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I just think that using the labels promotes this idea that the parts that you're born with define you. If you want to be treated the same, why not just use the same terminology and not let anyone tell you what you are? I guess I was a little disturbed at the comments that changing your gender identity would make you into a completely different person, and that's just not true.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:21 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 14:50 |
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You do realize the tremendous pain, suffering and danger that faces transgendered people? It's not that easy. Society holds a lot of power. Pressure holds a lot of power. An unfortunately large number of murders are transgendered people being 'outed'. Changing your gender identity does make you a completely different person to some people. It's not that easy to just say 'just be yourself man'. Edit: I mean, for the love of little green apples, people freak out about transfolk in bathrooms and dressing rooms.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:27 |
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Maximusi posted:If you want to be treated the same, why not just use the same terminology and not let anyone tell you what you are? Maximusi posted:I guess I was a little disturbed at the comments that changing your gender identity would make you into a completely different person, and that's just not true.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:29 |
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Maximusi posted:I guess I was a little disturbed at the comments that changing your gender identity would make you into a completely different person, and that's just not true. Except changing one's gender identity would completely change who they are. If you were trans, or cis of the opposite sex, you'd be a hell of a lot different than you are now, your entire life from your earliest memories would be a completely different life. The only way this could not be true if if you believe people's personalities, interests and ect are hard programed from birth. Trans if used as an adjective is just being part of a demographic that has affected you and your life and for better or worse made you the current person you are. I am a trans woman, my life experience has been different than that of a cis female and arguably I'm a much different person than I would be if I had been born a cis female. But it goes for many things, I'm also a poor woman, I'm also a white woman. If I had been born into say a rich Hispanic family, even if still trans, I'd still be a much different person from a completely different life experience. (I assume you were talking about the hypothetical question posted last page in regards to being a different person)
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:32 |
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Er, forgive me for butting in but didn't most of you have a time in your lives when you didn't have the same gender identity as now, most likely when you were much younger and especially before puberty? Did you become a different person when you realized your real gender identity?
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:36 |
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Maximusi posted:I just think that using the labels promotes this idea that the parts that you're born with define you. If you want to be treated the same, why not just use the same terminology and not let anyone tell you what you are? I guess I was a little disturbed at the comments that changing your gender identity would make you into a completely different person, and that's just not true. I don't know if you're trolling me or you really have some laughably immature idea of how the world works. Sure, I can declare myself a woman, no problem. The rest of the world however, within which I must exist and function, will fail to percieve me as one no matter how much I protest otherwise until I alter my appearance enough to visually pass for one, and I will be exposed to ridicule, discrimination and violence. Hell right at this moment, in one of what is certainly amongst the most minor of consequences trans people face, i'm being thrown out of my home because I claim that i'm not a man. Life is not so easy or simple.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:37 |
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Maximusi posted:I just think that using the labels promotes this idea that the parts that you're born with define you. If you want to be treated the same, why not just use the same terminology and not let anyone tell you what you are? I guess I was a little disturbed at the comments that changing your gender identity would make you into a completely different person, and that's just not true. Remember you're posting in the TMT, a thread about trans issues. Most people post elsewhere and they aren't constantly going about how they're trans. In fact having the trans go with me to posts elsewhere is the last thing I would want. Nor would I want people to label me as 'trans' because of posts here and ignore the rest of what I do. My experience suggests that most trans people do not want to be labelled as trans, in the same way X people don't really want to be labelled/compartmentalised as X (where X = a woman or gay or coloured or queer or Deaf or Blind, or etc) but they will sometimes unite under its banner for equality rights. Maybe some people do live the label, but this happens in every type of social identity thing, and it doesn't necessarily apply to all people under than banner (not that those people should be reviled) You may find that in a lot of communities who have had to fight society for respect of some aspect of their identity that a) they feel very strongly about this aspect of their identity, as well as being concerned about that aspect of their identity being taken away or delegitimised and b) people