I think that one of the worst things about this is how little you can do to explain it to other people. Within the general public there are agreed upon things that are traumatic, that can give you...
I think that one of the worst things about this is how little you can do to explain it to other people. Within the general public there are agreed upon things that are traumatic, that can give you a framework to communicate your struggles to other people (for example, someone with OCD can tell people how their disorder works and they're expected to be respectful of it). But there are also "wrong" kinds of trauma that usually only gets scoffs, sometimes even from people in the community. Things that "aren't that bad."
At the end of the day we don't need special treatment or people to feel sorry for us, but just to understand that our experiences can be traumatic for some and cause a lot of issues down the line that we do our best to manage. There's nothing more disheartening than having a friend dismissing your struggles because they don't think it's that bad.
Also, the point about obsessively trying to pass in an attempt to hide any trace of being trans is probably the most painful part in this read. Having had my realization on 4chan, pretty much every person I came to know had a very unhealthy relationship with their physical appearance, stemming solely internalized hatred towards trans people. If you pass then suddenly, you're on a different playing field than the rest, and can step on them like dirt.
I used to be on a discord server for Scandi/Nordic trans people and the users who were also on 4chan were always obvious and by far the most self-hating of everyone. I learned my share of...
I used to be on a discord server for Scandi/Nordic trans people and the users who were also on 4chan were always obvious and by far the most self-hating of everyone. I learned my share of internalized homophobia/transphobia from other parts of the internet, but I'm glad I never really went on 4chan. Truly a toxic place to be.
Oh and re: passing - I feel very lucky that I've had a successful transition. The difference between looking like a feminine queer man earlier in my transition and then passing as a woman now is night and day. There are downsides to being a woman too, because male privilege is real - but so is female privilege. They are not two sides of the same coin though, more like two different coins.
It could be that people simply pick up on the subconscious signals that I'm finally at peace with myself, meaning I act naturally and no longer put on an act, and that that's why I'm doing better now. But I do have more friends now, I'm met with open arms almost everywhere I go, complete strangers smile to me, I'm more in touch with my emotions, I can be totally honest about things that I couldn't before, etc. On the other hand, I am taken less seriously and I get interrupted more often. And passing groups of men when it's dark can be scary, especially young men/boys. And I have been yelled at on the street, which really sucks. But I feel a lot safer now that I'm perceived as a woman rather than as a (in some people's eyes), a feminine queer freakish man.
Got a little off-topic there I guess. But yeah, I agree that passing is a different playing field.
“Passing” = “successful transition”? I think that this states that unless you are passing a transition isn’t successful? That seems a bit like proving the people on 4chan are correct in their...
“Passing” = “successful transition”?
I think that this states that unless you are passing a transition isn’t successful? That seems a bit like proving the people on 4chan are correct in their loathing and reinforcing passing is the only way to successfully transition? At least that is how I read this.
That's just what I personally see as a successful transition for myself. And every other trans person I'm friends with sees it that way as well - I don't think any of us consider ourselves...
That's just what I personally see as a successful transition for myself. And every other trans person I'm friends with sees it that way as well - I don't think any of us consider ourselves superior to those who don't pass/don't want to pass, and I do have acquaintances who are trans but do not have it as a criteria of success at all.
I do apologize though because I know I went off-topic and I definitely wasn't trying to state anything nor reinforce people's self-loathing. There is no one right way to transition. There is only what feels right for you personally and nobody should force anything on anyone else.
I tend to over type responses and then try not to look like a spaz and delete most of it so sometimes my highly edited comments can come off as sounding a bit formal and direct. After I posted I...
I tend to over type responses and then try not to look like a spaz and delete most of it so sometimes my highly edited comments can come off as sounding a bit formal and direct. After I posted I worried I came off like a bitch and hope I didn’t come across too harshly as it wasn’t my intent.
I appreciate your story and honesty and I don’t think it was off-topic at all.
I don’t want to sound like /that/ person but I have had three trans female acquaintances and each of them had such a stark contrast in their feeling of /feeling comfortable/ after they transitioned but they all had their own thing about “passing”. So, I had to learn the language, so to speak, of the type of things that were triggering to hear so my radar is always up on what I say. And my interpretation of your post was…oooo…that would have made at least two of them have an episode. But your reply was eloquent, empathetic and makes complete sense.
I do remember the “female privilege”s but as an older woman it has been decades since I’ve had that worry of men at night or getting cat called. Take weird comfort in eventually, they will stop. :)
I am the exact same way! I often struggle with proper phrasing and forming coherent sentences and points, especially in text and doubly so when it's in English. So no worries and thank you for the...
I tend to over type responses and then try not to look like a spaz and delete most of it so sometimes my highly edited comments can come off as sounding a bit formal and direct. After I posted I worried I came off like a bitch and hope I didn’t come across too harshly as it wasn’t my intent.
I am the exact same way! I often struggle with proper phrasing and forming coherent sentences and points, especially in text and doubly so when it's in English. So no worries and thank you for the kind word about my eloquence and empathy! 😊
I know exactly what you mean about different things being triggering. The world is not a safe space though. I mean, I think we should all always try to be respectful and empathetic to our fellow humans. But it's not fair to have to walk on eggshells all the time (or have your radar up, as you put it). I have always been very fragile and sensitive but transitioning forced me to develop a thicker skin because you can't possible exist in this world if you get offended left and right. I easily shrug at things now that triggered me in the beginning.
