# Forum > Discussion > Friendly Banter > LGBTAI+ LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong

## Mystic Muse

Notice: This is mostly a support thread. If you want to ask a lot of questions, it would be best to make a separate thread (there does not seem to be a currently active questions thread at the time of posting this).


The AI is for All-Inclusive because we have only so much space in the title, but everyone, regardless of orientation, direction, letter, acronym or chosen astrological symbol is welcome here!

We do, unfortunately, have a few rules. We are not an anarchist state! Or, we weren't until we voted we were? But shush.

*1. We are primarily a support thread.*
This means that the primary focus should be in helping people here feel better; about themselves, about their lives, about their problems. We are also an education thread, but when helping someone learn involves not supporting, we will default to support - Mostly. We are only mostly human, after all.

All of the other rules are basically precisions of rule #1.

*2. If you want answers to triggering topics, spoiler-box or ask them privately.*
Triggering topics are those which are likely to make other people feel bad, in any way whatsoever: for instance, rape, violence, bullying and many others may be triggering to some people. If someone, even just that one individual person, has a problem with a topic because it stirs demons best left in their pit, *Do. Not. Bring. It. Up. Publicly.* Use a spoiler box and think carefully about whether this is the place to broach the topic at all (see rule #1: "We are primarily a support thread.")

If you have questions or need help on something that involves triggering topics, please use spoiler tags and label your spoilers for trigger warnings. When in doubt, put trigger warnings.

*3. Avoid discussing politics or religion.*
It doesn't matter how much these two topics intersect with our forum topic, they are verboten. Sometimes, hints are...looked over, such as, "Man, in my country being gay sucks," but detail is right out, and even that could be considered willful disregard. Be careful. As the moderators themselves often say, if you aren't sure, don't.

*4. Do not discuss moral justification.*
No one here is going to discuss whether or not it's Right" or "Okay" to be LGBTAEIOUsometimesY or anything else. It's not topical, it's not relevant. We _are_, and we are here to cope with that and with the stresses it causes.
And no, my joking acronym doesn't constitute considering this rule less important.

*5. Do not post sexually explicit content.*
It's against forum rules, it's against decorum, and it will get us shut down pretty fast. What adults do behind closed doors is cool, and allusion is fine. Anything that could involve a diagram, though? No.

*6. Avoid unfriendly debates.*
Several topics of conversation have created huge arguments that made several people uncomfortable and defied our goal of being a support thread. This is especially true debates of definition. These do not always end well, and are best avoided.

Fight Club, AKA things we do not talk about.
This thread has a past of traumatic experiences which we would rather not repeat, and some topics which have created (in)famous rows include:
- The precise distinction between bi- and pansexual;
- What is or isn't a polyamorous relationship;
- Whether transgender is more correct than transgender_ed_.
- Whether people who have homosexual sex should be able to give blood.
(Other topics may be added to the list.)
Unless you need support or help about this, please refrain from bringing up these topics.

Also, if a conversation that is not about support runs long, spoiler it if possible, even if it is polite.

Glossary of Common Terms

For reference, here is a list of commonly-used words in our community along with their definitions. Please keep in mind that this vocabulary is constantly evolving and that this list may not be complete. Any contributions to the list are appreciated.
*Spoiler*
Show

*LGBT:* Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*

*LGBTAI:* LGBT+Asexual/Aromantic/Agender+Intersex/All-Inclusive

*QUILTBAG:*
Q - Queer and Questioning
U - Unidentified
I - Intersex
L - Lesbian
T - Transgender/Transsexual
B - Bisexual
A - Asexual/Aromantic/Agender
G - Gay, Genderqueer

*GSRM:* Gender, Sexuality, and Romantic Minorities; sometimes only GSM

Where a word below is in _italics_, that means it has its own entry on the list.

A note on labels: many of these labels are seemingly interchangeable, and for some people they are. However, please do not presume to correct or judge another person's use of a label. _Bisexual_ and _pansexual_ are especially tricky in this regard, as are _transgender_ and _transsexual_ to a lesser degree.
Often the difference in why one person feels one label is appropriate and not another is deeply personal. If you wish to know more it is probably a topic to seek private advice on, from one of the people listed in the next section.

*AFAB/AMAB:* Assigned _Female_/_Male_ at Birth.

*Agender:* Someone who lacks a gender.

*Androgyne:* _Gender Identity_ with _male_ and _female_ aspects.

*Androsexual:* A person who is attracted to _men_.

*Asexual:* A person who does not feel sexual attraction.

*Assignment/Assigned Gender:*-The gender which someone is assigned at birth.

*Bigender:* Someone who identifies as both _male_ and _female_ (or as any two genders) either simultaneously or alternating. See also _Genderqueer_, _Genderfluid_

*Binary, The:* See: _Gender Binary._

*Bisexual*: 1. attracted to two genders; 2. attracted to one's own gender and another gender; 3. attracted to various genders; 4. attracted to people regardless of gender; 5. ask the person who says they're bi what exactly they mean by that. See also _Pansexual_

*Cis:* See: _Cisgender_

*Cisgender (CG):* Somebody whose gender and sex align.

*Demisexual:* A person who is sexually attracted to someone only after they have formed an intense emotional relationship with them.

*Dysphoria:* The etymological opposite of "euphoria." A state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction. In this context, generally referring to the discomfort or dissociation _Trans*_ people feel with their own body.

*Male-to-Female (MtF):* Someone who was assigned _male_ at birth, but is _female_. (AKA: _trans_ woman)

*Female*: See: _Woman_

*Female-to-Male (FtM):* Someone who was assigned _female_ at birth, but is _male_. (AKA: _trans man_)

*FAAB:* _Female_ Assigned at Birth.

*Feminine:* Something generally associated by society with _women_.

*FFS:* Facial Feminization Surgery: Surgery to reduce chin/nose/cheekbones. Associated primarily with _MAAB Trans_ people

*FtM*: See: _Female to Male_

*Gay:* See: _homosexual_.

*Gender Binary:* The commonly held notion that there are only _men_ and _women_ on two extremes, with nothing in between.

*Gender Expression (GE):* How one expresses their _Gender Identity_ to society.

*Gender Identity (GI):* How one feels inside society's idea of "_man_, _woman_, or other".

*Genderfluid:* Someone who fluctuates between different genders.

*Genderqueer (GQ):* Someone who is not of a binary gender; someone who is neither _male_ nor _female_.

*Gynosexual:* A person who is attracted to _women_.

*Heterosexual:* A person who is attracted to members of the opposite gender.

*Homosexual:* A person who is attracted to members of their own gender.

*HRT:* Hormone replacement therapy. _MtF_'s tend to progesterone, estrogens and androgen blockers, while _FtM_'s take testosterone almost exclusively.

*Lesbian:* A _woman_ who is attracted to women.

*MAAB:* _Male_ Assigned at Birth.

*Male-to-Female (MtF):* Someone who was assigned _male_ at birth, but is _female_. (AKA: _trans_ _woman_)

*Man/men:* A _cis_ man or _trans_ man. Male.

*Masculine:* Something generally associated by society with _men_.

*Pansexual:* A person who is attracted to people regardless of gender. _See also Bisexual_

*Polyamorous:* A person who is interested in a relationship with more than one person.

*Presenting:* _Trans*_ shorthand for appearing as their preferred gender, regardless of any _HRT_, _SRS_ or other changes.

*Trans*:* _Transsexual_ and _Transgender_ primarily, with the asterisk denoting that the trans- prefix could be followed by any number of appropriate words. It also includes other labels, and is a catch-all term for people who identify as something other than their biological sex at birth.

*Note:* While "Trans*" was at one time preferred terminology, of late it has become seen as problematic for various reasons, and is being phased out of use. The preferred term at this time is simply "Trans". You use the term in the definition of dysphoria.
Also, FtM and MtF are sometimes seen as problematic, and i've been seeing a lot more 'Trans man/Trans woman' for target gender, moving on to 'Trans-feminine/Trans-masculine' which describes the direction of change, but does not define an end point. 
"Transsexual" is also being phased out as being a bit obsessed with crotch bits and orientation linked either to the cis obsession with genital configuration, or the proven false idea that transgender people are just "super gay".

*Transgender:* Used in reference to a person whose sex(body) and gender(mind) are at odds or do not match. A transgender person can also identify as _genderqueer_, _transsexual_, or may use transgender as their only identity.

*Transitioning:* The process a _Trans*_ person undergoes to move to their preferred gender. Often includes _HRT_, _SRS_, _FFS_.

*Transsexual:* In common terms the same as _transgender_ above. In medical terms refers specifically to people who wish to transition from male to female or female to male, not accommodating any other options.

*SRS:* Sex Reassignment Surgery: Surgery to replace/transform a vagina into a penis, or vice versa. Mastectomies or plastic surgery may be used on breasts.

*Sexual Orientation (SO):* How one identifies who they are attracted to. 

*Significant Other(s) (SO):* Person(s) you are in a relationship with. 

*Third-gendered:* Someone who fits in a local society's third gender, usually _male_ performing _female_ tasks, occasionally vice versa. Also a person who feels they do not identify with any other gender identity.

*Woman:* A _cis_ woman or _trans_ woman. Female.

*Allies:* _Heterosexual_-_Cisgender_ people who support equality for sexual, gender, and romantic minorities.

*Aromantic:* a person who does not experience romantic attraction.

*Non-Binary:* Same as Genderqueer.

*Enby:* Shortened form of "Non-binary".

Private Consultation.

We have a list of people who are willing and able to discuss topics that may not be thread-appropriate but are still topical. They can be reached by Personal Message (PM), thought they may not respond immediately, or may be on sabbatical.

Don't be afraid to reach out and talk to them.

Many of us on the list are more than willing to listen to your questions or concerns and will not just lash out in hostility or anger.

*Spoiler: Topical Consultants*
Show


*Name: Especially familiar with the topic(s) of*
Absol197: Gender identity issues.
Astrella: GSRM rights, feminism, trans stuff, Skype.
BisectedBrioche: General basics, PM.
Chess435: Skype.
Eldest: General/basics, bisexuality, polyamory, pansexuality will Skype(voice if needed, no video).
Golentan: Mental health, fluid and questioning sexualities, and issues arising from sexual trauma.
inuyasha: Shoulder on which to cry, someone to listen.
Irish Musician: PM, Rants/Venting.
Kesnit: Trans stuff (FtM), legal issues.
Lentrax: General/basics, depression, bullying.
Lissou: Any. 
Lix Lorn: General/basics.
Lycunadari: genderfluid, genderqueer, nonbinary and asexual/grey-ace. I'm also happy to chat over discord (just text) for potentially forum-forbidden topics
Miraqariftsky: Family issues, transfolk issues, bullying, depression
Mystic Muse: General basics, PM. If it's significantly board unsafe, let me know and we'll find a way to talk. 
TaiLiu: General Transgender information, transphobia.


Some people are also willing to talk off-board, through Skype or email or other means; this is especially useful if your question involves board-forbidden topics such as religion or politics. Also, we can't (and ethically shouldn't!) give medical advice. If you need medical advice, please see a professional!

And as a parting note, I will say that even though moderators do not read PMs, they are still part of the forum and still subject to forums rules. Non-allowed topics and discussion should NOT be conducted via PM.


Previous Incarnations

Like the Glorious and Unconquered Sun, we have risen, lived, died, and risen anew, with many faces, many voices, many hearts. In this past, much can be found, both good, and bad, should one be brave or perhaps, foolish, enough to seek it.

*Spoiler: Past Threads*
Show

LGBT people in the playgroundLGBT people in the playground - part IILGBTitp - part IIILGBTitp 4: We are a family?LGBTitp - Part FiveLGBTitp - Part SixLGBTitp - Part SevenLGBTitp - Part EightLGBTitp - Part NineLGBTAitp - Part TenLGBTAitp - Part ElevenLGBTAitp - Part TwelveLGBTAitp - Part ThirteenLGBTAitp - Part FourteenLGBTAitp - Part FifteenLGBTAitp - Part SixteenLGBTAitp - Part SeventeenLGBTAitp - Part Eighteen!LGBTAitp - Part NineteenLGBTAitp - Part Twenty - Critical Hit!LGBTAitp - Part Twenty-One - BLACKJACK!LGBTAitP Part 22: The Best There IsLGBTAitP Part 23: Et tu, ~Bianca?LGBTAitP: Alphabet Soup-with 24 different Vitamins!LGBTAitP part 25: Doing Away With SubtitlesLGBTAitP 26: No Time For Snappy TitlesLGBTAitP 27: Of Shoes, and Ships, and Sealing WaxLGBTAitP #28: Come Taste the Rainbow!LGBTAitP #29: The Rainbow Outreach ProgramLGBTAitP 30: Free Cuddles (Enquire Within)LGBTAitP #31: Cuddles Are On Back Order. Have Some Snuggles!LGBTAitp #32: The Great Plushie Invasion!LGBTAitp #33: The Thread at the End of the Rainbow!LGTAitP #34: <3!!LGBTAitp #35: What Midlife Crisis? :3LGBTAitp #36: May Contain Bites!LGBTAitP #37: Once upon a time...LGBTAitP #38: Once More With Feeling!!LGBTAitP #38: Making Your Way in the World Today....LGBTAitP #40: Technicolour PartyboatLGBTAitp #41 - Imprecise Terminology SupercenterLGBTAitp #42: Better Than Skittles/The Meaning of Life!LGBTAitp #43 [Insert snappy subtitle here]LGBTAIitP #44: Quick, We Need To Vote A New Title!LGBTAIitP #45: Rainbow AnarchyLGBTAitP #46: I Cast Prismatic HugsLGBTAIitp #47: Weather Control CentralLGBTAIitp #48: For a Cuddly Tomorrow!LGBTAIitp #49: Please check all baggage before boarding the Rainbow Rail RoadLGBTAI+ #50: Warning: This Thread Has Exceeded its Maximum Awesome LevelLGBTAI+ 51: Lay That Hammer Down!LGBTAI+ 52: Aces HighLGBTAI+ 53: The Nefarious Rainbow SyndicateLGBTAI+ 54: A Full DeckLGBTAI+ 55: AKA The Page We'll Get to if I Don't Make a New OneLGBTAI+ 56: Prismatic SprayLGBTAI+ 57: I Love You, Always ForeverLGBTAI+ #58 Infinity 2.0: The Darth Arminius Apology ThreadLGBTAI+ #59 Will you take this woman to be your galpal




Webcomics that touch on... Well, everything related to the thread. 
*Spoiler*
Show

Venus Envy. Long dead webcomic. The creator has chosen not to continue it and move forward in life.
Rain. A story of a MtF girl in high school.
Khaos Komix.As the creator puts it(from his site): "A complete GLBTWTFBBQ comic about gender and sexuality. (Trigger warnings for EVERYTHING and nothing is safe for work.)"
Always Raining Here. "Adrian is heartsick, Carter is horny. This is a story about their misadventures as awkward teenagers as they fumble through unrequited romances."
Tripping over you.An awkward blind date leads to better options. 
Questionable Content. The LGBTA characters are fairly well done, and not stereotypes.
What's normal anyway. "Whats Normal Anyway? is a comic that discusses the trans male experience through the story of Mel, who takes the big risk of being himself and transitioning from female to male."
Princess. A webcomic.
Twokinds. Keveak: "It generally portrays GRSM matters positively and is quite a nice tale overall."
Misfile The Rose Dragon: "Ash is a young boy who, as a result of a screw-up in Heaven, gets stuck in a girl's body in a life he doesn't recognize, and has to deal with the changes and challenges of his new body while trying to get back his old life. Supernatural hijinks and car racing are involved."
Portside Stories A cute(and recently started) webcomic.
El Goonish Shive A long running webcomic, that I've heard often touches on lgbta relevant stuff.
Validation A Slice of Life webcomic focusing on Ally, a young transgender woman, just living her life.
Wildflowers A self proclaimed triggering comic dealing with suicide, depression, dysphoria and more.
Check, Please! Its a story about hockey and friendship and bros and trying to find yourself during the best 4 years of your life.
I Want To Be A Cute Anime Girl

I know I missed a few webcomics, and if anyone finds more, feel free to PM them to me with a brief description, and I will add them.


And a picture made by the Giant to celebrate gay marriage legalization in America.

*Spoiler: Prismatic Spray*
Show

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## Lycunadari

Yay new thread! 
It might be a good idea to update the list of private consultants- a lot of the people listed there haven't been active in the forums in years, so people wanting to ask them a question are likely to be disappointed. Also, even the people who are still active might not be willing to answer questions anymore, or have started to identify differently then when the list was made (like me! You can change my "speciality" to genderfluid, genderqueer, nonbinary and asexual/grey-ace. I'm also happy to chat over discord (just text) for potentially forum-forbidden topics).

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## DarthArminius

*Please PM me, if you are a private consultant. I am trying to recover from past Gay Conversion Therapy.*

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## Wizard_Lizard

Ayy new thread! Not much to say 'sides that, but cool!

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## Mystic Muse

> Yay new thread! 
> It might be a good idea to update the list of private consultants- a lot of the people listed there haven't been active in the forums in years, so people wanting to ask them a question are likely to be disappointed. Also, even the people who are still active might not be willing to answer questions anymore, or have started to identify differently then when the list was made (like me! You can change my "speciality" to genderfluid, genderqueer, nonbinary and asexual/grey-ace. I'm also happy to chat over discord (just text) for potentially forum-forbidden topics).


I have removed anyone who has not been on in more than a year. 

I'll go back over the list in April, and if anyone who hasn't been on in a few months still isn't, I'll remove them as well. 

There are three names on there I will have to do some more digging to figure out what their status is, because their names seem to have changed or something (Enrico Dandolo, Musashi, Metditto).

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## Grytorm

Enrico Dandalo changed her name to Miriel and hasn't posted since 2019.

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## Mystic Muse

> Enrico Dandalo changed her name to Miriel and hasn't posted since 2019.


Similar case with Musashi it seems. 

Cannot find Metditto at all, so assuming they're no longer part of the boards and have removed them. 

Alright, this is as far as I'm willing to go for the time being. Will check the list again in April.

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## Dire Moose

Just checking in here, wondering if I shouldnt just change my gender to female since I almost never present male anymore.

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## Mystic Muse

> Just checking in here, wondering if I shouldnt just change my gender to female since I almost never present male anymore.


Whatever makes you happiest.  :Small Smile:

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## 137beth

> Whatever makes you happiest.


The hard part is figuring out for yourself what makes you happiest :Small Sigh:

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## Lentrax

> I have removed anyone who has not been on in more than a year. 
> 
> I'll go back over the list in April, and if anyone who hasn't been on in a few months still isn't, I'll remove them as well. 
> 
> There are three names on there I will have to do some more digging to figure out what their status is, because their names seem to have changed or something (Enrico Dandolo, Musashi, Metditto).


You can leave me on the list. I may not be in here that much anymore, but I still check in every once in a while.

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## Dire Moose

Updated! Im still genderfluid, but Im a guy so rarely that I might as well just go with female.

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## BisectedBrioche

FWIW, I'd be happy to be added to the list for anyone who has questions about trans issues, especially in the UK.

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## Lissou

I'm happy to be on the list to provide an ear and shoulder, but with the caveat that I'm by no means a specialist in any of these topics at all. Not sure what that falls under, aside from "Any".

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## Sermil

Is the Spoiler marked "Prismatic Spray" supposed to contain an image linked to https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIc1vbNU...png&name=small, mayhaps? Because it's blank for me.

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## Ravens_cry

> Is the Spoiler marked "Prismatic Spray" supposed to contain an image linked to https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIc1vbNU...png&name=small, mayhaps? Because it's blank for me.


Same for me as well.

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## Mystic Muse

I'll edit the OP tomorrow. 

Yes, the pic is broken for some reason.

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## BisectedBrioche

Well, it's happening!

Today I'm going into hospital for my GCS!

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## Dire Moose

> Well, it's happening!
> 
> Today I'm going into hospital for my GCS!


So happy for you!

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## BisectedBrioche

> So happy for you!


Thanks! I'm in my hospital room now. Free wifi and everything!

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## Sigako

OP still broken.

Unsure, whether I should post it or not, but whatever: is there anyone here who can tolerate my whining for a little while (advice optional)? I'm stuck, and somewhat confused and depressed.
It's not so much triggering as stupid, and not 100% LGBTAI in nature, so I don't want to put it here, unless.
I'm a white cis gay male from Russia.

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## BisectedBrioche

UPDATE: I had my surgery successfully one Wednesday! I'm back on solids foods and am able to stand up. If all goes well, I'll have my bandages off on Monday morning and be discharged the next day!

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## Sigako

So, when will you be discharged?

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## Mystic Muse

> OP still broken.
> 
> Unsure, whether I should post it or not, but whatever: is there anyone here who can tolerate my whining for a little while (advice optional)? I'm stuck, and somewhat confused and depressed.
> It's not so much triggering as stupid, and not 100% LGBTAI in nature, so I don't want to put it here, unless.
> I'm a white cis gay male from Russia.


Fixed the OP. Sorry, been a bit of a week. 

Feel free to post. Maybe just put it in a spoiler, and be mindful of the board rules.

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## BisectedBrioche

The bandages are off, I've been shown how to clean everything and do post op stuff that might be a bit NSFW to name and I can walk freely again. Let the good times roll! ^_^

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## Sigako

Ok.
*Spoiler: whining*
Show


I have some nasty skin condition (basically, boils all over most part of the body surface), and doctors couldn't do anything with it for about a decade before I simply gave up, and on top of that I'm not the most pleasant person to have around - somewhat autistic and often abrasive.
Skin stuff means there's no sex for me, period. Turns out, most people have no use for a partner they cannot have sex with - the ones actually answering me in dating services usually haven't read my profile, and even the ones that do usually ghost on me shortly after. Actually, I cannot even blame them.
I hear sometimes that I should move to another country, but I don't see a point - the problem is in me, not in the attitude of the people surrounding me, homophobia and related stuff isn't the limiting factor.

For a long time I was somewhat chill about it - I invented some sort of philosophy justifying me being alone and focused on other stuff in my life. Several years later that stopped working - most of my other pursuits turned to be dead ends, I remembered that I'm not getting younger, it became too tiresome to deceive myself - actually, dunno, what was the exact cause.

Now I'm sort of stuck - I cannot distract myself from my sexuality, but all my attempts to find a mate are doomed before start, and it's driving me nuts.
Is there a way to "shut down" your sexuality and romatic urges, since in my case it does not do me any good? Also, one of my biggest fears is that if I actually find some good man, it'll turn out I cannot reciprocate the feelings (see above - autistic), and this will turn into a shaggy dog story.



And the rule of the internet which number I forgot: nobody cares.

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## Lentrax

Happy Transgender Day of Visibiliy, everyone!

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## BladeofObliviom

Oh no I can't ghost here invisibly

<3 Happy Transgender Day of Visibility day to you too!

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## sleepyhead

Just came out on another thread so figured I should here to. Recently discovered I'm pansexual and still tryna figure if I want to come out to my siblings or if that'd be to stressful (they are open to lgbtq+).

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## Lentrax

Well. Whatever you decide, just remember that here in this thread, you will be loved and respected, no matter what decision you make.

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## Talakeal

What does allohet mean?

I saw someone use the term on twitter, and I can get a few results in google, but I cant find a definition anywhere. Thanks!

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## PairO'Dice Lost

Well, in the same way "cishet" is short for cisgender-and-heterosexual, "allohet" would be short for allosexual-and-heterosexual.  As allosexual means someone who experiences sexual attraction, someone using the term in reference to someone else in contrast to themself most likely indicates that the speaker is asexual and heteroromantic.  I haven't ever seen the term used myself, since usually when people specify that they're just "[something]romantic" (as opposed to "heteroromantic bisexual" or the like) them being asexual is implicit.

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## Mith

> Ok.
> *Spoiler: whining*
> Show
> 
> 
> I have some nasty skin condition (basically, boils all over most part of the body surface), and doctors couldn't do anything with it for about a decade before I simply gave up, and on top of that I'm not the most pleasant person to have around - somewhat autistic and often abrasive.
> Skin stuff means there's no sex for me, period. Turns out, most people have no use for a partner they cannot have sex with - the ones actually answering me in dating services usually haven't read my profile, and even the ones that do usually ghost on me shortly after. Actually, I cannot even blame them.
> I hear sometimes that I should move to another country, but I don't see a point - the problem is in me, not in the attitude of the people surrounding me, homophobia and related stuff isn't the limiting factor.
> 
> ...


*Spoiler: Response*
Show

Here's my thoughts on this subject, which you can take with as much salt as you need.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to shut down sexual and romantic urges in any way that is healthy and doesn't result in personal harm. As for the 'no sex' rule that you say is causing problem looking for a partner, could you filter your own search to looking for anyone who is ace? They would be the category of people who the 'no sex' rule is not a problem. As far as the fear of being autistic 'driving the good ones away', all relationships are continual works in progress. I get having been burned previously regarding personality clashes, but if you are honest with yourself and your partner, and aim at trying to best by both of you, that is all everyone has going for them.

And don't necessarily take lack of responses being 'no one cares'. Sometimes, people just do not have the words to say regarding these issues. This corner of the forum doesn't get as much traffic as it used to, so slow response/interactions doesn't necessarily correlate to lack of empathy.

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## Sigako

Sorry for lashing out.

Very few aces available where I am - found only one, and we were totally incompatible in terms of personality. And I understand they're rare in general, and even more rarely in active search for a partner.

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## Mith

> Sorry for lashing out.
> 
> Very few aces available where I am - found only one, and we were totally incompatible in terms of personality. And I understand they're rare in general, and even more rarely in active search for a partner.


I apologize if my tone was over critical regarding the 'nobody cares' statement. I get the feeling of pouring a lot of personal energy into writing to get silence. I just wanted to point out that immediately going to 'no one cares' sort of throws in the towel before the run starts. Especially when this series of threads get fairly low traffic these days.

As for looking for an ace partner, the fact that you would be narrowing your dating pool in a pre-emptive fashion, rather than having them self select will do that. It is up to you which approach works better for you.

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## sleepyhead

Just learned the guy I'm interested in also is into dudes. Feels good man.

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## LaZodiac

Come this Friday I'll be meeting with my trans health doctor to organize top surgery. I've been approved for it and bottom surgery, so all I need is one more confirmation for bottom and I'll be good to go on both, and may be getting top soon.

So... wish me luck? Any advice from those who've had it?

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## Sigako

> Just learned the guy I'm interested in also is into dudes. Feels good man.


If you make a successfull couple, this would be a reason to come out to you siblings, no?

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## sleepyhead

> Come this Friday I'll be meeting with my trans health doctor to organize top surgery. I've been approved for it and bottom surgery, so all I need is one more confirmation for bottom and I'll be good to go on both, and may be getting top soon.
> 
> So... wish me luck? Any advice from those who've had it?


 That's great! Hope everything goes to plan!




> If you make a successfull couple, this would be a reason to come out to you siblings, no?


 Sure would, but I kinda casted off dating till I get my life together more. But who knows what'll happen? Of course if we did start dating I couldn't say we're together unless his folks also know he's not straight.

----------


## Sigako

> I apologize if my tone was over critical regarding the 'nobody cares' statement. I get the feeling of pouring a lot of personal energy into writing to get silence. I just wanted to point out that immediately going to 'no one cares' sort of throws in the towel before the run starts. Especially when this series of threads get fairly low traffic these days.
> 
> As for looking for an ace partner, the fact that you would be narrowing your dating pool in a pre-emptive fashion, rather than having them self select will do that. It is up to you which approach works better for you.


1. My first comment was answered almost immediately, while this was ignored for weeks. I felt like a s**ker, honestly. Feel like this a lot as of late.

2. Don't understand this part. Maybe it's just my English, I cannot parse this statement to make sense of it.
I simply disclose all these problems in my dating profile (it's mostly pointless to seek a gay mate in real world in Russia), mainly because I believe in honesty and this is an important detail, and myself trying to look for someone with lines like "sex is not important". Well, turns out it's an euphemism for "it's still critical, not I have other needs too". I've found said ace randomly, but we didn't like each other (and later he blogged on his socnetwork page why you shouldn't date people with such issues).
Ok, to be precise, currently I've left all dating services around last autumn because I see no point. Thought I'd try my luck with ridding of such urges, but alas, as you just wrote.


EDIT: What really stresses me out is a double-bind: on the one hand it's "an important part of yourself, and you shouldn't deny it, blah-blah-blah", on the other - to get meaningful relationship you have to be worthy, and said worth is not always dependent on your choices, sometimes you cannot do a thing about what's wrong with you.
All therapists I've met simply regurgitated the same drivel in the first point - "you do you, blah-blah-blah", until the cows come home. The last one actually gave in after I confronted them - they have no idea what to do either, but they charge per hour, and everyone wants to eat.

The only meaningful thing I've managed to find by myself is that whole this system is Goedel incomplete, and you can actually get caught in contradiction without any resolution. But for some reason a suicide isn't an exit either, and everyone tries to guilt-trip me out of it as soon as they hear about it (no worries: I'm the coward among the cowards, won't do anything reckless here).

----------


## Murk

> 1. My first comment was answered almost immediately, while this was ignored for weeks. I felt like a s**ker, honestly. Feel like this a lot as of late.


Must admit I also read the previous comment and thought "Geez, that's a difficult situation. I don't even know where to start." 
If anything, that doesn't make you the sucker but us!




> What really stresses me out is a double-bind: on the one hand it's "an important part of yourself, and you shouldn't deny it, blah-blah-blah", on the other - to get meaningful relationship you have to be worthy, and said worth is not always dependent on your choices, sometimes you cannot do a thing about what's wrong with you.
> All therapists I've met simply regurgitated the same drivel in the first point - "you do you, blah-blah-blah", until the cows come home. The last one actually gave in after I confronted them - they have no idea what to do either, but they charge per hour, and everyone wants to eat.
> 
> The only meaningful thing I've managed to find by myself is that whole this system is Goedel incomplete, and you can actually get caught in contradiction without any resolution. But for some reason a suicide isn't an exit either, and everyone tries to guilt-trip me out of it as soon as they hear about it (no worries: I'm the coward among the cowards, won't do anything reckless here).


I think you're really onto the crux of problem when you mention the double-bind - but it has to be your own choice which side you want to focus on.

Very rudely said you're at a massive disadvantage in the dating scene, through no fault of your own. 
For one, your sexuality is (relatively) uncommon.
Secondly, you have a physical affliction, which will limit your dating pool even further. 
Third, I think your location _already_ has a limited dating pool purely due to demographics.

So you start out at a huge disadvantage. That sucks big time - especially since it's not because of any choice of your own - but that's where you're at. 

You're not alone in your circumstances. I'm sure your _specific_ circumstances are unique, but people can be at a disadvantage in the dating scene for a whole lot of reasons: physical or mental illness, geographical isolation, poverty, just being ugly, etc. 

None of this means that it's impossible to find a lasting romantic relationship. The internet is filled with miracle stories of unlikely people finding true love. With a bit of determination and a whole lot of luck, it's possible. It's just (relatively) unlikely. 

At that point I think there are two options, and I think those two options are exactly the double-bind you mentioned:

- The "you do you" option. You accept your situation and who you are. You accept you might never find a lasting romantic relationship, and you work on being OK with that. You might remain optimistic, and keep your eyes open for the miracle story mentioned above, but you especially work on getting a life that you're happy with _without_ a romantic partner. If you _do_ happen to find one it's an added bonus, but not necessary. 
This includes finding other passions, finding a good outlet for sexuality (I guess getting rid of sexual urges is possible, but it sounds very dangerous) and a lot of introspection. 
I guess this is the option most therapists would try to guide you to, since it requires _mental_ solutions rather than _practical_ solutions.