who never had to fight for their identity seem to feel that just because we're talking about something that you always took for granted or don't understand, that we 'keep going on about it', or 'it defines us'. The idea that people are concerned a treatment to bring their minds in line with what society expects (in this case, being cis) might change their identity is hardly surprising to me. What if the treatment took away the gender expressions that were incongruent with their subconscious gender as well? What about a treatment to cure being 'a woman', do you think those people might be concerned about having part of their identity taken away? How about reviewing people with particular mental health conditions which make them healthy but non-neurotypical, rejecting the use of medications because it changes the way they think in a way that stops them being/feeling like themselves? Also, I'd say that most of us had a time in our lives when our gender identity didn't matter, and as soon as it did matter, most of us started having a problem with it.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:41 |
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Lexical Unit posted:I did exactly this, in a response to a post you made, a mere four posts prior this this post. What more do you want from me before you're willing to treat me "the same" (ie: with respect)? When I said "you" I meant a general you, not you specifically. It's strange to me since I've been fighting my whole life to make men understand that women are no different from them. I am not a stereotypical women by any means, and I reject everything that women are "supposed to be". So, yeah, being female doesn't define me. I'm not trying to start an argument here. I just wanted to ask questions.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:42 |
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Install Gentoo posted:Er, forgive me for butting in but didn't most of you have a time in your lives when you didn't have the same gender identity as now, most likely when you were much younger and especially before puberty? Did you become a different person when you realized your real gender identity? I'm pretty certain that most people in this thread feel that they've always had more or less the same gender, even if they couldn't articulate it at a younger age. Did you have a different gender before puberty?
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:43 |
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Maximusi posted:When I said "you" I meant a general you, not you specifically. We don't believe that any sort of stereotypical role is what makes us male or female. We just have gender identities, like you and most other people. As a trans man who likes to wear dresses and makeup, I certainly don't think anything that men are" supposed to be" is what defines my gender. (Sorry for double post; posting from awful app)
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:46 |
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Install Gentoo posted:Er, forgive me for butting in but didn't most of you have a time in your lives when you didn't have the same gender identity as now, most likely when you were much younger and especially before puberty? Did you become a different person when you realized your real gender identity? Ignoring the fact this isn't something that suddenly flared up alongside puberty one day, I certainly became a different person. If I was cis I wouldn't have grown up feeling wrong and broken for reasons I first couldn't understand and later couldn't accept. I probably wouldn't have spent a decade making bad decisions trying to run away from the fact my mind and body didn't match up. I daresay my youth wouldn't have been spent in a pool of self-loathing about something I could not control or change, a place I struggle to break out of even now I have accepted who I am. I have no idea who or what I would have become without them, but I am absolutely a different person for these experiences.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:52 |
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Goatface Killa posted:I'm pretty certain that most people in this thread feel that they've always had more or less the same gender, even if they couldn't articulate it at a younger age. Did you have a different gender before puberty? From what I've read many trans people don't realize their assigned gender isn't right for them until after puberty starts and brings on a heaping pile of dysphoria. This also seems to be the general sentiment in this thread. They didn't have an issue with being what they were assigned as when they were young kids, usually, but then things change and they realize that actually they do have an issue with that.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:54 |
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Install Gentoo posted:From what I've read many trans people don't realize their assigned gender isn't right for them until after puberty starts and brings on a heaping pile of dysphoria. This also seems to be the general sentiment in this thread. They didn't have an issue with being what they were assigned as when they were young kids, usually, but then things change and they realize that actually they do have an issue with that. Puberty I think brings issues boiling to the surface for a lot of people since it's all gross and wrong. I use to go to bed when like 8 though wishing to wake up as a girl, back when I thought magic might actually exist  . Puberty did make it 90x worse though.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 17:59 |
