Honestly, I was more frustrated with the spinner of doom that kept me from actually submitting my registration for a few days. That meant re-writing my response to that application question until I decided to just save it in notepad until I was able to get a registration form actually submitted.
The "interview" process itself makes total sense, and I'm happy to have even something so simple that helps keep some of the low-effort riff-raff out.
I've limited my Reddit usage purely to subreddits that I can't find a reasonable substitution for. Lemmy is small, a bit complicated to get at first, so naturally there's going to be some communities that just aren't going to make it here. For me really, I go back to participate in r/ChangeMyView and r/AskTransgender.
The first to help provide a voice for trans folk in the seemingly ceaseless threads about trans people, and the second (more important one) to hopefully provide advice or information to people who're just trying to figure things out. It's a tiny little way I can give back and hopefully help at least one person here and there, so I'm not going to give that up just because Reddit itself has shit the bed.
Hi friend!
I see a lot of my younger self in your post, if that helps at all.
I came out in my late 30's, after living life relatively comfortably as a guy (at least by outward appearances. By the time I came out I was starting to be a bit of a wreck inside.)
There were similar feelings and thoughts to what you describe. Often looking at women and thinking "goddamn, why do they get to look so pretty and I'm stuck like this?" or wishing I could have the same kind of fashion choices available that they do. I didn't spend any time watching trans porn content, but I did a lot of reading of transformation erotica. The idea of something or someone sort of "forcing" that transformation from a guy to a girl, and them having to learn to live with it (and secretly finding out they love it) was like crack to me. After a while, it wasn't even the smutty parts I was looking for -- they were fun, but I'd often skip over them to get to the next bit of plot so I could get that vicarious thrill.
By all outward appearances, I was a happy, regular dude -- a relatively successful one at that. I was married, had a dog and a house and a good relationship with my parents and a decent job and group of friends. And I could have probably kept living that way for longer, if I had to. But it ate me up inside. Once I had the thoughts you're having now, it got worse for me; I realized that what I was dealing with might be gender-related and might be dysphoria.
I pushed it away then. I thought "I can't have that, I'd lose everything I care about, all that stuff I worked so hard for." I stuffed it down and pretended I didn't feel it and, for a time, it went away. At first those feelings went away, for months even. But eventually, they came back, and when they did, I'd struggle with them. I'd get down in the dumps for a day or two before I could push it back down and away again. Turns out that it was a repeating cycle for me, each time they'd come back more quickly, and each time the feelings would hit me harder and stronger and I'd be stuck with them for longer before I could finally dispel them. The last time it did that I was depressed for a month or more, to the point that my wife started seriously worrying and told me that she felt almost like she didn't know who I was anymore, that she couldn't recognize what I was thinking or feeling and she was scared.
A week or two later I came out to her as maybe non-binary or genderfluid. Another week or two later I started therapy. Within a month, I'd accepted that yes, I'm trans, and I need to transition if I want a shot at being happy.
Sorry, I'm rambling a bit. What I'm trying to say is don't let it get as far along as I did. You're having these thoughts and questions, they're okay to have. This isn't something to feel shameful about. Seek out a good therapist that specializes in gender identity, and talk to them about it. Maybe try new pronouns out in a small, safe group. Explore, and see what feels right for you. You'll be okay. :)
Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?
I'm not sure where my folks stand, so thanks for creating this thread. :)
I've come out to them, and they said, ostensibly, the right things. "We love you and want you to be happy, whatever that looks like." But then the rest of the weekend I was with them they proceeded to act like the conversation never happened and made no attempt to use the correct name and pronouns.
Fingers crossed, the next visit with them goes better. I'm prepared to do some gentle corrections this time, now that they've had some time to mull on it.
Whether or not that stat is true, I don't think that minority representation should be accurately reflected based on the percentage of the population the minority represents. Just as an example, if we're talking about television shows, and let's just throw out a number that there are 100 major characters across all of the major networks/most watched shows. That would mean all LGBTQ+ representation is contained to 5 characters.. The chance of any one non-invested viewer seeing those characters becomes minimal -- which means that both cishet folks aren't getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps normalize us), and LGBTQ+ folks aren't getting exposed to minority representation (something that helps our own confidence and mental health).