Like, only other trans people know about all the little peculiarities of particular words specific to transness. I'm not going to bother to correct older members in my family for saying the word transvestite or transsexual instead of transgender. Many see the former as outdated and even offensive, but those are just the words they grew up with - what matters to me is their intention, not that they accidentally used a word that fell out of favor with a sub-group of a sub-group of a sub-group that your average cis person wouldn't have heard about in a million years.
Very much indeed they were extremely sensitive and in turn, ultimately exhausting and took a toll on me mentally. It hurt my heart to see good people go through such pain but I can only play...
Very much indeed they were extremely sensitive and in turn, ultimately exhausting and took a toll on me mentally. It hurt my heart to see good people go through such pain but I can only play therapist so long.
I did find that the experiences made me much more sensitive to just things I say in general and not just with trans people. There were certain words and slurs said much more openly about people when I was younger and unlike a lot of my aged peers, I adapted to see words have meaning and choose them carefully. Probably too carefully but also because I cared enough to. I have heard the excuse of “Well that’s just how I was raised” too much. But, being in the queer community would also open me up to hearing things cischet people wouldn’t. Though, I don’t think that necessarily means one should not have a curiosity of groups they don’t belong to and how to interact with them. Not sure if that is empathy, respect or curiosity but a lot of those qualities seem to be absent in the same people that say “Well that’s just the way I was raised”.
But, as you said “Intention matters” and I completely agree. Someone calling me an “old lady” derogatorily is way different than if someone chides me about my age and calls me an “old lady” ☺️
I do also wonder if these women I knew also had more to deal with in terms of societal acceptance in general since this was like 15 years ago. Being part of the queer community in the early 2000s we all had a lot of more stigma about us but particularly trans women, in particular. I saw too much violence. And I know that instilled a lot of self-hate of not being “enough”. I would hear things in community like not “gay” enough, not “butch” enough, etc. Plus the societal obsession with us women and our looks of never being “pretty” enough, “successful” enough which was probably multitudes higher with transwomen. I would have to believe that a generally unaccepting society was incredibly damaging. Then going back even further to when they were kids and definitely how much worse it would have been.
I believe this was alluded to in the article. I’d go back and check but it was a difficult read. I’m intrigued by sociology in general and think about it a lot and usually have too much to say about it hence the above musings ☺️
“Minority trauma” is very real even outside the queer community. The caste systems in place cause so much trauma to people and it’s so frustrating to see the effects of oppressive patriarchy especially based on skin color, income, who you are and who you love, where you were born, etc. Things that cannot be helped.
I’m veering off topic for a while now and prattling on but I’m not going to edit my response down to something smaller per the usual 😆
Ah, I didn't realise this was all 15 years ago! I am 30 so I was still a child and young teen in the 00's, and while I was not out back then (nor did I even realise I was queer until like 18, only...
Ah, I didn't realise this was all 15 years ago! I am 30 so I was still a child and young teen in the 00's, and while I was not out back then (nor did I even realise I was queer until like 18, only accepting/admitting it to myself at 25) I do remember the overwhelming amount of slurs used in daily language. Homophobic slurs were used casually and every single day - really making me internalize a lot of it and a big part of why it took me so long to come out. But actually being visibly out back then definitely must have been a lot harder than it is today. We have been a highly politicized group the last few years, but even though there is an increased focus on us, I do think that ignorance and therefore acceptance was worse in the 00's? That's an assumption though because again, I was a child.
The gay enough/butch enough/etc. stuff is pretty interesting to me. There are still norms in 2023 of course, and every group and community of any type has subtle cues as to what one has to be like in order to fit in, but I can thankfully say I never experienced those things! It seems like there is a more embracing attitude in which you can be uniquely yourself and not worry about being one way or another. However I think I have commented on Tildes in the past about something that I personally experienced - where me being asexual and saying that I wasn't interested in hearing about other's sex lives every day was immediately met with my getting called a bigot and I was told I was shaming them (this was on one of those discord servers I mentioned earlier). So even though asexuality is accepted on the surface, I was very much excluded for not being totally fine with hearing some very explicit things about their kinks.
I'm no longer ace because of surgeries and my E levels finally being in a good spot, but I still really struggle with how overtly sexual many parts of the LGBT+ community is. Maybe I grew up a little sheltered and am shy or something. But things like this lesbian event at this year's pride where you could meet other people doing embroideries, get hair cuts in a safe space by queer-accepting stylists, and oh, you can also buy sex toys there. Looking back, it's not that bad, and I get that I'm probably more prudish than the average queer person. But things this just make me raise an eyebrow because what in the world does hair and needle-work have to do with sex toys!?
Slightly ranting there sorry, I think I kind of forgot what we were talking about (apropos babbling on lmao, we are hopeless!) - I guess it came to mind as an example of not fitting in because of not being "sexual" enough which I thought was similar to being gay/butch/etc. enough.
Minority trauma/stress is so real, yes! An organisation was created a few years ago here specifically to help people deal with what it's like to be both an ethnic minority as well as being queer. I think they even won a prize for their work.
Out of curiosity, since you mentioned your age once or twice, I'm sure you're not actually and old lady 😅
LOL. I have a few decades on ya :) Coincidentally, the sexualization in general was one of the reasons I left the community and I didn’t consider myself a prude (maybe shy and aloof and, a word...
