Ask a Transperson anything about what it means to be Transgender

What hardship does it cause you to refer to someone in their chosen pronoun?

 

Even cutting off his penis does not change the fact he was born a male. He can live in a false reality but facts are facts.

 

I don't have pronouns. I have male and female in my vocabulary.

I don't demonize anyone. I just stick to facts. There is only 2 genders unless you are born with both parts. Fact.

 

This horse **** reeks of animus. I don’t buy your “champion of facts” shtick for one second. And it’s not just me. We all see right past it.

 

What brainwashing?
If no one cares anymore, there's no brainwashing taking place.

 

Will Republicans love trans people now that Jenner is running as a R and a supporter of trump?

 

Thank you for sharing your story, I should hope with a little bit of communication people can better understand that transgender individuals are just another member of society, who use public restrooms for the same purpose as everyone else. Prejudices most commonly stem from ignorance. It is always easier for people to believe negative things about a group of people they know little about, but with a bit more exposure and discourse I do believe that those prejudices can be reduced. Threads like this are useful, but the downside of course is you will receive some flak from certain individuals. To that it is important to understand that those individuals are only exposing the flaws in their own personal character.

Anyway, to make this a more properly on topic post, my questions are:

How long have you been open about your gender identity, and have you noticed any shifts in societal attitudes and understanding of transgender people since then?

Was there a particular time where you made a decision to come out to certain friends and family members, and if so what was that experience like for you?

 

Thanks for establishing that there is NO DATA available and yes, let's address YOUR concerns with this real life experience that is NOT yours.

Besides allowing her child to wear whatever makes them HAPPY and a picture on FB what else do YOU have that is NOT just an ASSUMPTION on YOUR part?

The child NOW has at least SIX and probably EIGHT years to EXPERIENCE what life would be like as GIRL.

Only then the rigorous ASSESSMENT process will BEGIN to ESTABLISH whether there is any DIAGNOSIS that would include the USE of puberty blockers.

Kids REJECT how their parents brought them up all the time. For example I HATED being FORCED to have short hair and wear pants but MY parents FORCED me to CONFORM to be something that I was NOT. I swore that I would NEVER impose that on any child of my own.

What is happening here is that this parent is allowing their child to EXPLORE the OPTIONS that I never had.

That is called a LEARNING experience for the child.

When the child becomes a TEENAGER then the child will be able to REFLECT on whether they were HAPPY being a girl or PREFERRED being a boy instead.

That is what the ASSESSMENT determines...what will result in a happy WELL ADJUSTED adult who will be a CONTRIBUTING member of society.

Do you want to know which kids are MESSED UP and end up doing drugs?

It is the kids who are FORCED to conform to an ARBITRARY stereotype that CLASHES with WHO they ARE inside.

The odds of that happening to this kid are significantly LOWER given that they have a parent who is WILLING to allow them to EXPLORE and DISCOVER themselves.

 

I have a trans friend. She's cool. Nice person, mostly just gets on with her life, it's not discussed all that often. I think more than anything what she wants is to be treated like anyone else.

Be yourself and if anyone gets uppity tell them to go **** themselves, it's a free country. If you're very concerned about the criticism of people maybe it's time to seek some professional help.

 

Transition was unheard of when I grew up and it was either conform to the typical male stereotype or be classified as gay which I was not.

I had no expectation of any transition at all and it was only AFTER my soulmate died last year that changed everything for me. In my grief my MATERNAL side stepped up and took over. It was weird having my female side in charge after being suppressed for all of those decades of my life.

When I mentioned this experience to my grief therapist she suggested that I have sessions expressing my femininity. That was the start of my transition to where I am now.

Had my spouse died a decade ago this opportunity would not have been there so I am grateful to all of the younger trans people of today who have opened the door for me to join them.

TBH the concept of Gender was not something that I was even aware of when I was growing up. You were either supposed to be male or female and because I was without any support or had access to any books I assumed that it was just me that was the "misfit". There was no one to talk to and no one else that could be called a "role model" to emulate when it came to being transgender.