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Install Gentoo posted:From what I've read many trans people don't realize their assigned gender isn't right for them until after puberty starts and brings on a heaping pile of dysphoria. This also seems to be the general sentiment in this thread. They didn't have an issue with being what they were assigned as when they were young kids, usually, but then things change and they realize that actually they do have an issue with that. Right, they realize they have an issue, not that they felt like one thing before and then it changed. Many (but not all) trans people believe they were always their identified gender, but that they didnt know until puberty because kids' bodies are not so gendered, or because it's probably hard for most kids to know that how they feel isn't how all the other kids feel, especially if theyre not too gender nonconforming in their assigned sex. Or whatever other reason.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:01 |
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Amused to Death posted:Puberty I think brings issues boiling to the surface for a lot of people since it's all gross and wrong. I use to go to bed when like 8 though wishing to wake up as a girl, back when I thought magic might actually exist See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:04 |
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Install Gentoo posted:See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity. It was an epiphany of the highest order when my therapist told me "If you want to be a girl, that means that you are one." That they are one and the same, and the difference is just word games. My daily desperate wish to wake up a girl was a very solid identification as female. I never identified as male; I believed what the world told me my identification must be, because of my body, and hid my real identity behind a mask. Now that I present my true identity to the world and I have experienced what it feels like to do so, I can't call that other identity anything other than completely false. I may not have self-identified as a woman but it was always my identity, waiting for me to accept it. Install Gentoo posted:They didn't have an issue with being what they were assigned as when they were young kids, usually Gender permanence doesn't even set in until age 6 or so. Until then, a child does not have the idea that their assigned gender is immutable - boys think they could just as well grow up to be women as men. Also, what gender means is completely opaque to them. I have a very clear memory that at age five I told a group of girls on the playground that I was a girl. I told the boys I was playing with that it was to "spy" on them, so I clearly knew that this wasn't considered okay... The girls' test to see if I was lying involved whether some sand would run through my fingers. And when it didn't at first, I remember a moment of panic, and then one of them tapped my hands to knock the rest out, and I felt something I had no words for. The panic was the same "Oh poo poo, is my 'cover' blown?" feeling that I get now when I see "that" look in someone's eyes. It was something. I felt it then, even if I couldn't put it to words. quote:, but then things change and they realize that actually they do have an issue with that. The "things" that changed for me: - "Oh, I really am going to be this for the rest of my life, aren't I?" - (upon finding that I was developing muscles [among other things]) "Oh, so that's happening now. Well, I guess I knew it was coming." - "Why does everyone seem to care so much about the things I like?" - "Why do I feel so completely different from what other men appear to feel?" among other things. All that really changed was my innocence in believing that if I just wished hard enough, I'd wake up from this dream. Anything that appeared to be me "identifying" as male was a defense. I buried my true feelings deeply, because my life was intolerable enough. Dessert Rose fucked around with this message at Dec 12, 2011 around 18:31 |
| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:14 |
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Install Gentoo posted:See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity. Well, please consider that children are: 1) Regularly told/shown that boys and girls are very different (even if one is not 'better' than the other.) 2) Told boys are not allowed to do girl things, though nowerdays girls are allowed to do boy things. 3) Told that they are a boy or a girl. 4) Almost always assumed to cis, heterosexual, neurotypical, etc. 5) Exposed to a lot of media that does not suggest that trans people are to be respected, or exist. 6) Children Just because someone asked you when you were 8 if you were a boy or a girl, and you said 'boy' or 'girl' when you now identify as the other, doesn't mean that you really understood it as your identity. It's just the way things were, and didn't everyone feel the same way and wish the same things? Is any identity you hold when you can't really honestly understand the world sufficiently to declare your identity a real identity? Also, hi-five sleepy time wish buddies.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:19 |
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Install Gentoo posted:See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity. I think an issue here might be terms, and the fact that in these kinds of discussions lots of words get used that can mean multiple things. Often trans people say they feel their gender or gender identity has been the same since birth, and only their recognition of it or feelings about it changed. When we say this, we often are using gender or gender identity to refer to a fairly intrinsic psychological understanding of what "gender" we are. This is not necessarily conscious, and in fact trans author and activist Julia Serrano sometimes calls it subconscious sex in her writing. This is distinct from a person's conscious thoughts regarding their subconscious sex, which you seem to be referring to. Those conscious thoughts could also reasonably be called a "gender identity," although this would not have the same meaning in which it has been used in this thread in recent pages. Subconscious sex is not something cis people recognize or have an easy time recognizing, because your assigned sex at birth and your subconscious sex match. There's nothing out of place, so it just seems like one big continuous thing. For trans folks, our subconscious sexes are discordant from our assigned sexes and many of us feel that discordance our entire life, even if we haven't always been sure what to call it or even how to feel about it.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:20 |
