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Post by Lizzie on Nov 20, 2014 14:56:04 GMT -5
so i found something with pronouns, kinda like the pronoun dressing room? except you can put the pronouns in, and it'll quiz you. its called practice with pronouns (a good name) and it's pretty good if you have less common pronouns like ze/hir, it/its, or even they/them if the person is really unfamiliar with pronouns outside the gender binary. you can also link to your own pronouns (i figured this out by editing my friend's link, but when you start the exercies it says "link to your pronoun set" on the left). for example, my friend has two different pronoun links: it/its and ze/zan, but i have they/them. idk i just find it cool.
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Post by Coaster on Dec 2, 2014 4:40:55 GMT -5
So, uh. I have a feeling this may come as a surprise to some folks here (even by the fact that I'm posting here at all), but... Numerous circumstances that have persisted through most of my life have kind of come to a head this past few months, and after quite a bit of wee-hours-o'-the-morning research into and exploring of the subject (coming from a fairly conservative background knowing next to nothing about it to begin with), and seeing how it corresponds to much of my experience and many actions I've taken that I'd rather not disclose over a public post, I'm seeing increasing evidence that... ...as far as the thread's acronym goes, I'd be a T by definition. or maybe it's not surprising at all in which case I now feel like a numpty More specifically, male-to-female with some intent to go through physical transition, though I haven't jumped any of the medical hoops at this point. For even more clarification, I'm maybe-kinda-gynephilic and the latter case would die down in transition, so I'm talking more about the gender issue rather than the orientation issue. Disclaimer: honestly, I'm still unsure of whether I fully subscribe to the idea of "transgender" or not, but it is something that I've been troubled about for quite some time, and it's been on my mind especially much recently, and it explains a lot, especially since I've taken the time to learn a bit more about it. The reasons I'm hesitant to say so more confidently: 1. Looking up the clinical diagnosis ( as given by the obviously best research website ever), I definitely fit the first three categories, but the fourth only ambiguously--"clinically significant" is a bit of an enigma to me. Honestly, my life's been reasonably peachy on the outside, between work, grades, friends (if only because I was lucky enough to be in the company of genuinely overall loving people), and family dynamics, but there have been recurring points of contention with my parents about some quirks of my behaviour/preferences, as well as (and sometimes in response to) overall aloofness from social relationships, and as much avoidance of typically male activities (and such conversation topics) as I can reasonably take. And yet none of that has led to outright bullying or abuse or anything quote-on-quote "serious". Similarly, internally, although my personality is the type to actively try to stay out of people's way/avoid inconveniencing them, and although at low points I have had passing thoughts of doing so more permanently, things like self-harm and outright suicide were never on the table (much less plans for them), and other than just being "part of my personality", I don't think the level of distress/impairment could be labeled "significant". Granted, though, thoughts on gender (and the conclusions to which this post pertains) have taken up a lot of my head space since around mid-childhood, increasingly so as time goes on (...one instance being me staying up until 4am both nights this weekend to explore the topic more, and past 2am just to write and edit this, aside from similar instances prior). 2. On the opposite side of that coin, being from said conservative (Christian) background and still believing (no matter what ends up happening), trying to deal with this alone has caused me quite a bit of internalized stress and confusion. Some of my 4am research hours have gone into looking a bit deeper into the Biblical support of each side of the debate and since verses are taken so out of context from either side of the argument, I really can't settle it in my mind whether or not it's definitely "sin". Within the last couple months, I've "come out" (in the form of confessing it as a struggle) to a couple trusted Christian friends, receiving in response some meaningful, encouraging conversation and prayer that ironically didn't say anything towards settling the issue for me one way or the other. If I did accept this and go open with it, I'm quite certain my Sunday morning church would excommunicate me, and I probably would be ineligible for student leadership (which I'm currently part of) in my campus Christian group, even though I could still attend the regular events/services (with some askance looks). With the possible exception of my dad, I don't think my family would disown me, but I feel that every interaction with them would involve them trying to get