- The other option is working to increase your dating pool. Obviously you can't change your sexuality or your illness, but there are other ways to increase the amount of possible partners. Moving to a location with a very active LGBT+ community; getting involved with people who also have physical limitations and might be more accepting; taking lessons or practicing on, like, "accepted" social behaviour and how to seem pleasant; getting heavy into fitness so that you're physically very attractive; or heck, even getting so obscenely wealthy that people will be interested in you despite all other objections.  
It's not a very popular approach, because "accepting who you are" is all the rage (and is definitely the option I would choose), but it's a valid way of looking at things. 

So neither are ideal.
But I think (like with all difficult issues) it's at least good to think about your options, what you want, and how much you're willing to sacrifice for it.

I hope as advice goes that's not _too_ pessimistic. It's not meant that way; but it would be dishonest to pretend we have a quick-fix solution for you either.

----------


## Sigako

> You're not alone in your circumstances. I'm sure your _specific_ circumstances are unique, but people can be at a disadvantage in the dating scene for a whole lot of reasons: physical or mental illness, geographical isolation, poverty, just being ugly, etc. 
> 
> None of this means that it's impossible to find a lasting romantic relationship. The internet is filled with miracle stories of unlikely people finding true love. With a bit of determination and a whole lot of luck, it's possible. It's just (relatively) unlikely.


Never said about it being unique, just unpleasant. And judging by amount of news about incels hoing crazy, I start to think that it's the people who are successfull at finding a good mate are actual outliers.
About 1.5 years ago I was presented with a bunch of such stories. I felt something fishy about the person that did it (I was right about him, but for completely wrong reason), so I digged around a bit, and found little good: one such miracle fell apart in mere months, another looked like a barely concealed abusive relationship ("You owe me everything" variety), and two were made up whole cloth for self-help/pick-up courses.




> - The "you do you" option. You accept your situation and who you are. You accept you might never find a lasting romantic relationship, and you work on being OK with that. You might remain optimistic, and keep your eyes open for the miracle story mentioned above, but you especially work on getting a life that you're happy with _without_ a romantic partner. If you _do_ happen to find one it's an added bonus, but not necessary. 
> This includes finding other passions, finding a good outlet for sexuality (I guess getting rid of sexual urges is possible, but it sounds very dangerous) and a lot of introspection. 
> I guess this is the option most therapists would try to guide you to, since it requires _mental_ solutions rather than _practical_ solutions.


Ok, simple question: how do I deal with frustration? Cannot even j/o or watch porno/something with a romatic storyline without a fit of despair and self-hatred half the time. Therapists just play echo chamber with me on this topic - just repeat what the client wants, but word it as a recommendation and pile enough clever words on top to confuse them. Turns out I know enough clever words too and can spot bull**** after a while, but not enough to actually help myself.
Also I left it out, mostly out of shame, but I turned desperate for relationship about 3-4 years ago, when most of my other pursuits, which kept me more or less occupied enough to be able to ignore this since puberty, fell apart, turned out to be delusions or just stopped being compelling (I went offline for 4 months just to brood uninterrupted at one point). Hate to admit, but I hoped that finding a date would help me to drag myself out of depression (also, I remembered I'm soon to turn 30 already, and felt cheated of the whole "exploration phase"), but, well, we see how that turned out.




> - The other option is working to increase your dating pool. Obviously you can't change your sexuality or your illness, but there are other ways to increase the amount of possible partners. Moving to a location with a very active LGBT+ community; getting involved with people who also have physical limitations and might be more accepting; taking lessons or practicing on, like, "accepted" social behaviour and how to seem pleasant; getting heavy into fitness so that you're physically very attractive; or heck, even getting so obscenely wealthy that people will be interested in you despite all other objections.  
> It's not a very popular approach, because "accepting who you are" is all the rage (and is definitely the option I would choose), but it's a valid way of looking at things.


Well, I see your train of thought, but while most of the listed options are usually reasonable to me they sound sort of irrelevant, because they deal with the wrong limiting factor.


Ok, that's a lot to chew. Mostly you just confirmed my thoughts, but at least you're honest here, which is, apparently, a huge rarity in this field.
Thank you.

ADD: Sorry for speech pattern - English not native, and I'm trying to hide behind long sentences.

----------


## Rydiro

> 1. My first comment was answered almost immediately, while this was ignored for weeks. I felt like a s**ker, honestly. Feel like this a lot as of late.


Here are tips for you:
1. Stop making your mood dependent on reactions on an internet forum.

2. Find friends irl.

----------


## Sigako

> Here are tips for you:
> 1. Stop making your mood dependent on reactions on an internet forum.
> 
> 2. Find friends irl.


At least it wasn't "Get a girlfriend". This one never gets old, apparently.

----------


## Murk

> At least it wasn't "Get a girlfriend". This one never gets old, apparently.


Yea, that wasn't the most helpful advice. 

But if you're dealing with depression or the aftermath, it makes sense the frustration of being single gets too much sometimes. 
From my own experience, being single (or even being lonely in general) is not a big issue to people who are otherwise happy. If you have an otherwise happy, healthy, fulfilled life, being single is usually a mild annoyance at most. But when you're already unhappy, being single can be the awful icing on an already awful cake. 

With the problem being that _even if you get a relationship_, that would still only fix the awful icing on the awful cake. And an awful cake with nice icing is still an awful cake. 


I think Rydiro's "tips" were awful (and the equivalent of advising someone with depression to "just be happy"), but it is true that unhappiness is a package deal, and that it's very hard to fix one part of it if you can't fix all the other parts as well.

----------


## Sigako

Another point is that finding friends is much easier said than done, even without any romantic/sexual/other related undertones.
Last year I was abruptly shown the door by my best friend, significantly soured relationships with another and start getting strains with the both remaining, and I never learned how to make new ones on purpose.

----------


## Rydiro

> Another point is that finding friends is much easier said than done, even without any romantic/sexual/other related undertones.
> Last year I was abruptly shown the door by my best friend, significantly soured relationships with another and start getting strains with the both remaining, and I never learned how to make new ones on purpose.


More awful "tips". ;)
1. While yes, finding new friends isn't easy, you can work on that skillset and try to have some successes in a few months. Maybe you pick up a social hobby and meet new people.

2. I'd also look into the reasons why all your friendships are strained. Maybe you can do something about that.

----------


## Sigako

> More awful "tips". ;)
> 1. While yes, finding new friends isn't easy, you can work on that skillset and try to have some successes in a few months. Maybe you pick up a social hobby and meet new people.
> 
> 2. I'd also look into the reasons why all your friendships are strained. Maybe you can do something about that.


2. Oh, this isn't a mystery: I always was a bit cranky and odd, but now my constant frustration (not just sex, see above) slowly drives me insane. Crazy people are not fun to hang out with (all ethical questions about new friends aside), but all my attempts to fix myself failed too.

----------


## Mith

> 2. Don't understand this part. Maybe it's just my English, I cannot parse this statement to make sense of it.
> I simply disclose all these problems in my dating profile (it's mostly pointless to seek a gay mate in real world in Russia), mainly because I believe in honesty and this is an important detail, and myself trying to look for someone with lines like "sex is not important". Well, turns out it's an euphemism for "it's still critical, not I have other needs too". I've found said ace randomly, but we didn't like each other (and later he blogged on his socnetwork page why you shouldn't date people with such issues).
> Ok, to be precise, currently I've left all dating services around last autumn because I see no point. Thought I'd try my luck with ridding of such urges, but alas, as you just wrote.
> 
> 
> EDIT: What really stresses me out is a double-bind: on the one hand it's "an important part of yourself, and you shouldn't deny it, blah-blah-blah", on the other - to get meaningful relationship you have to be worthy, and said worth is not always dependent on your choices, sometimes you cannot do a thing about what's wrong with you.
> All therapists I've met simply regurgitated the same drivel in the first point - "you do you, blah-blah-blah", until the cows come home. The last one actually gave in after I confronted them - they have no idea what to do either, but they charge per hour, and everyone wants to eat.
> 
> The only meaningful thing I've managed to find by myself is that whole this system is Goedel incomplete, and you can actually get caught in contradiction without any resolution. But for some reason a suicide isn't an exit either, and everyone tries to guilt-trip me out of it as soon as they hear about it (no worries: I'm the coward among the cowards, won't do anything reckless here).


Sorry for a late reply. Perhaps me saying that 'this thread doesn't get much traffic' or reflective on my personal experience of not coming to this corner of the internet often.

The reason I state that narrowing your dating pool and keeping that narrow focus is because if you are having partners leave due to sex being off the table, looking only for partners that are not bothered with sex not being on the table ends up being the same result, but you are not having someone abandoning you for something beyond your control. But as you noted, there is still issues with personality clashes. And your ex was completely in the wrong to write that blog post. Not only for throwing you under the bus (though that is enough) but because it reflects and can harm others in your position.

As far as there not being a solution to the problem, I would be highly surprised if those of us on the Internet can target things that therapists cannot. I do second the idea of looking into broadening social circle (yes I know it's cliché tripe). Simple because if you are having issues with dealing with personality clashes, the more you have experience with working with people, the better sense you have in terms of how you interact with people which you can carry onto your personal relationships.

In the end, I don't have a solution for you because I do not know you well enough to give one. But advice of 'get out and do something else' is not given just because it makes the advice giver feel better. There is practical reasoning behind it.

----------


## Dire Moose

I just found out that my best friend is getting married in August. And so we are going to return to my old hometown for the first time since I transitioned. This will also be the first time my best friend will have seen me in person since I transitioned as well, though he has seen pictures and we have done a video call since then.

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## Lissou

I've been dealing with thinking about gender for many years, and it's difficult. I feel like I may be agender or genderfluid. Sometimes I feel more comfortable binding and packing but my body type is hourglass and curvy so I know I don't pass as male. Other times I'm happy to wear a woman's T-shirt and womens' jeans and I feel good about it. I never feel like wearing a dress/skirt/makeup.

Part of me wants to get top surgery, not complete removal but a reduction. It would probably help even if presenting as female because I'm uncomfortable with all the stares. Another part of me freaks out at the idea, mainly because I worry I won't be as attractive to men anymore (I'm attracted to men exclusively). It feels like a superficial reason but because I don't feel I have a really strong sense of gender in the first place, it's hard to justify surgery, which I couldn't afford anyway. 
Similarly, I like the idea of taking testosterone to get my voice a bit lower and so I can grow a beard when I want to (and shave it when I don't), but I worry I'll regret it.

I've owned binders on and off for probably fifteen years, I usually wear them once, get disappointed that they don't seem to have much of an effect, and stash them away. I don't know what size I'd need to be for them to be more effective, though.

I feel so confused, but I never feel the same way long enough to act on it. I guess I just wanted to vent about it.

----------


## Caerulea

If you want to change your voice you don't need testerone for that. I'd recommend checking out r/transvoice, and the Scinguistics discord server. There's a bunch of advice on voice training (the majority of it that I've seen is for mtf, but there is ftm as well).

edit: Scinguistics link (expires in a week)

----------


## Lissou

> If you want to change your voice you don't need testerone for that. I'd recommend checking out r/transvoice, and the Scinguistics discord server. There's a bunch of advice on voice training (the majority of it that I've seen is for mtf, but there is ftm as well).
> 
> edit: Scinguistics link (expires in a week)


Thanks! I don't just want a deeper voice, but I appreciate the link and I'll look into it!
I'm wearing all three of my binders right now and while I definitely don't look like a guy, I look more androgynous and I feel a lot more comfortable with how I look. I've looked into top surgery, and because I have a history of shoulder, back and neck pain I would get covered for a reduction, as long as they remove at least one pound per side (which should be a problem). I feel like if I can get down to C or D at least I would be able to bind flatter, even if I still need to wear three binders at once (I probably wouldn't). And I would still have plenty for my more feminine days.
I didn't get to talk to family planning but I'll call again on Monday or possibly just go there, it's actually pretty close. It would be nice to go there while binding and packing and not have to care what people think because they're used to this kind of thing. I worry about them not understanding I'm not ftm but I'll tell them and we'll see.

I've talked to a few friends about getting a breast reduction (without talking about gender identity except with my ex, who already knew and has always been supportive). Only one of them reacted as I feared, telling me not to, that it looked great right now, that "the size never bothered him" (wtf?) and that maybe I could look into exercising to get them smaller if I really wanted to. I told him working out just makes my pecs bigger and he laughed. Then he said it can't be undone so I probably should think about it first, like it's not something I've thought about for 20 years already. I'm annoyed at him right now but I'll give myself a second to cool down before I talk to him and try and explain he was being insensitive.
My other two friends were supportive, in a "if that's something you want, hope that happens" kind of way, and I felt safe enough to bring up that I worried about people not finding me attractive anymore. They responded a bit differently but basically one told me that what I feel is more important than "other people" and the other one told me that anyone who only cares about breast size is a ****ing ******* in the first place so good riddance.

My ex, as I said, already knew as I'd been a guy at his place before and been neither as well, explicitly I mean, and he was supportive of anything that could help. He said he doesn't really understand gender but that he knows he'll love me regardless. Then we discussed gender in general, vaccinations (he just had his second shot and France has just allowed people over 18 to get same-day appointments if there are doses left) and it all felt very normal and not scary. It helps to know that whatever happens I'm never going to lose everyone I'm close to.

A razor I ordered arrived (I left my old one in the US) so I got to shave my face again, which I always enjoy. It's mostly fuzz except on my lip and chin, but I still prefer being clean-shaven, otherwise I feel like I have too much face hair for when I'm more feminine but not enough for when I'm more masculine.

I still don't know where things will go but I feel happier just talking about it and thinking about it. I think a reduction would make the biggest difference in my quality of life in all 'forms' so I may decide never to take T but I don't know. Are blockers even a thing for adults?

----------


## Lissou

I have an appointment for the end of June to talk about top reduction, what I can expect, how much will be covered and so on. Reading up on how it's done here in France I'm unclear how many appointments are needed but it should be faster and cheaper than in the US at least. The one thing is that I may be asked to lose some weight first as my BMI is higher than 24, and losing weight is challenging for me past my current point because my breasts get comparatively bigger and bigger.
I won't know more about it for more than a month so who knows, but I'll try to at least go back to good habits and maybe by then I'll have lost of few pounds.

The family planning thing was a bust, they don't deal with anything gender-related in France, I do see my psychiatrist later today but I don't really know if I'll feel up for telling her about any of it. I'll give it a try, I do see her every four weeks so I'll have other opportunities to bring it up.

I realise for most people top surgery happens after a lot of other things but I'm hoping that if it happens first due to it being a reduction, I'll have a clearer idea once it heals up about what I want and who I am.

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## Ravens_cry

Best hopes. Your journey is your own.  Don't feel you need to conform to the usual if it doesn't fit who you are. :Small Smile:

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## Sigako

Huh, actually this surgery talk was helpful: it reminded me that castration is also an option. Not sure if elective castration is permitted here, but it's something to look into.
Thank you.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

Speaking of surgery, tomorrow marks the day I'll be able to dilate twice a day instead three times a day after my vaginoplasty!

As you might imagine, this'll make actually doing things a heck of a lot easier.

----------


## Rydiro

> Huh, actually this surgery talk was helpful: it reminded me that castration is also an option. Not sure if elective castration is permitted here, but it's something to look into.
> Thank you.


At least talk the consequences through with a doctor.
That step sounds extreme and does not actually seem to adress any of your bigger problems.
Could aswell be neutral or worsening your situation.

----------


## Lissou

> Huh, actually this surgery talk was helpful: it reminded me that castration is also an option. Not sure if elective castration is permitted here, but it's something to look into.
> Thank you.


That sounds like something a lot of places would be against, at least surgically. Chemically may be more likely to be offered, but still not to many people. You should also know that while it would prevent the physical aspects (such as erections), it would probably not prevent the thoughts.




> Speaking of surgery, tomorrow marks the day I'll be able to dilate twice a day instead three times a day after my vaginoplasty!
> 
> As you might imagine, this'll make actually doing things a heck of a lot easier.


Yay! That should give you more free time.

----------


## DarthArminius

Well today's the first day of Pride Month and I feel like absolute excrement. Internalized homophobia has basically ruined my life, along with all the abuse from other people, their brainwashing has affected my mind to an absurd degree.

----------


## Lissou

> Well today's the first day of Pride Month and I feel like absolute excrement. Internalized homophobia has basically ruined my life, along with all the abuse from other people, their brainwashing has affected my mind to an absurd degree.


I'm so sorry to hear that :( Sending virtual hugs your way!

As for me, I'm pretty sure I'm genderfluid at this point, based on the fact that since the last post I've swung between loving having breasts and hating it. Female me is a bit freaked out about getting my breasts reduced and what that could mean, but neutral and male mes can hardly wait. Hopefully getting a reduction rather than a removal will work as a compromise rather than making everyone unhappy! The first consult is at the end of the month so there is still some time.

I definitely want to go back to working out and losing weight. I might need to before I can get surgery anyway, and it will be good for my physical and mental health (as long as I can get over the fact my breasts get proportionally bigger). I was going to start today but getting the vaccine yesterday caught up with me and I've been pretty sick, so I'lll wait until I feel better.

Happy Pride Month to everyone :)

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## TaiLiu

> Huh, actually this surgery talk was helpful: it reminded me that castration is also an option. Not sure if elective castration is permitted here, but it's something to look into.
> Thank you.


I dunno about Russia, but in a number of placesdepending on your definition of "castration"the closest thing for you would be an orchiectomy, a vaginoplasty, or a form of nonbinary genitoplasty. As others have mentioned, it is of course important to think about why you might want such a surgery, as well as any goals behind it.

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## Lentrax

Happy Pride!

Remember Be You. Be Strong, be bold.

And as always:

Be Gay, Do Crimes!

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## Sigako

> Happy Pride!
> 
> Remember Be You. Be Strong, be bold.
> 
> And as always:
> 
> Be Gay, Do Crimes!


Oh, right, it's a Pride Month. And I have no idea what to do with it. Aside from feeling stupid.






> I dunno about Russia, but in a number of placesdepending on your definition of "castration"the closest thing for you would be an orchiectomy, a vaginoplasty, or a form of nonbinary genitoplasty. As others have mentioned, it is of course important to think about why you might want such a surgery, as well as any goals behind it.


Well, the main reason is to get rid of libido, since for me it's only a source of frustration.
Also, on empty balls I feel less lonely and romantically frustrated too, for some reason. Well, not so much "less" as "this aspect of life loses most of importance, and edge with it".

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## TaiLiu

> Well, the main reason is to get rid of libido, since for me it's only a source of frustration. Also, on empty balls I feel less lonely and romantically frustrated too, for some reason. Well, not so much "less" as "this aspect of life loses most of importance, and edge with it".


Oh, gotcha. As Lissou mentioned, the connection between testosterone levels and libido may not be as clean as you would likethere are plenty of women with low testosterone and lots of libido, for instance. I guess you could even temporarily test it out yourself. Get some grey market anti-androgens and/or estradiol, which can lower your testosterone. Try them for a month or so. It's possible that they might make you feel better, but, well, if they do, it's probably not cuz of a libido drop.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

Welp, decided that I should probably wait a couple more years before pursuing HRT, which I'm still really conflicted about, so that's newsish I guess?

----------


## BisectedBrioche

The right time to transition is when you decide to, no sooner or later. That includes deferring it.

----------


## Phae Nymna

Haayyy sweet people~ I've been away from this account for a longgg time and I'm happy to say I'm thriving here in New Orleans. I came out when I was 14 and whew it uhh people did a bad job w that at first and ppl in my life really hurt me. Y'all, these girls gays n theys threads supported and affirmed me <3

My podnah Henry and I met at Southern Decadence 2019, but we'd matched on Tinder when we were both in college. It was a gush worthy meet-cute: Jeff Goldblum was dancing on the terrace of Good Friends bar and he wore a leopard print shirt and zebra print pants. It's a street corner and opposite Good Friends is Moon Wok Restaurant on the other side of St. Ann St; both corner building have wraparound galleries that stand over the sidewalk on cast iron poles, giving a second floor balcony and plenty of shade on the hottest day of the year in New Orleans. I saw him straight across the pride parade and we recognized each other just like that <3 Ran around the corner to text himb and he asked me to save him from his friends so I obliged, we ate late lunch in a bad restaurant and some old bears made things hella weird as they do that time of year, and we went to Audubon Park and sat on a bench and smooched. Anyway we were smitten p. much immediately and it will be 2 years this September 1st <3

xoxo

----------


## Dire Moose

So Im approaching 4 years since I transitioned, and realized that I havent presented as male since one time near the end of 2018. And after being on estrogen since November 2017, my spouse and I measured my growth again and found out that my breasts are now up to a 42D. While I still identify as being outside of a strict male/female binary, I have to admit that as far as day-to-day life is concerned, I have completely crossed over now. And it still feels like I only just started.

Only a month away now from my first trip to my old hometown as a girl. Im caught in between being excited to see everyone I left behind and nervous about what theyre going to say. Most people know I transitioned, but having to interact with the new me is different. I guess one of my biggest concerns isnt threats or violence but more just them not acknowledging what happened and continuing to refer to me as though nothing happened, male pronouns and everything. Not sure if I have anything to worry about there, though.

----------


## Lissou

Good luck! People sometimes make mistakes out of habit without meaning anything by it. I hope if that happens they'll apologise right away and it won't hurt too much, but of course you can't control your feelings...
Nothing wrong with identifying as transfeminine and nonbinary at the same time if that works for you. And of course if you ever identify as masculine/male again that would be valid too, there isn't any prescription on being fluid :) And if it turns out you're not fluid, well you seem really happy so whatever labels you decide to use for yourself, I know everyone here will support you :)

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## Lysbeth

Currently in the process of getting my name changed to the one you can see on my profile...

I have to provide letters by people who swear that I do use this name and am not just being random, amongst other things. I also have to provide scans of their ID cards. One of the two friends who wrote a letter is waiting to get a new valid ID card so I'm hanging on and waiting for him to get it. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting... is not a good feeling. But I'm also giddy to be finally getting my new name, so the happy/sad mix is really messing with me.

Ugh. Can't wait for this all to be over, I want my cool name now ;A;

----------


## Purple Eagle

Hi y'all, I'm an AMAB pansexual transfem, recently came out as trans to a couple of online friends of mine, and I thought I'd introduce myself here.

My fem persona's name is BiBi on the forums, and I've only begun voice training and transitioning on social media. The odd hypnosis audio/video helps, too. Not in real life however, it's very unsafe for me to come out of the closet there, save wearing feminine underwear.

So... yeah!

----------


## Lentrax

> Hi y'all, I'm an AMAB pansexual transfem, recently came out as trans to a couple of online friends of mine, and I thought I'd introduce myself here.
> 
> My fem persona's name is Nisha, and I've only begun voice training and transitioning on social media. The odd hypnosis audio/video helps, too. Not in real life however, it's very unsafe for me to come out of the closet there, save wearing feminine underwear.
> 
> So... yeah!


Hello and welcome to you and all the other newcomers (and you too, lurkers!)

We used to have cake, but the people who were good at it stop making them, and we have been told that biting is not an appropriate first greeting.


So instead I will say hello, and let you know that I am available to talk to via any method you prefer. Whatever you need to talk about, I am here.

That said, I hope you enjoy your stay here, and again...

WELCOME!!!

----------


## Purple Eagle

> Hello and welcome to you and all the other newcomers (and you too, lurkers!)
> 
> We used to have cake, but the people who were good at it stop making them, and we have been told that biting is not an appropriate first greeting.
> 
> 
> So instead I will say hello, and let you know that I am available to talk to via any method you prefer. Whatever you need to talk about, I am here.
> 
> That said, I hope you enjoy your stay here, and again...
> 
> WELCOME!!!


Thank you! Note that I edited the name above to read '*BiBi*' instead of Nisha, since it's what I've come to be known as on the internet... so please call me that, everyone! It's from Beagle, which was from when I was known as Bohemian Eagle.

Also, just in case this info should also become necessary, I was diagnosed autistic just a few years ago (mid 20s), as well as ADHD and OCD. The trifecta, if you will!  :Small Big Grin:  :Small Sigh:

----------


## Dire Moose

With my first trip back to my old hometown since I transitioned being only about 3 weeks away, I have to ask myself: am I the same person now as I was then?

Consider how many changes have happened. My body chemistry has been radically altered. The shape of everything is different now. I have discovered so many new likes and dislikes about myself that were hidden before. The world around me now relates to me in a different way, and plenty of people I once new may not even recognize me anymore.

Will it be the homecoming Ive been used to, or will I be stepping into the room of some guy who left years ago and never returned?

----------


## DarthArminius

> With my first trip back to my old hometown since I transitioned being only about 3 weeks away, I have to ask myself: am I the same person now as I was then?
> 
> Consider how many changes have happened. My body chemistry has been radically altered. The shape of everything is different now. I have discovered so many new likes and dislikes about myself that were hidden before. The world around me now relates to me in a different way, and plenty of people I once new may not even recognize me anymore.
> 
> Will it be the homecoming Ive been used to, or will I be stepping into the room of some guy who left years ago and never returned?


The world is changing, and so have you. It might be a warm, pleasant homecoming, and still be off putting.

----------


## Dire Moose

*Spoiler: Recent selfies*
Show

----------


## 137beth

I am now really upset on the whole "getting bottom surgery" ordeal.  

I already see two mental health doctors for reasons unrelated to gender.  My endocrinologist recommended a particular surgeon for bottom surgery.  I previously confirmed via phone with the surgeon's office that both of those doctors could write me letters of readiness.  They both wrote me letters and sent them in June.  

I then spent a month repeatedly calling the surgeon's office to see what the status was.  In mid-July they told me the received the letters, but they weren't good enough, and they sent information about what was missing to the office where my therapist and psychiatrist work.  But my therapist said she never got any information from them (and the receptionist answering my phone calls couldn't tell me anything more informative).  I then spent another few weeks calling the surgeon's office, after which they said they would re-send a fax to my therapist.  That was on Monday of this week.

Today, I got a call from my therapist, who said that the surgeon's office told her that she was not, in fact, qualified to write a letter of readiness for me, even though she has a doctorate in psychology, because she doesn't have "specific experience diagnosing people with gender dysphoria."  The same issue also disqualified my psychiatrist.
So just now I called the surgeon's office again, asking if they could tell me who in the region is "qualified" according to their criteria.  The receptionist didn't know, but said they would call me back :Sigh:

----------


## TaiLiu

> I am now really upset on the whole "getting bottom surgery" ordeal.  
> 
> I already see two mental health doctors for reasons unrelated to gender.  My endocrinologist recommended a particular surgeon for bottom surgery.  I previously confirmed via phone with the surgeon's office that both of those doctors could write me letters of readiness.  They both wrote me letters and sent them in June.  
> 
> I then spent a month repeatedly calling the surgeon's office to see what the status was.  In mid-July they told me the received the letters, but they weren't good enough, and they sent information about what was missing to the office where my therapist and psychiatrist work.  But my therapist said she never got any information from them (and the receptionist answering my phone calls couldn't tell me anything more informative).  I then spent another few weeks calling the surgeon's office, after which they said they would re-send a fax to my therapist.  That was on Monday of this week.
> 
> Today, I got a call from my therapist, who said that the surgeon's office told her that she was not, in fact, qualified to write a letter of readiness for me, even though she has a doctorate in psychology, because she doesn't have "specific experience diagnosing people with gender dysphoria."  The same issue also disqualified my psychiatrist.
> So just now I called the surgeon's office again, asking if they could tell me who in the region is "qualified" according to their criteria.  The receptionist didn't know, but said they would call me back


Really sorry to hear about this. The gatekeeping on display here is sickening.

----------


## Wizard_Lizard

My school has some really annoying hair based policies (has to be off the collar), which I'm looking into trying to repeal, currently have a local petition that's nearly at 400 signatures which is great, I'm having a meeting with the principal in two weeks to discuss it!! Wish me luck!!!

----------


## Caerulea

> My school has some really annoying hair based policies (has to be off the collar), which I'm looking into trying to repeal, currently have a local petition that's nearly at 400 signatures which is great, I'm having a meeting with the principal in two weeks to discuss it!! Wish me luck!!!


Good luck Wizard Lizard! I've personally had mixed success with changing school policy but from my experience school officials are usually reasonable people who'll listen if you're polite and articulate. I hope it goes well for you!

----------


## Grand Arbiter

Over the past couple years Ive worked up the courage to be completely honest with myself and came out as gay to my immediate family (parents/siblings). Happily, the response has been a positive one. 

Unfortunately, my nerves have been wracked the past few weeks so Ive come here for help. Id like to be able to tell my grandparents that Im gay, particularly my grandmother on my dads side due to recent health concerns. I dont want it to be left unsaid. At the same time I dont know _how_. Shes conservative, prejudiced and stubborn as a mule, but I love her despite her faults and dont want to hurt her. 

Compound how socially awkward I feel sometimes and Id greatly appreciate some advice/counsel for how to approach this.  :Small Sigh:

----------


## DarthArminius

> Over the past couple years Ive worked up the courage to be completely honest with myself and came out as gay to my immediate family (parents/siblings). Happily, the response has been a positive one. 
> 
> Unfortunately, my nerves have been wracked the past few weeks so Ive come here for help. Id like to be able to tell my grandparents that Im gay, particularly my grandmother on my dads side due to recent health concerns. I dont want it to be left unsaid. At the same time I dont know _how_. Shes conservative, prejudiced and stubborn as a mule, but I love her despite her faults and dont want to hurt her. 
> 
> Compound how socially awkward I feel sometimes and Id greatly appreciate some advice/counsel for how to approach this.


ERm, all I can say is that I hope it works out. If you find someone smarter than I am to help you and it works out alright that would be great!

----------


## Talakeal

Another question about trans issues if I may:

I have seen it asserted on twitter and facebook numerous times that it has been scientifically proven that gender is distinct from sex and that trans people are the gender they identify as, but with no explanation or evidence.

Can someone explain to me what this actually means?

As someone who is gender nonconforming, as well as a humanist and a feminist, I have always felt that gender was just a collection of oppressive stereotypes which society forces on people rather than something with objective reality.

Likewise, if there really is some objective gender identity, like, I don't know, a difference in brain structure or chemistry, what does that say about people who identify as trans but don't display it objectively?


Please note that I am not trying to make a political statement with this or invalidate anyone's identity, I am just really curious. And, as someone who identifies as trans but still in the closet to most people, it is something I give a lot of thought to.

----------


## Lycunadari

Well, there are some studies that show that (at least some) brain structures of trans women are more similar to those of cis women than to those of cis men (and vice versa with trans men), though most of them have tiny sample sizes and often inconclusive results. There are also studies pointing to genetic causes (including twin studies). If you're interested in this stuff, there's this wikipedia article: Causes of transsexuality

Personally, I don't care about any of that. Sure, it's kinda interesting to read about as a biologist, but as a trans person, I don't need studies to "prove" I exist. I know how I feel gender-wise, I know how I like to express my gender, I don't care about gender roles. I know it makes me happy if I hear my new name, or get post addressed to that new name. I know it makes me uncomfortable if online forms make me pick between male and female, stuff like that. Also, I'm weary that any research that "proves" an explicit cause for being trans would lead to eugenics (transphobic parents aborting fetuses if you can test for it before birth).

It might be useful for you to understand that gender (identity) ≠ gender expression ≠ gender roles. Some people do use these interchangeably, but at least for discussion trans issues, differentiating between them is useful: 
Gender (identity): you personal internal sense of gender, can be more or less strong (leading to some people to identify as 'cis by default' if they don't feel particularly like their assigned gender but don't care enough to identify as something else)
Gender expression: how you like to express you gender, includes clothes, makeup etc. Can in a wider sense also include stuff like your name, pronouns, terms of address, etc
Gender roles: how you are expected to act because of your gender. Varies widely by culture. 
They are of course all interconnected, especially gender expression and gender roles.