My COPING mechanism became crossdressing which had to be done in privacy. My soulmate knew about it but wanted nothing to do with it and enabled me as far as alone time was concerned. It was a form of stress relief but was considered to be a FETISH as opposed to a means of allowing myself to express who I really was.

When the current Transgender trend became more public I considered myself too old and at the time I was a full time caregiver because my spouse had cancer. I was fully focused on her needs and pretty much ignored my own for those 5 years.

Then she died and, as mentioned above, the journey began with baby steps. I began by trying to get across the concept that crossdressing was not a fetish but a lifestyle choice to my grief therapist. To her credit I was her first trans client and she adapted and we learned together what my transition entailed and the steps to take. She has become trusted friend and helped to me adjust to being comfortable as a transperson in public.

The younger transpeople that I have encountered seem to all be well adjusted and happy with their choices. They are focused on their futures and their questions are interesting because they are revealing that Gender is much more complex and interesting than one might anticipate. For example is someone born with female genitalia and a male brain who is post op and in a relationship with a cis-gay male also gay? Or someone who was born with male genitalia and a female brain married to a cis-female in a lesbian relationship?

The consensus is that labels are meaningless as long as there is a loving relationship between the individuals themselves. I am in full agreement with this because, as we discovered with gay marriage, it is the Pursuit of Happiness that OVERRIDES whatever OUTDATED stereotypes society might still have cluttering up people's minds.

So the term "Gender Fluid" seems to be apt since it covers the spectrum of what is happening now. Once the dust settles and the political noise is silenced there will probably be time for some clarity but I am delighted to know that the younger generations will NOT have to suffer what I went through.

Not sure if that longwinded response answers your questions satisfactorily because this is still a learning experience for me.

 

It is the OPENNESS and ACCEPTANCE of your generation that give me HOPE for our future.

One young Gen Z cis-male recently told me that he would physically intervene to PROTECT a transperson if someone was harassing them.

That is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of what I encountered growing up where young males harassed and bullied anyone who was NOT conforming to their toxic masculine stereotype.

You are absolutely right that the labels are absurd and outdated and that it is the individual themselves that matters. Happiness is precious and when you find it, embrace it and make it your own and ignore the hatemongers who want to deprive you of it.

They are the PAST and YOU are the FUTURE.

 

Pretty sure this is up to the Mods. Not you.

 

False. LINK: Trans women retain athletic edge after a year of hormone therapy, study finds (nbcnews.com) LINK: Effect of gender affirming hormones on athletic performance in transwomen and transmen: implications for sporting organisations and legislators | British Journal of Sports Medicine (bmj.com)

You didn't actually answer his question. He asked you if you think private businesses should be forced to allow transgender folks to use the bathroom of their choice. Its a yes or no answer. And it doesn't "imply" coercion. That is what use of force is about. Coercion.

You again did not answer the question. Which is a yes or no question. All that you're doing is evading.

 

I had one Uncle who everyone knew was homo, well, everyone except for Great Grandma.

When asked about why Uncle was still single, Great Grandma used to say; ''He hasn't found the right girl yet''

Today, I believe Great Grandma knew, however, in those days, people were making up çoncealing excuses for other people's anomalies.

And for anyone's info, Trump had a photo op in front of a Church that affirmed LGBT as Children of God, and who deserve acceptance/pastoral care, and equal protection under the law.

 

The definitions might help here;

https://medlineplus.gov/mentaldisorders.html

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/symptoms-causes/syc-20475255

A mental ILLNESS negatively IMPACTS your ability to FUNCTION.


Being UNHAPPY does NOT affect your ability to FUNCTION.

 

Correlation =/= causation. Just because X=Y does not mean Z. (not denying transgenderism, just pointing out a fallacy, nothing more)

You having a strong maternal instinct and do not have the same drive as other males does not mean that you are female. Take me for instance. I have more of a maternal instinct than my ex-wife. Much more. She was also the bread winner while I was content to stay home taking care of the kids. And even now that we are divorced I am still the one taking the kids to their various appointments, filling out forms etc etc.