LOL. I have a few decades on ya :)
Coincidentally, the sexualization in general was one of the reasons I left the community and I didn’t consider myself a prude (maybe shy and aloof and, a word that wasn’t around back then that I highly identify with these days: “demisexual”). That and substance abuse. As underground bars were pretty much the only place you could meet people other queer people in my area it was a poor backdrop for socialization. And, it was also a space that was rife for “hooking up”. Public pride events were later on and they just seemed to take the same bar space and made it public. Queer = sex and drugs. I can’t recall actual sex toys being sold at the events but they were sponsored by the local queer sex toy store, condom/lube manufacturers and a host of local bars. A queer embroidery club sounds awesome but it was something we were too off or faces to ponder. :D Once you stopped hooking up, being on the prowl and/or getting wasted there wasn’t an offshoot space for queer people to meet other queer people.
I have heard that the increased attention to transpeople these days has also made the invisible transpeople visible whereas, they had a form of stealth/passing before “transgender” was in the public lexicon and even a topic that was talked about by the public at large. Some trans people who had finished their transition years prior and flew under many a radar may be “seen as trans” these days. There are also those that spend tons of money for therapists for years, $100k + for surgeries and only to have their dreams of appearing cis to be completely dashed and they still look enough like their birth gender. Then throw on top all of the vitriol and attention over the past few years and it becomes a much larger burden whereas in earlier days, they would have probably had surgery, did all the legal stuff, moved and no one was the wiser. I am definitely not an expert in this and have limited personal experience but from things I read and hear studying society and older queer/trans peoples stories in general, some things were better when there wasn’t the attention. I think visibility is great in general because that is really only the way to eventual acceptance but I can definitely see where the visibility is also incredibly damaging in this time between.
I totally get how being asexual would make you an “other” in some queer spaces. I honestly knew no one who was asexual (at least openly) but I can assume that their presence would have been at conflict with the space and a kind of, “Why are you here?” type of question. If you didn’t fit a certain stereotype and follow an unwritten hierarchy - being x “enough” - discrimination would occur. Which as a free-wheeling hippie, peace & love type made completely no sense to me at the time: the highly discriminated caste of queer people extended discrimination into their own ranks.
If you ever come across information on the organization you mentioned, I’d love a link to whatever info they publish. My altruism these days is more towards marginalized groups in general but I do put a bit more effort into donating to organizations that help the marginalized of the already marginalized.
Thanks for the conversation. It has made me think about and reflect upon things and people that I haven’t thought about in a long time.
You should take a look at your local community again sometime, if you feel the inkling at all. In my experience this is very much not the case anymore - people are still sexual for sure, but...
Coincidentally, the sexualization in general was one of the reasons I left the community and I didn’t consider myself a prude (maybe shy and aloof and, a word that wasn’t around back then that I highly identify with these days: “demisexual”). That and substance abuse.
You should take a look at your local community again sometime, if you feel the inkling at all. In my experience this is very much not the case anymore - people are still sexual for sure, but there's a lot more inclusivity of people who aren't. Of course I say this as a young person (28) so in your age range things might be different.
I personally do love queer sexual liberation but I would never want that at the expense of all the people I know who are on the asexual spectrum. I don't know how long ago you stopped engaging, but it may be worth trying to look again - if anything I would say the needle has swung the other way.
Hmm looks like they only translated some parts of their website, so most of it is in Danish it seems. But here it is: https://sabaah.dk/welcome-to-sabaah/ About visibility.. yes to all of what you...
Hmm looks like they only translated some parts of their website, so most of it is in Danish it seems. But here it is: https://sabaah.dk/welcome-to-sabaah/
About visibility.. yes to all of what you said. I definitely personally would rather go back to the times when people simply didn't know about us, and therefore didn't know what to look for. But talk to any conservative or certain type of person and they will tell you "we always know". They don't always know of course lol, but they think they do because they know to look for hysterectomy scars on transgender men, they know to look at transgender women's throats for an adam's apple, shoulders/waist/hips ratio etc... Most people are thankfully not like that but I do believe it's been detrimental that we are so visible nowadays. Of course, without this visibility I would have likely continued to suppress myself for even longer than I already did - I would not have learned that it is possible to transition since I did not already belong to the queer community. I believe that's the reason that you most of the time, trans people in the past were likely to have started out thinking they were simply bi-/homosexual and then later realised that they were also trans. But since they were already part of the queer community, they got to learn about it.
And thank you too by the way! I could talk for hours about these things 😊
While I struggled fitting in to what I might call designated queer spaces like gay bars and night clubs, I'm happy with the people I've gotten to know outside of it. It's just a different common understanding that we have of one another that I won't get with cis and straight people. As humans we always seek out those who look like ourselves, but yeah I agree that it's super unfortunate that there will be social control in away in our own ranks. You might be just as troubled as the next person in the gay bar, but you still can't stick out too much from whatever norm may or may not be imposed there. However I will definitely echo /u/supergauntlet's sentiments! There's a lot more to be had now, for example in my city there's a recurring event each month called "queer cafe" - I still haven't been there but my friend and I had been talking about seeing what it is because despite her being a party-girl and me being rather quiet, she has a wife so we at least agree on not being in it for the hook-ups and whatnot haha
Thanks for that link. That is the type of work I love to support! I did hear one smug male asshole say not that long ago, “I can tell when a woman is trans within seconds.” Like, yeah, no you...
Thanks for that link. That is the type of work I love to support!
I did hear one smug male asshole say not that long ago, “I can tell when a woman is trans within seconds.” Like, yeah, no you can’t. But then I think of the creepy male chasers (do they still call them that?) who sought out transwomen voraciously and have studied many transwomen with deep interest would probably be able to tell better than a typical cis straight person. So, my theory is the asshole outed himself as a creepy chaser and he didn’t think anyone would notice :).
