that trans-affirming care is the only appropriate approach to treating being trans. I have the impression that as a trans person you feel this is wholly incompatible with my sense that it is a mental health issue. I’d like to explicitly ask why my two beliefs are contradictory.
I’m asking because I am just in the past year or so suffering with severe physical and mental illnesses, and when I try to picture what the trans experience is like, I find that what I am imagining aligns very closely with my mental illnesses and not closely at all with my physical illnesses. I was extremely reluctant to accept that I have a mental illness because of both societal stigma and because in my situation, no one in their right mind would choose to treat my mental illnesses with therapy and pills when a change in living conditions would actually help enormously more, which seemed analogous to treating being trans.
That is what’s made me feel my two beliefs aren’t contradictory - I hadn’t understand how deeply I had internalized stigma against the mentally ill until I was asked to apply it to myself. I am imagining that other people would resist identifying as having mental illness in the same way I was. I picture the trans experience as emotional anguish with all physical threats as consequences of that emotional anguish. One where, also like many cases of mental illness, physical treatments are the correct option. But I don’t understand a way to liken it to my experiences with physical illness, so maybe it would be helpful to understand the physical danger and physical suffering explicitly.
I think there are extremely few situations where a mental illness should be treated as something to correct rather than accommodate without the patient being fully on board with thinking of it as something that needs to be corrected. In many cases, the only reason a patient would be fully on board is societal stigma and designed inaccessibility of accommodations, which is the impression I have of the trans experience as well. That’s the reason I don’t think of options other than trans-affirming care as okay.
I reacted badly because of recently surfaced mental health issues (blehhh) where I obsess over my character and respond to perceived character attacks as an attack on my identity even though I should just be listening. Your response seemed to focus on why I should agree with gender-affirming care and I read that as a character attack, rather than considering that you don’t see it as even possible to believe being trans is a mental health issue that should only be addressed by gender-affirming care. I was being overly wordy to try to be clear that I’m trying to understand how your experience compares with mine, and look, we’re back again.
Also I tend to read comments like that as a disgust and a need to distance from the mentally ill, and that’s something I very much need to work on because I know it’s not the intention at all. It stung more than usual in this case because I was looking to build camaraderie and tried my best to clarify that I don’t want mental illness to be an attack and that I am in favor of gender-affirming care.
This time I promise I will have the good sense to wait at least a few hours in responding to something that makes me feel bigoted. I apologize for being hurtful earlier and I’m hoping this one is less so.
tl;dr - The core stumbling block for me is this one - when I try to picture what the trans experience is like, I find that what I am imagining aligns very closely with my mental illnesses and not closely at all with my physical illnesses. I’ve elaborated way too much on why that is. I need to hear what I have imagined incorrectly, what I have overlooked.
Hm, you’ve said a lot, so there is a lot to cover. I’ve been very busy traveling and haven’t been able to respond to comments like this, so apologies for the delay, the reasons for the delay were on my end.
First, I am hearing you disclose that you are struggling mentally, but it’s a bit ambiguous what you are struggling with. I hear you saying that you are sensitive to feeling criticized or attacked, and sensitive to having disgust or stigma as a reaction to your mental illness.
One aspect of the whole debate about whether gender dysphoria is a mental illness does have to do with exactly that stigma associated with mental illness, and a reason for that is that homosexuality was also stigmatized and classified as a mental illness. As gay rights were achieved, the stigma and classification of homosexuality as a mental illness was reconsidered.
I would like to hold space for both realities: that classifying something as a mental illness is a way society communicates stigmatized way of thinking about behavior, and also that this stigma can be an inappropriate response to mental illness (even classically stigmatizing mental illnesses, like psychosis).
It is also worth noting that I did notice you said you were in favor of gender affirming care as a treatment of gender dysphoria, even while still thinking of gender dysphoria as a mental illness. To turn this around a little, I wonder if you noticed that I admitted gender dysphoria could be thought of as a mental illness in some sense of what it means to be a mental illness.
I do think you might have missed some of my larger points, which were not primarily trying to convince you that gender affirming care is important or the right way to treat it (which you have already affirmed), but why that is true - this gets to the point about classifying it as a mental illness.
Gender dysphoria is a genetic, hormonal, neural, and physical condition that causes both physical and mental symptoms. It is not just a mental illness because it is also a hormonal disorder, for example. It is more like diabetes or hypothyroidism. You also experience mental symptoms if you are an untreated diabetic, for example. The brain develops a certain way, and the body develops another way, and as a result the dominance of the wrong sex hormones creates problems. As Ada has already pointed out, this is true for a cis person - if you take a cis person and raise them as the opposite sex, they experience the same gender dysphoria.
“Mental illness” is very broad and that gets into problems, though. Some mental illnesses are like gender dysphoria, caused by genetic and physical conditions which can be alleviated medically through various drugs, surgeries, etc. Sometimes the brain just doesn’t work for some reason that ends up being more physiology than psychology.
Other mental illnesses are caused by the experiences we have and our psychology. I suffered from an eating disorder at one point as a result of abuse from a family member. I have experienced hyper-vigilance and symptoms of PTSD as a result of abuse as well. Both of those were not caused nor solved through medicine or surgery, the problems were more psychological.
So what is so important about classifying gender dysphoria as a mental illness? Usually this comes up when conservatives wish to dismiss gender dysphoria as a legitimate or valid reason for someone’s gender identity to be respected. It’s a reason for them to not just stigmatize but dismiss - the conservative might argue it’s a mental illness like PTSD (and not a medical condition like diabetes). They then want to argue that social and medical transition is inappropriate and heavy-handed as a treatment, and instead it should be treated with talk therapy (which is conversion therapy), and so on. This is based on nothing more than discomfort and bias about trans people, there is no evidence supporting it (and plenty of evidence for why we shouldn’t treat gender dysphoria with conversion therapy - like, it doubles the risk of suicide).