Note that this was not me denying that you're transgender. Just noting that you being what is more traditionally considered the way females are vs the way males are does not equate to you being a female. It just means that you're more maternal and not as driven as men traditionally are.

 

Yeah I have a question for you... actually a few.

#1) Please explain how being transgender does not fit the TEXTBOOK definition of delusional.

Here I’ll even post it for you:
“A delusion is a belief that is held with strong conviction despite evidence disproving it that is stronger than any evidence supporting it. It is distinct from an erroneous belief caused by incomplete information (misconception or misunderstanding), deficient memory (confabulation) or incorrect perception (illusion). The psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers proposed 3 criteria for delusional beliefs in 1913: certainty (the belief is held with absolute conviction), incorrigibility (the belief cannot be changed with any proof to the contrary) and impossibility or falsity (the belief cannot be true)(Jaspers, 1967). Delusions are associated with a variety of mental and neurological disorders, but are of diagnostic importance in the psychotic disorders.”

Please explain to me how transgender does not EPITOMIZE that definition.

Once you’ve figured out how to respond to that... please explain to me why transgenders have such absurdly high rates of depression, psychosis, self-harming behaviors and suicide rates when compared to their peers.

And before you argue that it’s because they’re treated so poorly and not accepted... I will point you to a study from the Netherlands where homosexuality has been accepted at a greater than 90% rate since the 1980’s and yet homosexuals and transgenders still show comparable levels of depression, psychosis, self harming behaviors and suicide when compared to the US. So clearly “acceptance” can’t be the cause. So what is it?

Here is said study: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...dies-nemesis/F4C594FEF2BAA2EA065FBB70BA1240B9

 

Tell this to my daughter who has depression to the point of thinking about killing herself. IE: Unhappy.

 

Would it cause black people hardships if I decided I was a transracial black person, wore makeup to darken my skin color, put my blonde hair in cornrows and wanted all the black people at work refer to me as Daquan? When they start having convos about white privilege I can step in and talk about how the white man is holding down us black people.

And if they DARE to say I’m white and not black, I can have them brought up before HR for their hatespeech and possibly fired right?

 

#1 the study is 22 years OLD!

#2 the study looked at just 19 transpeople!

Drawing CONCLUSIONS from a MINISCULE subset of the trans population where there has been NOTHING in the way of SUBSEQUENT research that MIGHT corroborate these findings is DISINGENUOUS.

 

I have only been open for a few months and I have not personally observed any significant shift is such a short time frame.

That said there has been a significant ANTI-Trans attitude nefariously perpetrated by the EXTREMIST rightwing DISINFORMATION media over the past year or so.

This thread was started as an attempt to COUNTER that disinformation about Transpeople.

Yes to friends, still haven't got around to any family members who do NOT live with me.

To date I have not encountered a single negative reaction among the limited family and larger group of friends. Everyone has been supportive and it has made a significant difference to my own sense of well being and happiness.

I was asked by my grief therapist what it would be like if my brother, an evangelical, were to reject me and my response was that I do NOT need his approval or acceptance of me being myself.

The most IMPORTANT family member is my daughter and her love and acceptance was there from the outset and that is what matters to me. She is a Millennial and her friends have been equally supportive.

 

This is the most jacked up thread ever. Still got it, still a man. JMO.

 

She is there voluntarily. She would have been told, or saw for herself what the sport involved.

No sympathy from this quarter.

 

@Derideo_Te
While you and I are in disagreement the majority of the time, for what reason you only know, I wish you well on your journey. Being not of the mainstream in anything is not easy, and coming to terms with it even harder.

 

Except liberalism has nothing to do with that. Girls have been allowed to participate on boys wrestling teams for decades. The reason being that if there is no girls team of a particular sport then girls can participate on the boys team. Just as boys have been participating on girls teams when there is no boys equivalent such as field hockey and volleyball to name a couple.