In the States, I personally blame that asshole Jenner for creating this landscape. Overnight, trans people went to really not known about to full-on this is what every one in a large chunk of the world is talking about the next day. And here we are. I mean, probably many more factors at play here but that interview put the word “transgender” into a lot of people’s heads that wasn’t there the day before and it doesn’t seem like it has stopped since. That may also have been around the time the DSM was updated to stop treating transgenderism as a mental disease - but I’m still going to blame her. :)
They are still called chasers and I can attest that they are unfortunately still a thing..! And let me just add to this with a funny story - last year when I went in for a regular laser hair...
They are still called chasers and I can attest that they are unfortunately still a thing..! And let me just add to this with a funny story - last year when I went in for a regular laser hair removal check up, the nurse/tech asked me the reason that I needed laser: "do you have PCOS or what's up?" - I was completely dumbfounded by that question because I thought a person trained in this field would 100% of the time know if she was talking to a trans woman. Guess not though, because she was surprised to learn that the reason for my facial hair is that I'm transgender. So anyway, they sure can't always tell lol
Jenner is definitely one of the worst persons you could ever come up with to be the representative 😬 Because yeah for a while there she was the only trans people that anybody knew of. More celebrities have transitioned by now which is really great, Elliot Page being the most famous one I think? But I think film and TV did a lot more damage to us as a whole than Janner. And while it seems to be going back and forth quite a lot, I think it's slowly but surely going the right way in terms of general acceptance of not only trans people, but also queer folk as a whole in that more and more people's attitude seems to be "who cares? They're not hurting anyone" (this is from my strictly western perspective though)
One thing that's changed a lot with chasers is that as societal mores have changed more and more people don't give a shit if you like trans people. So there's fewer "DL top looking for TS for fun"...
One thing that's changed a lot with chasers is that as societal mores have changed more and more people don't give a shit if you like trans people. So there's fewer "DL top looking for TS for fun" where it's a bi guy that won't ever admit to fucking a tslur and more "soft boy looking for trans goth gf" where it's just a kinda dorky straight or straightish (my friends jokingly call them 'reddit bisexuals' - straight + femboys) guy that wants to date a transfemme.
There's absolutely still creeps out there that see us as walking penises with boobs attached. But there's creeps everywhere, and times are changing.
And while it seems to be going back and forth quite a lot, I think it's slowly but surely going the right way in terms of general acceptance of not only trans people, but also queer folk as a whole in that more and more people's attitude seems to be "who cares? They're not hurting anyone" (this is from my strictly western perspective though)
Very real. I'm optimistic about the long game, but it sucks a lot having to deal with assholes right now.
Well, that's exactly the problem. A lot of trans people place passing as their end all be all solution and loathe every part of themselves that reminds them of the opposite gender. Remember, even...
Well, that's exactly the problem. A lot of trans people place passing as their end all be all solution and loathe every part of themselves that reminds them of the opposite gender. Remember, even if you pass to other people, you don't necessarily pass to yourself.
There are a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms in the community, but that's what happens when you feel like you can't be yourself without being judged. People discovering they have dysphoria should not be presented with passing as being the holy grail, as is done on 4chan.
The solution is self acceptance. You change what you can, through whatever means you can, and learn to live with what you can't. Some of us will never be perfect at it, but it's still an important thing to remind myself whenever I drift off to somewhere dark. The more someone learns to accept themselves the easier it is to be confident, which leads to more acceptance. A successful transition, to me, is one where you come to accept yourself, even if you don't necessarily pass.
Agreed. It's taken me a long, long time to be able to talk to my closest friends and partner about some of the subjectively awful experiences I had as a teenager. I have been burned several times...
There's nothing more disheartening than having a friend dismissing your struggles because they don't think it's that bad.
Agreed. It's taken me a long, long time to be able to talk to my closest friends and partner about some of the subjectively awful experiences I had as a teenager. I have been burned several times by trusting the wrong people, and that set me back years in coming to terms with my identity.
You're absolutely right. I regret singling any group out in my original post. I wish I'd have caught it during proofreading, but I reiterated my words to hopefully be a bit less presumptuous. I...
You're absolutely right. I regret singling any group out in my original post. I wish I'd have caught it during proofreading, but I reiterated my words to hopefully be a bit less presumptuous. I hope you're doing better now and have found your comfort.
A good read, I like a lot of Doc Impossible's work. This one did trigger a bit of a trauma response in me and had me reliving some particularly awful memories from my adolescence, which wasn't fun...
A good read, I like a lot of Doc Impossible's work. This one did trigger a bit of a trauma response in me and had me reliving some particularly awful memories from my adolescence, which wasn't fun to go through right before a work meeting.
I read this post to the part about the bullying and started crying so I tabled it until the morning. Frank discussion again of childhood abuse again like the article When I was a dumb little weird...
I read this post to the part about the bullying and started crying so I tabled it until the morning.
Frank discussion again of childhood abuse again like the article
When I was a dumb little weird kid, I had the lovely experience of being a fat kid with gynecomastia. Kids are not nice to middle school boys with man boobs. One of my biggest traumas was being literally groped by an asshole kid while he yelled 'bean dip' which objectively is a really funny thing to be traumatized about. Like I thought for the longest time I never wanted breasts because of this little shithead kid 15 years ago.
Nobody told him to stop. Not once did an adult do a goddamn thing. I think about that a lot. Like the author, I think about the kinds of evil corrective gender policing we allow children to do without a second thought all the time.
This article is fantastic but very hard to read. I'm so sorry to the author for the things they endured and I'm so glad they're here to share their wisdom with us. I'm not certain if the caste system analogy is exactly accurate, as I don't fully feel like it's accurate that a white trans woman at the bottom of the white totem pole could always get away with abusing a non-white cishet man, but it's certainly one I'm going to talk to my mother about as she grew up in India when the caste system was much more entrenched than today. It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.