So you can have for example a woman (= gender), who wears dresses, goes by she/her pronouns and gets called Mom by her kids (=gender expression), and who is a stay-at-home mom who likes to sew and knit, which is expected of her by society (=gender roles). Maybe she's cis, maybe she's trans, you can't tell from the example.

Or you can have another woman, who also wears dresses, goes by she/her pronouns but gets called Dad by her kids, and likes so play soccer with them (which can be a bit difficult in a dress  :Small Wink:  ). Maybe she's trans and her kids are the only ones who are allowed to use masculine words for her, maybe she's cis and the "Dad" thing is a family joke because people always expect dads to play soccer with their kids. You can't tell from the example.

Or you can have yet another woman, who wears suits, goes by he/him pronouns, gets called Husband by his wife, and likes to go on motor bike rides. Maybe he's cis and a butch lesbian, or maybe he's a closeted trans woman. You can't tell from the example.


Did any of that help? (Or did it just lead to more questions?)  :Small Smile:

----------


## Talakeal

> Did any of that help? (Or did it just lead to more questions?)


Not really, no, but thank you taking the time to type it out for me!  :Small Big Grin: 



Read the wikipedia article you linked, seems to show that the science is pretty inconclusive one way or the other.

I fully agree with you about the differences between the types of gender; but I personally prefer to just judge people as individuals and identify myself as gender nonconforming and refer to physical sex*.


I really don't like the idea of gender being somehow objectively hard coded, not only because people will try and cure / prevent it, but also because of the amount of "gate-keeping" that will apply to people whose behaviors don't link to whatever "objective" measure is being used to scientifically prove gender.

While I think the idea is about gender-queer folk trying to validate their own existences, which is a good thing, it could far too easily be used to invalidate someone else's gender identity, and comes very close to the misogynist rhetoric about how women are biologically coded to be (insert stereotype about women here).


*Which is a spectrum and which people have both the right and the capability to change through medical means.

----------


## SerTabris

> I fully agree with you about the differences between the types of gender; but I personally prefer to just judge people as individuals and identify myself as gender nonconforming and refer to physical sex*.


It's perfectly fine to refer to anything you'd like for pronouns and such for _yourself_, but this is definitely not something that should be imposed on others. That is, you should still be referring to other people with the pronouns that they've told you are the appropriate ones to refer to them. (From this phrasing, I wasn't sure of the scope of what you were saying, so I wanted to clarify this part.)

The rest of it, I don't think I can add anything to in particular, but I wanted to emphasize that.

----------


## Talakeal

> It's perfectly fine to refer to anything you'd like for pronouns and such for _yourself_, but this is definitely not something that should be imposed on others. That is, you should still be referring to other people with the pronouns that they've told you are the appropriate ones to refer to them. (From this phrasing, I wasn't sure of the scope of what you were saying, so I wanted to clarify this part.)
> 
> The rest of it, I don't think I can add anything to in particular, but I wanted to emphasize that.


Surely you mean that it is something which should be imposed on others?

But yes, I acknowledge that it is very rude to refer to someone by the wrong pronouns and I know how painful being misgendered can be.

----------


## SerTabris

> Surely you mean that it is something which should be imposed on others?
> 
> But yes, I acknowledge that it is very rude to refer to someone by the wrong pronouns and I know how painful being misgendered can be.


No, that's not what I meant, but I think you're parsing this differently. I meant that your (or anyone else's) internal conception about how sex/gender/etc. shouldn't be imposed on others, and each individual has to be taken as the authority on referring to themselves. So, it sounds like you're agreeing but phrasing the idea in another way.

----------


## 137beth

Oh hey, I just noticed my username has been changed :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Talakeal

> No, that's not what I meant, but I think you're parsing this differently. I meant that your (or anyone else's) internal conception about how sex/gender/etc. shouldn't be imposed on others, and each individual has to be taken as the authority on referring to themselves. So, it sounds like you're agreeing but phrasing the idea in another way.


I was just about to edit my last post to say exactly that  :Small Smile:

----------


## enderlord99

Is it okay that I'm both ace and volcel?  Every time "Ace week" happens, I see a *ton* of people posting "asexuality is different from celibacy" and "it's okay to want sex but still label yourself ace" and basically nobody saying "it's okay to not want sex at all."

How bad of a person am I because I fit an offensive stereotype perfectly?

----------


## BisectedBrioche

I'd say people are just saying that because it's contrary to the assumption. You can be ace and sex positive, sex negative, or sex indifferent (yo!), as well as being romantically still gay (yo again), bi or any other sexuality under the sun.

It's just that "people choose to be asexual" and "asexuals never want to have sex" are assumptions made, so there's not much need to assert them.

EDIT: I should emphasise that I have indeed seen positivity posts along the lines of "it's fine to want to be single", for what it's worth

Speaking of twitter, I'm chuffed to see Cis with the T trending, after everything that's happened the last few days (which I'd assume isn't an acceptable topic to discuss).

----------


## Lycunadari

You're not a bad person at all! There are lots of ace people who are sex repulsed or just sex indifferent, so you are certainly not alone. Also, not all stereotypes are inherently offensive and they often exist for a reason (and "ace people don't like sex" is one of them). Sometimes people can go too far in trying to make clear that not everyone who is part of a community fits a certain stereotype, making the people who *do* fit that stereotype feel alienated. (Other examples of this I've seen this are "Not all gay men are flamboyant" and "not all bi people are promiscuous!" being said so often that the gay men and bi people who are flamboyant/promiscuous feel like they're doing something wrong/harming their community when that isn't the case at all).

----------


## Bounty Hunter

Just swinging through to say hello and remind everyone that they're super awesome.

----------


## 137beth

So, I don't know how many people here still read _Rain_, but this week's pages introduced (IMO) the biggest plot twist in the comic's 11 year history.  It was foreshadowed many times years in advance, but it still completely shocked me, and I didn't see any commenters on ComicFury who predicted it.

----------


## Lentrax

I didn't see it coming, and I binge reread Rain every time there is a Rain Delay.

I mean, _dayum_.

----------


## Lentrax

We are coming up on the holidays, and I want to once again remind everyone that you are important, you are special, and you are loved.

And if you feel like none of that applies to you, PM me, and I will reaffirm it for you.

You are loved.

You are special.

You are deserving.

You are amazing.

You are awesome.

----------


## dafrca

> We are coming up on the holidays, and I want to once again remind everyone that you are important, you are special, and you are loved.
> 
> And if you feel like none of that applies to you, PM me, and I will reaffirm it for you.
> 
> You are loved.
> 
> You are special.
> 
> You are deserving.
> ...


Great post and oh so true. So often we fall victim to the negative voices in our own heads even. It is good for you to remind us with these words what is true. 

Well done.  :Small Smile:

----------


## LaZodiac

Good news everyone!

I have received an email from GRS Montreal. Within the next few weeks I'll be getting a call to arrange for my bottom surgery date!

----------


## BisectedBrioche

That's fantastic! I hope it goes smoothly.

I'm more or less recovered from mine back in March, but I was told to be careful for at least a year.

----------


## LaZodiac

> That's fantastic! I hope it goes smoothly.
> 
> I'm more or less recovered from mine back in March, but I was told to be careful for at least a year.


Thanks.

I'll be honest, I'm terrified. I read the information booklet they gave me and had a bit of an anxiety attack. I'm just... nervous.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> Thanks.
> 
> I'll be honest, I'm terrified. I read the information booklet they gave me and had a bit of an anxiety attack. I'm just... nervous.


I calmed myself down by remembering that all I need to do is show up, and then I get to sleep through it!

The first few days in hospital were pretty rough (all liquid diet, plus I discovered that my digestive system does NOT like painkillers), but after the bandages are off and you're mobile again, it's all plain sailing.

----------


## Lissou

Surgery should be scary, it's a big deal, but the rewards outweigh the pain and recovery, hang in there!

----------


## LaZodiac

> I calmed myself down by remembering that all I need to do is show up, and then I get to sleep through it!
> 
> The first few days in hospital were pretty rough (all liquid diet, plus I discovered that my digestive system does NOT like painkillers), but after the bandages are off and you're mobile again, it's all plain sailing.


This is for bottom surgery, and I'm considering getting it with cavity, which requires a LOT of aftercare work, and that's what is making my nerves explode.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> This is for bottom surgery, and I'm considering getting it with cavity, which requires a LOT of aftercare work, and that's what is making my nerves explode.


This is also what I'm talking about (fully vaginoplasty, with a cavity).

While dilating 3 times a day is time consuming (until you're able to do it less), you'll find that after you're discharged (I was discharged after a week, which as far as I can tell is standard), it's mostly just a matter of taking it easy (and avoiding any heavy lifting, or straining yourself).

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> Surgery should be scary, it's a big deal, but the rewards outweigh the pain and recovery, hang in there!


This, I'd be more worried if somebody had no trepidation.

Not that I can really give anything more than well wishes, having no first or second hand experience here. But to bring them over from RB, good luck on the surgery Zodi!

----------


## LaZodiac

> This is also what I'm talking about (fully vaginoplasty, with a cavity).
> 
> While dilating 3 times a day is time consuming (until you're able to do it less), you'll find that after you're discharged (I was discharged after a week, which as far as I can tell is standard), it's mostly just a matter of taking it easy (and avoiding any heavy lifting, or straining yourself).


Fair, I'm just... scared. A part of me wants to go non-cavity because it'll be easier to take care of, but I'm worried about feeling "fake" or like a coward who chose this option for the wrong reason.




> This, I'd be more worried if somebody had no trepidation.
> 
> Not that I can really give anything more than well wishes, having no first or second hand experience here. But to bring them over from RB, good luck on the surgery Zodi!


Thanks for the support.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> Fair, I'm just... scared. A part of me wants to go non-cavity because it'll be easier to take care of, but I'm worried about feeling "fake" or like a coward who chose this option for the wrong reason.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the support.


That's understandable, but at the end of the day it's your body. All I can say is, anyone who has a problem with your choices in that respect can trip over while carrying heavy shopping in both hands.

You've already done the bravest part getting this far.

----------


## Ranger Mattos

Woo! That's super awesome! I'm actually recovering from a revision myself right now (going a bit rockier than expected but I think I'll be ok)




> That's understandable, but at the end of the day it's your body. All I can say is, anyone who has a problem with your choices in that respect can trip over while carrying heavy shopping in both hands.
> 
> You've already done the bravest part getting this far.


Agree with this. It's definitely a big thing and being anxious is totally legit. I will also say that personally I find dilating to be a chore that's annoying but doable (tho granted, in my case I had 2 months off work and 1 month working from home before I went down to 2/day, which certainly makes it easier, and idk about what your situation will look like during recovery). You've got time to think about this so give yourself some room to breathe.

If you wanna talk further/more privately then you're welcome to message me on discord.

----------


## LaZodiac

> That's understandable, but at the end of the day it's your body. All I can say is, anyone who has a problem with your choices in that respect can trip over while carrying heavy shopping in both hands.
> 
> You've already done the bravest part getting this far.


Thank you. I've gotta keep that in mind.




> Woo! That's super awesome! I'm actually recovering from a revision myself right now (going a bit rockier than expected but I think I'll be ok)
> 
> Agree with this. It's definitely a big thing and being anxious is totally legit. I will also say that personally I find dilating to be a chore that's annoying but doable (tho granted, in my case I had 2 months off work and 1 month working from home before I went down to 2/day, which certainly makes it easier, and idk about what your situation will look like during recovery). You've got time to think about this so give yourself some room to breathe.
> 
> If you wanna talk further/more privately then you're welcome to message me on discord.


Will do, and good luck yourself!

----------


## Dire Moose

> Fair, I'm just... scared. A part of me wants to go non-cavity because it'll be easier to take care of, but I'm worried about feeling "fake" or like a coward who chose this option for the wrong reason.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for the support.


There is no one right way to transition. We all have things we are and arent comfortable with and some things that are necessary, arent necessary, and some things we never wanted to do in the first place. For example, I never had any kind of trans-related surgeries at all, just HRT and legal changes, and I am content with that at this point. That changes nothing about who I am and makes me no less of a woman than someone who has undergone all the surgeries in the world.

You just need to figure out what works best for the results YOU want.

----------


## DarthArminius

I'd like to talk to someone about being Pansexual. I'm confused. I was bisexual, then gay, and now I just don't know, intellectually. I feel gay, does that make sense?

----------


## dafrca

> I'd like to talk to someone about being Pansexual. I'm confused. I was bisexual, then gay, and now I just don't know, intellectually. I feel gay, does that make sense?


I am sure you will get some great advice from people much more qualified than I, but I want to say this: 

People are all different and the fact you do not feel comfortable fitting into someone else's labels is fine. Nothing wrong with you. You are thinking about and trying to find the path that best fits you. You do not need a hard label to do so. I have watched a few friends and two family members go through this and in each case once they stopped trying to force themselves into a pigeon hole box they felt better both about themselves and their lives. 

Labels might help with some conversations, but in the end you are not the label, you are a wonderful person and should be patient with yourself as you explore and find your path. 

Ok, I will go back to lurker mode.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> I'd like to talk to someone about being Pansexual. I'm confused. I was bisexual, then gay, and now I just don't know, intellectually. I feel gay, does that make sense?


Sexuality is not solid, and it might change with the times. But you don't have to fit into any label, while as humans we like to categorise none of the buckets cover the full nuance of sexuality.

Maybe you'd be more comfortable with something like homoflexible rather than pansexual? Don't be afraid to associate with any identity, your sexuality is your sexuality and if you fit best in gay than you can be gay.

----------


## Quill

Just chiming in to say how happy I am this thread exists! Feeling very welcomed.

----------


## Lentrax

> Just chiming in to say how happy I am this thread exists! Feeling very welcomed.


All are welcome here!

Glad to see you like the space. A little empty here of late, but we are still all around somewhere, ready to love, comfort and support in whatever types and amounts you need and are comfortable with.

----------


## The Extinguisher

its been over two years since i last used this forum, but i'd feel awful if i browsed without saying hi to this thread. i definitely would not be where i am now without a place to talk about all the scary gender feelings i was having. but now im four years on hrt and thriving. (not really im very mentally unwell but that has nothing to do with gender)

anyways just wanted to spread some cheer and happiness while i remembered this existed. wishing ny'all just the absolutely gayest year imaginable

----------


## Dire Moose

Im still alive, and celebrating 5 years of being married to Mariah later this month. And I recently celebrated 4 years of HRT in November too.

----------


## 137beth

Does anyone have recommendations for a queer-friendly TTRPG-focused Discord server?

----------


## DataNinja

> Does anyone have recommendations for a queer-friendly TTRPG-focused Discord server?


Lancer's PilotNet (second result for Lancer on discord search, only one for PilotNet) is very, very queer-focused. I spend a lot of time there myself, and... well, if the dabbing mech in front of a trans flag as the server banner doesn't give you an idea of how welcoming it is to the queer community, nothing will.  :Small Tongue: 

Don't have any ideas for more _general_ ones, but that one's grown rather more than just Lancer, at least.

----------


## TwilightSandwic

It's been ten years since my grandma passed away so she's been on my mind lately. She died when I was in High School and that was also around the time I started realizing that I'm not-straight (I'm aroace) but those weren't thoughts I shared with my family at the time. When grandma passed away I was emotionally messed up for months, she was really one of my fav people in the whole world... probably because she spoiled me rotten, lol. She was one of those people who just wanted nothing more than to dote on their grandkids and greatgrandkids and listen to classical music.
Years passed, I realized I'm aroace and came out to my family, and I always felt sad that grandma never got to see me graduate from school or finish my first animated project. One day this year me and my parents were in the car together and the conversation has moved to reminiscing about grandma. And mom and dad recalled the time she came to visit them back when they were living in San Francisco, during June, and coming across a pride parade. That was her first real encounter with the existence of queer folks and she was appreantly 'in shock' and 'appalled'.
And, well, appreantly my parents thought it was just a funny anecdote, but that was kind of a punch to the gut for me to hear something like that. Because... I would like to believe that no matter how many figurative monocoles she popped while seeing her first pride parade, if she lived longer or if I came out to her while she was alive that she would have accepted me. That she loved me and my cousins and my cousin's kids so strongly that if any one of us came out as aroace or gay or trans or bi or any other flavor of queer, she would have overcome whatever prejudice she had. 
And like... I don't think that's an out-there thing to think about! I mean that story happened like 27 years ago and 17 years before she died, she could have changed her mind. And I know nothing was more precious to my grandma than her family. And it's not like she was a raging homophobe single-mindedly focused on hating LGBTQAI+ people, after all, I only ever heard she had any problem with us long after her death. But...  I don't know for sure, I CAN'T know for sure. Because she's dead. And that lack of certainty is just... making me really sad. How I can't be *certain* about it. 

(On a happier note, my weekly visits to grandma's house was actually where I was first exposed to queer media. One of the weekly magazines she used to get had a recurring comic by a lesbian about herself, her girlfriend and their cats. I dunno if grandma ever read those comics, *but I sure did*.)

----------


## Astrella

For what it's worth, people's initial reaction can often be very different from how they react in the end. Not to mention that like, having someone you're close to come out as queer makes people think about it in different ways too. 

So I don't think it's set in stone that your gran would have been a bigot at all.

----------


## ComicSansSeraph

Good news: Finally came out as non-binary to my grandmother, which means I'm out to everyone.

Bad news: Got a Reddit suspension for appealing my permaban from r/lgbt for not being friendly to idiots making attack helicopter jokes because they muted me last time I appealed it.

----------


## TwilightSandwic

> For what it's worth, people's initial reaction can often be very different from how they react in the end. Not to mention that like, having someone you're close to come out as queer makes people think about it in different ways too. 
> 
> So I don't think it's set in stone that your gran would have been a bigot at all.


Thanks for your kind words. On some level I'm still just shaken up about the uncertainty of it all. I guess that's one of the tragedy of death, it's the one thing that stops us humans from learning and evolving our views. 




> Good news: Finally came out as non-binary to my grandmother, which means I'm out to everyone.


Congrats!!  :Small Big Grin:  :Small Big Grin: 
(sucks about Reddit, though)

----------


## JusticeZero

I exist.
That's pretty much all, really.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

Existing is one of those things that has a low barrier to entry (if you can acknowledge it as an achievement, you're in), while still being an amazing achievement. Especially when it takes more effort to exist as yourself in some form.

----------


## Lentrax

If you live in Texas and you need someone to talk to because you are scared, I am available via PM.

Reach out to any trans or LGBT friendly org in your area.

Stay safe.

Know you are loved.

Know we are fighting.

----------


## halfeye

> If you live in Texas and you need someone to talk to because you are scared, I am available via PM.
> 
> Reach out to any trans or LGBT friendly org in your area.
> 
> Stay safe.
> 
> Know you are loved.
> 
> Know we are fighting.


Is this politics or what? We can't talk about politics, but I know one website that is down since a week ago, if it's anything like that we can probably say what it is.

----------


## Caerulea

> Is this politics or what? We can't talk about politics, but I know one website that is down since a week ago, if it's anything like that we can probably say what it is.


{scrubbed}

----------


## Lentrax

And because this is a political issue, this is as far as we can go in this thread.

----------


## halfeye

> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


Too much detail, probably.

You could have said "local politics" or if the cause was something else "international politics", or maybe for a third thing "local terrorist incident", "international terrorist incident", "local accidental disaster" or "international accidental disaster" or any of billions of variations without getting into details depending on what it was.

Oh and yakyak.org is back:




> Sorry, I didn't notice it was down until <name> mailed me today.
> 
> The AWS instance that YY was on was retired because of an underlying HW issue. I've migrated it to another server, restarted phpbb and things now seem okay :)

----------


## Otomodachi

Draw your own conclusions, I'm outta here, not worth sticking around for the ending to me, anymore.


{Scrubbed}

----------


## The Extinguisher

> Draw your own conclusions, I'm outta here, not worth sticking around for the ending to me, anymore.
> 
> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}


this sucks. here i was, just thinking that it's been i while since i left the forums. thinking maybe this time i will be able to have opinions on a webcomic without encountering a wall of subtle hostility. or at least be funny in the face of it. guess not. I dont use twitter, so i have no way of actually talking to the guy, but he doesn't need to tell us to not use the forums. we're already getting harassed off of them.

----------


## Lentrax

Hey.

Just reminding you (Yes you).

I love you.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Draw your own conclusions, I'm outta here, not worth sticking around for the ending to me, anymore.
> 
> {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}





> this sucks. here i was, just thinking that it's been i while since i left the forums. thinking maybe this time i will be able to have opinions on a webcomic without encountering a wall of subtle hostility. or at least be funny in the face of it. guess not. I dont use twitter, so i have no way of actually talking to the guy, but he doesn't need to tell us to not use the forums. we're already getting harassed off of them.


I'm probably missing important context, or maybe I'm misreading something. What about 2022 in particular makes the long-standing no politics/religion talk policy problematic now? It's always been the case that some topics of critical importance can only be talked about outside of the forums.




> Hey.
> 
> Just reminding you (Yes you).
> 
> I love you.


♥♥♥

----------


## enderlord99

> I'm probably missing important context, or maybe I'm misreading something. What about 2022 in particular makes the long-standing no politics/religion talk policy problematic now? It's always been the case that some topics of critical importance can only be talked about outside of the forums.


I'm just as confused as you are.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> I'm probably missing important context, or maybe I'm misreading something. What about 2022 in particular makes the long-standing no politics/religion talk policy problematic now? It's always been the case that some topics of critical importance can only be talked about outside of the forums.
> 
> 
> ♥♥♥


I have to say, the tone of the forums, and style of moderation feels very different to how it was before I sorta drifted away before returning in 2020.

It's hard to put my finger on, but if nothing else, it feels harder to just ask for clarification on the rules or what the issue is if your post is scrubbed.

But then, maybe I've just been spoiled by forums with open user/moderator discussions and a public appeals process. Different spaces, different styles.

----------


## DarthArminius

Life is so frustrating. @BisectedBrioche , I might understand what you mean. I've been here since 2004. This is my third account on this website because after not being able to get a password for my last account, none of the moderators would help me get another one.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I'm just as confused as you are.


Confusion buddies! Also, hi, it's been a hot minute! Hope things are going well with you and yours.




> I have to say, the tone of the forums, and style of moderation feels very different to how it was before I sorta drifted away before returning in 2020.
> 
> It's hard to put my finger on, but if nothing else, it feels harder to just ask for clarification on the rules or what the issue is if your post is scrubbed.
> 
> But then, maybe I've just been spoiled by forums with open user/moderator discussions and a public appeals process. Different spaces, different styles.


Oh, okay. I've never been scrubbed before, so maybe I've just avoided that aspect of these forums. I agreethese forums have always had a relatively rigid moderation style. But Rich is paying for the forums and wants, like, a controversy-free space; and if I wanna talk politics I talk about them elsewhere; and admittedly I'm not winning any awards for posting rate. So it's not been a huge problem for me.




> Life is so frustrating. @BisectedBrioche , I might understand what you mean. I've been here since 2004. This is my third account on this website because after not being able to get a password for my last account, none of the moderators would help me get another one.


It sucks losing access to your account. I'm sorry about that.

----------


## 137beth

_Rain_ has now ended :Small Frown:

----------


## Lentrax

Sad to see it end.

----------


## Peelee

> I have to say, the tone of the forums, and style of moderation feels very different to how it was before I sorta drifted away before returning in 2020.
> 
> It's hard to put my finger on, but if nothing else, it feels harder to just ask for clarification on the rules or what the issue is if your post is scrubbed.
> 
> But then, maybe I've just been spoiled by forums with open user/moderator discussions and a public appeals process. Different spaces, different styles.


You (general "you", not BB specifically) can always PM any moderator if you have a general question or the specific moderator who issued a warning or Infraction if you have a question about that, and if that route does not work, you can always consult Roland St. Jude. If you ever have any issues, you're always free to ask me and I'll do whatever I can to help. 



> Life is so frustrating. @BisectedBrioche , I might understand what you mean. I've been here since 2004. This is my third account on this website because after not being able to get a password for my last account, none of the moderators would help me get another one.


None of the moderators are able to do anything to help. Moderator powers are the ability to use red text without issue and access to few extra buttons. Only the administrators would be able to do anything concerning that, and even then it'd likely be Rawhide's domain.

----------


## JusticeZero

So, in other news...

Happy birthday to me, I have been gifted with a trip to Thailand, for reasons typical to us.

Any tips?

----------


## DarthArminius

> So, in other news...
> 
> Happy birthday to me, I have been gifted with a trip to Thailand, for reasons typical to us.
> 
> Any tips?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfg6xG1C6vA

Happy Birthday.

----------


## Astrella

> So, in other news...
> 
> Happy birthday to me, I have been gifted with a trip to Thailand, for reasons typical to us.
> 
> Any tips?


Oh congrats!

Listen to your surgeon! And take after care seriously, it's really rough, especially at the start, but it's very important. Oh, and drink lots and lots of water. I was already prone to UTI's before bottom surgery, but it got a lot worse after. (Now with drinking enough fluids and some cranberry supplements and once I didn't need to wear pads anymore post-surgery wise it got a lot better.)

Oh, and don't worry if everything doesn't magically feel right in every way from the start, it takes time for your body to adapt to the new anatomy + healing + nerve rejiggling and all that.

----------


## Mr.Silver

So it's been a few years since I was last really around the forums, but since I've been doing a 'general update' in various places lately I've looked back here enough times that I should really include this place as well.

Anyway: I'm non-binary. More on the 'agender/neither of the above' end of the spectrum - I'm very much a 'they' rather than a 'he' or 'she' - as it turns out. 
I came-out back in 2019, and although it's not been perfectly smooth sailing (both due to global events and otherwise), overall it's definitely been better than being stuck in the closet. I guess I have  had the slight advantage of transitioning as an adult, meaning that people are sort of obliged to take you more seriously, so that may have helped things a little (even if it doesn't really make up for the 'lost years' beforehand, but that's another topic).


That's about the gist of things, really. I don't know if how 'actively back' here I'm going to be long time (or indeed if there are any other old-timers who'd remember me either way) but regardless, if you're reading this: I hope you're safe and doing well.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> So, in other news...
> 
> Happy birthday to me, I have been gifted with a trip to Thailand, for reasons typical to us.
> 
> Any tips?


Happy Birthday!

For me, the worst part was the pre-surgery enema. You'll be asleep for most of the recovery days in hospital, so they're fairly easy (just bring a book or something). Once the drains and catheters are out, you're home free. ^_^

----------


## Karen Lynn

It is good to see this thread persists. Be Well.

----------


## Karen Lynn

> Yo I'm gay.


That's pretty gay.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Lord Raziere

Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.

----------


## DarthArminius

I really want a boyfriend. Being in the closet sucks, but I'm planning to get my life together. I need to do that before I get involved with anyone.
Uh, it sucks being so impatient by nature and having to deal with this.

----------


## BladeofObliviom

> Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.


I'm sorry, that's relatable and sucks. My mom's initial reaction was pretty much "mmmmmsoundsfake". She did _eventually_ kind of come around though still never gets the pronouns right. Ugh.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.


That's ****. Especially because there are plenty of cis women who have 'never done anything girly'. I hope she manages to understand that you know your odentity better than she does.


*Spoiler: Barely related waffle about myself*
Show

I sometimes forget that I'm lucky that most of my family's reactions to me coming out as NB were 'makes sense', in fact my older sister pretty much immediately went 'called it'. The only one who expressed doubt is my stepmum, who didn't know me when I was young and actually expressing this stuff, and I just can't be bothered to continue correcting her.

----------


## DarthArminius

> Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.


Sorry I didn't see this. I haven't been following a lot in this thread because it seems to be moving a little slower than it has in the past. At least she seems to be ignorant and not willfilly ignorant, which isn't as bad.

----------


## Lord Raziere

Thanks, its reassuring at least to know that its not an abnormal reaction I guess.

----------


## DarthArminius

> Thanks, its reassuring at least to know that its not an abnormal reaction I guess.


Be cautious but don't freak out. Sometimes ignorance is not maliciousness. It's just, you know, life. 
Before we learned Math, we didn't know the square root of anything. It didn't mean we were bad people.

----------


## LaZodiac

> Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.


I'm sorry you've had to deal with this ****, and I hope things improve sooner rather than later.

----------


## DarthArminius

I'll be honest, When i was four and five, I wanted to be a girl. Feels real weird to remember thinking about those days.

I realize it's because I already had affection for guys. Does that make any sense or do you guys think it's impossible for someone that young?

----------


## 137beth

> I'll be honest, When i was four and five, I wanted to be a girl. Feels real weird to remember thinking about those days.
> 
> I realize it's because I already had affection for guys. Does that make any sense or do you guys think it's impossible for someone that young?


Would it be impossible for someone who was four or five to be straight?  If not, then it isn't too young to know you're gay.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> I'll be honest, When i was four and five, I wanted to be a girl. Feels real weird to remember thinking about those days.
> 
> I realize it's because I already had affection for guys. Does that make any sense or do you guys think it's impossible for someone that young?


I mean gender play is just kind of normal at those ages? But yeah, at 4/5 I wanted to be a girl, and then in my 20s I realised I wasn't cis. I'd definitely say it's possible to solidly be non cis-het at that age, but I wouldn't say it's the only possible reason for such desires.

Lots of kids don't know their identity, some do. We should be accepting of those kids who do, even if they interpret it weirdly.

----------


## DarthArminius

Could I please ask for some DM regarding something of a trans issue?

----------


## Rydiro

> I mean gender play is just kind of normal at those ages? But yeah, at 4/5 I wanted to be a girl, and then in my 20s I realised I wasn't cis. I'd definitely say it's possible to solidly be non cis-het at that age, but I wouldn't say it's the only possible reason for such desires.
> 
> Lots of kids don't know their identity, some do. We should be accepting of those kids who do, even if they interpret it weirdly.


How would you discern between kids who know and those who 'only think' they know?

----------


## enderlord99

> How would you discern between kids who know and those who 'only think' they know?


In hindsight

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> How would you discern between kids who know and those who 'only think' they know?


You don't. You let's kids express how they want and be who they want, even if they change their mind later. Trust that the child knows better than you do. Assume knowledge rather than ignorance.

ETA: yeah, also in hindsight. This applies as much to apparently cis kids as apparently trans kids.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

Yep, ultimately it's just a matter of giving them room to grow.

----------


## Lentrax

Popping in here again to ask MM to add I Want to Be a Cute Anime Girl to the list of webcomics.

A lovely story of a MtF who has her egg cracked after her sister gives her a 'makeover.'

Lovely work, and the artist Azul Crescent seems just lovely.

Go give it some love!

Love you all!

----------


## LaZodiac

> Popping in here again to ask MM to add I Want to Be a Cute Anime Girl to the list of webcomics.
> 
> A lovely story of a MtF who has her egg cracked after her sister gives her a 'makeover.'
> 
> Lovely work, and the artist Azul Crescent seems just lovely.
> 
> Go give it some love!
> 
> Love you all!


It's pretty great! A little rough in places (emotionally, which is good- and mechanically, which is a little less good (it reads better in a binge basically)) but really enjoyable and cute!

----------


## Mystic Muse

> Popping in here again to ask MM to add I Want to Be a Cute Anime Girl to the list of webcomics.
> 
> A lovely story of a MtF who has her egg cracked after her sister gives her a 'makeover.'
> 
> Lovely work, and the artist Azul Crescent seems just lovely.
> 
> Go give it some love!
> 
> Love you all!