me to change my mind. (Even my sister ironically used to talk about how much she wanted a sister, but her views have since evolved somewhat.) For instance, they already repeatedly pry into my (nonexistent by choice) relationship life, including playing both the "I want grandkids" and the "girl + friend = probable love interest" cards. And that's regarding my already-explicitly-conveyed-and-unambiguously-biblically-supported lack of desire to get married and procreate, not accounting for anything like the subject of this post, which gets into "muddier" territory. Meanwhile, if I tried to keep suppressing/internalizing it and kept my life as it is right now, I would probably persist and worsen (as has been the case to this point) in unhealthy habits that relate to it, and likewise not get any happier about it. Now, although I haven't gone to a therapist about anything yet (including the possibility of a transition), I'm exploring the options available, and have anonymously contacted some of the services at my campus that deal with it... One more big stressor in the decision is that if I ended up acting on this, now would be the best time, because (aside from the obvious earlier-is-better physical reasons) my health plan from university covers pretty much all foreseeable costs of therapy/counseling and 80% of the cost of any medication, meaning I wouldn't have to put much of a burden on my existing student loans or (more concerning) draw my parents' attention by having it covered by their health plans. Incidentally, also increasingly recently, I've been trying (to varying degrees of conscious/subconscious/active/forgetting) to train my voice to sound a bit more feminine or at least androgynous, so that's a thing. As another side note, I considered it a great victory when I convinced my family to let me grow my hair "long" (read: anything that would go past my eyes if it were all bangs) without getting forced to cut it, and even then I only settled the point when I framed it as an act of making personal decisions independently from my parents in general (and I'm quite certain I'll get bugged for my hair next time I visit anyways). At the moment, I'm thinking that if I went all the way with this, I'd only tell people on an individual basis who call attention to it, and otherwise try to stay incognito as long as possible, preferably until I graduate and can get off the radar. Which kind of defeats the purpose...? I mean, as of as long ago as I can remember, I kinda like my currently held quality of life, just quite muchly not my currently held man-ness. <_< Considering that I actually go to university on quite a small campus, I'm pretty sure word would get around pretty fast within my sphere of acquaintanceship if I got involved with a campus support group for this context, too. tl;dr As far as I can tell, I'm trans, but I'm conflicted on whether I should act on it because of a combination of perceived lack of seriousness of problems it's caused, and pressure/confusion from my own/family's/friends' religious background and involvement. If you're concerned at me over any of this (whether over my wellbeing or due to unintentional offensiveness on my part), please send me a PM (or only reply here if the response is something obvious I should have said and wouldn't prompt argument or require gritty details). I'm also open to advice if anyone around sees fit to give any. <_< Primarily regarding the two main points mentioned above, because those are what's keeping me on the fence about everything.
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Post by Coaster on Jan 8, 2015 12:44:17 GMT -5
Double-posting with a quick update: for those who haven't read my diary thread, I indicated that this was something I wanted to go for, and I just got my referral from the campus counselor to el Doctor, so. Haven't scheduled the appointment yet, but still. Wooooooooooo EDIT: Two and a half weeks. Refer to last word of previous paragraph.
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Post by Celestial on Jan 28, 2015 16:47:46 GMT -5
Oh dear, I appear to have a rant all over my chest, mind if I get it off here?
I should preface this by saying that I love my mum. I get on really well with her, even if we have disagreements. She's a really cool, nice, accepting and open-minded person.
But I don't think she fully understands what asexuality is, if at all. Which sucks because I'm ace. I've known this for years, even though I've flip-flopped between whether I am truly ace or a demi/greysexual. But I am definitely somewhere on the spectrum of asexuality. I don't understand what it is like to look at another person and feel attracted to them. I can accept and understand that they are physically good-looking but I don't feel it at all. Nor do I have any kind of *cough* drive (I hope that's not TMI) and I've noticed that I think differently from non-asexual folks too, on the topics of attractiveness and what to do with said attractiveness. Honestly, the whole subject kind of makes me uncomfortable. I can joke about it fine because that's all it is; jokes. A serious conversation about x or y or z being hot is completely alien to me.