I hope one day we can get to a place where queer children are simply allowed to exist.
“I hope one day we can get to a place where queer children are simply allowed to exist.” I couldn’t agree more. But, I think though it will be quite a while - maybe two or three generations from...
“I hope one day we can get to a place where queer children are simply allowed to exist.”
I couldn’t agree more. But, I think though it will be quite a while - maybe two or three generations from now. Maybe. In order for queer kids of all creeds to be just kids takes a monumental shift of how people from every currently marginalized society are treated, I think,
I wish I would be alive to see the society children of today are able to build. I believe that this generation out of most of the recent will be able to do things right and I hope it is glorious.
Yeah, as a fellow older queer who had to suffer through a lot of traumatizing bullying, physical violence, and pure hatred growing up, Gen Z and Gen Alpha gives me a lot of hope for the future...
Yeah, as a fellow older queer who had to suffer through a lot of traumatizing bullying, physical violence, and pure hatred growing up, Gen Z and Gen Alpha gives me a lot of hope for the future too. They seem to have their heads screwed on straight, and their much more tolerant attitudes, empathetic behavior, progressive beliefs, and culture of activism is admirable. The kids are alright, and unlike us younger GenX and Millennials, they finally have the demographic numbers to start affecting real change too, especially as the Boomers and older Gen Xers finally die off.
The kids are, as cfabbro says, alright. We can support them too, and as time goes on I think more and more people will come to see that not being miserable cops about everything is the better way...
The kids are, as cfabbro says, alright. We can support them too, and as time goes on I think more and more people will come to see that not being miserable cops about everything is the better way to live.
Even in just the last 15 years so much has changed. Saying the fslur on tv used to be pretty normal, now it's a cultural death sentence. The same is increasingly true of the tslur but progress doesn't happen overnight.
For every miserable asshole that doesn't want to admit genderqueer and trans and nonbinary people deserve to exist, there's more and more people every day that believe the opposite.
I think that one of the worst things about this is how little you can do to explain it to other people. Within the general public there are agreed upon things that are traumatic, that can give you a framework to communicate your struggles to other people (for example, someone with OCD can tell people how their disorder works and they're expected to be respectful of it). But there are also "wrong" kinds of trauma that usually only gets scoffs, sometimes even from people in the community. Things that "aren't that bad."
At the end of the day we don't need special treatment or people to feel sorry for us, but just to understand that our experiences can be traumatic for some and cause a lot of issues down the line that we do our best to manage. There's nothing more disheartening than having a friend dismissing your struggles because they don't think it's that bad.
Also, the point about obsessively trying to pass in an attempt to hide any trace of being trans is probably the most painful part in this read. Having had my realization on 4chan, pretty much every person I came to know had a very unhealthy relationship with their physical appearance, stemming solely internalized hatred towards trans people. If you pass then suddenly, you're on a different playing field than the rest, and can step on them like dirt.
I used to be on a discord server for Scandi/Nordic trans people and the users who were also on 4chan were always obvious and by far the most self-hating of everyone. I learned my share of internalized homophobia/transphobia from other parts of the internet, but I'm glad I never really went on 4chan. Truly a toxic place to be.
Oh and re: passing - I feel very lucky that I've had a successful transition. The difference between looking like a feminine queer man earlier in my transition and then passing as a woman now is night and day. There are downsides to being a woman too, because male privilege is real - but so is female privilege. They are not two sides of the same coin though, more like two different coins.
It could be that people simply pick up on the subconscious signals that I'm finally at peace with myself, meaning I act naturally and no longer put on an act, and that that's why I'm doing better now. But I do have more friends now, I'm met with open arms almost everywhere I go, complete strangers smile to me, I'm more in touch with my emotions, I can be totally honest about things that I couldn't before, etc. On the other hand, I am taken less seriously and I get interrupted more often. And passing groups of men when it's dark can be scary, especially young men/boys. And I have been yelled at on the street, which really sucks. But I feel a lot safer now that I'm perceived as a woman rather than as a (in some people's eyes), a feminine queer freakish man.
Got a little off-topic there I guess. But yeah, I agree that passing is a different playing field.
“Passing” = “successful transition”?
I think that this states that unless you are passing a transition isn’t successful? That seems a bit like proving the people on 4chan are correct in their loathing and reinforcing passing is the only way to successfully transition? At least that is how I read this.
That's just what I personally see as a successful transition for myself. And every other trans person I'm friends with sees it that way as well - I don't think any of us consider ourselves superior to those who don't pass/don't want to pass, and I do have acquaintances who are trans but do not have it as a criteria of success at all.
I do apologize though because I know I went off-topic and I definitely wasn't trying to state anything nor reinforce people's self-loathing. There is no one right way to transition. There is only what feels right for you personally and nobody should force anything on anyone else.
I tend to over type responses and then try not to look like a spaz and delete most of it so sometimes my highly edited comments can come off as sounding a bit formal and direct. After I posted I worried I came off like a bitch and hope I didn’t come across too harshly as it wasn’t my intent.
I appreciate your story and honesty and I don’t think it was off-topic at all.
I don’t want to sound like /that/ person but I have had three trans female acquaintances and each of them had such a stark contrast in their feeling of /feeling comfortable/ after they transitioned but they all had their own thing about “passing”. So, I had to learn the language, so to speak, of the type of things that were triggering to hear so my radar is always up on what I say. And my interpretation of your post was…oooo…that would have made at least two of them have an episode. But your reply was eloquent, empathetic and makes complete sense.