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Install Gentoo posted:See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity. The latter is really just an adult affirmation of the former. Puberty is the period where an individuals work to gain autonomy from their parents. When you are a kid it is about what you want to do, what you would like to do etc. where as a teen going into adulthood it turns into being about what you are. That is just normal child development. Maximusi posted:When I said "you" I meant a general you, not you specifically. Here is the thing, you are different simply by the nature of socialization. The fact that you are fighting against a stereotypical image and feel the need to means it is defining you, just in a different way.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:31 |
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Helena P Blavatsky posted:I think an issue here might be terms, and the fact that in these kinds of discussions lots of words get used that can mean multiple things. Often trans people say they feel their gender or gender identity has been the same since birth, and only their recognition of it or feelings about it changed. When we say this, we often are using gender or gender identity to refer to a fairly intrinsic psychological understanding of what "gender" we are. This is not necessarily conscious, and in fact trans author and activist Julia Serrano sometimes calls it subconscious sex in her writing. This is distinct from a person's conscious thoughts regarding their subconscious sex, which you seem to be referring to. Those conscious thoughts could also reasonably be called a "gender identity," although this would not have the same meaning in which it has been used in this thread in recent pages. To me it just seems like you used to have a fake identity (the assigned one) and now you have a real one - is that even making sense?
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:32 |
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Maximusi posted:It's strange to me since I've been fighting my whole life to make men understand that women are no different from them. I am not a stereotypical women by any means, and I reject everything that women are "supposed to be". So, yeah, being female doesn't define me. Maximusi posted:I'm not trying to start an argument here. I just wanted to ask questions. 
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:33 |
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Install Gentoo posted:See, like, this reads to me as before it was "i'd like to be a girl (but I don't identify as such)" and after is "I am a girl/woman". The latter is your real identity, but the former was valid at the time and a different identity. But at like 8 years old it's really hard to comprehend things like gender identity, physical sex, ect. I wished to be a girl because I felt like a girl, but I was very physically a boy, and had absolutely no concept of trans related things. I just assumed I must be weird, boys don't feel like girls, girls don't feel like boys, ect.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:45 |
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Something I have noticed about language, which may be what you're getting at with this: Before I accepted who I am, I read a lot of stories that trans women told; I thought I might be (actually "wished" I was trans, as ridiculous as that seems now) and was looking for something that sounded like me. But I always read "I've always felt this way" or "I was miserable" or other things that sounded like they were so certain, that it was just obvious. At the time I used that to deny myself. These people knew all along that they were - I just wish. I'm not that. But now the language I use to describe my feelings then is the same as those stories. It is obvious in retrospect. I spent over six months "pretending" to be a girl online, for gently caress's sake. I was miserable. I never liked being male, I constantly claimed to be embarrassed for my gender. The fact that my language has changed is something that has been pointed out to me by my friends. They'll tell me exactly that - that I didn't know, that I didn't feel that way, because if I did, then I was clearly lying before when I told them I was fine. Well, I was lying. As much to myself as anyone else. The words I/we use to describe our experiences make that sound intentional, but the truth is, it wasn't. Compared to how I feel now, I was never anything but various shades of miserable or angry then. But at the time, those shades were my entire range of emotion. When I told someone they made me happy, what that really meant was "You make me slightly less miserable/bitter than I usually am" or "You don't make me feel worse than I already do". The emotion that I use "happy" to describe now is nothing like what I used that word to describe then. It's like someone who can't see color telling you that something is "colorful" when what they mean is that they can see lots of shades of gray in it, and they've seen other people use "colorful" to describe things that look like that. Maybe they're right enough of the time to fool you into thinking that you're both speaking the same language - but they aren't. They're lying and they don't even know it.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:48 |
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Amused to Death posted:But at like 8 years old it's really hard to comprehend things like gender identity, physical sex, ect. I wished to be a girl because I felt like a girl, but I was very physically a boy, and had absolutely no concept of trans related things. I just assumed I must be weird, boys don't feel like girls, girls don't feel like boys, ect. I agree with this? You didn't figure out your real identity yet, because you were too young to do so.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:50 |