Admittedly, it isn't something I'm open about with people, for the same reason as my mum: because they don't understand. I don't want to go through the whole song and dance routine of trying to explain that no, I don't find x or y or z hot and no, I don't want to talk about the subject because it is boring and embarrassing. And it's okay around my friends, it is rarely a topic that comes up and if it does, I can just stay out of it, or make contributions in the form of jokes (I am the filthiest minded ace. xD). I wonder if this counts as being closeted, actually...but it isn't something that affects me much. Much easier to hide the fact that something isn't there than hiding something that is there.
But it's not a subject I can really avoid with my mum and sometimes it comes up. Now, I've explained to her many times what I am and what that means but she either refuses to listen or doesn't understand. She insists that it is hormonal, or that it will change later (which reeks to me of "you just haven't met the right person", which when you don't find anybody attractive and are a socially-awkward introvert is...so encouraging) even though I am very certain it wouldn't. It isn't even that she's openly unaccepting of my sexuality and...honestly, sometimes I think it would be better if she was. Her being ignorant hurts because I can't simply dismiss her opinion as invalid, nor can I dislike her for it. I've tried to explain to her that this is just another sexuality, and have brought up with her if she would be like this if I was, say, a lesbian. She insists that she would not be and would be fully accepting of it, which I believe because she's that sort of person: really open-minded. But I'm confronting her with a total absense of attraction, which must be too alien for even her to handle. Just like being attracted to people is alien to me, I guess, but I disgress.
Her tendency to 'ship me with people or give me unneeded advice or ask "will there be boys? ;3" whenever I go anywhere to be sociable also gets on my nerves. Thankfully that doesn't happen frequently.
I'm not really looking for advice, it isn't like this is impacting the quality of my life or my relationship with her. Plus there are people out there who have been thrown out of their families and their homes for their sexuality. It's still something I find majorly frustrating.
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Post by Ted (the zombie Dalek) on Jan 28, 2015 19:57:06 GMT -5
Celestial Same! So much same! (I'm lucky my mum's not like that, but she doesn't seem to get the concept of allosexual vs. asexual, since she's always insisted to me that everyone's like that. I don't know if she's asexual or it was just the environment she was brought up in, but she doesn't seem to understand the concept of sexual attraction as separate from romantic attraction. It's really weird.) My main gripe is when my friends insist on talking about sexual topics at sleepovers and suchlike (sleepovers? am I a teenager?), like excuse me for not wanting to know that your ex-boyfriend once "[did something really squicky]". WHO EVEN TALKS ABOUT THAT? *ahem* Thankfully the topic of who's hot doesn't really come up much, since (I'm thinking) we're all different enough to know that attractiveness is the littlest part of someone's worth. Edit: Also, my Mum's never shipped me with boys to my knowledge (except a cardboard cutout of David Tennant, which, yeah... I'm not going to go into detail on that) but she has done so to my lesbian sister. What even?
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Post by Coaster on Mar 23, 2015 4:00:44 GMT -5
I heard a pretty good analogy for gender identity lately and decided to extend the metaphor substantially, so I thought I'd tirade share it here just because. Question 1: Are you left- or right-handed, or ambidextrous? ((To most people, this is fairly intuitive.)) Question 2: How do you know? ((You just know, and just exercised your initial preference. Or at worst, you had to pick one of the three to be defined as when you started writing, even if you prefer different hands for different things.)) Question 3: How hard to you think it would be to completely change your handedness if you had to, or would it even be possible? ((Answers may vary, but people I asked figured they'd only be building habits but always maintain some degree of preference for their original dominant hand.))
Keep in mind that handedness is essentially a mental thing ("all in your head"), despite having outward indicators (with varying degrees of accuracy--eg. which side a young child sleeps on) and expression (namely, what hands you use for things); it's "set in stone" quite early in life but usually the strongest evidence comes when a child starts learning to write; historically, schoolteachers would beat left-handed students until they built the habit of writing with their right hand, and we've considered such practices unethical for decades now and tend to let people pick whatever handedness they want, even if being left-handed is a little more difficult on average (scissors and smudge stains and such).