Absolutely.
Discovering that I was trans was the start of a long journey for me -- one that I'm not very proud of how it started, with suppressing it for the first decade or so out of fear of losing the people and things I cared most about. But I'm here now, I'm out, I'm transitioning, and I honestly had no idea that life could feel this good.
I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
And I'm saying that's a bogus reason to ban trans women from women's sports. If their advantage is no greater than that of the advantages between cis women, then including medically transitioned trans women in women's sports does not un-level the playing field.
ETA: The way that we control for the testosterone-fueled changes a trans woman's body undergoes in puberty is by requiring them to be on HRT (including T suppressors) for a long enough amount of time that those advantages become negligible and they can fairly compete with other athletes, not by outright banning them. It's ridiculous and more than a little offensive to act like outright banning trans women from high level competition is the right thing to do.
Hey, just wanna say I really appreciated that video, thanks for sharing!
It's not that this instance is meant to be an echo chamber, it's that it's meant to be welcoming, inclusive, and queer friendly. Saying that we're over-represented, ackshually, isn't really contributing to the discussion other than to tell us that our lived experiences of being under-represented are wrong. It implies that a statistical/percentage-based over-representation of a minority group is a somehow a bad thing. Less charitably, it sounds awfully similar to being told to sit down, shut up, and be happy with what we've got.
Likewise! Keep the place nice, and nice people are going to want to stick around.
Agreed. I'm doing my damnedest not to catastrophize, but it's hard when one of the two major political parties in this country is running on a platform specifically demonizing and targeting my community and people like me in particular.
Yeah, that's the closest thing I can tell. They want either "normal" or just to reserve the term "woman" or "man" for cisgender people, and refuse to even acknowledge trans identities at all.
I mean, the guy that Elon is quoting here, ostensibly "protecting" objects to the word cis because he objects to trans people's existence in general.
No worries, I was picking up what you're saying just fine :)
Also, just because there's a sexual aspect to these thoughts doesn't necessarily mean you're a chaser or it's a fetish. A good exercise might be to ask yourself if you'd prefer to be a woman in mundane, non-sexual situations. How does it sound to be a woman doing her taxes, or a woman arguing with the phone company, or a woman commuting to work, for example.
I do want to say, just because I see some of your story in mine doesn't necessarily mean you're trans. It doesn't mean anything other than I can relate to what you've said so far. The best thing you can do is continue to reflect, and maybe seek outside help in the form of therapy to help you work through these feelings and decide what to do next. A therapist won't (shouldn't, at least) tell you if you're trans or not, but they can help you examine these thoughts and feelings and hopefully give you some clarity so you can decide what, if anything, is your next step.
As a warning, I do feel that there's a bit of a pushiness within the trans communities, and certainly it's not something I'm immune to. We see someone who sounds like our younger eggy selves, and we think "I can help them!" In our eagerness to help someone the way that we might not have had help, we could potentially end up pushing someone towards something that's not right for them. It's why I strongly recommend therapy -- a therapist should be more impartial, and help you draw your own conclusions instead of coming in with their own bias. So please, take what you read here with the understanding that in the end, you're the only person who can truly know what your identity is.
This is it, exactly.
Every time I've gone and looked into it, the research seems to indicate that trans women who've been on HRT for a year or two do retain some advantages due to testosterone-fueled puberty, but those advantages they may retain are well within the bounds of what's expected between cis women. In other words, sure, maybe a trans woman is taller than she'd be had she not gone through T-puberty, but there are cis women who are also tall, and we're not banning them on that basis. The same goes for any other advantages they (trans women) retain.
We stopped punishing left-handedness. As an example: children used to be taught only how to write with their right hand, and using the left hand would result in punishment -- such as the hand being hit with yardsticks or the child being verbally abused -- until the child forced themselves to write with their right hand.
Oh, it's her! I remember seeing her video of the incident in the cheesecake factory. I'm so happy that she's continuing. Not only that I love that she's using her platform to push some education about trans people, though certainly it's not her responsibility to do so. :)
I'll add Minnesota to that as well! We've always been a pretty decent LBGT stronghold and this last legislative session has been phenomenal.