I have set an alarm to remind me to do this tonight.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Finally admitted I'm transgender to my mother. Sigh...as I expected she just expressed doubt rather than supportiveness, just like my brother did because I've never "done anything girly". I'm so introverted and unwilling to try anything new and hide so much of what I'm interested in, people in my family apparently think I'm this statue who has no interests outside of what they've seen. she said that I'll probably go see someone to sort all this out though, so she isn't  against the idea but clearly knows nothing about this issue.


Sorry, Raziere. That's not fair.




> I really want a boyfriend. Being in the closet sucks, but I'm planning to get my life together. I need to do that before I get involved with anyone.
> Uh, it sucks being so impatient by nature and having to deal with this.


That sucks, DarthArminius. Hope things get better soon.

----------


## Kesnit

This is going to sound really weird, but I don't know how (or if) to approach this...

Someone I know shared a Facebook memory from last year. It was a Father's Day wish to her husband, son, and sons-in-law. All 4 men are fathers, so the Happy Father's Day wish is very nice. However....

You know how you can put a background image on FB posts? Yeah... The background image is the trans pride flag. None of the men identified are transmen. 

I don't know if I should tell her. (To be clear, the woman who did this is supportive of queer rights. I went to school with 2 of her daughters. She was also my high school advanced math teacher.)

----------


## enderlord99

> This is going to sound really weird, but I don't know how (or if) to approach this...
> 
> Someone I know shared a Facebook memory from last year. It was a Father's Day wish to her husband, son, and sons-in-law. All 4 men are fathers, so the Happy Father's Day wish is very nice. However....
> 
> You know how you can put a background image on FB posts? Yeah... The background image is the trans pride flag. None of the men identified are transmen. 
> 
> I don't know if I should tell her. (To be clear, the woman who did this is supportive of queer rights. I went to school with 2 of her daughters. She was also my high school advanced math teacher.)


"The background image for that post has a meaning that, while positive, also doesn't fit with the image.  You should probably remove said background."

----------


## Sigako

Oh, hey, it's Pride month. Just noticed.
Strange, but I don't feel particularly festive about it. Though we don't celebrate it here either.

Update: oops, just realized that this came out wrong. It wasn't a sarcasm, my time attention is really that low, I often miss several weeks at once before being surprised by yells about a deadline.

----------


## Talakeal

Its once again time for me to ask, can anyone explain the modern concept of gender to me or point me to a website that actually explains things?

I just had another nasty exchange on twitter where I got simultaneously accused of not really being trans and of being transphobic because I referred to people as being one gender and then transitioning to the other; which is apparently a form of misgendering now? 

I was also told that I can't even be a trans-ally until I accept that people are born with a gender identity, which  really doesn't make sense to me. 

Its a psychological fact that all human behavior is a combination of genetics, experiences, and conscious choices. Why is gender identity any different? What is this immutable gender identity that people are born with? Are they adopting mystical dogma and claiming that people have gendered souls or essences? Are they biological essentialists claiming all trans people are really intersex? Are they engaging in magical thinking and pretending like trans people were always their preferred sex? I just don't get it. 

And every time I look for answers, I either get a lecture about how its only important to respect and not to understand (which just isn't how my brain works) or a circular argument that boils down to:
"I identify as X gender"
"Well what is X gender?"
"Its the thing that I identify as."

And, like, I want to understand, but it really hurts me when people make objective statements about gender identity that don't apply to me, as does when I am that I need to ascribe to a belief system without logic or evidence or else I am a hateful bigot. And I really don't feel transphobic, I fully believe that everyone should be able to express their gender and modify their body in any they like with full access to human rights and legal protections, but I can at least understand bigoted arguments even if I don't agree with their conclusions.

Really looking forward to guidance, but thanks for listening to me vent either way.


Edit: Oh, and for extra fun, I tried calling up my parents and talking to them about it, but I am not out to them yet and so couldn't explain why it hurt me so much, and was told that they "Don't like talking to me when I am in a whiny mood" and hung up on. Just to give me a small taste of what being disowned feels like on the day I actually come out to them.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Its once again time for me to ask, can anyone explain the modern concept of gender to me or point me to a website that actually explains things?


Once upon a time, I remember reading a really cute gender identity 101 website. Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore. So you get me.  :Small Tongue: 





> I just had another nasty exchange on twitter where I got simultaneously accused of not really being trans and of being transphobic because I referred to people as being one gender and then transitioning to the other; which is apparently a form of misgendering now?


Can't comment on the accusation, although I've found Twitter kinda nasty in general. I guess maybe the post format contributes. I try to stay away.

Some people, possibly including you, like terms like MtF or FtM or XtY. Others, including me, don't. I think most of it is a language difference. Some trans people feel like they used to be, e.g., a man and now they're a woman. Other people don't feel like that's an accurate way of talking about their experiences.

It's possible to rub people the wrong way when you use terms they dislike to refer to them. I'm very comfortable with other people using XtY to refer to themselves. Or others who are comfy with that language. But I wouldn't like it if someone used that terminology for me. I think it's a factually incorrect assertion about me.





> I was also told that I can't even be a trans-ally until I accept that people are born with a gender identity, which  really doesn't make sense to me. 
> 
> Its a psychological fact that all human behavior is a combination of genetics, experiences, and conscious choices. Why is gender identity any different? What is this immutable gender identity that people are born with? Are they adopting mystical dogma and claiming that people have gendered souls or essences? Are they biological essentialists claiming all trans people are really intersex? Are they engaging in magical thinking and pretending like trans people were always their preferred sex? I just don't get it.


There's a lot going on here. I'm not sure what your ontological beliefs about gender are. (And I cannot speculate on what these strangers' beliefs are.) Do you mind clarifying your beliefs?

"Gender identity" is a troubled construct. It falls apart upon close examination. But so does "sex." I wonder if you're privileging one problematic construct over another.





> And every time I look for answers, I either get a lecture about how its only important to respect and not to understand (which just isn't how my brain works) or a circular argument that boils down to:
> "I identify as X gender"
> "Well what is X gender?"
> "Its the thing that I identify as."


I think that's kinda the nature of language, ha ha. "What does this word mean?" "It means these other words, which means the aforementioned word."

But I can relate to being presented with a weak argument and being dissatisfied with the response. Presumably there would be some response that you would accept. What would be a satisfactory response for you?





> And, like, I want to understand, but it really hurts me when people make objective statements about gender identity that don't apply to me, as does when I am that I need to ascribe to a belief system without logic or evidence or else I am a hateful bigot. And I really don't feel transphobic, I fully believe that everyone should be able to express their gender and modify their body in any they like with full access to human rights and legal protections, but I can at least understand bigoted arguments even if I don't agree with their conclusions.


Different trans people have different opinions about the nature of transness and gender and all that. I don't think you'll find a consensus opinion anytime soon.

Which arguments don't you understand? Which (bigoted) arguments do you understand? Can you lay out their premises and conclusions?





> Edit: Oh, and for extra fun, I tried calling up my parents and talking to them about it, but I am not out to them yet and so couldn't explain why it hurt me so much, and was told that they "Don't like talking to me when I am in a whiny mood" and hung up on. Just to give me a small taste of what being disowned feels like on the day I actually come out to them.


Sorry to hear that. Being trans with a transphobic family is quite painful. I wish it weren't this way.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> And every time I look for answers, I either get a lecture about how its only important to respect and not to understand (which just isn't how my brain works) or a circular argument that boils down to:
> "I identify as X gender"
> "Well what is X gender?"
> "Its the thing that I identify as."


I think the simple answer here would be that a concise summary of what gender is, and what might define specific genders is an entire degree's worth of information, and very hard to get across in a simple conversation. Let alone a tweet or forum post.

While this is true of any gender (including one which someone was assigned at birth, and remains happy with), naturally someone who's expressed their gender differently to society's norms might find themselves questioned on it frequently. This leaves them with two options: give an imperfect, but short, answer, or do an entire degree's worth of study and bring it up potentially multiple times a day.

I can understand that's frustrating if you're looking for more information. I'd recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano for a bit of further reading (it's mostly about trans women, and how we're subject to the same social forces as cis women, but it does a good job of summarising exactly what gender is in that context in doing so, which might give you the explanation you're after).

Other than that, I can't really add much more than what TaiLiu's already said. I'm sorry you experienced rudeness on twitter (I'd talk about my own experiences, but I wouldn't want to import any drama), the limited characters really do bring about a death of nuance. I'm also very sorry about your family (I'm extremely lucky to have an accepting family, myself); I hope when you are able to come out, they come around.

----------


## Purple Eagle

*Spoiler*
Show




> Its once again time for me to ask, can anyone explain the modern concept of gender to me or point me to a website that actually explains things?
> 
> I just had another nasty exchange on twitter where I got simultaneously accused of not really being trans and of being transphobic because I referred to people as being one gender and then transitioning to the other; which is apparently a form of misgendering now? 
> 
> I was also told that I can't even be a trans-ally until I accept that people are born with a gender identity, which  really doesn't make sense to me. 
> 
> Its a psychological fact that all human behavior is a combination of genetics, experiences, and conscious choices. Why is gender identity any different? What is this immutable gender identity that people are born with? Are they adopting mystical dogma and claiming that people have gendered souls or essences? Are they biological essentialists claiming all trans people are really intersex? Are they engaging in magical thinking and pretending like trans people were always their preferred sex? I just don't get it. 
> 
> And every time I look for answers, I either get a lecture about how its only important to respect and not to understand (which just isn't how my brain works) or a circular argument that boils down to:
> ...





I always recommend the Gender Dysphoria Bible. Also, check out the RationalWiki articles.

I was going to answer in depth, but that would require an essay I'm not ready to write right now(future edit: agh, guess I'm writing that essay after all >.<).

Suffice it to say that my research leads me to see gender identity as neurological and endocrine in nature. The theory goes that the interplay of systems that govern the development of a growing fetus (e.g. hormonal exposure) can affect their resulting gender identity and sexual orientation.

In short, I'm trans because my AGAB does not match what I know myself to be, which causes gender dysphoria that manifests in different ways, the only known effective cure for which is to literally transition. No spiritual woo needed, it's just science. As reductive as the 'born this way' statement could be (reductive cos it's more complicated than that), the statement is no less true. Experience and conscious choice for me factor in to my identity in the sense that without even trying (I also can't transition at the moment due to family) I get pinged as fem (experience), and I choose to stop denying my true self because the contrary is too painful to consider (choice).

If we had that hypothetical conversation, it would go something like this:
"I'm a femby."
"What's that mean?"
"My word for 'nonbinary transfeminine', which basically means 'genderfluid between 'woman' and 'nonbinary'."
"Why couldn't you just be a binary trans woman, then?"
"I also ask myself the same question a lot. The best I can come up with is that I don't feel like a _binary_ trans woman. "

Fun fact: I wasn't sure what to think about nonbinary and genderfluid identities once... until I realized those terms explain how I experience gender. Nothing like

I'm new to all this however, so if there's any flaws in my explanation then know that I'm always eager to learn.

----------


## enderlord99

I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.

Does not understanding how people can care about things neither I nor they nor third entity will ever be able to observe mean I'm a transphobic bigot?  I hope not, but I suspect so.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> Fun fact: I wasn't sure what to think about nonbinary and genderfluid identities once... until I realized those terms explain how I experience gender.


I can empathise. I feel like the gender binary is pushed hard enough by mainstream media that it can be hard to realise that these Strange New Terms can fit. I'm not transfem (yet at least), but I've had the same Experiences with terminology.


There's also the issue with how people view their pre-transition self varying, including how people treat their deadnames (which I'd really like to stop learning, even when it's in the context of 'I published this as a young girl' or 'I need two people to sign this document I've written and then it's legally not my name'). Most people I personally know either view themselves as having always been gender X or have no issue with you treating it like that, but I think one person prefers you to treat them as separate people.

----------


## Lycunadari

> I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.
> 
> Does not understanding how people can care about things neither I nor they nor third entity will ever be able to observe mean I'm a transphobic bigot?  I hope not, but I suspect so.


What does "unobservable" even mean? Happiness can't be "observed", so does happiness not exist? History can't be "observed", so does it not exist? Sure, we can look at pictures, read old books, excavate ruins; those are all parts of history, but history itself is a construct.

Gender is a construct, it is what we make of it. For me personally, it's very similar to a feeling, I know when I'm a man just like I know when I'm exited, and I know when I'm nonbinary just like I know when I'm happy. That makes it hard to explain in a way that's not just "I'm nonbinary because my gender is not binary", just like it's hard to explain what "happiness" feels like without just using synonyms.

That said, not understanding gender doesn't make you a bigot, and not understanding why people care about it doesn't either, not automatically. I'm not "soccer-phobic" just because I don't get how people can care so much about sports. What matters is how you treat people- do you use the name and pronouns they tell you to use, including those a lot of people see as weird (like neopronouns)? Do you support trans people's right to self-determination and their right to transition? Do you treat trans people with the same respect you treat cis people? If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you're probably not transphobic. In essence- you don't need to understand us to support us.

----------


## Halae

> I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.


So you would also preclude love from existing, by that definition? Justice? Faith? None of those are observable, even if the effects upon the psyche are quite obvious. Just because you can't touch it doesn't mean it's not there. 

To answer your worry, I don't think it makes you transphobic; that'd require you to be going out of your way to harm the demographic, rather than just having a conflicting viewpoint. I do think it makes you a little unempathetic, though.

----------


## enderlord99

> What does "unobservable" even mean?


Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses.  I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.


> Happiness can't be "observed"


First of all, emotion and thought are both just the brain observing itself. Other peoples' happiness can also be observed and even studied; it belongs to the scientific fields of neurology and psychology, as well as the philosophical field of aesthetics.


> History can't be "observed", so does it not exist? Sure, we can look at pictures, read old books, excavate ruins; those are all parts of history, but history itself is a construct.


I don't understand how "observing parts of history" is distinct from "observing history" or how being artificially constructed prevents something from being observed.

To be clear: I wasn't *asserting* that gender is unobservable; I was expressing befuddlement that *Purple Eagle's link* defined it that way.

EDIT: 


> None of those are observable, even if the effects upon the psyche are quite obvious.


That's a contradiction.  If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.

----------


## Halae

> EDIT: 
> That's a contradiction.  If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.


Obvious in the same way Gender affects people, yes. The "unobservable" you read in the link was the scientific point of view, concerned with hard objects and numbers, not with sociological or cultural impact.

----------


## Lycunadari

> Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses. I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.
> 
> To be clear: I wasn't *asserting* that gender is unobservable; I was expressing befuddlement that *Purple Eagle's link* defined it that way.


Ah, I think there's just a misunderstanding/confusion about the word then. I haven't written that website, obviously, but I think they meant "unobservable" just as a fancy synonym of "invisible" and not as "literally cannot be noticed by anyone in any way", considering they use it to differentiate it from phenotype, which is mostly visible.

(dictionary.com defines "observable" as "capable of being or liable to be observed; noticeable; visible; discernible")

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> That said, not understanding gender doesn't make you a bigot, and not understanding why people care about it doesn't either, not automatically. I'm not "soccer-phobic" just because I don't get how people can care so much about sports. What matters is how you treat people- do you use the name and pronouns they tell you to use, including those a lot of people see as weird (like neopronouns)? Do you support trans people's right to self-determination and their right to transition? Do you treat trans people with the same respect you treat cis people? If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you're probably not transphobic. In essence- you don't need to understand us to support us.


This hits the nail on the head. There are people who are in places that I do not understand with regards to gender, but my understanding of what it means to them is not required; only my respect and understanding. Do neopronouns sound silly to me? Yes, I'm not a fan, for purely structural and linguistic reasons, but if someone tells me "my pronouns are ze/zir" then hey, all right, those are your pronouns. It doesn't have to make sense to me, because it's not about me. It's about the other person and what matters to them, and whether your default assumption is "I will respect what you tell me to call you and how you want to be known" or "you can be one of the following things because those make sense to me, and anything else is fake."

My personal default assumption about everything is _I might be wrong_. Something may not make sense to me or seem silly to me, but 20-year-old me thought that she was in the last long-term relationship she was ever going to be in and that she had her whole life planned out right down to adopting children. Neither of those things were accurate or played out the way she thought. 20-year-old me even thought she knew who she was attracted to without any doubt, and _that_ was wrong. If I can be wrong about _me_, I should give everyone else the same benefit of the doubt.

----------


## TaiLiu

> While this is true of any gender (including one which someone was assigned at birth, and remains happy with), naturally someone who's expressed their gender differently to society's norms might find themselves questioned on it frequently. This leaves them with two options: give an imperfect, but short, answer, or do an entire degree's worth of study and bring it up potentially multiple times a day.


I like this analysis, too.




> I can understand that's frustrating if you're looking for more information. I'd recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano for a bit of further reading (it's mostly about trans women, and how we're subject to the same social forces as cis women, but it does a good job of summarising exactly what gender is in that context in doing so, which might give you the explanation you're after).


_Whipping Girl_ is good. And also a good example of disagreement among trans people about genderI think Serano is mistaken in several ways.





> always recommend the Gender Dysphoria Bible.


Thanks for the link! Never seen this site before.





> I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.


I think this is a difficult epistemology to uphold, although I'm vaguely sympathetic, and you're certainly not the first or only person to say this. Scientists (and others) posit unobservable entities all the time. Electrons and black holes are classic examples. Those in favor are scientific realists; those who have issues with this are a subset of scientific anti-realists.




> Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses.  I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.


Frankly, I can't think of anyone who posits the existence of something that can't ever be detected. Presumably, if you're genuinely positing the existence of something, you've "detected" it!




> That's a contradiction.  If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.


I think you're using "observation" and "unobservable" in ways that many people aren't. We certainly don't need to observe anything to know the truth or falsity of some mathematical fact.

----------


## Talakeal

Thanks for the replies! Very busy week, sorry it took me longer to reply.




> Can't comment on the accusation, although I've found Twitter kinda nasty in general. I guess maybe the post format contributes. I try to stay away.


Twitter sucks.

Mostly I just use it for making cynical one liners.

The problem is that when people come back at me I switch from cynical twitter mode to curious / obsessive forum mode and try and have a conversation where we actually understand one another's views, which twitter is not technically or socially prepared for, and most conversation end up with the other person dismissing me as a right wing troll and/or spending the majority of their post incorrectly telling me what I said or what I believe.





> Some people, possibly including you, like terms like MtF or FtM or XtY. Others, including me, don't. I think most of it is a language difference. Some trans people feel like they used to be, e.g., a man and now they're a woman. Other people don't feel like that's an accurate way of talking about their experiences.
> 
> It's possible to rub people the wrong way when you use terms they dislike to refer to them. I'm very comfortable with other people using XtY to refer to themselves. Or others who are comfy with that language. But I wouldn't like it if someone used that terminology for me. I think it's a factually incorrect assertion about me.


To me, that feels like trans erasure. And honestly, that would be great for me, if I could just retroactively be a cis-woman, but that's not the reality I live in.

But yeah, when people attack me for noting that trans people had a transition, that just feels like they are accusing me of blasphemy against some religion that I am not a part of.




> There's a lot going on here. I'm not sure what your ontological beliefs about gender are. (And I cannot speculate on what these strangers' beliefs are.) Do you mind clarifying your beliefs?


Ok. So...

Sex is a list of anatomical and physiological traits. Sex is real. Sex is a spectrum. Sex is mutable. Sex is also probably psychological and neurological traits, but at this point trying to actually pinpoint such things is pseudo-science at best.

As a kid, sex and gender were synonymous. I much preferred to use the word gender though, because after Austin Powers came out everyone thought they were oh so clever saying "Yes please!" when asked their sex and it always drove me up the wall.

In college, mostly in an effort to understand my own dysphoria, I got really into feminism, and that people had started using gender to refer to behaviors and social roles as distinct from biological sex. As a feminist and a gender non-conforming individual, I tend to agree with the statement that "Gender is just a collection of harmful stereotypes" and think the whole concept of gender as distinct from sex belongs in the ashbin of history. I hate being told I am not a man because I don't like to do all the manly things, but even worse, I am afraid that if I ever do wholly transition people will insist that I am "still really a man" because I don't do all of the girly things either.

Now that I am in my thirties, people appear to have changed the definition of gender again. Now it appears to be a concept of one's self. I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role. At this point, it appears to be totally meaningless and circular. 

Saying "I am a woman because I identify a a woman" but then insisting that "woman" has nothing to do with either of the above gender definition to me makes as much sense as saying "I am a blorglesplorch," and then defining blorglesplorch as "the thing which I identify as".

And, of course, lots of people, particularly on twitter but not entirely, get very upset if you refer to them as either their biological sex or social gender roll, which makes it very difficult to actually discuss trans issues.




> "Gender identity" is a troubled construct. It falls apart upon close examination. But so does "sex." I wonder if you're privileging one problematic construct over another.


How so?

Like all biological classification, one can pick at the edges to create problems. But I can come up with a long list of masculine or feminine traits that apply to most everyone, even the <.1% of the population who is truly intersex generally favors one sex or the other.

IMO Sex is biological and descriptive (not that humans don't have the power to alter it). Gender roles are man-made and prescriptive.

I don't have a clue what gender identity is.




> I think that's kinda the nature of language, ha ha. "What does this word mean?" "It means these other words, which means the aforementioned word."


True. 

The problem of tension is that the so-called """""woke-mob""""" considers using language differently to be akin to a hate crime and appears to engage in magical thinking where redefining a thing changes its nature. I remember reading an article recently talking about how "we have recently discovered what the word gender really means" and thinking to myself "Its language, not a chemical formula, you didn't discover anything, you redifined it, and it 'really' means whatever you are using it to mean."





> Which arguments don't you understand? Which (bigoted) arguments do you understand? Can you lay out their premises and conclusions?


Well... for example:

This article is written by someone whose conclusions I vehemently disagree with and consider morally abhorrent, but points out a lot of the same logical contradictions I struggle with when trying to discuss trans issues with more open minded people. 

On the other hand, this article seems to be coming from the right play, but is just filled with so much woo and illogic that it drives me nuts and raises ten questions for every one it answers.




> But I can relate to being presented with a weak argument and being dissatisfied with the response. Presumably there would be some response that you would accept. What would be a satisfactory response for you?


Something concrete or observable would be nice.

If we could find a "trans gene" or reliably model a "woman's brain" or even find some sort of extra-deimensional pink energy field that follows trans women around.

Even for more soft stuff; philosophies, political beliefs, and religions all have observable groups of beliefs and behaviors that can be used to label their followers.

But right now, AFAICT gender identity is a label without a basis in either science or thought.




> I always recommend the Gender Dysphoria Bible. Also, check out the RationalWiki articles.
> 
> I was going to answer in depth, but that would require an essay I'm not ready to write right now(future edit: agh, guess I'm writing that essay after all >.<).
> 
> Suffice it to say that my research leads me to see gender identity as neurological and endocrine in nature. The theory goes that the interplay of systems that govern the development of a growing fetus (e.g. hormonal exposure) can affect their resulting gender identity and sexual orientation.
> 
> In short, I'm trans because my AGAB does not match what I know myself to be, which causes gender dysphoria that manifests in different ways, the only known effective cure for which is to literally transition. No spiritual woo needed, it's just science. As reductive as the 'born this way' statement could be (reductive cos it's more complicated than that), the statement is no less true. Experience and conscious choice for me factor in to my identity in the sense that without even trying (I also can't transition at the moment due to family) I get pinged as fem (experience), and I choose to stop denying my true self because the contrary is too painful to consider (choice).


As I think I said above, the people who insist people's gender identities are hard wired tend to fall into two categories; scientific and mystical. The former asserts that all genderqueer people are really intersex.

This is a good scientific explanation, but AFAIK doesn't actually have any evidence behind it, so it remains a pseudo scientific assertion.

The problem with this approach, imo, is that it just locks people back into a rigid gender binary, albeit one that is not as readily visible.

What about people who want to transition but don't exhibit such an endocrine abnormality?
What about people who do exhibit such an endocrine abnormality, but are perfectly happy with their assigned gender?
What about people who change gender identity over time or choose to detransition?

As a humanist, I reject such simple biological essentialism outright.


I will say, however, that this is the only model where using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" actually makes sense. Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent. But, for some reason, it is now politically correct to refer to everyone in this manner, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense for a multitude of reasons.





> I think the simple answer here would be that a concise summary of what gender is, and what might define specific genders is an entire degree's worth of information, and very hard to get across in a simple conversation. Let alone a tweet or forum post.
> 
> While this is true of any gender (including one which someone was assigned at birth, and remains happy with), naturally someone who's expressed their gender differently to society's norms might find themselves questioned on it frequently. This leaves them with two options: give an imperfect, but short, answer, or do an entire degree's worth of study and bring it up potentially multiple times a day.
> 
> I can understand that's frustrating if you're looking for more information. I'd recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano for a bit of further reading (it's mostly about trans women, and how we're subject to the same social forces as cis women, but it does a good job of summarising exactly what gender is in that context in doing so, which might give you the explanation you're after).
> 
> Other than that, I can't really add much more than what TaiLiu's already said. I'm sorry you experienced rudeness on twitter (I'd talk about my own experiences, but I wouldn't want to import any drama), the limited characters really do bring about a death of nuance. I'm also very sorry about your family (I'm extremely lucky to have an accepting family, myself); I hope when you are able to come out, they come around.


Thanks! I will check it out!




> This hits the nail on the head. There are people who are in places that I do not understand with regards to gender, but my understanding of what it means to them is not required; only my respect and understanding. Do neopronouns sound silly to me? Yes, I'm not a fan, for purely structural and linguistic reasons, but if someone tells me "my pronouns are ze/zir" then hey, all right, those are your pronouns. It doesn't have to make sense to me, because it's not about me. It's about the other person and what matters to them, and whether your default assumption is "I will respect what you tell me to call you and how you want to be known" or "you can be one of the following things because those make sense to me, and anything else is fake."


I feel the opposite way, I love neo pronouns, but am totally incapable of comprehending (let alone writing) anything using the singular they.

My brain also has a really hard time learning a new name for something; I still call Fedex Office "Kinko's" and I still call the WWE the "WWF", and its kind of unfair to assume my political beliefs from how I refer to something. And I don't think anyone has any right to police how other people refer to them when they aren't around; which is to me the weirdest part about pronoun controversies, as if you are actually talking to the person you don't really need pronouns other than you / we / us.

I also don't like being asked my pronouns, because that leaves me in the position of having to choose between giving this person permission to misgender me or coming out to someone whom I am not comfortable coming out to yet.

But then yeah, I totally get how painful it is to be misgendered. Like, as an illustration of how bad it is for me, anytime someone refers to *Spoiler: Darth Revan from KoToR*
Show

For those unfamiliar with the game, the big twist is that your character was actually the villain all along. Darth Revan is left as a totally blank slate to allow for more immersion and is never seen without their mask or spoken of in gendered terms. I loved that game and, of course, played as a female. But then years later Lucas Films decided the make Darth Revan canonically a straight cis white male. 
 as "he" that triggers a huge wave of gender dysphoria in me.

----------


## Rynjin

> What does "unobservable" even mean? Happiness can't be "observed", so does happiness not exist? History can't be "observed", so does it not exist? Sure, we can look at pictures, read old books, excavate ruins; those are all parts of history, but history itself is a construct.


I feel like, interestingly, happiness is a pretty good equivalence as far as gender goes, even more than other, clearer emotions like anger.

"Happiness" and similar vague social constructs (such as the aforementioned "faith" and justice") are purely subjective matters. Not only do different things cause happiness to occur (be achieved?) by a person, happiness itself means something entirely different to almost everyone.

And that applies to gender as well. Which makes things...complicated.

Since it's entirely personal, it's hard to come up with a viable, universal lexicon of things that "define" gender identity in the same way that defining happiness is futile. And yet, people try. And enough people agree on enough of the nebulous little floaty bits about both that people get really judgey about not only how people experience happiness/gender but how people express it, or even "interface' with it.

"The American Dream" is a good example of a sort of platonic ideal of happiness that everyone, supposedly, should strive for. Nice house, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a fulfilling career "define" happiness for a lot of people.

Of course, to others that ideal sounds like a complete drudge, and it is actively exclusive to a lot of people; those unable or unwilling to have children, those whose idea of a fulfilling career differs from what would allow them to acquire the material wealth to buy a home, and so on.

Which brings it around to the main point: as happiness (and gender) cannot be truly defined except by the person experiencing it, including yourself, it doesn't do to really take to heart the thoughts of people who would tear down your own conception if it makes you feel comfortable.

If someone tells you that you are "not truly trans" because the words that define you make them uncomfortable, tell them to shove it. Of course, that also applies both ways. If someone asks you to refer to them a certain way, do so or don't engage with them at all. The same way you would, naturally, not respond to someone saying "I' feel so happy!" by nitpicking every little thing "wrong" with their supposed conception of happiness.

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## Talakeal

That works fine as an analogy.

But we all have emotions, and our emotions constantly change. Nobody is trying to claim that people are born with one emotional state and that it is constant or immutable.

If I see a picture of a pre-transition transwoman smiling and laughing and I say Look how happy he is, nobody is going to accuse me of hate speech for calling them happy, but they will for the misgendering.

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## Rynjin

> That works fine as an analogy.
> 
> But we all have emotions, and our emotions constantly change. Nobody is trying to claim that people are born with one emotional state and that it is constant or immutable.
> 
> If I see a picture of a pre-transition transwoman smiling and laughing and I say Look how happy he is, nobody is going to accuse me of hate speech for calling them happy, but they will for the misgendering.


"They" really only refers to Twitter Goblins, who exist for the sole purpose of stirring up **** on the internet. I wouldn't put too much stock in what "they" think, because terminally-online Twitter users aren't really people don't really matter in the real world or represent any significant portion of people IRL.

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## Lycunadari

> I will say, however, that this is the only model where using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" actually makes sense. Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent. But, for some reason, it is now politically correct to refer to everyone in this manner, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense for a multitude of reasons.


That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman. The intersex-specific terms are IAMAB/IAFAB (intersex assigned male/female at birth) and FAMAB/FAFAB (forcibly assigned male/female at birth). Sadly, most of the posts discussing this have been deleted/the blogs changed names, so this  is the only source I have right now (and I don't have time to look further). Also, why do you think using these terms for non-intersex people doesn't make sense? They simply mean "someone (usually a doctor) looked at this baby's genitals, said 'it's a boy/girl!' and wrote it down on the birth certificate". So they apply to the vast majority of people, including cis people. They don't describe how someone was raised, how someone's body looks, what chromosomes someone has... they just describe what someone was assigned at birth.

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## Talakeal

> That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman. The intersex-specific terms are IAMAB/IAFAB (intersex assigned male/female at birth) and FAMAB/FAFAB (forcibly assigned male/female at birth). Sadly, most of the posts discussing this have been deleted/the blogs changed names, so this  is the only source I have right now (and I don't have time to look further). Also, why do you think using these terms for non-intersex people doesn't make sense? They simply mean "someone (usually a doctor) looked at this baby's genitals, said 'it's a boy/girl!' and wrote it down on the birth certificate". So they apply to the vast majority of people, including cis people. They don't describe how someone was raised, how someone's body looks, what chromosomes someone has... they just describe what someone was assigned at birth.


Interesting.

I didn't realize I was perpetuating an intentional lie; it just seemed so much more plausible than the alternative, as it is a nonsense term (for non intersex people) and I know so many trans people who try and insist that they are actually intersex (for example having a "female brain structure") without any proof.