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Install Gentoo posted:To me it just seems like you used to have a fake identity (the assigned one) and now you have a real one - is that even making sense? I think you're getting tripped up on "identity" - when we say "I identify as X" we're talking about our internal sense of self. There's no way for that to be "fake". That's different from the external identity that others infer through various cues, which can match our internal identity or not, and be "fake" or "real" based on whether it matches or not.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:52 |
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Install Gentoo posted:To me it just seems like you used to have a fake identity (the assigned one) and now you have a real one - is that even making sense? I feel this is partially correct, at least for myself, but to be most accurate I've got to reiterate that there are two real things going on here: I have a "gender identity" that is a bundle of conscious thoughts regarding my subconscious sex. But I also have a subconscious sex which is sometimes itself referred to as a "gender identity," because on a basic level it helps determine who I am psychologically. My conscious identity (the former case) as a child was much less accurate and faithful to my subconscious sex, that's right. But while it was inaccurate, socially-imposed, and traumatic, it wasn't "fake" so to speak. The process of developing my conscious thoughts was just part of growing up and learning who I was, and all those thoughts I had along the way were basically "real" even though they were hampered by being thought by a child with a child's brain.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 18:52 |
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Install Gentoo posted:I agree with this? You didn't figure out your real identity yet, because you were too young to do so. But I basically had figured out my identity, I knew I felt female, I knew I wanted to be a girl, but at the time I have no way to really process it, since as far as I knew that just didn't happen, boys of course didn't feel like girls, and I was just some defect weirdo. Then it actually turned into outright suppression when I was a bit old and realized what being trans was, because I didn't want to be that, even though it was painfully obvious I was. Truth be told a lot of that probably came from early trans sites/forums I found, crazy circlejerks are often not encouraging.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 19:13 |
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On the too young to figure it out tangent, some of my earliest memories are praying before bed that I would wake up a boy. This was well before puberty.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 19:13 |
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AngryRobotsInc posted:On the too young to figure it out tangent, some of my earliest memories are praying before bed that I would wake up a boy. This was well before puberty. Praying before bed buddies  But yeah, I always wanted to be a girl back before puberty. There's no difference between that state and my trans state now, it's just that back then I didn't realize that I actually was a girl. All the adults called me a boy, so who was I to argue?
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 19:17 |
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Install Gentoo posted:Er, forgive me for butting in but didn't most of you have a time in your lives when you didn't have the same gender identity as now, most likely when you were much younger and especially before puberty? Did you become a different person when you realized your real gender identity? No, I have always been female in terms of who I am mentally. It's the difference between body and mind. My brain is who I am and how I think, and how I relate to people. I went under the assumption I was a boy before realzing I actually wasn't because that's how I psychially appeared to be and that's what everyone told me. But your body doesn't make you the person you are, it's your brain, and my brain feels, acts, reacts, and functions as female. Some people know from a very young age they are born the wrong sex, but that just wasn't the case for me for some reason as I didn't figure it out until late high school. LemonLimeTime fucked around with this message at Dec 12, 2011 around 19:39 |
| # ? Dec 12, 2011 19:27 |
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Showcase SHODAN fucked around with this message at Apr 14, 2013 around 03:37 |
| # ? Dec 12, 2011 19:53 |
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I think I was a 3 on the COGIATI. Is there not a way we can't bomb that site out of existence, as well as a few others.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 20:07 |
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Dessert Rose posted:Stuff Just thought I'd throw my two cents (pennies?) in here and add that I was in a very similar situation, but things didn't change for me until I hit puberty. To be honest, gender had never been a huge factor in my life as a kid, as you put it, I was told that I was a boy and therefore I should behave as one so I did. It wasn't until me and everyone of my age started hitting puberty, developing their sexual characteristics and changing their behaviour more in line with their gender that I realised I was on the wrong side of the fence. I really, really wish that I could go back and tell myself to do something about it now, but... Showcase SHODAN posted:(...)I never really had any moment of "I don't wanna be trans," aside from watching Jerry Springer and thinking "I don't want to be like *that*." But trans in general? Nah, it was a relief to know. This happened to me, basically as a kid/teenager the only thing I knew about transgenderism was the word 'tranny' and that it was basically men in drag that everyone apparently hated, which made me push that thought as far away from my mind as possible. I only wish I had realised sooner that it wasn't the case. Come to think of it, TV shows like South Park or the Simpsons did a huge amount of damage to my confidence. All they ever taught me was that 'this is what you'll look like' or at the very least, 'this is how people will see you.' and I guess I preferred the idea of being miserable than having people throw stones at me.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 20:14 |