I understand completely that this conservative “argument” is not what you are agreeing with, but you should know that the only reason we are having this discussion is because gender dysphoria has been framed this way by an anti-trans movement that aims to deny trans people their medical care. It’s a needless discussion and way to rationalize and wedge people on the trans topic - doctors are not wringing their hands over this or wondering whether it’s a mental illness. The doctors and scientists know now that gender identity is biological and genetic, that gender dysphoria is not like PTSD or other mental illnesses like that, and that the treatment is social transition, hormones, and surgeries as appropriate (i.e. as the patient seems to need it, based on the consensus of the patient, their therapist, and doctors).
So why is this so relevant? What does it mean to be a mental illness to you, and why is it so important to determine if it is a mental illness or not?
EDIT: I forgot to mention, one of the problems with thinking of gender dysphoria as just a mental illness is that this is often used to imply the experience of gender identity is delusional when it’s not according with the assigned sex at birth. A neurobiologist might argue that the brain is where a person’s identity exists in the first place, and if you were to choose between someone being their brain or their body, it is obvious people’s identities are in their brains. To this extent, trans women are women because their brains are female - their gender identity is biologically hard-wired, and not a delusion, and thus not a mental illness. The body is what is wrong, so it’s what gets changed.
EDIT2: oops, I didn’t forget to mention that, it was the first point I made in my initial reply to your comment 😅 We’re going in circles now!
My only question is why? Why go through all that stuff to “become” someone when you can just “be” who you already are?
I mean, almost nobody is happy with the body they’ve grown, but most of us just accept it and go on with life. What is the reason for drastic changes like taking hormones and getting surgery and needing other people’s validation?
I hope this isn’t seen as transphobic, I’m happy to accept anyone, I just really don’t understand the drasticness of it.
Because that body was so unpleasant I was considering suicide. There was a wrongness pervading every aspect of my life. And I’ve long liked the term “hormonal dysphoria” to describe how in some trans people such as myself the mere act of having the wrong sex hormone dominance essentially has very similar symptoms to major depression.
I tried plenty else first. I attempted to man up, I grew a beard and got somewhat strong. I tried being an effeminate man and cross dressing for a bit. I tried religion. When I transitioned there were still old trans people giving the old advice, to wait to transition until the only alternative was suicide. I hit that point at 19 and began hormones at 20, but in a more accepting world I’d’ve probably accepted myself at 16.
It can be really hard to understand why trans people transition - the answers are complicated and involve explanations of the neurobiology of sex and gender.
One way to help you understand is to imagine or even try out being in the wrong sex yourself - if you are male, imagine you were born a woman, they named you Sue and expect you to date boys, play with dolls, dress in frilly skirts and dresses, and so on. Why can’t you just be Sue authentically? Why bother with horomones and social transition?
When it feels wrong to be in the wrong sex, it is due to how your brain developed as a fetus, and you can’t help that the wrong sex hormones make you depressed and anxious, you can’t help that your body feels completely wrong, you can’t help that the only known solutions to the suffering is to take the right hormones, to fix the body and to live as your actual gender. Cis people don’t have to go through that struggle, so it’s harder for them to understand what it’s like to be trans. It makes complete sense you would have difficulty understanding, even as a trans person I struggled to recognize I experienced gender dysphoria or that I needed to transition - it was not obvious at the time.
And if the thought doesn’t bother you, you might be actually agender or genderfluid or something. I probably am agender for this reason, although I live as a cisman.
For me at least, there’s a pretty significant difference between being in a body i find revolting versus one I don’t. I wanted to live my life as someone I could tolerate, who didn’t make me feel disgusting.
I’m not underselling it, dysphoria is repulsive. I felt like a freak, I felt wrong. I just did whatever I had to do to fix that. Validation wasn’t something I sought as much, it’s certainly nice to be recognized but I transitioned for me first and foremost.
tbh even before hormones were changing my body, they drastically altered my mind and alleviated my depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation within a few months … while the dysphoria I feel about my body is severe sometimes, it’s much easier for me to live with than having testosterone dominance in my body and its impact on my mind
This is what I didn’t understand about transition before, that it can have these kinds of medical consequences. I thought of being trans more as a social thing, and that never seemed worth prioritizing. I had no idea the wrong sex hormones can cause depression and other mental symptoms (and not just those symptoms caused from being sad because body looks and feels wrong, I mean the sex hormones directly impact the brain and cause the symptoms).
Many people go out of their way to transform their bodies, from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery. My question is why not? It’s your flesh puppet; decorate it how you like.
Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid? Transracial identity? Otherkin? Insincere trans identity, such as the recent case of Liebich, a transphobic neo-Nazi who legally identified as a trans woman seemingly just to avoid men’s prison? Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?
I personally think transracial identity is particularly interesting when one considers that race is a fluid social concept rather than an objective concept like genetics (see how in the US and Europe different peoples have historically changed from being considered ‘black’ to being considered ‘white’ over time, see how a person can be considered a race in one society and a different race in another society, such as “mixed-race” people or people with ancestry from the edges of continents). Unfortunately most of the examples of transracialism I’m aware of are cases where deception or fame played a large part in compounding criticism, such as Dolezal and Korla Pandit, leading to claims of their transracial identity being exploitation.
Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?
Identities don’t really need to be either validated or contested, especially if the person didn’t ask for it. Validation will likely win you more friends, though.
Obv use their preferred names and pronouns to be respectful, as with any person. But beyond that, there’s really no need to get involved in their identity at all. It’s a deeply personal thing and it’s unlikely they’ll change it for anyone other than themselves.