As for why the term makes no sense:

Its not assigning anything. Its describing something.
It typically happens before birth in our modern era of sonagrams.
Hundreds of millions of people alive today do not have birth certificates. Does this not apply to them? How about the billions of people who lived without certificates in the past?
For the ~4999/5000 of us who aren't intersex, the baby's sex can be identified by its genitals, so why do we need this extra layer of obfuscation?
The "assignment" has no authority. Have you ever heard of anyone, say parents, actually going by what is written on the birth certificate over their own evaluation of the child's sex? Like, a doctor "assigns" an XY child with a penis to the female gender so the parents just put him and dress, make him use the little girl's room, and tell him to start playing with dolls and dating boys?


I don't suffer from gender dysphoria because someone "assigned" me the wrong gender, that's ridiculous. If I were a biological female, I would simply laugh about the error on my birth certificate and get it legally changed; I wouldn't consider myself a trans person, just a cis-female with a clerical error on her record.

----------


## Mr.Silver

> The problem is that when people come back at me I switch from cynical twitter mode to curious / obsessive forum mode and try and have a conversation where we actually understand one another's views, which twitter is not technically or socially prepared for, and most conversation end up with the other person dismissing me as a right wing troll and/or spending the majority of their post incorrectly telling me what I said or what I believe.


From my experience, Twitter is just generally very bad for discussing anything more complicated than 'what I ate for lunch today' so probably shouldn't have much weight placed on it.

Back on topic, I also was very gender abolitionist back in university (so, late teens to early 20s), a position that I'm a bit more nuanced about nowawadys, partly due to coming to terms with my own gender (and how, with hindsight, that was something that pushed me gender abolitionism in the first place). So I may not be entirely unaware about where you're coming from on some of this.




> I don't have a clue what gender identity is.


Good news and bad news: you're not alone in that. In fact, I don't think _anyone_ has a concise clear model for gender identity.
But then, why _would_ they?
Because it's not as if there's a rich, long history of documented research into gender identity. Like most things that are adjacent to 'trans-issues', historically it's either been considered irrelevant or actively censored and surpressed as a topic of research. Academically, it's effectively a new field - and a quite a complex one. There simply isn't a concise model for gender identity, because we're still in the process of trying to find one that works (and, notably, 'social roles' doesn't - more on this later) or indeed if there even is going to be an intuitive model that accounts for it.
The definition is changing is but so is our understanding of it, based on people's experiences and behaviours in how they relate to that. This is just in academia; most people talking about gender online are not coming from an academic background, haven't really had that much experience or training in philosophical inquiry, so are very unlikely to be able to come up with a sound definition on demand.

Yeah, it would be very nice to have a clear, concrete definition you could at least point people at. But our collective knowledge base isn't there yet, assuming there even will be one.




> I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role.


Ah, this might be my fault actually.

...

Okay, not _specifically_ mine, but people like me: agender and 'third-gender' non-binary people in societies and cultures that do not have those gender roles. While non-binary identity does tend to get overlooked a lot in discussions about gender, the fact remains that it presents a difficult problem with the idea of 'gender as social roles', because it's rather tricky to have something that exists be the product of a social role that doesn't. 

Now, if you want to have a descriptive definition of gender then you need to account for this, which means that you do in fact have to divorce it from social roles. The fact that non-binary identity also isn't particularly tied to 'biological sex' and that non-binary people do still experience dysphoria, including people on the agender and 'third-gender' end of the spectrum, places a similar requirement whant it comes to that too. So if you're taking a scientific approach then, logically, you can only conclude that, whatever gender is, it likely involves something else that isn't either of those. 



The point I'm sort of getting at here is that the lack of concrete definition of gender identity is not incompatable with it being descriptive, or based on observation. Behaviour and psychology might not the most clearly defined observable things, but they are still observable phenomena.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Thanks for the replies! Very busy week, sorry it took me longer to reply.


Shout out, Talakeal, for reviving this thread. Admittedly it's supposed to be focused on support, but the Q&A thread is super dead, so this is probably the next best place.

Gonna politely skip the interpersonal stuff with Twitter, which is orthogonal to your question.

I'm getting the sense that you're frustrated by the lack of good argument from internet strangers. There's nothing to do about that, but I think you should check out some sources on gender that aren't by internet strangers. Some suggestions follow:

Julia Serano. 2007. _Whipping Girl_. BisectedBrioche recommended it, and I will, too. She makes an argument for the existence of a neurological gender identity. I don't find it convincing, but it's probably one of the best arguments for it, if somewhat dated.Monique Wittig. 1992. _The Straight Mind and Other Essays._ Take a look at "The Category of Sex" or "One is Not Born a Woman." A philosophical argument for the material construction of gender, particularly womanhood.Jules Gill-Peterson. 2018. _Histories of the Transgender Child_. A historical trajectory on how gender and transness has shifted over time, with a focus on the 20th century.

You might've read some of these works before. I have others recs, but they are political. Other peeps can recommend other books.





> To me, that feels like trans erasure.


And I am certainly happy to refer to you as MtF! But it's absolutely not an accurate way to refer to my experiences, and I'm not erasing my experiences by not referring to myself with an XtY construct.





> And honestly, that would be great for me, if I could just retroactively be a cis-woman, but that's not the reality I live in.


You've lost me here. I'm not sure how this connects with what you or I said previously.





> Sex is a list of anatomical and physiological traits. Sex is real. Sex is a spectrum. Sex is mutable. Sex is also probably psychological and neurological traits, but at this point trying to actually pinpoint such things is pseudo-science at best.


I don't really find that satisfactory. It's real vague. What is that list, and what binds that list together? How many dimensions does that spectrum consist of? What does it mean for it to be "real"?





> As a kid, sex and gender were synonymous. I much preferred to use the word gender though, because after Austin Powers came out everyone thought they were oh so clever saying "Yes please!" when asked their sex and it always drove me up the wall.
> 
> In college, mostly in an effort to understand my own dysphoria, I got really into feminism, and that people had started using gender to refer to behaviors and social roles as distinct from biological sex. As a feminist and a gender non-conforming individual, I tend to agree with the statement that "Gender is just a collection of harmful stereotypes" and think the whole concept of gender as distinct from sex belongs in the ashbin of history. I hate being told I am not a man because I don't like to do all the manly things, but even worse, I am afraid that if I ever do wholly transition people will insist that I am "still really a man" because I don't do all of the girly things either.
> 
> Now that I am in my thirties, people appear to have changed the definition of gender again. Now it appears to be a concept of one's self. I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role.


Like many words, "gender" has many uses. I run for exercise, I run for office, I'm run down. Certainly I'm not referring to the same thing when I use "run." Same here. I can use "gender" to refer to different concepts, and it's possible that "gender" has indeed expanded in its use.





> At this point, it appears to be totally meaningless and circular. Saying "I am a woman because I identify a a woman" but then insisting that "woman" has nothing to do with either of the above gender definition to me makes as much sense as saying "I am a blorglesplorch," and then defining blorglesplorch as "the thing which I identify as".


Not sure how circularity makes something meaningless. A housecat is a member of _Felis catus_; a member of _Felis catus_ is a housecat. Those propositions mean something. If "A housecat is a member of _Felis catus_" is true, then it is the case that a housecat is a member of _Felis catus_. I'm genuinely confused by your meaningless argument. Do you mind clarifying?

Also, language is embedded in a social context. To identify as a woman is to identify as a member of a set of people who call themselves woman. Womanhood has a history; women experience particular forms of violence, and so forth. That's not the case for identifying as a blorglesplorch.

Also also, "woman" is absolutely associated with gender/sex assignment and gender roles. Most women were assigned female at birth. Many women follow the gender role society prescribes them. I don't think most people would disagree.





> And, of course, lots of people, particularly on twitter but not entirely, get very upset if you refer to them as either their biological sex or social gender roll, which makes it very difficult to actually discuss trans issues.


Honestly, I wouldn't be happy if you tried to refer to me by my "biological sex," either.





> How so?
> 
> Like all biological classification, one can pick at the edges to create problems. But I can come up with a long list of masculine or feminine traits that apply to most everyone, even the <.1% of the population who is truly intersex generally favors one sex or the other. IMO Sex is biological and descriptive (not that humans don't have the power to alter it). Gender roles are man-made and prescriptive.


The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.

The fact that you don't propose a simple solution but instead a "long list" is telling. Sex is troubled. We, as trans people, are on the edges. We trouble it. It's "descriptive" but it describes a list longer and longer. Sex can no longer be considered a clear biological concept. You can certain try to save it. Continue to tinker and make _ad hoc_ changes. Epicycles saved geocentrism for a while. But at some point it becomes more useful to say that the earth revolves around the sun.

I hope this is clear. Feel free to disagree or ask for clarification.





> I don't have a clue what gender identity is.


Gender is a list of psychological beliefs. Gender is real. Gender is a spectrum. Gender is mutable. Gender is neurological and descriptive.  :Small Tongue: 





> Well... for example:
> 
> This article is written by someone whose conclusions I vehemently disagree with and consider morally abhorrent, but points out a lot of the same logical contradictions I struggle with when trying to discuss trans issues with more open minded people. 
> 
> On the other hand, this article seems to be coming from the right play, but is just filled with so much woo and illogic that it drives me nuts and raises ten questions for every one it answers.


I don't see why the latter is any more illogical than the former. Here's the logic: If I feel like a man, I'm a man. I feel like a man. Therefore, I'm a man. A perfectly valid argument.





> Something concrete or observable would be nice.
> 
> If we could find a "trans gene" or reliably model a "woman's brain" or even find some sort of extra-deimensional pink energy field that follows trans women around.
> 
> Even for more soft stuff; philosophies, political beliefs, and religions all have observable groups of beliefs and behaviors that can be used to label their followers.
> 
> But right now, AFAICT gender identity is a label without a basis in either science or thought.


Like many things, gender is not observable, so you must unfortunately give up that quest. For consistency's sake, are you also troubled by sexuality's lack of observability? Much like gender, sexuality is a construct only visible via indirect evidence.





> This is a good scientific explanation, but AFAIK doesn't actually have any evidence behind it, so it remains a pseudo scientific assertion.


I think this is mistaken on multiple counts. The first is that there is indeed neurological evidence consistent with a neurological explanation. For an old example, see Zhou et al. (1995), "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality." I personally don't find it convincing, cuz I'm a party pooper who insists that neural correlates are not neural causes. But you might like it. You can probably find other papers like it.

The second is that it's not psuedo-scientific to assert scientific explanations without evidence. That's kinda what scientific theories and models are. They make empirical predictions that are not yet supported by the data. Probably the most famous assertion in the history of science is Einstein's, who claimed that light would bend a certain amount in a gravitational field. Only years later did the beginnings of evidence come in.





> Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent.





> That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman.





> I didn't realize I was perpetuating an intentional lie; it just seemed so much more plausible than the alternative, as it is a nonsense term (for non intersex people)


Seconding Juniper. You make a historical claim that needs historical evidence. (It's clear that you're engaging in good faith, though.)





> and I know so many trans people who try and insist that they are actually intersex (for example having a "female brain structure") without any proof.


You have an odd way of using the term "intersex." If a trans person claims to have an x brain structure, how does it follow that they're claiming they're intersex?





> As for why the term makes no sense:
> 
> Its not assigning anything. Its describing something.
> It typically happens before birth in our modern era of sonagrams.
> Hundreds of millions of people alive today do not have birth certificates. Does this not apply to them? How about the billions of people who lived without certificates in the past?
> For the ~4999/5000 of us who aren't intersex, the baby's sex can be identified by its genitals, so why do we need this extra layer of obfuscation?
> The "assignment" has no authority. Have you ever heard of anyone, say parents, actually going by what is written on the birth certificate over their own evaluation of the child's sex? Like, a doctor "assigns" an XY child with a penis to the female gender so the parents just put him and dress, make him use the little girl's room, and tell him to start playing with dolls and dating boys?
> 
> I don't suffer from gender dysphoria because someone "assigned" me the wrong gender, that's ridiculous. If I were a biological female, I would simply laugh about the error on my birth certificate and get it legally changed; I wouldn't consider myself a trans person, just a cis-female with a clerical error on her record.


There's a lot going on here. It's difficult to talk without addressing our different epistemologies first. But I'll try.

When someone says, "It's a boy," they usually do not mean that it's a human being with a penis. It's not the same as saying, "It has a penis." Those two propositions mean different things. If I'm a doctor and the baby comes out and I go, "It has a penis!  :Small Smile: ," the parents will likely react differently than if I said, "It's a boy!" So it can't just be the case that you're just describing something.

Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. _That_ is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. _That_ is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.


I would add from my own experiences that realizing the cultural expectations around gender can often be a deeply personal and ongoing process that you engage with from the time that you're old enough to understand what gender is in the first place throughout the remainder of your life. For example, saying "it's a girl" creates the cultural assumption of pronouns and eventual romantic entanglement with boys. It was difficult for me to understand my own gender with the experience of "but... I don't really want to be romantically involved with boys, I want to be romantically involved with women" because at the time I was discovering that side of myself, it was the mid-90s and that was still culturally _far_ outside of the expected gender role for a woman.

At this point those cultural expectations have shifted enough that it seems a lot of women consider "I have some interest in other women" to be a perfectly normal part of a woman's gender role. Not _all_, but it doesn't carry the same unexpected sting as it did when I was 13.

Other cultural expectations persist. My entire life I have had people who expect that I would eventually want children, up to including my mother (who herself identifies as a lesbian) despite the fact that if anything my desire for children has _lessened_ rather than increased. And my own relationship with my gender has changed and shifted over time. There was a point in my life where I wouldn't have the username I have on this forum and would have felt frankly odd or anxious directly identifying my gender online. My wife has gone through periods where she has wanted to be more feminine in her presentation and periods when she feels more comfortable with a gender-neutral presentation. I spent most of my life with short hair but started growing it out a few years back and now _really_ enjoy having long hair, but I might cut it again soon.

Gender presentation and identity can shift a lot _even for cis people_. Everyone's journey, identity, and comfort is different. It's hard to give any absolute hard-and-fast rules, which is why the watchwords are about respect, understanding, and acceptance.

I really hope this helps, and I hope any of my trans siblings reading this will tell me if they feel I've misunderstood or misrepresented them; it's not my intention.

----------


## Murk

For what it's worth, I (used to) feel very similar to Talakeal. 

I think that's in a large part because up to thirty years ago the "progressive" view on gender was the complete opposite of what it is now, and the language it used (and the meaning of words) was very different too. 

I grew up when the progressive view on gender was still (post) feminist: gender was seen as an outdated concept, something that was forced on people _externally_.
The difference between men and women (and other) was either physical, or oppression. 
So people didn't _have_ a gender: they were _given_ a gender, by society. 

I recognise a lot of this in Talakeals musings about gender roles and the question what gender means. This matches with the late feminist view that gender doesn't mean _anything_ except for other people's expectations and demands. 

That doesn't mean transgender people didn't exist in this view. But you'll notice that language from that time used "wants to be..." much more often than "is..."
If someone was transgender they would _want to be_ the other gender - not _they are_ the other gender (yet). 
And with the premise that gender is purely externally assigned this makes sense. You _are_ the gender you have been assigned, because that's the meaning of the word. 
You can desire to change your gender, but until you transition (socially and/or physically) you are the gender you have been assigned. You will only be the other gender once you have convinced society you are. Because that's what the word means. 

So I think that view matches Talakeals feelings more closely: _all_ transgender people would be x to y, because your gender is solely what other people assign you. 


And then somewhere in the previous few decades, the progressive view on gender made a 180° flip: nowadays gender is something _internal_. 
You _have_ a gender (rather than being _given_ a gender), and gender has an inherent meaning. 
The common progressive view now is that gender has an inherent psychological, social, _personal_ meaning. It's not just a superfluous role you are assigned by society but an integral part of who you are. 
And as such, the role you are assigned by society can mismatch with your inherent gender. 

From that view, most transgender people will _not_ be x to y. They have always been y. Their inherent gender is y, and that's the _real_ gender. The gender they have been assigned was just wrong. Transitioning (either socially or physically) is just the process of showing society who you have always been, rather than actually becoming a different gender. (And because of that, I think the word transitioning itself has become far less used - it's not really a _transition_ anymore). 

From this view saying someone "used to be x" is very offensive, because you are saying you believe what random people think about someone's identity rather than they themselves. 


For me, the modern view is confusing, but that's because I had my formative years when the previous view was more common. I've grown up (and formed my identity) with the view that gender is bunkus, that it's a relic of societal oppression, and that the world would be better off if we just ditched the notion of gender entirely. 
And now progressive people happily personally identify with a gender! Now, they think the world would be a better place with _more_ genders rather than less! 

But when it comes down to it, I think that's just a change in language and the philosophy of gender. It doesn't mean that _you_ (or I) need to change, but if we want to connect with the current views we do need to adapt our language accordingly.

When I was a teenager I was just a feminist man, who was so comfortable in his maleness that my gender didn't matter. My lack of a strong male identity came from a position of privilege and comfort: _because_ I was so comfortable as a man I could afford not to care. In my language "gender" means something put on me from the outside. The outside tells me I'm male, I don't care, so I'm a man and forget about out it.

Nowadays teenagers tell me that I might be agender! That doesn't match the language I would use, but I understand that in their language it makes sense. 
In their language "gender" means something from the inside. My inside doesn't care about my gender, so I must be agender!


All of that is a very long (sorry!) way to say that the progressive philosophy on gender has changed, the language has changed accordingly, and I think the language Talakeal uses hasn't changed with it. 
Which is fine!
But if you engage the (often young) Twitter crowd you need to use their language.

----------


## Talakeal

> Snip


Pretty much.

Although I would like to state that while I don't have a concept of my own "gender" I am still very much not what I would call cis; I consider my sex male and would like it to be female.


Its kind of annoying, as now that I am finally accepting enough of my identity to actually want to connect with the larger trans community, I found this huge communication gap where my language feels like misgendering and transphobia to them, and theirs feels like erasure and reinforcement of the patriarchal stereotypes I have been oppressed by my entire life.



Now, the idea that "gender roles" are internal and driven by psychology is a logical argument, albeit one with only flimsy evidence, but it sounds way too close to oppressive misogyny to me, and also fails to grasp the full complexity of any one individual's mind, for me to ever consider a progressive argument.

----------


## Anymage

Question.  What does gender therapy actually entail?  Google is giving me a bunch of "how to find a gender therapist" and posts about the generalized benefits that gender therapy can provide, while I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.

----------


## LaZodiac

> Question.  What does gender therapy actually entail?  Google is giving me a bunch of "how to find a gender therapist" and posts about the generalized benefits that gender therapy can provide, while I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.


There's differences depending on what direction you're going but typically you take medicine to suppress the wrong and medicine to generate the good. Once you've done this long enough that your body is successfully in the correct factory settings, you can (if you wish) continue on to therapy that assists with it. I don't know how boy stuff works but for girls once you have bottom surgery you can stop the suppressants since the stuff that makes the boy juice is gone.

----------


## Talakeal

> Julia Serano. 2007. _Whipping Girl_. BisectedBrioche recommended it, and I will, too. She makes an argument for the existence of a neurological gender identity. I don't find it convincing, but it's probably one of the best arguments for it, if somewhat dated.Monique Wittig. 1992. _The Straight Mind and Other Essays._ Take a look at "The Category of Sex" or "One is Not Born a Woman." A philosophical argument for the material construction of gender, particularly womanhood.Jules Gill-Peterson. 2018. _Histories of the Transgender Child_. A historical trajectory on how gender and transness has shifted over time, with a focus on the 20th century.
> 
> You might've read some of these works before. I have others recs, but they are political. Other peeps can recommend other books.


Thanks! I will check those out, although I am worried that they might be a bit outdated given the publication dates.




> [LIST]You've lost me here. I'm not sure how this connects with what you or I said previously.


I am saying that to deny I was ever a man would, by definition, make me a ciswoman. Which would be great if it words actually had the power to change reality, but they do not and a remain a transwoman, and to claim otherwise feels like trans-erasure.




> [LIST][*]I don't really find that satisfactory. It's real vague. What is that list, and what binds that list together? How many dimensions does that spectrum consist of? What does it mean for it to be "real"?
> 
> Not sure how circularity makes something meaningless. A housecat is a member of _Felis catus_; a member of _Felis catus_ is a housecat. Those propositions mean something. If "A housecat is a member of _Felis catus_" is true, then it is the case that a housecat is a member of _Felis catus_. I'm genuinely confused by your meaningless argument. Do you mind clarifying?


I think you are trying to make a post-modernist point here, but it really reads as either playing word games or being deliberately obtuse.

I took both zoology and anatomy in college, and while it is acknowledged that there are always weird edge cases, there is a fairly simple process for keying out an animal's species or determining its gender. At the same time, most everyone has an intrinsic knowledge of what a cat or a woman is. I have never seen a cat (or a physical woman who was not trying to dress to hide her sex).

Physically, when compared to the human mean, women have vaginas, an XX chromosone, have enlarged breasts which are capable of producing milk, cannot grow beards, are shorter, have less muscle tissue, have less body hair, have broader hips and narrower waists, have less dense bones, have different pelvic anatomy, have higher levels of estrogen and lower levels of testosterone, have fuller lips, have softer chins, and reproduce by producing eggs and gestating the young internally. 

This is only a partial list, and obviously not every woman meets every criteria on the list, but most women meet most criteria on the list (I know I fail to meet any of them). These are the same characteristics which are targeted by gender affirming surgery. Obviously injury, age, birth defect, or medical intervention means that any woman is capable of failing to meet some of these criteria, but that doesn't mean that the whole category is meaningless.

Likewise, cats animals who are small, warm blooded, have nipples, quadrupedal, nocturnal, carnivorous, have retractable claws, foot pads, medium length straight hair, slit-pupils, rough tongues, sharp teeth (the precise shape of the teeth alone should be enough to definitively tell you if something is or isn't a cat). And I am sure countless other anatomical and physiological unique traits.

I say it is meaningless because simply providing a circular argument with no actual context does not convey any information.





> [LIST][*]The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.


Animals came in male and female for hundreds of millions of years before humans appeared, so I am not sure what you mean by it being a human made concept. Unless you literally mean that we invented the words used to label it.





> [LIST][*]Like many words, "gender" has many uses. I run for exercise, I run for office, I'm run down. Certainly I'm not referring to the same thing when I use "run." Same here. I can use "gender" to refer to different concepts, and it's possible that "gender" has indeed expanded in its use.
> 
> Also also, "woman" is absolutely associated with gender/sex assignment and gender roles. Most women were assigned female at birth. Many women follow the gender role society prescribes them. I don't think most people would disagree.


Ok. So why is it so hard for people to explain which meaning of gender they are using? And why are they so quick to vilify people who are using it in a different way?






> [LIST][*]Honestly, I wouldn't be happy if you tried to refer to me by my "biological sex," either.


And why is that?

Why is it such a taboo subject? And how are people supposed to have meaningful conversation about trans issues if they aren't allowed to mention it?





> [LIST][*]The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.


That's quite a claim, and runs contrary to both all of the research I have ever done as well as common sense.

Just the other day I was reading about how Roman laws had separate legal categories for men, women, and hermaphrodites.

Just because this sentence is a spectrum rather than a binary, I fail to see how that is evidence that red and blue don't exist and its actually just black and white.





> [LIST][*]Gender is a list of psychological beliefs. Gender is real. Gender is a spectrum. Gender is mutable. Gender is neurological and descriptive. 
> 
> I don't see why the latter is any more illogical than the former. Here's the logic: If I feel like a man, I'm a man. I feel like a man. Therefore, I'm a man. A perfectly valid argument.


IMO that is a classic logical fallacy rather than a valid argument.

However, whether or not it is a fallacious argument is irrelevant, the issue is that it doesn't actually impart any insight into what a man is or what it means to be one.





> [LIST][*]Like many things, gender is not observable, so you must unfortunately give up that quest. For consistency's sake, are you also troubled by sexuality's lack of observability? Much like gender, sexuality is a construct only visible via indirect evidence.


No, because sexuality describes a set of feelings and behaviors.

I would however, be equally puzzled if a man claimed to be gay, but only felt attraction to and had relationships with women.





> [LIST][*]I think this is mistaken on multiple counts. The first is that there is indeed neurological evidence consistent with a neurological explanation. For an old example, see Zhou et al. (1995), "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality." I personally don't find it convincing, cuz I'm a party pooper who insists that neural correlates are not neural causes. But you might like it. You can probably find other papers like it.
> 
> The second is that it's not psuedo-scientific to assert scientific explanations without evidence. That's kinda what scientific theories and models are. They make empirical predictions that are not yet supported by the data. Probably the most famous assertion in the history of science is Einstein's, who claimed that light would bend a certain amount in a gravitational field. Only years later did the beginnings of evidence come in.


That's a hypothesis, not a theory.

And yes, it would be scientifically unethical to demand everyone adhere to a hypothesis without proof.

People have long been making the argument that a person's biology determines their personality. Racists, classists, and sexists love it. Phrenology is a classic pastime of bigots. Lots of people used the "innate tendencies" of the female brain to bar women from "men's work". Similar arguments were (and still are) used to justify slavery and segregation.

There is weak evidence to support it, and there is weak evidence to disprove it.

As a philosophical humanist, I am opposed to using ill defined pseudo-scientific hypothesis to label people or try and limit their behavior.

In my opinion, while there likely is some correlation between gender and brain structure, the human brain is far too plastic, and individual humans are far too varied, to make any sort of definitive claims about it, certainly not at our current level of technology.

On a personal level, this just feels oppressive and hurtful. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents and teachers forbid me from taking part in traditionally female activities (and usually questioned my sanity or sexuality in the process). But also as an adult, when my friends tell me that I am not "really trans" because I still enjoy many traditionally male activities.




> [LIST][*]You have an odd way of using the term "intersex." If a trans person claims to have an x brain structure, how does it follow that they're claiming they're intersex?


How wouldn't it?

If someone had a female brain structure in an otherwise male body, I would label them intersex just like if they had, say, ovaries in an otherwise male body.





> [LIST]There's a lot going on here. It's difficult to talk without addressing our different epistemologies first. But I'll try.
> 
> When someone says, "It's a boy," they usually do not mean that it's a human being with a penis. It's not the same as saying, "It has a penis." Those two propositions mean different things. If I'm a doctor and the baby comes out and I go, "It has a penis! ," the parents will likely react differently than if I said, "It's a boy!" So it can't just be the case that you're just describing something.
> 
> Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. _That_ is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.


So, it seems like you are making a correlation between filling out a birth certificate and forcing gender roles on someone.

I have never seen it. I have had people try and force gender rolls on me countless times in my life, and not once have I ever had to tell them what was on my birth certificate, or what a doctor or my parents "assigned" me.

Would someone who was born in a developing nation without doctors and birth certificates still be "assigned" a gender at birth? What if the society has rigidly enforced gender rolls or no gender rolls at all? What if said person moved to a developed nation later in life and we tried to enforce out gender rolls on them? What if a "biological" girl was born to a mother who was stranded on an island and they had to fulfill both gender rolls as there was nobody else to rely upon, but they had never seen or even been told of the existence of males, is she still AFAB?

----------


## TaiLiu

> I would add from my own experiences that realizing the cultural expectations around gender can often be a deeply personal and ongoing process that you engage with from the time that you're old enough to understand what gender is in the first place throughout the remainder of your life. For example, saying "it's a girl" creates the cultural assumption of pronouns and eventual romantic entanglement with boys...
> 
> Gender presentation and identity can shift a lot _even for cis people_. Everyone's journey, identity, and comfort is different. It's hard to give any absolute hard-and-fast rules, which is why the watchwords are about respect, understanding, and acceptance.


I really liked this post! A good way of showing how gender assignment is coercive for everyone, including cis people (although of course trans people face more violence regarding it). Also a good way of showing how coercive gender assignment is a society-wide phenomenon, which is socially reinforced and which shifts depending on culture and time.





> I think that's in a large part because up to thirty years ago the "progressive" view on gender was the complete opposite of what it is now, and the language it used (and the meaning of words) was very different too.


Are you referring to gender abolition? Mr. Silver mentioned it, too. I guess in some sense it's "progressive," but I'd argument that it has problems with transphobia and transmisogyny. (Not that I'm calling you or Talakeal gender abolitionists or transphobes, of course.)




> So people didn't _have_ a gender: they were _given_ a gender, by society.


One of the authors I cited, Wittig, argues this, too. In fact, it's the epistemology of gender that I prescribe to. I don't think I was born with my gender. I think social events have transpired and now I'm the gender that I am ...




> If someone was transgender they would _want to be_ the other gender - not _they are_ the other gender (yet).
> 
> And with the premise that gender is purely externally assigned this makes sense. You _are_ the gender you have been assigned, because that's the meaning of the word.
> 
> You can desire to change your gender, but until you transition (socially and/or physically) you are the gender you have been assigned. You will only be the other gender once you have convinced society you are. Because that's what the word means. 
> 
> So I think that view matches Talakeals feelings more closely: _all_ transgender people would be x to y, because your gender is solely what other people assign you.


... But just because I buy into one proposition doesn't mean I buy into all of them. I'd argue that these propositions don't follow from the previous one.

Again, not saying that you're arguing for this position. Just pointing something out.




> From that view, most transgender people will _not_ be x to y. They have always been y. Their inherent gender is y, and that's the _real_ gender. The gender they have been assigned was just wrong. Transitioning (either socially or physically) is just the process of showing society who you have always been, rather than actually becoming a different gender. (And because of that, I think the word transitioning itself has become far less used - it's not really a _transition_ anymore).


Yes, I think that's a good way of putting it. It's not a surprising epistemic move. The "born this way" argument has generally been the popular argument in the LGBTQ community. Understandably so.





> What does gender therapy actually entail? ... I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.





> There's differences depending on what direction you're going but typically you take medicine to suppress the wrong and medicine to generate the good.


I could be wrong, but I think Anymage is asking about gender psychotherapy and not hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery. (Sex reassignment surgery for Talakeal.)

Personally I have no idea. I've never been to a psychotherapist who specialized with trans people before. If you find a particular therapist, presumably you could ask what they could help you with.

----------


## Anymage

Thanks for the replies.

The reason I was curious, though, was because I saw some virulently transphobic claptrap and started pushing back against it, only to realize that it'd be handy if I actually knew what I was talking about.  I figured that there's talk therapy before anything medical happens, and was curious where I could find out more about that.  Well before the medical interventions that transphobes keep fixating on.

Edit:



> I could be wrong, but I think Anymage is asking about gender psychotherapy and not hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery. (Sex reassignment surgery for Talakeal.)
> 
> Personally I have no idea. I've never been to a psychotherapist who specialized with trans people before. If you find a particular therapist, presumably you could ask what they could help you with.


This, largely.  Again, my curiosity comes from a place of wanting to be informed when I tell transphobes just how wrong they are.

----------


## Kesnit

I had an interesting chat (via text) last night that is bothering me.

My office has 3 summer interns, one of whom, R, is a lesbian and knows Im trans. R and another intern, A, go to school about 90 minutes away, so carpool together. A does not know Im a transman.

I had previously figured out A knows R and I have a connection, but she obviously does not know what it is. R told me that A is getting close to thinking either there is something she doesnt know (which is, of course, true) or Im just a creepy man and am trying to hit on R. Given that the truth is rather obscure in common society (when most people think of trans, they think MTF), its more likely A will decide Im an idiot man who is hitting on a lesbian, and am therefore creepy.

This is making me sad-angry, and I do know why. I came out as trans 16 years ago, but that was after 30 years of living as a woman. No matter how long I live as my real, male, self, some of my actions and mental processes are always going to go down the long-engrained female pathways. Actions taken by (male name) are going to be perceived differently than ones taken by (dead name).