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Has anyone else felt more like: "I am not this gender that I was assigned at birth" rather than "I am this gender that I was not assigned at birth" ? That is how I feel most days, and I've not seen a whole lot of others express this sentiment. Rather, the desire to eliminate one's physical attributes of the birth-assigned gender outshine the desire to acquire those of the non-birth-assigned gender.  I couldn't find a more easily understandable way of typing that, so apologies in advance.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 20:17 |
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Showcase SHODAN fucked around with this message at Apr 14, 2013 around 03:37 |
| # ? Dec 12, 2011 20:18 |
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xov posted:Has anyone else felt more like: This is absolutely how I felt as a child/teenager and the major underlying feeling of how I feel now. I remember my thought process being that I was told so often that I wasn't a boy so I couldn't be a boy... but I definitely wasn't a girl! I just didn't know what that meant and tried to repress it for a long long time. (I didn't have any exposure to transsexuality - not drag - until I was 20/21 and I transitioned pretty much instantly after finding out about it.) Even now, I am mostly motivated by getting rid of attributes of my assigned gender. Get rid of my chest, not have a more masculine chest. Get rid of my girly voice, not have a deeper voice. Stop being so short/unmuscular, stop being unable to pee standing up etc. The phrasing difference is subtle but there. I often fall back on these feelings when I'm having a period of self-doubt about whether I'm "actually" male identified or just fooling myself/it's because of X event in my past. Deep down, I know very clearly that I am not female. I don't really know how to validate my experiences beyond that, but that's okay. Even if I'm a masculine-leaning genderqueer person, that doesn't mean my transition so far has been "wrong" in any way.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 20:26 |
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Just for a wonderful example of someone who never identified as anything but female, despite being born as male... http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/fam...knew/?page=full (News story posted today.)
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 21:13 |
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Latin Pheonix posted:Just thought I'd throw my two cents (pennies?) in here and add that I was in a very similar situation, but things didn't change for me until I hit puberty. To be honest, gender had never been a huge factor in my life as a kid, as you put it, I was told that I was a boy and therefore I should behave as one so I did. This is a lot like how it was for me, and I'm having a hell of a time convincing certain family members now that I was still trans back then, and just wasn't as obvious about it. It's kind of bizarre, considering I grew up in a very conservative family, but somehow I came away with the idea that gender roles were pretty much obsolete and gender didn't matter at all. So when I was 7 or so I had a vague idea that I'd grow up to be a man even if everyone thought I was a girl now (I even wanted to be a Catholic priest for awhile, which is a men-only thing, and this didn't seem to present any problems to me). And then I hit puberty and realized gender did matter to me. (My answer to those "would you transition if society didn't care about gender" questions people always ask is a definitive yes.)
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 22:32 |
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The Duke of Avon posted:This is a lot like how it was for me, and I'm having a hell of a time convincing certain family members now that I was still trans back then, and just wasn't as obvious about it. It's really hard for cis people to understand just how good our performances get without us even consciously trying. Especially when they're the ones that basically train us in the first place, by providing clear and obvious cues as to what's considered acceptable behavior. After the second or third time someone looked at me like I was an alien because I waved my hands and said "yay!", I stopped doing that. I didn't have to think about it, the negative reactions did a good enough job training it out of me. Live your life like that for a while, and you get really good at acting how people expect you to. They'll let you know if your performance isn't believable enough.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 23:13 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 14:50 |
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Dessert Rose posted:It's really hard for cis people to understand just how good our performances get without us even consciously trying. Especially when they're the ones that basically train us in the first place, by providing clear and obvious cues as to what's considered acceptable behavior. Middle school did a good job of beating the poo poo out of any natural feminine behaviors I had had in childhood.
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| # ? Dec 12, 2011 23:30 |
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