I do remember the “female privilege”s but as an older woman it has been decades since I’ve had that worry of men at night or getting cat called. Take weird comfort in eventually, they will stop. :)
I am the exact same way! I often struggle with proper phrasing and forming coherent sentences and points, especially in text and doubly so when it's in English. So no worries and thank you for the kind word about my eloquence and empathy! 😊
I know exactly what you mean about different things being triggering. The world is not a safe space though. I mean, I think we should all always try to be respectful and empathetic to our fellow humans. But it's not fair to have to walk on eggshells all the time (or have your radar up, as you put it). I have always been very fragile and sensitive but transitioning forced me to develop a thicker skin because you can't possible exist in this world if you get offended left and right. I easily shrug at things now that triggered me in the beginning.
Like, only other trans people know about all the little peculiarities of particular words specific to transness. I'm not going to bother to correct older members in my family for saying the word transvestite or transsexual instead of transgender. Many see the former as outdated and even offensive, but those are just the words they grew up with - what matters to me is their intention, not that they accidentally used a word that fell out of favor with a sub-group of a sub-group of a sub-group that your average cis person wouldn't have heard about in a million years.
Very much indeed they were extremely sensitive and in turn, ultimately exhausting and took a toll on me mentally. It hurt my heart to see good people go through such pain but I can only play therapist so long.
I did find that the experiences made me much more sensitive to just things I say in general and not just with trans people. There were certain words and slurs said much more openly about people when I was younger and unlike a lot of my aged peers, I adapted to see words have meaning and choose them carefully. Probably too carefully but also because I cared enough to. I have heard the excuse of “Well that’s just how I was raised” too much. But, being in the queer community would also open me up to hearing things cischet people wouldn’t. Though, I don’t think that necessarily means one should not have a curiosity of groups they don’t belong to and how to interact with them. Not sure if that is empathy, respect or curiosity but a lot of those qualities seem to be absent in the same people that say “Well that’s just the way I was raised”.
But, as you said “Intention matters” and I completely agree. Someone calling me an “old lady” derogatorily is way different than if someone chides me about my age and calls me an “old lady” ☺️
I do also wonder if these women I knew also had more to deal with in terms of societal acceptance in general since this was like 15 years ago. Being part of the queer community in the early 2000s we all had a lot of more stigma about us but particularly trans women, in particular. I saw too much violence. And I know that instilled a lot of self-hate of not being “enough”. I would hear things in community like not “gay” enough, not “butch” enough, etc. Plus the societal obsession with us women and our looks of never being “pretty” enough, “successful” enough which was probably multitudes higher with transwomen. I would have to believe that a generally unaccepting society was incredibly damaging. Then going back even further to when they were kids and definitely how much worse it would have been.
I believe this was alluded to in the article. I’d go back and check but it was a difficult read. I’m intrigued by sociology in general and think about it a lot and usually have too much to say about it hence the above musings ☺️
“Minority trauma” is very real even outside the queer community. The caste systems in place cause so much trauma to people and it’s so frustrating to see the effects of oppressive patriarchy especially based on skin color, income, who you are and who you love, where you were born, etc. Things that cannot be helped.
I’m veering off topic for a while now and prattling on but I’m not going to edit my response down to something smaller per the usual 😆
Ah, I didn't realise this was all 15 years ago! I am 30 so I was still a child and young teen in the 00's, and while I was not out back then (nor did I even realise I was queer until like 18, only accepting/admitting it to myself at 25) I do remember the overwhelming amount of slurs used in daily language. Homophobic slurs were used casually and every single day - really making me internalize a lot of it and a big part of why it took me so long to come out. But actually being visibly out back then definitely must have been a lot harder than it is today. We have been a highly politicized group the last few years, but even though there is an increased focus on us, I do think that ignorance and therefore acceptance was worse in the 00's? That's an assumption though because again, I was a child.
The gay enough/butch enough/etc. stuff is pretty interesting to me. There are still norms in 2023 of course, and every group and community of any type has subtle cues as to what one has to be like in order to fit in, but I can thankfully say I never experienced those things! It seems like there is a more embracing attitude in which you can be uniquely yourself and not worry about being one way or another. However I think I have commented on Tildes in the past about something that I personally experienced - where me being asexual and saying that I wasn't interested in hearing about other's sex lives every day was immediately met with my getting called a bigot and I was told I was shaming them (this was on one of those discord servers I mentioned earlier). So even though asexuality is accepted on the surface, I was very much excluded for not being totally fine with hearing some very explicit things about their kinks.
I'm no longer ace because of surgeries and my E levels finally being in a good spot, but I still really struggle with how overtly sexual many parts of the LGBT+ community is. Maybe I grew up a little sheltered and am shy or something. But things like this lesbian event at this year's pride where you could meet other people doing embroideries, get hair cuts in a safe space by queer-accepting stylists, and oh, you can also buy sex toys there. Looking back, it's not that bad, and I get that I'm probably more prudish than the average queer person. But things this just make me raise an eyebrow because what in the world does hair and needle-work have to do with sex toys!?
Slightly ranting there sorry, I think I kind of forgot what we were talking about (apropos babbling on lmao, we are hopeless!) - I guess it came to mind as an example of not fitting in because of not being "sexual" enough which I thought was similar to being gay/butch/etc. enough.
Minority trauma/stress is so real, yes! An organisation was created a few years ago here specifically to help people deal with what it's like to be both an ethnic minority as well as being queer. I think they even won a prize for their work.