If I was still living as (dead name), my friendship with R could still be a bit creepy. (Im 20 years older than her. And if someone thinks I am hitting on her, that would also be an issue because I am married - to a woman - and R is engaged.) But it would look a lot more normal than my friendship with her as (male name). I didnt think of that when our friendship began because Im not used to being in social situations where one person knows and another doesnt. I let myself be socially comfortable with R, which led me to act in a way that feels normal, but is not viewed as normal by society. 

If it becomes an issue, Ill tell A the truth. But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I cant be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. Im angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.

----------


## TaiLiu

Missed this while writing the other post, so addressing this now.





> Thanks! I will check those out, although I am worried that they might be a bit outdated given the publication dates.


_Histories_ is the freshest, definitely. But Wittig is surprisingly relevant, even though she doesn't refer to trans people.





> I am saying that to deny I was ever a man would, by definition, make me a ciswoman. Which would be great if it words actually had the power to change reality, but they do not and a remain a transwoman, and to claim otherwise feels like trans-erasure.


I think it's perfectly plausible for a trans woman to say that she's not cis and also say that she was ever a man or a boy. "I was assigned male at birth. But I'm a woman. So I'm a trans woman." Being assigned male does not make her male, and people argue this point from a variety of perspectives.





> I think you are trying to make a post-modernist point here, but it really reads as either playing word games or being deliberately obtuse.


If it helps, I'm not a post-modernist or post-structuralist. I took you saying that a circular set of propositions is necessarily a meaningless one. I just disagree with you about that.





> I took both zoology and anatomy in college, and while it is acknowledged that there are always weird edge cases, there is a fairly simple process for keying out an animal's species or determining its gender. At the same time, most everyone has an intrinsic knowledge of what a cat or a woman is. I have never seen a cat (or a physical woman who was not trying to dress to hide her sex).


I'm kinda confused by your wording. "Intrinsic" is probably not the right word. I take you to mean instead that most people have a commonsense notion of what cats and women are. I agree. But that commonsense notion is socially constructed.

I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about never having seen a cat or a woman dressing to "hide her sex."





> Physically, when compared to the human mean, women have vaginas, an XX chromosone, have enlarged breasts which are capable of producing milk, cannot grow beards, are shorter, have less muscle tissue, have less body hair, have broader hips and narrower waists, have less dense bones, have different pelvic anatomy, have higher levels of estrogen and lower levels of testosterone, have fuller lips, have softer chins, and reproduce by producing eggs and gestating the young internally. 
> 
> This is only a partial list, and obviously not every woman meets every criteria on the list, but most women meet most criteria on the list (I know I fail to meet any of them). These are the same characteristics which are targeted by gender affirming surgery. Obviously injury, age, birth defect, or medical intervention means that any woman is capable of failing to meet some of these criteria, but that doesn't mean that the whole category is meaningless.
> 
> Likewise, cats animals who are small, warm blooded, have nipples, quadrupedal, nocturnal, carnivorous, have retractable claws, foot pads, medium length straight hair, slit-pupils, rough tongues, sharp teeth (the precise shape of the teeth alone should be enough to definitively tell you if something is or isn't a cat). And I am sure countless other anatomical and physiological unique traits.


Okay, sure. I mean, I agree, so I'm not quite sure what argument you're tackling. Most women are cis. Most women have vulvas and so on and so forth. Right.





> I say it is meaningless because simply providing a circular argument with no actual context does not convey any information.


I agree here, too. I think you're addressing one of my arguments, or possibly an argument made by someone else, but I'm not sure which one.





> Animals came in male and female for hundreds of millions of years before humans appeared, so I am not sure what you mean by it being a human made concept. Unless you literally mean that we invented the words used to label it.


If you'll allow me to use jargon from the philosophy of science: what I'm saying is that sex is not a natural kind. Sex is a set of natural kinds, but that set is decided by humans and has changed throughout history. We invented the organizing principle that is "sex," but that set is not a natural kind.

As an interesting sidenote, Joan Roughgarden has this to say about sex in _Evolution's Rainbow_:

_To a biologist, "male" means making small gametes, and "female" means making large gametes. Period! By definition, the smaller of the two gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg. Beyond gamete size, biologists don't recognize any other universal difference between male and female. Of course, indirect markers of gamete size may exist in some species. In mammals, males usually have a Y chromosome. But whether an individual is male or not comes down to making sperm, and the males in some mammalian species don't have a Y chromosome. Moreover, in birds, reptiles, and amphibians, the Y chromosome doesn't occur. However, the gamete-size definition is general and works throughout the plant and animal kingdoms._
I get the sense that you--and others--mean more than this when you talk about sex. (Is someone who doesn't make any gametes sexless?)





> Ok. So why is it so hard for people to explain which meaning of gender they are using? And why are they so quick to vilify people who are using it in a different way?


I have no special social insight, so I have no idea. I think this is a loaded question, though.





> And why is that?


It depends on the person and what they mean by "biological sex." I've cited a biological definition of sex above. If people are using that definition, it would have to be a real specific convo for it to be relevant. In some circumstances, I wouldn't mind. In others, I might be irritated: perhaps because it's none of their business, or perhaps because they're using it for transphobic means.





> Why is it such a taboo subject?


Well, it's really not taboo at all. People do it all the time when they insist that a trans person is really a man or a woman.





> And how are people supposed to have meaningful conversation about trans issues if they aren't allowed to mention it?


Another loaded question. Ignoring the loadedness, I honestly dunno how to respond to this! It's, uh, real easy. You just have conversations. About trans issues. And then you don't use the concept of biological sex. Is there a reason why you think people wouldn't be able to?





> That's quite a claim, and runs contrary to both all of the research I have ever done as well as common sense.
> 
> Just the other day I was reading about how Roman laws had separate legal categories for men, women, and hermaphrodites.


That's an interesting point about Roman law. Do you have a citation?

History often violates our commonsense expectations. Citing at length Laqueur in _Making Sex_:

_For thousands of years it had been a commonplace that women had the same genitals as men except that, as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in the fourth century, put it: "theirs are inside the body and not outside it." Galen, who in the second century A.D. developed the most powerful and resilient model of the structural, though not spatial, identity of the male and female reproductive organs, demonstrated at length that women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat--of perfection--had resulted in the retention, inside, of structures that in the male are visible without. Indeed, doggerel verse of the early nineteenth century still sings of these hoary homologies long after they had disappeared from learned texts:

though they of different sexes be,
Yet on the whole they are the same as we,
For those that have the strictest searchers been,
Find women are but men turned outside in.

In this world the vagina is imagined as an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles. The learned Galen could cite the dissections of the Alexandrian anatomist Herophilus, in the third century B.C., to support his claim that a woman has testes with accompanying seminal ducts very much like the man's, one on each side of the uterus, the only difference being that the male's are contained in the scrotum and the female's are not._
Another fun excerpt:

_All of this evidence suggests that in the construction of the one-sex body the borders between blood, semen, other residues and food, between the organs of reproduction and other organs, between the heat of passion and the heat of life, were indistinct and, to the modem person, almost unimaginably--indeed terrifyingly--porous. "Anyone who has intercourse around midnight," warns a text attributed to Constantinius Africanus, "makes a mistake." Digest (concoct) food first before straining the body to give the final concoction to the seed. Fifteen hundred years after Aristotle and a thousand after Galen, Dante in the Purgatorio still plays on the fungibility of the body's fluids and the affinities of its heats. "Undrunk" blood, perfect like a dish (alimento) that is sent from the table, is redistilled by the heat of the heart, sent down to the genitals, from which "it sprays in nature's vessel, on another's blood."_




> Just because this sentence is a spectrum rather than a binary, I fail to see how that is evidence that red and blue don't exist and its actually just black and white.


I don't disagree, but I'm not sure what you're addressing.





> IMO that is a classic logical fallacy rather than a valid argument.


With all due respect, it's really not. It's just modus ponens. There's no fallacy whatsoever. I'm genuinely confused why you would think it is. Do we really disagree on something as basic as the logical rules of inference?





> However, whether or not it is a fallacious argument is irrelevant, the issue is that it doesn't actually impart any insight into what a man is or what it means to be one.


I disagree on two fronts. The first is that it does impart insight: it tells us that men must have the belief that they're men to be men. (We might disagree, of course.)

The second is that what is necessary for manhood does not define all of manhood. Many men have many common traits. Most of them have penises. Most of them were assigned male at birth. Men in general are construed as tough and less sensitive and there are all these other expectations. So on and so forth.





> No, because sexuality describes a set of feelings and behaviors.
> 
> I would however, be equally puzzled if a man claimed to be gay, but only felt attraction to and had relationships with women.


Right! But why doesn't gender "describes a set of feelings and behaviors"?

I don't get your analogy. Which parts of the sexuality analogy correspond to which parts of gender?





> That's a hypothesis, not a theory.
> 
> And yes, it would be scientifically unethical to demand everyone adhere to a hypothesis without proof.


No, a hypothesis is a part of a theory, but it's certainly not the whole thing. You can have a hypothesis without a theory. A theory accounts for some part of the data and then makes further predictions (i.e. hypotheses).

Presumably the best and strongest proponents of neurological gender believe that their theory accounts for some part of the data about gender. They also believe that the predictions about gender neurology are somewhat supported and will continue to accrue support.





> People have long been making the argument that a person's biology determines their personality. Racists, classists, and sexists love it. Phrenology is a classic pastime of bigots. Lots of people used the "innate tendencies" of the female brain to bar women from "men's work". Similar arguments were (and still are) used to justify slavery and segregation.
> 
> There is weak evidence to support it, and there is weak evidence to disprove it.
> 
> As a philosophical humanist, I am opposed to using ill defined pseudo-scientific hypothesis to label people or try and limit their behavior.
> 
> In my opinion, while there likely is some correlation between gender and brain structure, the human brain is far too plastic, and individual humans are far too varied, to make any sort of definitive claims about it, certainly not at our current level of technology.
> 
> On a personal level, this just feels oppressive and hurtful. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents and teachers forbid me from taking part in traditionally female activities (and usually questioned my sanity or sexuality in the process). But also as an adult, when my friends tell me that I am not "really trans" because I still enjoy many traditionally male activities.


Not being a proponent of neurological-gender-from-birth, I won't defend it. Others who participate in this forum might be. They can defend it better than me.

I will say that the "born this way" argument is popular not only for gender but for sexuality, too. Likely for similar reasons: a defense from supporters of conversion therapy and from homo- and transphobia. Whether or not it's a good defense is a different matter.





> How wouldn't it?
> 
> If someone had a female brain structure in an otherwise male body, I would label them intersex just like if they had, say, ovaries in an otherwise male body.


Cuz "intersex" refers to sexual characteristics. Like genitals and chromosomes and hormones. Hence the name. It doesn't refer to neurological characteristics.





> So, it seems like you are making a correlation between filling out a birth certificate and forcing gender roles on someone.
> 
> I have never seen it. I have had people try and force gender rolls on me countless times in my life, and not once have I ever had to tell them what was on my birth certificate, or what a doctor or my parents "assigned" me.
> 
> Would someone who was born in a developing nation without doctors and birth certificates still be "assigned" a gender at birth? What if the society has rigidly enforced gender rolls or no gender rolls at all? What if said person moved to a developed nation later in life and we tried to enforce out gender rolls on them? What if a "biological" girl was born to a mother who was stranded on an island and they had to fulfill both gender rolls as there was nobody else to rely upon, but they had never seen or even been told of the existence of males, is she still AFAB?


No, I wasn't talking about birth certificates at all. That was Juniper. We're different people and believe different things.  :Small Tongue: 

Sure, your gender marker on your birth certificate is a part of it, but that marker is neither necessary nor sufficient for the phenomenon of coercive gender assignment.

----------


## Rydiro

> But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I cant be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. Im angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.


Rejoice, because being seen as creepy is part of the male experience.
I'd suggest confidently standing to the things you do, without necessarily giving too much explanation.
Being insecure adds creepy vibes. Being at ease reduces them.
You don't owe A an explanation, you don't owe her sh**.
Likely she is envious that other people have a fun friendship.

----------


## Mr.Silver

> Are you referring to gender abolition? Silver mentioned it, too. I guess in some sense it's "progressive," but I'd argue that it has problems with transphobia and transmisogyny. (Not that I'm calling you or Talakeal gender abolitionists or transphobes, of course.)


Yeah, at the time (at least in my neck of the woods, may have been different schools of thought elsewhere) it was a position that the socially enforced gender designation should be done away with, both on anti-sexism grounds and because the definition of 'biological sex' the gender designation was (supposedly) based upon was too nebulous and irrelevent for the overwhelming majority of applications to be worth enshrining, as it were. On a progressive it did offer a few advantages, both in terms of being an attack on the justifications for a lot of sexism and because, ironically, it would allow for a lot more freedom in terms of gender-expression. But, yes, there was a pretty big hole in it wrt trans experiences, and I suspect it would probably have dropped out of a use in most circles even if transphobes hadn't claimed it.
I suppose there's a question as to how much modern "gender critical" transphobia is an outgrowth of this school of thought versus a hijacking of it, but I think we're well past the point where it matters either way.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

It might be worth pointing out that "gender" originally meant "the observable but non-tangible aspects of sex" when it was coined in the 50's. The "social roles" definition is the newer aspect.

You can observe someone's gender in the same way that you can observe any other emotion; you can feel happy or sad, and while some people are better than others at hiding it, you can tell when someone else is happy or sad (and understand their feelings through the lens of your own). We all make the decision to get out of bed in the morning (or not), we know everyone else does, and so we can be aware that the will to do something other than sleep all day exists.

----------


## TaiLiu

> The reason I was curious, though, was because I saw some virulently transphobic claptrap and started pushing back against it, only to realize that it'd be handy if I actually knew what I was talking about.  I figured that there's talk therapy before anything medical happens, and was curious where I could find out more about that.  Well before the medical interventions that transphobes keep fixating on.


Are you asking if there are any mandated psychological interventions before a trans person starts HRT or undergoes surgery?





> R told me that A is getting close to thinking either there is something she doesnt know (which is, of course, true) or Im just a creepy man and am trying to hit on R...
> 
> If it becomes an issue, Ill tell A the truth. But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I cant be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. Im angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.


I'm sorry, Kesnit. That's really unfair. If you do choose to tell, I hope it's a choice and not cuz A socially forces your hand.

Frankly, A should mind her own business and stop being so judgemental. It's your and R's relationship, not A's. Lots of people, for lots of (non-trans) reasons, act in ways that aren't seen as normal.





> On a progressive it did offer a few advantages, both in terms of being an attack on the justifications for a lot of sexism and because, ironically, it would allow for a lot more freedom in terms of gender-expression. But, yes, there was a pretty big hole in it wrt trans experiences, and I suspect it would probably have dropped out of a use in most circles even if transphobes hadn't claimed it.
> 
> I suppose there's a question as to how much modern "gender critical" transphobia is an outgrowth of this school of thought versus a hijacking of it, but I think we're well past the point where it matters either way.


Yeah, I think the core of gender abolition's pretty sound. But the inability to correctly account for people most vulnerable to gendered violence is a pretty big problem.





> It might be worth pointing out that "gender" originally meant "the observable but non-tangible aspects of sex" when it was coined in the 50's. The "social roles" definition is the newer aspect.


Oh, cool! I didn't know that.

----------


## halfeye

Old bad joke:

How do you tell a boy from a girl? Take down their genes (/jeans).

From so far back in the day that boys having long hair was currently new (again), and yes it was intended to be offensive then, but in a sort of different way.

----------


## Anymage

> Are you asking if there are any mandated psychological interventions before a trans person starts HRT or undergoes surgery?


Largely.  Also what sorts of things a competent therapist would want a person to know before medically transitioning, and possibly before social transition/large scale coming out.

Basically if someone came in whose primary sources of information were transphobic fearmongering about how transgenderism expected small children and confused young adults to jump right to medical transition (generally using much coarser language), I was curious what the actual process entailed for the purpose of calling out said fearmongering.

----------


## Kesnit

> Boys don't cry.


I am going back to this comment because I noticed something weird when I started hormones. Before, I could cry easily. After a while (can't remember how much time) on T, I couldn't. There would be times when I would WANT to cry, but could not force the tears to come. 




> For example, saying "it's a girl" creates the cultural assumption of pronouns and eventual romantic entanglement with boys. It was difficult for me to understand my own gender with the experience of "but... I don't really want to be romantically involved with boys, I want to be romantically involved with women" because at the time I was discovering that side of myself, it was the mid-90s and that was still culturally _far_ outside of the expected gender role for a woman.


I also came out in the mid-90s - and was engaged to a man when I did! 

I had an interesting conversation with a lesbian in her mid-20s recently. She never had a coming out because she always knew she's gay. In contrast, at some point when growing up in the 80s, I realized gay people exist. But there were none in my very tiny hometown* and I didn't meet a gay person until I went to college. (I played on my college women's rugby team, which I was told is a anomaly because the team was "mostly straight.") It never crossed my mind that I could be a lesbian**, even though in hindsight, I could see the signs. 


* In the decades since I graduated and moved away, I know of 2 other people near my age who have come out. But none of us were out in high school!

** I came out as a lesbian at age 20 and a transman at 30. 





> Question.  What does gender therapy actually entail?  Google is giving me a bunch of "how to find a gender therapist" and posts about the generalized benefits that gender therapy can provide, while I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.





> The reason I was curious, though, was because I saw some virulently transphobic claptrap and started pushing back against it, only to realize that it'd be handy if I actually knew what I was talking about.  I figured that there's talk therapy before anything medical happens, and was curious where I could find out more about that.  Well before the medical interventions that transphobes keep fixating on.
> 
> Edit:
> 
> 
> This, largely.  Again, my curiosity comes from a place of wanting to be informed when I tell transphobes just how wrong they are.





> Largely.  Also what sorts of things a competent therapist would want a person to know before medically transitioning, and possibly before social transition/large scale coming out.
> 
> Basically if someone came in whose primary sources of information were transphobic fearmongering about how transgenderism expected small children and confused young adults to jump right to medical transition (generally using much coarser language), I was curious what the actual process entailed for the purpose of calling out said fearmongering.


I don't know what therapists do today since I started my transition 16 years ago. I had been seeing my therapist for other issues for a while, so adding on gender dysphoria was just another topic.  :Small Big Grin:  She didn't have specific experience with gender issues so couldn't give me any help in that specific area. But she was able to work my gender issues in with the rest of the reasons I was seeing her. 

At the time, I was living in a location that had a clinic that specialized in medical issues for the queer community. The clinic did require a therapist letter before they would let people start HRT. (Obviously, I had a letter from my long-time therapist.) They were also gatekeeping a little harder than normal at the time because a character on The L Word had recently started transition and a lot more AFAB were coming in saying they wanted to be like Max. (I never watched The L Word, and when asked if my transition had anything to do with Max, I gave the nurse practitioner a weird look.) 

About 3 years after I started T, I moved to another state in order to go to law school. The school had a psychologist on-site to work with students (because law school is mentally tough). I went to her and asked if she knew any endocrinologists who take trans patients because I needed to find a doctor to prescribe my hormones. She wasn't able to point me towards one, even though I found out several years later that the local university had an active queer group and there were doctors in the area who did work with trans patients.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Largely.  Also what sorts of things a competent therapist would want a person to know before medically transitioning, and possibly before social transition/large scale coming out.


Most otherwise competent therapists are rather incompetent when it comes to trans stuff.




> Basically if someone came in whose primary sources of information were transphobic fearmongering about how transgenderism expected small children and confused young adults to jump right to medical transition (generally using much coarser language), I was curious what the actual process entailed for the purpose of calling out said fearmongering.


It depends on the country or state or province. My opinion (as well as the opinions of some other trans people) is that we can do with a little less gatekeeping re: these lifesaving medicines and surgeries. If someone's seriously committed to transphobia, talking about the gatekeeping that already exists will be ineffective. If someone isn't, but has transphobic beliefs, I think it'd be better to explain why it's important that trans people get bodily autonomy and choice.

Of course, I try not to talk with transphobes. So I'm shooting in the dark here.





> I am going back to this comment because I noticed something weird when I started hormones. Before, I could cry easily. After a while (can't remember how much time) on T, I couldn't. There would be times when I would WANT to cry, but could not force the tears to come.


Oh, interesting. I've definitely heard this before, as well as the other way around (estrogen eases crying). Personally, HRT hasn't really changed me emotionally, and I've been on it for several years. So either there's some body weirdness going on with me, or it's some kind of placebo effect related to our cultural beliefs around hormones.

Of course, "boys don't cry" is applied to literal babies, so I reckon it can't _just_ be hormones.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Rynjin

> Most otherwise competent therapists are rather incompetent when it comes to trans stuff.


Yeah, when it comes to any kind of medical care you're better off with a specialist. The mark of a good general practitioner is, in some ways, how well-networked they are and if they can properly refer you to a competent specialist.

(And of course have the insight to realize when a problem is beyond their expertise.)

----------


## TaiLiu

> Yeah, when it comes to any kind of medical care you're better off with a specialist. The mark of a good general practitioner is, in some ways, how well-networked they are and if they can properly refer you to a competent specialist.
> 
> (And of course have the insight to realize when a problem is beyond their expertise.)


Yeah, 100% agreed. This seems all right to me. Sucks that therapists who specialize with trans people are so rare. But mental health care is pretty hard to get in general. So people take what they can get.

----------


## Kesnit

I had a rather awkward conversation with my boss at lunch yesterday. 

It started with him saying when (not if, when) I trade my wife in on a "younger model," having kids would be expected. I glossed over the point that I CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN and pointed out that she and I have been married for 10 years and I have no intention of "trading her in." He commented back that his parents were married for 20 years before they divorced. 

Then he asked me if transmen who are trying to get pregnant have to go off hormones. I have no idea. It's never been something I thought about because I am never having children! 

Then he asked if it would have been possible for my wife and I to get pregnant at the same time when we first started dating. At this point, I did tell him I'd had surgery before I ever met her. 

But yeah, how did I get myself roped into that conversation????

----------


## LaZodiac

> I had a rather awkward conversation with my boss at lunch yesterday. 
> 
> It started with him saying when (not if, when) I trade my wife in on a "younger model," having kids would be expected. I glossed over the point that I CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN and pointed out that she and I have been married for 10 years and I have no intention of "trading her in." He commented back that his parents were married for 20 years before they divorced. 
> 
> Then he asked me if transmen who are trying to get pregnant have to go off hormones. I have no idea. It's never been something I thought about because I am never having children! 
> 
> Then he asked if it would have been possible for my wife and I to get pregnant at the same time when we first started dating. At this point, I did tell him I'd had surgery before I ever met her. 
> 
> But yeah, how did I get myself roped into that conversation????


Report him to whoever can strip the flesh from his bones for being a absolute ****ing creep *******. This man is the scum of human society.

----------


## Peelee

> I had a rather awkward conversation with my boss at lunch yesterday. 
> 
> It started with him saying when (not if, when) I trade my wife in on a "younger model," having kids would be expected. I glossed over the point that I CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN and pointed out that she and I have been married for 10 years and I have no intention of "trading her in." He commented back that his parents were married for 20 years before they divorced. 
> 
> Then he asked me if transmen who are trying to get pregnant have to go off hormones. I have no idea. It's never been something I thought about because I am never having children! 
> 
> Then he asked if it would have been possible for my wife and I to get pregnant at the same time when we first started dating. At this point, I did tell him I'd had surgery before I ever met her. 
> 
> But yeah, how did I get myself roped into that conversation????


That seems like a good question for HR.

----------


## Rynjin

> That seems like a good question for HR.


Yeah. LPT, you can get HR involved for just about anything that is none of your nosy coworker's business, but if even the vaguest hint of sexuality is involved, even tangentially, it's a sure-fire way to get them reprimanded and in retraining pronto.

Companies really like not being sued. It's like their second favorite thing after making money.

----------


## TaiLiu

> But yeah, how did I get myself roped into that conversation????


Yikes. That sucks a lot. It especially sucks that he's your boss.

----------


## Talakeal

@TaiLiu:

Sorry I didnt respond to you in more depth, been busy with moving, and I was obviously getting your position mixed up with Junipers (not to mention twitter randos).

Still trying to figure out this whole gender thing, but just when I think I have it figured out I read something that further confuses me.


Out of curiosity, I am starting to feel like gender is to sex as culture is to race. Does that make sense to anyone else?

----------


## halfeye

> Out of curiosity, I am starting to feel like gender is to sex as culture is to race. Does that make sense to anyone else?


Nope. I don't understand any of the four. Race is a non-thing really, people can and do breed with any other people. I hate fashion and I fear culture is just another word for fashion.

----------


## Murk

I think there are some nice similarities between the two sets, in that the meaning of "race" and "culture" also differ depending on the language used (and ironically, the culture of the person speaking/hearing the word). 
Without going into too much detail, "race" in American English seems to mean something very different from the English I've been taught. 

But of course it's true for almost all words that their meaning will differ from person to person.

----------


## Sigako

> Out of curiosity, I am starting to feel like gender is to sex as culture is to race. Does that make sense to anyone else?


Not really: discrete race is proven to be a bogus concept, culture is explicitly taught and can be switched at will (not easily, mind, but it's possible), and isn't really discrete as well, sex is physically defined and usually falls into discrete binary scale, hermaphrodites and other exceptions being relatively rare, and gender is mostly in-born too, even though more of a continuum, otherwise there wouldn't be any need for SRS in the first place, as any sort of gender dysphoria would only need psychotherapy and counseling in this case.


Also, I vaguely recall the gender identity being unfalsifiable as a feature and an explicit point of some definitions, though I cannot remember why it was done so (if I ever knew).

----------


## TaiLiu

> @TaiLiu:
> 
> Sorry I didnt respond to you in more depth, been busy with moving, and I was obviously getting your position mixed up with Junipers (not to mention twitter randos).


No worries. I was in fact defending Juniper's position, so I get the confusion.




> Still trying to figure out this whole gender thing, but just when I think I have it figured out I read something that further confuses me.
> 
> Out of curiosity, I am starting to feel like gender is to sex as culture is to race. Does that make sense to anyone else?


No. Adding more vague and hotly debated constructs arguably confuses the issue more.  :Small Tongue: 





> gender is mostly in-born too, even though more of a continuum, otherwise there wouldn't be any need for SRS in the first place, as any sort of gender dysphoria would only need psychotherapy and counseling in this case.


I don't think that follows, but I get the intuition. It's one of the reasons I used to subscribe to the neurological gender argument.

----------


## Talakeal

So, another confusing thing I got off twitter the other day. A transwoman who had just undergone feminization surgery was complaining about the term "feminization" because in their mind they were always a woman, and therefore everything about them was, by definition, completely feminine.

Which again, to me is the epitome of a meaningless circular argument, but at the same time is about the only definition of gender identity I ever see. The equivalent of "I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!"





> No worries. I was in fact defending Juniper's position


That's what I thought.




> No. Adding more vague and hotly debated constructs arguably confuses the issue more.


You don't understand or you don't agree?

If the former, the idea is that sex and race are both collections of anatomical traits that are generally shared by a certain population of humans, and that gender and culture are a certain set of behaviors that are generally shared by a certain set of humans, and people often conflate sex with gender and race with culture.

Of course, that really doesn't have anything to do with "gender identity" which is what I am really trying to wrap my head around.

----------


## halfeye

> You don't understand or you don't agree?
> 
> If the former, the idea is that sex and race are both collections of anatomical traits that are generally shared by a certain population of humans, and that gender and culture are a certain set of behaviors that are generally shared by a certain set of humans, and people often conflate sex with gender and race with culture.
> 
> Of course, that really doesn't have anything to do with "gender identity" which is what I am really trying to wrap my head around.


In my case, I don't agree. A race is something mystical that is shared by some population, that excludes all people not of that population. There is no such thing in human genetics. There are genetic aberations that occur at random in all populations, and there are genes that are more common in some populations than others, but I am unaware of any genes that are exclusive to any particular populations.

----------


## Talakeal

> In my case, I don't agree. A race is something mystical that is shared by some population, that excludes all people not of that population. There is no such thing in human genetics. There are genetic aberations that occur at random in all populations, and there are genes that are more common in some populations than others, but I am unaware of any genes that are exclusive to any particular populations.


I agree. Nothing in biology is so precise.

Still, there are enough shared anatomical characteristics, that I imagine most people can guess what region of the world most peoples ancestors can from by looking at them.

Race and sex arent a 1 to 1 comparison for sure, I am not trying to make that claim, what I am pondering is how closely the link between sex and gender is akin to the link between race and culture.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

Gender was (apologies if I've already said it) coined to mean the aspects of sex which weren't tangible, but were observable.

Consider emotions. You know "happy" means. If someone feels happy, they recognise the feeling. Some people are better than others at hiding how they feel, but overall, if someone's happy you can tell from their behaviour. People instinctively understand that interacting with someone when they're happy is different to when they're sad. People understand that some people feel happy more often that others.

It's hard to pin down what it is, but it's clearly there.

And yet, if you were to try and explain what it means to be happy, your choices are; a) "I dunno, I just feel happy" or b) absurdly complicated philosophy.

A trans person (and to a lesser extent a cis person)'s gender can be observed through euphoria or dysphoria in a similar way. We know it exists, even if we can't quite explain where it comes from.

----------


## Rater202

My current understanding of gender is a concept that humans made up. the definition is entirely arbitrary and subject to both change over time and extreme variance in interpretation by distinct individuals.

It's really only important for social reasons, and honestly, those social reasons can go screw themselves for all I care, and for the psychological reason of "identifying as this gender makes me feel good/bad on the inside."

At the end of the day the only definition of gender that matters is the one that makes you happy.

----------


## Talakeal

> My current understanding of gender is a concept that humans made up. the definition is entirely arbitrary and subject to both change over time and extreme variance in interpretation by distinct individuals.
> 
> It's really only important for social reasons, and honestly, those social reasons can go screw themselves for all I care, and for the psychological reason of "identifying as this gender makes me feel good/bad on the inside."
> 
> At the end of the day the only definition of gender that matters is the one that makes you happy.


I would 100% agree with you but the problem is that we can no longer discus sex without having to detangle it from gender.


I also get a lot of gatekeeping from friends who say that because I currently think of myself as a man, I will always be a man, no matter what I do to transition, which is a weird ideological horseshoe that starts to sound a lot like transphobic people telling me that Because I was born with a Y chromosome I will always be a man no matter what I do to transition.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> I also get a lot of gatekeeping from friends who say that because I currently think of myself as a man, I will always be a man, no matter what I do to transition, which is a weird ideological horseshoe that starts to sound a lot like transphobic people telling me that Because I was born with a Y chromosome I will always be a man no matter what I do to transition.


Bah! I flit between man, woman, agender, and pissoff with regularity, and my body shape, tone of voice, chromosomes, genitals, or anything else have nothing to do with it.

Although if I lose a lot of weight I'm going to look into HRT. But one thing at a time, and the weight is more important.

So screw them, our thought process is yours, and not theirs. Human gender (and sexuality) is not as solid and unchanging as people think. If you ever stop thinking of yourself as a man and start thinking of yourself as a woman then congratulations, you are now a woman, whether or not anything has changed

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> If you ever stop thinking of yourself as a man and start thinking of yourself as a woman then congratulations, you are no a woman, whether or not anything has changed


I think our anonymously magely friend meant _now_ a woman, from context.  :Small Tongue: 

But this sentiment is also correct. It can be complicated, but if you decide tomorrow that you are a woman, you are a woman just as surely as me. Someone who knew their gender from a young age is just as valid as someone who only recently discovered it, and while there are definitely different experiences living as a cis woman compared to a trans woman, that does not invalidate either of their womanhood. (Ditto trans men, nonbinary folks, genderfluid friends, and so forth.)