Absolutely. It's still a bit arbitrary, but at least there's data and established history to back this up as a viable way for trans women to compete. It's how we've been doing things in most major sports already, if they have any policy for trans athletes at all. It's worked out fine, I have yet to see any example of a trans athlete that is blowing her competition out of the water, so to speak. All of their examples are heavily cherry picked and misrepresented to look poorly on the trans community, but at closer inspection are anything but that.
That said, there are still some problems. For one, focusing on T-levels ends up with people like Caster Semenya, a cis-woman with a condition that means she produces a bunch of testosterone, being barred from competing.
Oh thank god my home state of MN is on that list!
Honestly, Minnesota (at least in the cities) is super queer-friendly from my experience. The latest legislative session has put some pretty positive things in the books and have enshrined the state as a trans refuge.
In the last year I've been in the process of transitioning and my coming out couldn't have gone smoother. No one's given me anything more than a passing glance as, I assume, they try to figure out my gender. But even that's been kept to themselves and I've heard nothing but respect for my name and pronouns when I've been out and about.
Okay, maybe it was closer to two decades when I think about it 😅
Felt some dysphoric feelings when I was young, didn't realize that it could be gender related til I was at least 20 or so, didn't actually come out and start transitioning until 38... oops
The 90's and 00's weren't the best for representation of what "trans" is.
Oh, I by no means think that other minority groups are more well off when it comes to representation.
I'm just coming at this from my own personal lens, being well aware that any representation of trans folk as normal would have gone a long way for me as a child. So that's what I advocate for, but by no means do I feel we need to tear others down to get where we need to be.
No worries, and no need to apologize!
I'll admit coming off of other social media spaces (looking at you, Reddit), I'm consistently (and pleasantly) surprised at the kind of interaction here. I'm so used to having to defend myself that I sometimes read hostility where there's really no hint of it at all.
And yeah, I'm happy that we're starting to see some representation out there. As a kid I pretty much just had Jerry Springer or Ace Ventura as far as representation of what trans people are, and let me say that was not at all helpful to a young kid trying to figure out what these feelings were.
I'm not who you asked, but I am also a trans person that's not planning on bottom surgery so thought I might chime in here.
Personally, the best solution is simply: Don't legislate anything regarding bathroom/gender. Leave the bathrooms as they are. Let people use the bathrooms that they feel fit them best, that they're most comfortable in. And if someone attempts to sneak in and assault/harass women in the bathroom, that's already a crime that we have laws for.
Places that want to be more friendly or progressive will generally provide gender-neutral options. To me, the presence of a gender-neutral or all-gender bathroom is a good signifier that the place of business could be considered a potentially "safe" space -- the staff there are probably going to be more accepting/less tolerant of open hate or bigotry and I can afford to let my guard down a little bit.
Yeah, it's both an overarching label for the LGBTQIA+ community at large and also a label that some people do identify personally with, as they may feel that no others really fit but they still are part of the community.
My wife, for example. I'm a trans girl, we married when I was still deeply buried in the closet. She's ostensibly cishet - she's more attracted to masculinity, she wouldn't consider herself a lesbian or even bi, but nonetheless she's happy married to another woman.
She's doesn't like saying she's straight anymore - she says it doesn't capture our relationship. She sees me for the woman I am, this isn't a situation of her denying my gender, and she says it doesn't feel like a straight relationship anymore. So if she has to pick a label she just calls herself queer and that's good enough.
Awesome, congrats! Glad to hear it went well, I'm sure you were really nervous!
What the everloving fuck was that ad, holy shit. Seriously, that's a political ad? Supposed to make us like the guy?
Well, no, I suppose it's supposed to make people like me afraid. And I suppose on some level, yes, I'm very afraid for myself and for the country in general if Desantis somehow gets his way and wins the presidency.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, my first response is "wait, did we not already know this?"
Seriously, reliance on a lot of caffeine is such a typical way for ADHD folks to self-medicate, especially prior to being diagnosed.