Out of curiosity, since you mentioned your age once or twice, I'm sure you're not actually and old lady 😅
LOL. I have a few decades on ya :)
Coincidentally, the sexualization in general was one of the reasons I left the community and I didn’t consider myself a prude (maybe shy and aloof and, a word that wasn’t around back then that I highly identify with these days: “demisexual”). That and substance abuse. As underground bars were pretty much the only place you could meet people other queer people in my area it was a poor backdrop for socialization. And, it was also a space that was rife for “hooking up”. Public pride events were later on and they just seemed to take the same bar space and made it public. Queer = sex and drugs. I can’t recall actual sex toys being sold at the events but they were sponsored by the local queer sex toy store, condom/lube manufacturers and a host of local bars. A queer embroidery club sounds awesome but it was something we were too off or faces to ponder. :D Once you stopped hooking up, being on the prowl and/or getting wasted there wasn’t an offshoot space for queer people to meet other queer people.
I have heard that the increased attention to transpeople these days has also made the invisible transpeople visible whereas, they had a form of stealth/passing before “transgender” was in the public lexicon and even a topic that was talked about by the public at large. Some trans people who had finished their transition years prior and flew under many a radar may be “seen as trans” these days. There are also those that spend tons of money for therapists for years, $100k + for surgeries and only to have their dreams of appearing cis to be completely dashed and they still look enough like their birth gender. Then throw on top all of the vitriol and attention over the past few years and it becomes a much larger burden whereas in earlier days, they would have probably had surgery, did all the legal stuff, moved and no one was the wiser. I am definitely not an expert in this and have limited personal experience but from things I read and hear studying society and older queer/trans peoples stories in general, some things were better when there wasn’t the attention. I think visibility is great in general because that is really only the way to eventual acceptance but I can definitely see where the visibility is also incredibly damaging in this time between.
I totally get how being asexual would make you an “other” in some queer spaces. I honestly knew no one who was asexual (at least openly) but I can assume that their presence would have been at conflict with the space and a kind of, “Why are you here?” type of question. If you didn’t fit a certain stereotype and follow an unwritten hierarchy - being x “enough” - discrimination would occur. Which as a free-wheeling hippie, peace & love type made completely no sense to me at the time: the highly discriminated caste of queer people extended discrimination into their own ranks.
If you ever come across information on the organization you mentioned, I’d love a link to whatever info they publish. My altruism these days is more towards marginalized groups in general but I do put a bit more effort into donating to organizations that help the marginalized of the already marginalized.
Thanks for the conversation. It has made me think about and reflect upon things and people that I haven’t thought about in a long time.
You should take a look at your local community again sometime, if you feel the inkling at all. In my experience this is very much not the case anymore - people are still sexual for sure, but there's a lot more inclusivity of people who aren't. Of course I say this as a young person (28) so in your age range things might be different.
I personally do love queer sexual liberation but I would never want that at the expense of all the people I know who are on the asexual spectrum. I don't know how long ago you stopped engaging, but it may be worth trying to look again - if anything I would say the needle has swung the other way.
Hmm looks like they only translated some parts of their website, so most of it is in Danish it seems. But here it is: https://sabaah.dk/welcome-to-sabaah/
About visibility.. yes to all of what you said. I definitely personally would rather go back to the times when people simply didn't know about us, and therefore didn't know what to look for. But talk to any conservative or certain type of person and they will tell you "we always know". They don't always know of course lol, but they think they do because they know to look for hysterectomy scars on transgender men, they know to look at transgender women's throats for an adam's apple, shoulders/waist/hips ratio etc... Most people are thankfully not like that but I do believe it's been detrimental that we are so visible nowadays. Of course, without this visibility I would have likely continued to suppress myself for even longer than I already did - I would not have learned that it is possible to transition since I did not already belong to the queer community. I believe that's the reason that you most of the time, trans people in the past were likely to have started out thinking they were simply bi-/homosexual and then later realised that they were also trans. But since they were already part of the queer community, they got to learn about it.
And thank you too by the way! I could talk for hours about these things 😊
While I struggled fitting in to what I might call designated queer spaces like gay bars and night clubs, I'm happy with the people I've gotten to know outside of it. It's just a different common understanding that we have of one another that I won't get with cis and straight people. As humans we always seek out those who look like ourselves, but yeah I agree that it's super unfortunate that there will be social control in away in our own ranks. You might be just as troubled as the next person in the gay bar, but you still can't stick out too much from whatever norm may or may not be imposed there. However I will definitely echo /u/supergauntlet's sentiments! There's a lot more to be had now, for example in my city there's a recurring event each month called "queer cafe" - I still haven't been there but my friend and I had been talking about seeing what it is because despite her being a party-girl and me being rather quiet, she has a wife so we at least agree on not being in it for the hook-ups and whatnot haha
Thanks for that link. That is the type of work I love to support!
I did hear one smug male asshole say not that long ago, “I can tell when a woman is trans within seconds.” Like, yeah, no you can’t. But then I think of the creepy male chasers (do they still call them that?) who sought out transwomen voraciously and have studied many transwomen with deep interest would probably be able to tell better than a typical cis straight person. So, my theory is the asshole outed himself as a creepy chaser and he didn’t think anyone would notice :).
In the States, I personally blame that asshole Jenner for creating this landscape. Overnight, trans people went to really not known about to full-on this is what every one in a large chunk of the world is talking about the next day. And here we are. I mean, probably many more factors at play here but that interview put the word “transgender” into a lot of people’s heads that wasn’t there the day before and it doesn’t seem like it has stopped since. That may also have been around the time the DSM was updated to stop treating transgenderism as a mental disease - but I’m still going to blame her. :)
That queer cafė sounds like it could be nice!