----------


## TaiLiu

> You don't understand or you don't agree?
> 
> If the former, the idea is that sex and race are both collections of anatomical traits that are generally shared by a certain population of humans, and that gender and culture are a certain set of behaviors that are generally shared by a certain set of humans, and people often conflate sex with gender and race with culture.
> 
> Of course, that really doesn't have anything to do with "gender identity" which is what I am really trying to wrap my head around.


Both, but now just the latter. That you think race is a biological kind, though, suggests that we really do live in different worlds with different conceptual constructs. 




> I also get a lot of gatekeeping from friends who say that because I currently think of myself as a man, I will always be a man, no matter what I do to transition, which is a weird ideological horseshoe that starts to sound a lot like transphobic people telling me that Because I was born with a Y chromosome I will always be a man no matter what I do to transition.


Your friends sound unsupportive.

----------


## Talakeal

> Both, but now just the latter. That you think race is a biological kind, though, suggests that we really do live in different worlds with different conceptual constructs.


Not sure if I would say that it is a biological kind, just that groups in different parts of the world have different tendencies with a high enough statistical frequency that you can usually tell by looking at someone where their ancestors are from.




> Your friends sound unsupportive.


For sure. Although I think they are trying to be supportive, just doing it by adamantly supporting a single trans narrative that they have picked up somewhere along the way.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Not sure if I would say that it is a biological kind, just that groups in different parts of the world have different tendencies with a high enough statistical frequency that you can usually tell by looking at someone where their ancestors are from.


Oh, I see. I guess I don't have that skill, although that might be cuz I have trouble with faces. Like, I can usually tell when someone's white or Black or something. But no way can I pinpoint Italy or Haiti or other ancestral origins.




> For sure. Although I think they are trying to be supportive, just doing it by adamantly supporting a single trans narrative that they have picked up somewhere along the way.


Maybe the knows-from-childhood narrative?

----------


## Talakeal

> Oh, I see. I guess I don't have that skill, although that might be cuz I have trouble with faces. Like, I can usually tell when someone's white or Black or something. But no way can I pinpoint Italy or Haiti or other ancestral origins.


Yeah, most people can't narrow it down that close unless they are very familiar with said populations, but I think pretty much everyone can, as you say, tell when someone's white or black or something.




> Maybe the knows-from-childhood narrative?


Yeah, that's definitely one. I personally didn't really suspect I was genderqueer until college (although looking back I can sure see the signs in retrospect) but several of my friends insists that all transpeople are born that way and always know from early childhood.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Yeah, that's definitely one. I personally didn't really suspect I was genderqueer until college (although looking back I can sure see the signs in retrospect) but several of my friends insists that all transpeople are born that way and always know from early childhood.


Yeah, that one's a really old narrative. I wonder where it came from.

----------


## LaZodiac

Another fun win for us; Bridget is back in Guilty Gear and her story mode is her coming to grips with the fact, and choosing by her own will to be, a trans girl.

----------


## Talakeal

> Yeah, that one's a really old narrative. I wonder where it came from.


Yeah. One of my friends brother medically transitioned and is now his sister. But my friend still insists that she isnt really trans because she didnt realize she was trans until almost thirty and their family friend, who is a child psychologist, corroborates this because je never exhibited any of the signs of gender dysphoria growing up. 

And I hear him talk like this, and am just like so what do you think about me who is almost forty and still hasnt medically transitioned. What do I have to do to be really trans in your eyes?

----------


## Rater202

It sounds like your friend has a toxic attitude and is trying to gatekeep being trans.

----------


## BladeofObliviom

It also just isn't always obvious, even in first person. It didn't 'click' for me until around my 25th birthday but in retrospect, like. In second grade I once asked if I could be on the girls team instead for some stupid playground boys vs girls thing (and the girls were like "sure why not welcome aboard").

----------


## Talakeal

> It also just isn't always obvious, even in first person. It didn't 'click' for me until around my 25th birthday but in retrospect, like. In second grade I once asked if I could be on the girls team instead for some stupid playground boys vs girls thing (and the girls were like "sure why not welcome aboard").


Oh yeah, I always asked to be on the girls team in grade school.

Like I said, there were a lot of signs in retrospect.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> It also just isn't always obvious, even in first person. It didn't 'click' for me until around my 25th birthday but in retrospect, like. In second grade I once asked if I could be on the girls team instead for some stupid playground boys vs girls thing (and the girls were like "sure why not welcome aboard").


I wanted to be a girl until I wassomewhere between 8 and 10, never had an issue with wearing women's clothes or looking feminine, got occasional very mild dysphoria, and some other things. Realised I wasn't exactly cis in my early twenties but it took until I was about 25 to realise I don't fit on either end of the spectrum except when I do. Even then it took me a while to work out what I actually am (which I'd describe as agender fluid*). And I still occasionally misgender myself through sheer force habit. Meanwhile I've known people go from genderqueer to trans and from trans to genderqueer.

I think the sheer cisnormativity of society can lead to us dismissing our identities. It took somebody making a joke related to Ru Paul's Drag Race for me to work it out, to the surprise of pretty much none of my friends (as to family most don't give a rat's arse either way, one of my siblings probably worked it out ten years before I did and another is alsoGQ).

* I'm GF, but I spend most of my time as neither mae or female.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> Another fun win for us; Bridget is back in Guilty Gear and her story mode is her coming to grips with the fact, and choosing by her own will to be, a trans girl.


Yeah! I saw that. It's lovely to see some sort of, hmm... rep go to actual, unambiguous rep. ^_^

----------


## DarthArminius

Speaking of trans rights, I have never been trans but I remember getting so much terrible back lash as a little boy wanting to be a girl. I don't understand why people can't move on past other people's differences. 
I have never been a hyper masculine, donkey balled party freak who gets all the girls (or guys), why can't people just respect one another?

----------


## Mr.Silver

> Yeah, that one's a really old narrative. I wonder where it came from.


My working hypothesis is that it's related to the 'born this way' conception of sexuality, in that its function as a rebuttal to the common "you're just confused/it's just a phase" denials and dismissals might play a bit of a roll in it. 

Admittedly my perspective might be a little unusual on this, since I didn't know it was even possible to be what I am until my mid-twenties and so just chalked-up my (fairly severe) dysphoria as 'atypical depression symptoms' for years. With hindsight, yes it's pretty obvious my brain knew _something_ was off about my assigned gender but I don't think I can honestly say I 'always knew I was non-binary' without adopting a rather creative definiton of 'knew'.




> Another fun win for us; Bridget is back in Guilty Gear and her story mode is her coming to grips with the fact, and choosing by her own will to be, a trans girl.





> Yeah! I saw that. It's lovely to see some sort of, hmm... rep go to actual, unambiguous rep. ^_^


Yeah, it's pretty cool. I found it surprisingly affecting, especially considering I don't have any real experience with Guilty Gear stuff. Not quite as big an effect as seeing Testament when they got added, but then Testament is essentially 'what my teenage self wanted to see every time they looked in a mirror but was too repressed/closeted to articulate' made manifest and put in an anime fighting game  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Kesnit

> Admittedly my perspective might be a little unusual on this, since I didn't know it was even possible to be what I am until my mid-twenties and so just chalked-up my (fairly severe) dysphoria as 'atypical depression symptoms' for years. With hindsight, yes it's pretty obvious my brain knew _something_ was off about my assigned gender but I don't think I can honestly say I 'always knew I was non-binary' without adopting a rather creative definiton of 'knew'.


I agree with this. 

Growing up, I knew theoretically that gay people existed. There were gay characters in books I read and I would occasionally read something about it in the news. But being gay in the tiny town where I grew up "just didn't happen."* After I came out as a lesbian (age 20), I could look back and see the signs, but was completely oblivious at the time. Even after I came out as a lesbian, and I knew trans people existed, it never occurred to me that I may be one. I was happy being a butch lesbian, right..? Like, really butch... And everyone is amused when they are misgendered, right? It just means I'm comfortable in my butchness, right? It took until I met and got to know a transwoman (when I was 30) that I came face to face with what I had really been feeling all those years. 


* I've learned in the past few years about 2 other people I went to high school with who have come out. Three may not seem like a lot, but it is a major thing.

----------


## BladeofObliviom

> * I've learned in the past few years about 2 other people I went to high school with who have come out. Three may not seem like a lot, but it is a major thing.


Super relatable. I'm up to five people from high school that I know of who now identify as transgender and/or nonbinary, though I've only really kept in contact with a couple.

----------


## Kesnit

> Super relatable. I'm up to five people from high school that I know of who now identify as transgender and/or nonbinary, though I've only really kept in contact with a couple.


To be clear, the other two from my high school are gay. I'm the only TG or nonbinary (that I know of).

----------


## Anonymouswizard

No idea about people from my secondary school, but from my uni friend group one other person has come out as NB, I think one other person might be NB, we're not sure about another person because of various factors stopping their transition, and I think everybody is pan.

----------


## BladeofObliviom

> To be clear, the other two from my high school are gay. I'm the only TG or nonbinary (that I know of).


Oh I see! That's...gonna be a bigger number then lol. I can think of a dozen lgbt people from my high school without breaking a sweat. Some of them were even openly so at the time. I'm beginning to wonder if my school is an outlier or if I just had a large social circle though.

----------


## Kesnit

> Oh I see! That's...gonna be a bigger number then lol. I can think of a dozen lgbt people from my high school without breaking a sweat. Some of them were even openly so at the time. I'm beginning to wonder if my school is an outlier or if I just had a large social circle though.


Depends on a lot of factors. 

Im in my mid-40s. LGBT issues were not as mainstream when I was growing up as they are now. (I came out before Ellen) I talked to a lesbian in her mid-20s not long ago who told me she never had to come out because she always knew she is gay. The whole concept of gay issues being so prevalent that someone can be aware and know so young blows my mind.

Also, I grew up in a really rural area. (My graduating class was 102 people.) My first exposure to anything gay-related was when I read a book with lesbian secondary characters when I was 13. Someone who grew up in a more urban or suburban area is more likely to encounter a gay person than I was. (That same mid-20s lesbian grew up in a large city in the western US.)

----------


## BladeofObliviom

That also makes sense. I'm in my later 20s and my graduating class was five times that size, so...fair.

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

Everyone learns at different times. I knew I liked women from the time when I was old enough to process being attracted to _anyone_, and because my mom came out around that same time, I always identified that way from a young age... even though it always seemed to me that if there was a man who was attracted to me, well, I'd be flattered, I'm not opposed to the idea, but that's normal, right? It wasn't until my early 30s that I realized I was actually bisexual, even if I still lean toward women and lesbian relationships most of the time. We all are growing and learning at our own pace, and the idea that you need to figure it out from early life for it to be valid is just nonsensical.

----------


## TaiLiu

I really appreciate seeing everyone's stories about realization. I realized I wasn't straight and cis when I was a child... but only after reading about people with similar experiences and feelings. Like others here, I certainly didn't "always know."




> Yeah. One of my friendsÂ brother medically transitioned and is now his sister. But my friend still insists that she isnÂt Âreally transÂ because she didnÂt realize she was trans until almost thirty and their family friend, who is a child psychologist, corroborates this because je never exhibited any of the signs of gender dysphoria growing up. 
> 
> And I hear him talk like this, and am just like so what do you think about me who is almost forty and still hasnÂt medically transitioned. What do I have to do to be ÂreallyÂ trans in your eyes?


Echoing everyone else. That really sucks, and it really sucks that their friend is getting support from another. I feel for you and for his sister.





> My working hypothesis is that it's related to the 'born this way' conception of sexuality, in that its function as a rebuttal to the common "you're just confused/it's just a phase" denials and dismissals might play a bit of a roll in it. 
> 
> Admittedly my perspective might be a little unusual on this, since I didn't know it was even possible to be what I am until my mid-twenties and so just chalked-up my (fairly severe) dysphoria as 'atypical depression symptoms' for years. With hindsight, yes it's pretty obvious my brain knew _something_ was off about my assigned gender but I don't think I can honestly say I 'always knew I was non-binary' without adopting a rather creative definiton of 'knew'.


Yeah, that might be right. But it only really works for a portion of trans people, so I think we're in agreement that it's a shoddy defense.

----------


## DarthArminius

How do other gay guys in the playground deal with not ever having a boyfriend ever?

----------


## 137beth

> And I hear him talk like this, and am just like so what do you think about me who is almost forty and still hasnt medically transitioned. What do I have to do to be really trans in your eyes?


With that kind of person, you'll never be "good enough."  If you meet some criteria for being "truly trans," they'll just move the goalpost.

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> With that kind of person, you'll never be "good enough."  If you meet some criteria for being "truly trans," they'll just move the goalpost.


Seconding this, and it's sadly not unique to cis people (although it is far, _far_ more common there). A good friend of mine got dumped by her girlfriend because said girlfriend hadn't transitioned enough, and her girlfriend claimed she couldn't go through the pain of the early stages of transition again... despite the fact that she herself was trans and was no stranger to being seen as insufficiently feminine. Not someone I'm fond of.

Trans women are women, and if you can't accept them at the start of their transition, you're not going to suddenly accept them later on either.

----------


## Dire Moose

Long post, but I was feeling like finally bringing some closure to this.

It was June of 2015. A friend of mine participated in a bizarre sort of contest in which (among other things) he was forced to dress up as a girl, put on makeup and shave his legs. Like everyone else, I thought it was hilarious. But I alone couldnt help but be disappointed, wishing that could have been me instead. On kind of a whim afterward, I tried shaving off all my body hair. The soft and smooth feeling was amazing, like taking off a layer of clothing I never knew I had been wearing. But I found myself wishing I could take it farther. In my mind, it was much better, but still not as good as having a female body would be.

As a result of that, memories from my teen years started resurfacing, and I found my mind wandering to old, forgotten fantasies. Over the next few months, I thought back to my passion for gender transformation stories and wishing I could transform myself as well. Because of my prior experience in LGBT circles, I had met people who had transitioned genders before, and so I was aware that it was possible to do so without magic or mad science. So I made a post on an online community asking whether it might be a good idea to try crossdressing at some point.

After that, I started low-key working on the idea of making myself look more androgynous and maybe secretly getting a few female clothes to test the idea out. This led me to start pondering the question of,  So wait, what gender am I, really? I posted up more about the turmoil I was going through, and eventually asked myself a sort of armor-piercing question on October 20, 2015:  If I could have any kind of body I wanted, apart from any social or cultural pressure, what would I want?

Admitting I would rather be a woman than a man was a shock to my system. I struggled with whether this was true, what to do with the revelation, what my friends and family would think, and how it would affect my life. I wrestled with my identity for quite a while, seeking help from this forum, an online trans community, a therapist they recommended and two different IRL support groups, but none of them were able to help me figure things out.

So I made another post in early 2016 letting everyone know I would be stepping back from the issue for the sake of my own sanity. I spent the next year or two putting my gender confusion out of my mind, and managed to calm down. I was afraid of doing anything about it at that point, as I was afraid that if I did I would inevitably end up losing myself and becoming a woman forever. I simply didnt know how I could live like that. But I couldnt bury those feelings forever.

In October 2017, about nine months after I married my spouse, Mariah (who is also trans), I found myself growing curious again about being female. I had finally started to accept that it was possible to not have to be one gender or the other permanently, and that I wouldnt be doing any harm by trying out a new gender. With a lot of support from Mariah, I started presenting myself as a woman in public to see how it felt. And it felt good. I had intended to simply switch presentations to suit how I felt at the time, and for the moment, it seemed to be working.

A month later, things werent looking so good. I had come out to my friends and family as genderfluid and most of them were supportive, but I wasnt happy with how it had turned out. I felt like a fraud, like I was just a man cosplaying as a woman, because once the wig and clothes came off at the end of the day, I was left as a man. And I didnt look feminine enough to myself even when dressed as a woman sometimes. I broke down crying about it one night, and Mariah couldnt console me with her words. We both realized that more was needed. At the time, Mariah still had some of her injection meds left over from before she switched to pills, so I ended up taking my first dose of estrogen that night.

Things proceeded quickly from there. I saw a new therapist for the next few months, and she helped me work out a lot of what was bothering me. I was set up on estrogen officially in the spring of 2018. But as time went on, I found myself spending less and less time as male, often just presenting male at work and changing right after. That was even over by the end of 2018; I came out at work in November. By the end of the year, I stopped presenting male entirely, and in July 2019, I had my name and gender changed on my legal documents too.

All has been pretty quiet since then, and as of now I have stopped even using they/them pronouns and exclusively use she/her. I still have some element of a male side, but its purely mental, and not relevant to my day-to-day presentation. As it turns out, I have realized that I am actually a woman and I will remain one forever. I never lost myself in the process, but instead I found a deeper and truer self than before. Thank you all for staying with me and supporting me through this long and difficult journey, and I hope you found this helpful.

----------


## DarthArminius

> Long post, but I was feeling like finally bringing some closure to this.
> 
> It was June of 2015. A friend of mine participated in a bizarre sort of contest in which (among other things) he was forced to dress up as a girl, put on makeup and shave his legs. Like everyone else, I thought it was hilarious. But I alone couldnt help but be disappointed, wishing that could have been me instead. On kind of a whim afterward, I tried shaving off all my body hair. The soft and smooth feeling was amazing, like taking off a layer of clothing I never knew I had been wearing. But I found myself wishing I could take it farther. In my mind, it was much better, but still not as good as having a female body would be.
> 
> As a result of that, memories from my teen years started resurfacing, and I found my mind wandering to old, forgotten fantasies. Over the next few months, I thought back to my passion for gender transformation stories and wishing I could transform myself as well. Because of my prior experience in LGBT circles, I had met people who had transitioned genders before, and so I was aware that it was possible to do so without magic or mad science. So I made a post on an online community asking whether it might be a good idea to try crossdressing at some point.
> 
> After that, I started low-key working on the idea of making myself look more androgynous and maybe secretly getting a few female clothes to test the idea out. This led me to start pondering the question of,  So wait, what gender am I, really? I posted up more about the turmoil I was going through, and eventually asked myself a sort of armor-piercing question on October 20, 2015:  If I could have any kind of body I wanted, apart from any social or cultural pressure, what would I want?
> 
> Admitting I would rather be a woman than a man was a shock to my system. I struggled with whether this was true, what to do with the revelation, what my friends and family would think, and how it would affect my life. I wrestled with my identity for quite a while, seeking help from this forum, an online trans community, a therapist they recommended and two different IRL support groups, but none of them were able to help me figure things out.
> ...



I can't speak about being trans, I'm not trans, but I can say as someone who's different from even a lot of gay people, watch out for people that will demonize for being ex trans or whatever, just because you aren't them.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> Long post, but I was feeling like finally bringing some closure to this.
> 
> [snip]


I have a similar experience, in that I crossdressed as a kid, and came out as agender before working out I was a trans woman at about 25-ish (ironically, one of the reasons I worked it out was because someone on an online forum assumed I was assigned female at birth, and tried misgendering me with she/her pronouns when I asked people to use they/them).

Speaking of, I've just had my oestrogen bumped up to 8mg a day from 6mg a few days ago, and I can't describe how, but I feel amazing!

----------


## Talakeal

@ Dire Moose 

I wish I had the courage and support that you do.

/love

----------


## DarthArminius

There are tons of issues getting in the way of me being who I really am in real life. This sucks ass.

I'm sorry if I'm kind of a broken record but can I talk with someone in PM?

----------


## Dire Moose

> @ Dire Moose 
> 
> I wish I had the courage and support that you do.
> 
> /love


I was a terrified mess when I first realized who I was and I didnt have the proper support in place either. As much as it may seem like Im a brilliant success story, it was a lot darker and messier than it might seem looking back. You may be surprised by this, but I still have doubts about myself that flare up every now and then.

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> There are tons of issues getting in the way of me being who I really am in real life. This sucks ass.
> 
> I'm sorry if I'm kind of a broken record but can I talk with someone in PM?


I'm late to the response and may or may not be the sort of person you need to speak with, but I'm willing to offer whatever insight I have to folks who need it.




> Speaking of, I've just had my oestrogen bumped up to 8mg a day from 6mg a few days ago, and I can't describe how, but I feel amazing!


That's wonderful! Remember, ladies, if your body isn't producing the hormones you need naturally, store-bought is fine.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Long post, but I was feeling like finally bringing some closure to this... Thank you all for staying with me and supporting me through this long and difficult journey, and I hope you found this helpful.


I remember seeing some of your old posts and in some sense I've followed your trajectory from genderfluid to (relatively binary) trans woman. I'm glad to hear that it's gone so well.

----------


## Rater202

Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?

----------


## halfeye

> Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?


I believe it does. Other humans are way too much aggro.

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## TaiLiu

> Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?


Grey ace or ace, sure. Not the sexuality gatekeeper, though.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Anymage

> Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?


Yes.  But also not really relevant.  "Dating isn't worth the bother" communicates the basic idea to most people in five words.  "Gray ace" in two, but for anyone who isn't in spaces that regularly discuss fine shading of sexuality-space you'll likely be asked to elaborate and that'll likely take more than three words.

I guess my question back is why you're asking.  If it's for yourself, you're free to define yourself however you like.  If it's for discussing people who like to talk about the fine details of gender and sexuality, the answer is generally yes but also those people like to discuss things to death so you'll likely be asked to elaborate regardless.  (Unless you run into a pocket of people who are gatekeepy and one-true-way-ish, in which case remove yourself as soon as you reasonably can.)  If it's for people outside those spaces, I only say no because there are likely better ways to match the idea to the audience's vocabulary.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?


TBH, that sounds like my deal, and ace is how I describe myself.

Specifically the label I use is "Sex indifferent asexual" (the alternatives to sex indifferent being "sex repulsed" and "sex positive"; meaning not wanting sex at all, and willing to seek out sexual encounters despite the absence of sexual attraction receptively), meaning I wouldn't be opposed to it, but I don't seem the point of seeking it out (and I don't find people sexually attractive).

And all I have to say to people who're wondering if they're "really asexual" is; you know how allo people act when sex is on the table in sitcoms and dramas? That's not an exaggeration or artistic licence, apparently.

----------


## Lycunadari

The most common definition of asexuality is usually "experiences little/no sexual attraction", but personally I prefer the more open "experiences sex or sexual attraction in a way that's different from how allosexual people are expected to experience it". So "I don't find people sexually attractive" falls under it, but so does "I just don't care about sex", "I'm only attracted to fictional characters", "I can't tell the difference between sexual attraction and other kinds of attraction" or "trying to figure out if I'm ace or not is just to much work".

----------


## Rater202

"I am capable of sexual attraction but do not see acting on such as worth it."

----------


## Lycunadari

> "I am capable of sexual attraction but do not see acting on such as worth it."


Yup, counts as ace if you want it to (I always see identity words as opt-in)! :Small Smile:

----------


## Domino Quartz

So, I came out to a family member (my brother) as bisexual earlier today. He was very accepting. He basically said something more or less to the effect that as long as everybody involved in a given situation is a consenting adult, it's fine as far as he's concerned. It made me very happy.

----------


## TaiLiu

> So, I came out to a family member (my brother) as bisexual earlier today. He was very accepting. He basically said something more or less to the effect that as long as everybody involved in a given situation is a consenting adult, it's fine as far as he's concerned. It made me very happy.


That's great!  :Small Smile:

----------


## Dire Moose

> I remember seeing some of your old posts and in some sense I've followed your trajectory from genderfluid to (relatively binary) trans woman. I'm glad to hear that it's gone so well.


Thank you. Im happy with where things are going, even if the road has been rough.

----------


## enderlord99

Sock, Ray, Blue

----------


## theangelJean

Hiya all, haven't been active in the thread for years. I catch up now and then. Good to see you all "still going strong" like the thread title says. 

Virtual hugs to anyone who's not _feeling_  strong, you can find me in the same place emotionally because I've lived here for 40 years, insecurity is a figurative load of **** that we carry on our shoulders, backs and heads until we're exhausted and dump it all over someone. I'm still here anyway, you're still here and we made it this far. That's got to be worth something.




> Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?


This speaks to me so much right now. I don't personally identify as ace but I definitely have a low sex drive. I happen to be cis-het and married so it shouldn't be a big deal, right, it's _normal_ for women, right? Stuff that, there is no normal. 

In my case this thread helped me many years ago to figure out that I was demisexual. I will strike up a deep and meaningful conversation with just about anyone, and have recently started wondering if I'm panromantic, but actual arousal quite often feels like too much effort. Not for any lack of intimacy - my husband and I are closer emotionally than ever, kisses are great, and holding hands is my favourite thing which I'm so lucky to get to do every night. And don't get me wrong, it _is_ fun when I do deliberately put myself in to the mindset, relax, let my body do its thing ... It just takes a lot of mental effort to get there and I don't seek it out. I am wondering if part of is how much I have been out of touch with my body and stuck in my head, which is partly inattentive type ADHD and partly flat-out ignoring my body out of habit. 
And that's playing on "twenty year established relationship" easy mode - if I weren't partnered, I would be physically attracted to precisely zero people and it would be that much more work to get to the point of even "wanting" sex, much less enjoying it. Add in my husband being definitely allo and my base insecurity, and I go back to my default state of feeling like I am just not enough (but that's another story which is entirely to do with me rather than him, which I'll dump on you all in future posts)

So, err, I don't know exactly what place you are at the moment, Rater202, but you've managed to encapsulate precisely where I am right now, so thank you. And you're not alone. And sure, you could call it a type of ace, if you felt like it. Personally I like being overly specific (see: the above wall of text) so I feel like "demi" describes me better and you might not feel the same. But that feeling of "yes sex exists, cool, but it's _so much work_" is definitely there.

----------


## Rater202

> So, err, I don't know exactly what place you are at the moment, Rater202.


Well, it started a couple of years ago when Lazodiac commented based on some things I said that sh thought I might be nonbinary...

...And it ended with me thinking that the entire concept of Gender is complete bull**** coupled with the realization that I have never been attracted to someone in a way that wasn't either childish infatuation or base physical attraction and even with physical attraction the idea of actually being with someone sounds like too much work given that even a "casual" relationship requires a lot of upkeep and that human bodies are kind of icky.

I have no idea what labels most accurately apply if any, and honestly, I can't decide if there are too many labels or not enough for any given thing.

I did discover Voidpunk during all of this, which was my "there's a name for it" moment.

----------


## theangelJean

Thanks for replying, I did actually want to know where you were coming from, even if my post was all about me :p

There are a few different ideas to discuss in your post, but I'm going to resist the urge to go over them point by point - let me know if you want to hear that bit. For now, I'll skip most of them and come back to them later. 

What stood out to me was the way you think of your attractions to people: you describe them as 


> childish infatuation or base physical attraction


Whatever it is that you feel/have felt in terms of emotional or physical attraction - without sticking labels on them - I get the sense that you don't like the way you feel/felt. Am I hearing you right? 

(And if I'm right, well fair enough, you don't have to like your feelings. I certainly have plenty I don't like.)

I'm going to tease apart your phrasing a little more:



> I have never been attracted to someone in a way that wasn't <snip>


You definitely have a sense that there's something more out there that you haven't experienced. My question now is, are you looking at what you feel and have felt in the past, and already judging it as inadequate, or maybe just "not enough"?

(Story of my life, by the way. I realised recently that every single thought, feeling and even principle I have ever had can be boiled down to the idea of "not enough". )

Because if you're feeling that way, I'll just point out that there's a difference in concept between
- "What I have/had isn't everything"  there is more out there
- "What I feel/felt is not the same as other people's feelings" different things for different people
- "What I have/had wasn't enough" you actually want something more
- "What I have/had wasn't good enough" you don't like your past experiences
- "I wasn't good enough" you don't like who you were
- "They weren't good enough" who you were with, wasn't right for you
- "I'm not good enough" you don't like who you are.

Personally I've lived that last one all my life, and I'm struggling to turn it around.  It isn't actually a logical conclusion from the first one though. None of them are - they're all different things. So while the first one will always be true, it's important to remember that the rest might not be. Which ones are true for you right now?

----------


## Rater202

Honestly, I legitimately don't care.

Like... "I've never felt genuine romantic feelings for someone" and "I'm sexually attracted to people but don't think I'll ever actually do anything about it" are just kind of... Observations I've made?

Like, I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other.

----------


## theangelJean

> Honestly, I legitimately don't care.
> 
> Like... "I've never felt genuine romantic feelings for someone" and "I'm sexually attracted to people but don't think I'll ever actually do anything about it" are just kind of... Observations I've made?
> 
> Like, I don't feel strongly about it one way or the other.


Okay! I was totally projecting my own stuff on what you wrote, then.

Well, if it's not a big deal to you, then I can see why you aren't fussed about labels. You don't need a label to be you. Like I said, language is for communication, and if "I've never felt genuine romantic feelings for someone" and "I'm sexually attracted to people but don't think I'll ever actually do anything about it" work well enough in saying what you want to say, you don't need to boil them down to one word. I can't see anyone demanding "so what does that make you?" 

If you want to know whether there are people who feel the same way you do (the answer is always yes, by the way) I am guessing that you could indeed find them in a group of people who label themselves Ace. But that's just my guess.

----------


## Kesnit

Just a small rant...

I'm a public defender. The annual conference of all PDs in the state was this week. At the conference, there are 1-hour long sessions led by other attorneys (usually other PDs) with an interest in the topic. Although I didn't realize it until I got there Thursday, one of the breakout sessions that afternoon involved how to work with and represent transgender and NB juvenile clients. I had signed up for a different class at that time, but my boss (who knows I'm trans) went. I asked him later what was discussed, and was disgusted with how low level and petty the class was. My boss summed it up as "ask what name and pronouns they use. The word 'tranny' is offensive. Don't ask about their genitalia." 

What made this extremely frustrating is that at the end of September, the governor of state released recommended guidelines for public schools that "would require transgender students to use school facilities and programs matching their 'biological sex.' Parents would have to give approval for teachers and other staff members to refer to students by a different name or pronoun at school, and families would have to provide legal documentation to change a students name and gender on official school records." (quotes from the Washington Post article about the walkouts.) The policy also requires teachers, guidance counselors, and other school officials to inform parents when a student comes out to the school official. This led to walkouts of students across the state. 

This policy and the walkouts would have been PERFECT topics of discussion in the class. Instead, they were barely touched on and not discussed. I am LIVID. Sure, as PDs, we don't get involved in school-related matters unless they involve a crime. But this proposed policy and the consequences if it goes into effect can provide background if and when the consequences rise to the level of the juvenile justice system. (And they will. Bullied students retaliate. Parents charged with child abandonment for kicking out their queer child. Etc.)

----------


## lio45

> "Don't ask about their genitalia."


That basic general advice applies well to all attorneys for all clients at all times!  :Small Tongue: 

It's pretty crazy it had to be said out loud  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Kesnit

> That basic general advice applies well to all attorneys for all clients at all times! 
> 
> It's pretty crazy it had to be said out loud


My boss said the same thing. In 25 years of doing this job, he could not recall a single time the genitals of the client were relevant. (I can only think of 1 circumstance where they would be - if someone alleges a man did something with his penis and that man turns out to be a transman who has not had bottom surgery.) 

Oh, and I forgot to mention it above, but there was another relevant topic of discussion. (Well, maybe relevant, since the talk dealt with the juvenile justice system. But it could be expended to juveniles.) A transwoman won a case at the federal circuit (one level below the US Supreme Court) holding that it was a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act to house her with male inmates. She was originally housed with women, then when it was discovered she was in transition, they housed her with men, refused to give her hormones (that she had been on for 15 years), would not give her a bra, and had her strip searched* by male corrections officers. 



* As I understand it, strip searching is common in jails and prisons. That she was strip searched was not a violation. That she was strip searched by men rather than women was the violation.