They are still called chasers and I can attest that they are unfortunately still a thing..! And let me just add to this with a funny story - last year when I went in for a regular laser hair removal check up, the nurse/tech asked me the reason that I needed laser: "do you have PCOS or what's up?" - I was completely dumbfounded by that question because I thought a person trained in this field would 100% of the time know if she was talking to a trans woman. Guess not though, because she was surprised to learn that the reason for my facial hair is that I'm transgender. So anyway, they sure can't always tell lol
Jenner is definitely one of the worst persons you could ever come up with to be the representative 😬 Because yeah for a while there she was the only trans people that anybody knew of. More celebrities have transitioned by now which is really great, Elliot Page being the most famous one I think? But I think film and TV did a lot more damage to us as a whole than Janner. And while it seems to be going back and forth quite a lot, I think it's slowly but surely going the right way in terms of general acceptance of not only trans people, but also queer folk as a whole in that more and more people's attitude seems to be "who cares? They're not hurting anyone" (this is from my strictly western perspective though)
One thing that's changed a lot with chasers is that as societal mores have changed more and more people don't give a shit if you like trans people. So there's fewer "DL top looking for TS for fun" where it's a bi guy that won't ever admit to fucking a tslur and more "soft boy looking for trans goth gf" where it's just a kinda dorky straight or straightish (my friends jokingly call them 'reddit bisexuals' - straight + femboys) guy that wants to date a transfemme.
There's absolutely still creeps out there that see us as walking penises with boobs attached. But there's creeps everywhere, and times are changing.
Very real. I'm optimistic about the long game, but it sucks a lot having to deal with assholes right now.
Well, that's exactly the problem. A lot of trans people place passing as their end all be all solution and loathe every part of themselves that reminds them of the opposite gender. Remember, even if you pass to other people, you don't necessarily pass to yourself.
There are a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms in the community, but that's what happens when you feel like you can't be yourself without being judged. People discovering they have dysphoria should not be presented with passing as being the holy grail, as is done on 4chan.
The solution is self acceptance. You change what you can, through whatever means you can, and learn to live with what you can't. Some of us will never be perfect at it, but it's still an important thing to remind myself whenever I drift off to somewhere dark. The more someone learns to accept themselves the easier it is to be confident, which leads to more acceptance. A successful transition, to me, is one where you come to accept yourself, even if you don't necessarily pass.
Agreed. It's taken me a long, long time to be able to talk to my closest friends and partner about some of the subjectively awful experiences I had as a teenager. I have been burned several times by trusting the wrong people, and that set me back years in coming to terms with my identity.
You're absolutely right. I regret singling any group out in my original post. I wish I'd have caught it during proofreading, but I reiterated my words to hopefully be a bit less presumptuous. I hope you're doing better now and have found your comfort.
A good read, I like a lot of Doc Impossible's work. This one did trigger a bit of a trauma response in me and had me reliving some particularly awful memories from my adolescence, which wasn't fun to go through right before a work meeting.
I read this post to the part about the bullying and started crying so I tabled it until the morning.
Frank discussion again of childhood abuse again like the article
When I was a dumb little weird kid, I had the lovely experience of being a fat kid with gynecomastia. Kids are not nice to middle school boys with man boobs. One of my biggest traumas was being literally groped by an asshole kid while he yelled 'bean dip' which objectively is a really funny thing to be traumatized about. Like I thought for the longest time I never wanted breasts because of this little shithead kid 15 years ago.
Nobody told him to stop. Not once did an adult do a goddamn thing. I think about that a lot. Like the author, I think about the kinds of evil corrective gender policing we allow children to do without a second thought all the time.
This article is fantastic but very hard to read. I'm so sorry to the author for the things they endured and I'm so glad they're here to share their wisdom with us. I'm not certain if the caste system analogy is exactly accurate, as I don't fully feel like it's accurate that a white trans woman at the bottom of the white totem pole could always get away with abusing a non-white cishet man, but it's certainly one I'm going to talk to my mother about as she grew up in India when the caste system was much more entrenched than today. It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.
I hope one day we can get to a place where queer children are simply allowed to exist.
“I hope one day we can get to a place where queer children are simply allowed to exist.”
I couldn’t agree more. But, I think though it will be quite a while - maybe two or three generations from now. Maybe. In order for queer kids of all creeds to be just kids takes a monumental shift of how people from every currently marginalized society are treated, I think,
I wish I would be alive to see the society children of today are able to build. I believe that this generation out of most of the recent will be able to do things right and I hope it is glorious.
Yeah, as a fellow older queer who had to suffer through a lot of traumatizing bullying, physical violence, and pure hatred growing up, Gen Z and Gen Alpha gives me a lot of hope for the future too. They seem to have their heads screwed on straight, and their much more tolerant attitudes, empathetic behavior, progressive beliefs, and culture of activism is admirable. The kids are alright, and unlike us younger GenX and Millennials, they finally have the demographic numbers to start affecting real change too, especially as the Boomers and older Gen Xers finally die off.
The kids are, as cfabbro says, alright. We can support them too, and as time goes on I think more and more people will come to see that not being miserable cops about everything is the better way to live.
Even in just the last 15 years so much has changed. Saying the fslur on tv used to be pretty normal, now it's a cultural death sentence. The same is increasingly true of the tslur but progress doesn't happen overnight.
For every miserable asshole that doesn't want to admit genderqueer and trans and nonbinary people deserve to exist, there's more and more people every day that believe the opposite.