----------


## TaiLiu

> This policy and the walkouts would have been PERFECT topics of discussion in the class. Instead, they were barely touched on and not discussed. I am LIVID. Sure, as PDs, we don't get involved in school-related matters unless they involve a crime. But this proposed policy and the consequences if it goes into effect can provide background if and when the consequences rise to the level of the juvenile justice system. (And they will. Bullied students retaliate. Parents charged with child abandonment for kicking out their queer child. Etc.)


Sorry. That's frustrating.




> Oh, and I forgot to mention it above, but there was another relevant topic of discussion. (Well, maybe relevant, since the talk dealt with the juvenile justice system. But it could be expended to juveniles.) A transwoman won a case at the federal circuit (one level below the US Supreme Court) holding that it was a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act to house her with male inmates. She was originally housed with women, then when it was discovered she was in transition, they housed her with men, refused to give her hormones (that she had been on for 15 years), would not give her a bra, and had her strip searched* by male corrections officers.


Do you remember what the ADA had to do with transphobia / transmisogyny? It's certainly a moral violation on many counts, and extraordinarily cruel and violent, but I guess I wouldn't have considered it ableist.

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> That basic general advice applies well to all attorneys for all clients at all times!


I think it applies to pretty much everybody at all times  :Small Wink: 

Which I say as somebody who has broken that rule. Multiple times actually, and only with good friends or partners, but I still shouldn't have asked.

----------


## enderlord99

> Do you remember what the ADA had to do with transphobia / transmisogyny? It's certainly a moral violation on many counts, and extraordinarily cruel and violent, but I guess I wouldn't have considered it ableist.


I wondered the same thing when I first read it, then went "yeah, actually,  that makes sense" but I still couldn't tell you _why_ it makes sense.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

My first guess would be that the recommended treatment for gender dysphoria (which is how some institutions insist in defining being trans) is allowing someone to transition, so blocking someone from treatment for it would be the same as blocking treatment for any other ailment.

----------


## ArlEammon

I (Trigger Warning For mentions of past traumas)*Spoiler*
Show

dont know what to do. Im living through the after math of abusive ABA therapy, Conversion therapy, and child grooming. Im 38 but I feel so guilty about still hurting over this.
shouldnt I be able to move on after thirty years

----------


## Kesnit

> Do you remember what the ADA had to do with transphobia / transmisogyny? It's certainly a moral violation on many counts, and extraordinarily cruel and violent, but I guess I wouldn't have considered it ableist.





> I wondered the same thing when I first read it, then went "yeah, actually,  that makes sense" but I still couldn't tell you _why_ it makes sense.


Quotes are from the 4th Cir holding. As it has not yet been "published" (legalese for given an official citation), I cannot include a full cite. 




> Among its protections, the ADA prohibits public entities from discriminating against, or excluding from participation in the benefits of services, programs, and activities, any qualified individual with a disability. 42 U.S.C. § 12132. The ADA defines the term 'disability' broadly to include 'a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.'"





> "[T]he Sheriff relies on the ADAs exclusions. The statute excludes from the broad definition of 'disability'  and thus from the statutes protections  'transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, [and] other sexual behavior disorders.' Sheriff Kincaid argues, and the district court held, that the exclusion for 'gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments' applied to Williams gender dysphoria and barred her ADA claim."


The Court goes on to say that Congress has directed the Courts to interpret the ADA as broadly as possible, and to limit what falls under exclusions. 

The Court goes to the DSM to analyze "gender identity disorder" and "gender dysphoria." Gender Identity Disorder was used in the DSM in 1990, when the latest version of the ADA was passed. The most up-to-date DSM has removed "gender identity disorder" and inserted "gender dysphoria." This is because of new scientific understanding of the issue.




> "And the DSM-5 explains that the discomfort or distress caused by gender dysphoria may result in intense anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and even suicide. DSM-5 at 45455. In short, 'being trans alone cannot sustain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria under the DSM-[5], as it could for a diagnosis of gender identity disorder under [earlier versions of the DSM]'."





> "if a transgender person does not experience clinically significant distress, she could not be diagnosed as having gender dysphoria under the DSM-5."





> "Reflecting this shift in medical understanding, we and other courts have thus explained that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, unlike that of 'gender identity disorder[],' concerns itself primarily with distress and other disabling symptoms, rather than simply being transgender. In Grimm, we further explained that 'left untreated, gender dysphoria can cause, among other things, depression, substance use, self-mutilation, other self-harm, and suicide.' 972 F.3d at 595. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit has pointed out that '[f]ailure to follow an appropriate treatment plan [for gender dysphoria] can expose transgender individuals to a serious risk of psychological and physical harm.' Edmo v. Corizon, Inc., 935 F.3d 757, 771 (9th Cir. 2019).





> "Put simply, while the older DSM pathologized the very existence of transgender people, the recent DSM-5s diagnosis of gender dysphoria takes as a given that being transgender is not a disability and affirms that a transgender persons medical needs are just as deserving of treatment and protection as anyone elses."





> "Thus, the ADA excludes from its protection anything falling within the plain meaning of 'gender identity disorders,' as that term was understood at the time of its enactment.' Bostock, 140 S. Ct. at 1738. But nothing in the ADA, then or now, compels the conclusion that gender dysphoria constitutes a 'gender identity disorder' excluded from ADA protection. For these reasons, we agree with Williams that, as a matter of statutory construction, gender dysphoria is not a gender identity disorder."


I'm not going to quote this part, but the Court goes on to say the fact that Williams takes hormones is a basis to view her gender dysphoria as having a physical basis.

The Court then points out that a law that excludes transgender people as a class be discriminatory under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. A previous 4th Circuit holding has already held that laws discriminating against trans people are entitled to review under intermediate scrutiny. (The middle level, between "rational basis," and "strict scrutiny.")




> "Thus, such laws will 'fail unless they are substantially related to a sufficiently important governmental interest.' Grimm, 972 F.3d at 608 (cleaned up). And '[t]o survive intermediate scrutiny, the state must provide an exceedingly persuasive justification for the law. Id. (quoting United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 534 (1996) (VMI))."


If anyone wants to read the full holding, here is the link.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I (Trigger Warning For mentions of past traumas)*Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> dont know what to do. Im living through the after math of abusive ABA therapy, Conversion therapy, and child grooming. Im 38 but I feel so guilty about still hurting over this.
> shouldnt I be able to move on after thirty years


*Spoiler*
Show

That's awful. I'm sorry you had to go through all that. Unfortunately, if traumatogenic symptoms don't dissipate soon after a traumatic injury, those symptoms usually linger. Treatment and management are possible, but time itself won't close those wounds. It's not your fault you're not able to move on. I hope you're able to find healing in whatever form (counseling, community, something else) it may take.

Incidentally, as you may know, ABA and conversion therapy are historically tied. It might mean that working on one trauma may help alleviate symptoms from the other. Maybe that's a reason for hope.  :Small Smile: 





> I wondered the same thing when I first read it, then went "yeah, actually,  that makes sense" but I still couldn't tell you _why_ it makes sense.


Oh, I see. Does the official explanation jive with your original intuitions?




> My first guess would be that the recommended treatment for gender dysphoria (which is how some institutions insist in defining being trans) is allowing someone to transition, so blocking someone from treatment for it would be the same as blocking treatment for any other ailment.


Gotcha! Yeah, it seems like that was the official explanation.




> Quotes are from the 4th Cir holding. As it has not yet been "published" (legalese for given an official citation), I cannot include a full cite...
> 
> If anyone wants to read the full holding, here is the link.


I appreciate the thorough explanation and the link! (And the work that you do as a public defender.  :Small Smile: ) I guess the short story is that gender dysphoria counts as a disability under the ADA. I wasn't previously aware that was a thing.

Also, god, all those awful people doing awful transphobic things in the holding. I'm glad she's not there anymore.

----------


## enderlord99

> Oh, I see. Does the official explanation jive with your original intuitions?


Not exactly, but kind of.  It makes sense, in any case.

----------


## theangelJean

Interesting.

So, just checking if I understand this correctly...

"Gender identity disorder" is no longer considered to be a category of mental illness, which means that treatments aimed at "changing the mind" are not valid.

Gender dysphoria is considered a medical condition, which justifies the availability of medical treatment such as hormones and surgery.

If you identify as a different gender from the one you were assigned at birth, you can identify as transgender. If this does not actually bother you, in theory you can be transgender without suffering from gender dysphoria? 

Maybe in a different society, someday that might be a thing. When gender norms aren't so strongly baked into society, and if your body doesn't match your identity, some people might find that has a noticeable effect on their lives, and others might ... not?

But in the meantime, at least medicalising the condition serves to legitimise the hormone/surgical treatments, to the point where they can be considered treatment for a chronic condition which requires accommodations.  Maybe they might even acknowledge that misgendering people and other transphobic behaviours can exacerbate the condition!

I'm trying to see a parallel with the way that disability advocates frame "disability" as a societal problem requiring structural change. But maybe it's exactly the other way around.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Not exactly, but kind of.  It makes sense, in any case.


Oh, okay. Cool cool.



> I'm trying to see a parallel with the way that disability advocates frame "disability" as a societal problem requiring structural change. But maybe it's exactly the other way around.


Yeah, I think "exactly the other way around" is right. You're referring to the social model of disability, right? The legal argument does seem to be much more medical modelbased (whatever that medical model is).

----------


## Dire Moose

It still kind of amazes me that humans can change genders, even five years after I did it myself.

----------


## theangelJean

> It still kind of amazes me that humans can change genders, even five years after I did it myself.


Agreed that it's amazing. Which aspect do you find most fascinating? (No special reason for asking, I just like hearing what interests people.)

----------


## Dire Moose

> Agreed that it's amazing. Which aspect do you find most fascinating? (No special reason for asking, I just like hearing what interests people.)


I suppose its just how perfect some of the changes are; like its impossible to tell with a lot of people that they ever been different. I feel like if I z went back and talked to some of my old acquaintances, they would find it nearly impossible to recognize me now.

EDIT: Actually, more to the point, gender is one of those things that everyone has mostly assumed to be a permanent part of all of us, and knowing that it can actually be changed has a certain wow factor to it as a result.

----------


## Dire Moose

So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.

And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.

----------


## theangelJean

> I suppose its just how perfect some of the changes are; like its impossible to tell with a lot of people that they ever been different. I feel like if I z went back and talked to some of my old acquaintances, they would find it nearly impossible to recognize me now.
> 
> EDIT: Actually, more to the point, gender is one of those things that everyone has mostly assumed to be a permanent part of all of us, and knowing that it can actually be changed has a certain wow factor to it as a result.





> So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.
> 
> And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.


Congratulations on how far you've come! And that feeling that you're just getting started? Something tells me you will just keep growing so much more as a person.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.
> 
> And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.


Lucky! I can't seem to grow beyond a B cup after like 3 years.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't agree if I had larger ones...

----------


## Anonymouswizard

> So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.
> 
> And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.


Congrats on the developments! Even if it was five years ago there's no reason for it to feel like a long time 

I'm hoping to go on hormones if I can lose a good amount of weight (personal decision to delay going transfem).

Life and transitioning is a neverending journey. Literally in some cases.

----------


## Dire Moose

> Lucky! I can't seem to grow beyond a B cup after like 3 years.
> 
> Then again, maybe I wouldn't agree if I had larger ones...


Well, I cheated a bit. I had a decent amount of swelling from pubertal gynecomastia that never completely went away. HRT already had a bit of a foundation to build on. And to answer your other question, yes I do see myself as lucky

----------


## TaiLiu

> So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.
> 
> And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.


Hey, congrats! I'm around the five year mark for HRT, too. It's not magic, but it's (slowly) life-changing.

----------


## Kesnit

> So on November 17, 2017, I took my very first dose of estrogen. One of the best decisions of my life, and five years, a pair of D-cup boobs, and my butt no longer fitting my old boy pants later and I absolutely dont regret it.
> 
> And yet, it doesnt feel like its been that long. Even though Im usually one of the longest-transitioned in the queer friend groups Ive been with and looked up to as an inspiration somehow, I still feel like Ive barely even started and hardly even know what Im doing.


I understand what you mean. 

I took my first dose of T on October 24, 2006. It's sometimes hard to remember that it's been that long because it, well, HAS been that long. I've long-since completed the "firsts" and have been living as who I am for over a decade. It's sometimes hard to remember that I spent 30 years living as female. 

I remember when I started transition, I found a transman group on LiveJournal. (Yeah, it's been that long...) I remember talking to the guys who had been on T for 3, 4, 5 years and being so in awe of them. Now I've been on T 3 times that long...

----------


## TaiLiu

> I understand what you mean. 
> 
> I took my first dose of T on October 24, 2006. It's sometimes hard to remember that it's been that long because it, well, HAS been that long. I've long-since completed the "firsts" and have been living as who I am for over a decade. It's sometimes hard to remember that I spent 30 years living as female. 
> 
> I remember when I started transition, I found a transman group on LiveJournal. (Yeah, it's been that long...) I remember talking to the guys who had been on T for 3, 4, 5 years and being so in awe of them. Now I've been on T 3 times that long...


Sixteen years and thirty days is impressive. Congrats!

I dunno what the process was for you and Dire Moose. For me, my clinic began offering informed consent HRT just a few months before I scheduled a meeting with them. I had a much easier time than trans peeps who had to go through the frustration of procuring letters from mental health professionals or being compelled to go through a real-life test.

----------


## Dire Moose

I just needed a letter from a therapist before my doctor would prescribe it.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I just needed a letter from a therapist before my doctor would prescribe it.


Oh, gotcha! Not informed consent, then.

----------


## BladeofObliviom

Yeah, similar here. I talked to my regular therapist about it, she scheduled an interview with a specialist gender therapist for me (which was sort of weird since it was a phone interview during the covid days but obviously something normally done in person and he was pretty clearly asking questions off a list to fill out a form - at one point he asked what I was wearing, which is super weird to hear. "Uh, pajamas? It's 7am I just got up.")

From there that therapist forwarded me to an Endo.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Yeah, similar here. I talked to my regular therapist about it, she scheduled an interview with a specialist gender therapist for me (which was sort of weird since it was a phone interview during the covid days but obviously something normally done in person and he was pretty clearly asking questions off a list to fill out a form - at one point he asked what I was wearing, which is super weird to hear. "Uh, pajamas? It's 7am I just got up.")
> 
> From there that therapist forwarded me to an Endo.


Oh, gotcha. I guess I'm the only person who went through the easier informed consent process, then. That's almost surprising.

----------


## Kesnit

> I dunno what the process was for you and Dire Moose. For me, my clinic began offering informed consent HRT just a few months before I scheduled a meeting with them. I had a much easier time than trans peeps who had to go through the frustration of procuring letters from mental health professionals or being compelled to go through a real-life test.


I had been seeing a therapist for unrelated issues when I came out as trans. She'd never had a trans patient before, but since we had an existing therapeutic relationship, she was willing to write a letter for me. 

The biggest roadblock I ran into had more to do with timing than gatekeeping (and is a funny story in hindsight). I never watched The L Word, so didn't know that season 3 had a character who transitioned from female to male. Apparently, seeing Max transition made a lot of AFAB realize they are transman and went to the local clinic that focuses on LGBT+ issues - which is also the clinic I went to. 

The nurse-practitioner I met with was rather rude when  I first went in, and I was upset and annoyed. At some point in the meeting, she asked me if I was "doing this because of Max." I gave her a confused look and asked who Max was. Her entire attitude changed and she became a lot more upbeat and supportive.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I had been seeing a therapist for unrelated issues when I came out as trans. She'd never had a trans patient before, but since we had an existing therapeutic relationship, she was willing to write a letter for me. 
> 
> The biggest roadblock I ran into had more to do with timing than gatekeeping (and is a funny story in hindsight). I never watched The L Word, so didn't know that season 3 had a character who transitioned from female to male. Apparently, seeing Max transition made a lot of AFAB realize they are transman and went to the local clinic that focuses on LGBT+ issues - which is also the clinic I went to. 
> 
> The nurse-practitioner I met with was rather rude when  I first went in, and I was upset and annoyed. At some point in the meeting, she asked me if I was "doing this because of Max." I gave her a confused look and asked who Max was. Her entire attitude changed and she became a lot more upbeat and supportive.


I'm glad that ended well for you. I guess the frustrating worry about "transtrenders" isn't new. My experience is positively idyllic in comparison.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

I got some similar grief from an out trans woman like a decade ago. I was just getting into cosplay, more specifically "crossplaying" a very tomboyish character from a strategy game and she accused me of doing it for attention.

That took a lot of my enthusiasm for cosplaying, and probably pushed me back into the closet for a few years.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I got some similar grief from an out trans woman like a decade ago. I was just getting into cosplay, more specifically "crossplaying" a very tomboyish character from a strategy game and she accused me of doing it for attention.
> 
> That took a lot of my enthusiasm for cosplaying, and probably pushed me back into the closet for a few years.


That must've sucked coming from a fellow trans person.

----------


## BisectedBrioche

> That must've sucked coming from a fellow trans person.


Yeah, I was struggling a lot with if I was "really" trans (there was a lot less information available back then, so I didn't really have a way of knowing a bunch of stuff was just junk science). A cis person being transphobic I could have just shrugged off, but...

----------


## Dame_Mechanus

> Yeah, I was struggling a lot with if I was "really" trans (there was a lot less information available back then, so I didn't really have a way of knowing a bunch of stuff was just junk science). A cis person being transphobic I could have just shrugged off, but...


You should kick cis people being transphobic in the shins.

Sincerely, a cis person who absolutely deserves a kick in the shins if she does something transphobic. (Thankfully both rare and something my trans friends are averse to delivering even if I deserve it.)

On the topic at hand, I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you; I'm glad you're out now and presumably much happier for it.

----------


## TaiLiu

> Yeah, I was struggling a lot with if I was "really" trans (there was a lot less information available back then, so I didn't really have a way of knowing a bunch of stuff was just junk science). A cis person being transphobic I could have just shrugged off, but...


Yeah, I get it. If someone has authority, what they do has a greater effect.

----------


## Kesnit

> Just a small rant...
> 
> I'm a public defender. The annual conference of all PDs in the state was this week. At the conference, there are 1-hour long sessions led by other attorneys (usually other PDs) with an interest in the topic. Although I didn't realize it until I got there Thursday, one of the breakout sessions that afternoon involved how to work with and represent transgender and NB juvenile clients. I had signed up for a different class at that time, but my boss (who knows I'm trans) went. I asked him later what was discussed, and was disgusted with how low level and petty the class was. My boss summed it up as "ask what name and pronouns they use. The word 'tranny' is offensive. Don't ask about their genitalia."


So a little update...

After the conference where this "class" was held, I rode back (4 hour drive) with my boss and the office deputy. The deputy (who wasn't in the class and also knows I'm trans) commented that he feels like that class should be cleaned up and presented at the annual Management Conference. (A 2-day conference every year for the Chief Public Defender and Deputy Public Defender(s) in every office.) 

I know this isn't what the Deputy meant, but it got me thinking. Why not me? I am a public defender, so I know what our job entails. I'm also a transman and have been out for 16 years (including my entire time working as a public defender). 

I talked to our Office Manager (who is also a work-friend) this morning and she thought it was a good idea. However, she pointed out that if I did this, I would be out to EVERYONE in every PD office in the state - not just the management and HQ personnel. Obviously, this is a big step.

I am going to talk to our Deputy and bounce the idea off him. If he thinks it would be good, I can approach my boss, who would take it to the HQ Training Department (who plan the conferences).

----------


## theangelJean

> So a little update...
> 
> After the conference where this "class" was held, I rode back (4 hour drive) with my boss and the office deputy. The deputy (who wasn't in the class and also knows I'm trans) commented that he feels like that class should be cleaned up and presented at the annual Management Conference. (A 2-day conference every year for the Chief Public Defender and Deputy Public Defender(s) in every office.) 
> 
> I know this isn't what the Deputy meant, but it got me thinking. Why not me? I am a public defender, so I know what our job entails. I'm also a transman and have been out for 16 years (including my entire time working as a public defender). 
> 
> I talked to our Office Manager (who is also a work-friend) this morning and she thought it was a good idea. However, she pointed out that if I did this, I would be out to EVERYONE in every PD office in the state - not just the management and HQ personnel. Obviously, this is a big step.
> 
> I am going to talk to our Deputy and bounce the idea off him. If he thinks it would be good, I can approach my boss, who would take it to the HQ Training Department (who plan the conferences).


Sending you strength and support, whether you decide to go through with this or not. It _shouldn't_ be solely the burden of trans individuals to educate the rest of us, because in an ideal world there would be enough people of all types who had the proper expertise to educate everyone, in all industries. It seems like there's so much ignorance, though, that we need to shut up and let people with lived experience do the talking. But only if everyone else doesn't just listen, but is also prepared to _act_ and enact change.

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## Kesnit

> Sending you strength and support, whether you decide to go through with this or not.


I am going to think about it over the long weekend and hopefully have a decision made by next week. 

I talked to the Deputy yesterday evening. He also thinks it is a good idea, if I decide to go through with it. He recommended I email the head of HR for our agency, the head of training, and the guy who coordinates minority issues in our agency's HR. He also pointed out that there is a chance that doing this would eventually out me to everyone in the legal community. (i.e. a PD from Office A becomes a prosecutor in jurisdiction B. They go to their annual conference and meet a prosecutor where I practice and make a comment like "oh, where that transman is!?") That is a little more intimidating, as there are prosecutors here that I would prefer not have any idea of my medical history. On the other hand, they know me as (Male Legal Name) and have known me as (Male Legal Name) for almost 6 years, so it isn't like their only impression of me would be "that 'tranny' defense attorney." 

Of course, doing this would also mean I have to come out to the remaining people in my office who don't know. (There are 10 people in this office. 4 I know for sure know I'm trans. One we think knows, though he may have forgotten. The other 5 probably don't know. I know I've never told them and I can't remember anything I said that would tip them off.) The Office Manager offered to help me get the word out by "staging" conversation with me where comments are made that would clue the listener in in places where others could overhear.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I am going to think about it over the long weekend and hopefully have a decision made by next week. 
> 
> I talked to the Deputy yesterday evening. He also thinks it is a good idea, if I decide to go through with it. He recommended I email the head of HR for our agency, the head of training, and the guy who coordinates minority issues in our agency's HR. He also pointed out that there is a chance that doing this would eventually out me to everyone in the legal community. (i.e. a PD from Office A becomes a prosecutor in jurisdiction B. They go to their annual conference and meet a prosecutor where I practice and make a comment like "oh, where that transman is!?") That is a little more intimidating, as there are prosecutors here that I would prefer not have any idea of my medical history. On the other hand, they know me as (Male Legal Name) and have known me as (Male Legal Name) for almost 6 years, so it isn't like their only impression of me would be "that 'tranny' defense attorney." 
> 
> Of course, doing this would also mean I have to come out to the remaining people in my office who don't know. (There are 10 people in this office. 4 I know for sure know I'm trans. One we think knows, though he may have forgotten. The other 5 probably don't know. I know I've never told them and I can't remember anything I said that would tip them off.) The Office Manager offered to help me get the word out by "staging" conversation with me where comments are made that would clue the listener in in places where others could overhear.


Seconding the good wishes! That's a hard decision.

----------


## Lissou

I've been wanting to get a breast reduction for many years and even had an appointment with a surgeon in summer 2021. But she said I needed to lose weight and maintain it for 6 months first and, well, that didn't happen. Part of that is because it's hard to exercise with a larger chest, and part of it is because when I lose weight, my chest is proportionally bigger, so that's not very motivating.

I'm seeing a different surgeon in a few days. The goal is to get my chest small enough that a binder with do something when I'm feeling more masculine or androgynous, and if I'm feeling feminine I'll have some breasts.

I've been thinking about taking testosterone but I'll wait until after my surgery. It's a bit tricky because I want to present as a woman sometimes and as a man sometimes, so it's not like I can transition to one "form" that will always work, if that makes sense. If anyone has experience with that, I'd be happy to hear about it.

----------


## TaiLiu

> I've been wanting to get a breast reduction for many years and even had an appointment with a surgeon in summer 2021. But she said I needed to lose weight and maintain it for 6 months first and, well, that didn't happen. Part of that is because it's hard to exercise with a larger chest, and part of it is because when I lose weight, my chest is proportionally bigger, so that's not very motivating.
> 
> I'm seeing a different surgeon in a few days. The goal is to get my chest small enough that a binder with do something when I'm feeling more masculine or androgynous, and if I'm feeling feminine I'll have some breasts.
> 
> I've been thinking about taking testosterone but I'll wait until after my surgery. It's a bit tricky because I want to present as a woman sometimes and as a man sometimes, so it's not like I can transition to one "form" that will always work, if that makes sense. If anyone has experience with that, I'd be happy to hear about it.


Ugh, that sucks about the weight requirement. Hopefully the second surgeon will have better news.

----------


## Lissou

> Ugh, that sucks about the weight requirement. Hopefully the second surgeon will have better news.


I saw the new surgeon, and there is good news and bad news. The good news is that there is none of that weight requirement stuff. The bad news is that I learned that "100% covered" by France's healthcare actually means, in this case, 100% of 400, and my health insurance can cover an extra 300. But the total amount is about 3k so that's still over 2k I'd have to cover myself. It's better than the zero coverage I'd get if it were purely aesthetic, but not great.

I'm going to see if I can find a doctor who doesn't charge extra but I don't have great hopes, and plan B is... saving up I guess?

----------


## TaiLiu

> I saw the new surgeon, and there is good news and bad news. The good news is that there is none of that weight requirement stuff. The bad news is that I learned that "100% covered" by France's healthcare actually means, in this case, 100% of 400Â, and my health insurance can cover an extra 300Â. But the total amount is about 3k so that's still over 2k I'd have to cover myself. It's better than the zero coverage I'd get if it were purely aesthetic, but not great.
> 
> I'm going to see if I can find a doctor who doesn't charge extra but I don't have great hopes, and plan B is... saving up I guess?


Wow, that sucks. Especially since trans healthcare is so life-preserving. Hoping you can find someone.

----------


## Lissou

> Wow, that sucks. Especially since trans healthcare is so life-preserving. Hoping you can find someone.


Thanks! I think I'll have to find the "exchange rate" of time and money. How much am I willing to spend to get it done how much sooner? But it will depend on my options, and very much on whether I find a job this year :P

Some good news is that my boyfriend talked to me yesterday about it all. He doesn't really understand the concept of gender identity or transgenderism, let alone genderfluidity. I've told him I'd like to be more androgynous, he knows I'm planning to get a reduction, and lately I've started wearing binders around him if I'm more masculine that day (I've done it twice so far, once this year and once at the end of last year).
So yesterday while we were on the couch and I was wearing a binder, he broached the subject. He started with apologising if he was mixing up everything then asked me if I would prefer to "remove my chest completely" rather than have a reduction, adding that if I did he supported me and if I didn't he supported me too. I explained that I wanted to have breasts and be more feminine some days, and that them being smaller would allow me to, well, I didn't phrase it that way, but to present as male or female depending on how I felt and so I thought it would work better.

Then he talked about a couple he had heard of when one person transitioned to male and the other man, who identified as straight, ended up staying with his partner because he found that in the end he didn't lose his attraction. Then my boyfriend added that he loves me the way I am inside, and however I looked on the outside, what mattered was that I feel good about myself and be happy.

I was really surprised, in a good way, and felt so accepted by him. I hadn't really allowed myself to think about it too much, my late husband was very uncomfortable when I presented more masculine and so I got used not to really expressing that part of myself because the relationship meant more to me I guess? And I think in retrospect I was scared it would be the same thing and delayed talking about it more deeply. I'm so happy he decided to bring it up and of course that he's so loving and accepting. Maybe down the line he'll realise some aspects are a bit too much for him, but at the very least he's starting from a great place and I feel better having an ally in him <3

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## theangelJean

That's wonderful, Lissou! It must be such a relief to find that the one you're close to actually has some understanding and you don't have to go over everything, and even better that he's accepting and ready to support you!

----------


## TaiLiu

> Thanks! I think I'll have to find the "exchange rate" of time and money. How much am I willing to spend to get it done how much sooner? But it will depend on my options, and very much on whether I find a job this year :P
> 
> Some good news is that my boyfriend talked to me yesterday about it all. He doesn't really understand the concept of gender identity or transgenderism, let alone genderfluidity. I've told him I'd like to be more androgynous, he knows I'm planning to get a reduction, and lately I've started wearing binders around him if I'm more masculine that day (I've done it twice so far, once this year and once at the end of last year).
> So yesterday while we were on the couch and I was wearing a binder, he broached the subject. He started with apologising if he was mixing up everything then asked me if I would prefer to "remove my chest completely" rather than have a reduction, adding that if I did he supported me and if I didn't he supported me too. I explained that I wanted to have breasts and be more feminine some days, and that them being smaller would allow me to, well, I didn't phrase it that way, but to present as male or female depending on how I felt and so I thought it would work better.
> 
> Then he talked about a couple he had heard of when one person transitioned to male and the other man, who identified as straight, ended up staying with his partner because he found that in the end he didn't lose his attraction. Then my boyfriend added that he loves me the way I am inside, and however I looked on the outside, what mattered was that I feel good about myself and be happy.
> 
> I was really surprised, in a good way, and felt so accepted by him. I hadn't really allowed myself to think about it too much, my late husband was very uncomfortable when I presented more masculine and so I got used not to really expressing that part of myself because the relationship meant more to me I guess? And I think in retrospect I was scared it would be the same thing and delayed talking about it more deeply. I'm so happy he decided to bring it up and of course that he's so loving and accepting. Maybe down the line he'll realise some aspects are a bit too much for him, but at the very least he's starting from a great place and I feel better having an ally in him <3


And quality of surgeon, too, I'm guessing. Unless they're all about the same. I have a friend who got bottom surgery. She travelled far away, no insurance, to get it done by this well-known surgeon.

Seconding Jean. That's great!  :Small Smile:

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## Lissou

Thanks! The support is going to make a big difference if it takes me a while to save up. The new surgeon has good results and I really like him, we connected well so I think I will stick with him, it seems he's around mid-range for prices but I'm willing to pay a bit more for someone I really trust.
I'm looking for a job right now but I graduated from a UX/UI bootcamp recently and the average income in that field is a lot higher than I'm used to. I don't plan on moving to a more expensive apartment or change my lifestyle or anything so if I do get a job I will be able to save up much faster than, well, at any time in my life up till now, so I'm going to focus on that and I might be able to get surgery this year. I will let you all know if it happens and how it goes.

And if things change I will let you know as well of course. Even with the greatest boyfriend I could ever have hoped for, the support from this forum makes a big difference too, and the fact some of you have gone through similar things helps me feel less "weird" and more valid.

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## TaiLiu

> Thanks! The support is going to make a big difference if it takes me a while to save up. The new surgeon has good results and I really like him, we connected well so I think I will stick with him, it seems he's around mid-range for prices but I'm willing to pay a bit more for someone I really trust.
> I'm looking for a job right now but I graduated from a UX/UI bootcamp recently and the average income in that field is a lot higher than I'm used to. I don't plan on moving to a more expensive apartment or change my lifestyle or anything so if I do get a job I will be able to save up much faster than, well, at any time in my life up till now, so I'm going to focus on that and I might be able to get surgery this year. I will let you all know if it happens and how it goes.
> 
> And if things change I will let you know as well of course. Even with the greatest boyfriend I could ever have hoped for, the support from this forum makes a big difference too, and the fact some of you have gone through similar things helps me feel less "weird" and more valid.


Looking forward to it. Good luck.  :Small Smile:

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