Let's also include hair color, which is an essentially immutable physical characteristic: it becomes more defined particularly around the prime years of one's life, but becomes basically irrelevant or harder to discern by old age, and while it can be dyed, it will always grow back as the original color (which can be told by careful attention to the roots).
Hopefully that clears a bit of the mental space to take the analogy a bit closer to the scale of our society.
Imagine there is some isolated country in the world where there's a strong correlation between handedness and hair color: in some strange defiance of statistics (perhaps for well-identified genetic reasons), the population is almost entirely a 50/50 split between redhead and brunette, and almost all the redheads are lefties, and almost all the brunettes are righties. Ambidextrous people or people with "reddish-brown" or other hair colors exist but are incredibly rare. Left-handed brunettes and right-handed redheads also exist rarely. However, given the country's population, the "red-left/brown-right" system works in the vast majority of cases.
In this imaginary country, all people are called by their assumed handedness based entirely on their hair color (eg. in talking about a brunette who visited your house, you'd say "rightie visited my house"). Much of what you interact with in the country (cutlery, doorknob, etc.) is also intended for use with lefties or righties specifically. In fact, about a third of all conversation topics are about things pertaining to handedness or hair color, most often invoking sweeping generalizations of "red-lefts" or "brown-rights". Redheads (overwhelmingly left-handed) have a bit more leeway and are permitted to use many right-hand-specific things, like in our culture, but there's still some stigma (and difficulty if actually leftie) associated with it, and with redheads and lefties in general (to a much higher degree than "ginger-cruelty" in our culture).
Assume you were raised in this country and are one of the rare minorities: a right-handed redhead, or a left-handed brunette, or ambidextrous, or non-red-or-brown-haired, or someone who just doesn't use their hands for things. For the questions, I'll phrase them in terms of being a left-handed brunette.
Question 4: How would you react to being continually addressed as right-handed based entirely on your brown hair, and excluded from left-handed conversations that supposedly don't apply to you because you're brunette, yet being included in right-handed conversations you don't relate to for the same reason? ((Probably pretty badly. If not pointing out the flaws in the system, would probably insist on being called by and treated as the appropriate handedness regardless of hair color.)) Question 5: Would you consider dying your hair red if people understood it as an assertion that you were left-handed, or if they assumed you had red hair naturally (and thus were probably leftie)? What if you really didn't like (or just didn't care much about) your hair color to begin with? ((Probably, even if it couldn't ever be actually red. Seems like a no-brainer if people treat dyed hair like normal hair, unless you really like your normal hair.)) Question 6: If ambidextrous or a non-brown-or-red person, how would you feel about being alienated from both groups based on the fact that you don't match either one's dominant physical or mental characteristic? ((Probably about the same way to question 4 or worse.))
Now, assume this culture is even weirder. A particular religious sect is prominent here, and even if people don't adhere to the sect itself, they usually still claim to agree with many of its principles, and the overall culture is steeped in this sect's prescribed worldview. This sect has a couple ambiguous principles regarding hair color and handedness, but these principles are contained in a section pertaining to a number of principles that are otherwise disregarded. The most oft-quoted principles are that "brown-rights cannot marry among themselves, nor can red-lefts, but they can only marry the other" and "a brown-right cannot make their visible hair red, nor can a red-left make their visible hair brown". The existence of brown-lefts, red-rights, ambidextrous, and non-brown-or-red persons are forgotten, intentionally ignored, treated as a joke (most popularly in the case of brown-lefts), punished if insistent, and/or sorted into either the red-left or brown-right group (almost arbitrarily, based partially on which color their hair is closest to, or failing that, on which hand they might have preference for). What more, people with "mismatched" hair and handedness, or ambidextrous or with non-red-or-brown hair, are seen as having severe spiritual deficits, demon-possession, or the like, despite the rest of the sect's teachings having no basis for such an assumption. (Many scholars in this sect note that the principles in question may have been written in the context of avoiding pagan rituals that broke a number of more ethically-supportable principles and incidentally involved hair-dying and same-hair-color marriages.)
To those who even consider non-brown-or-red-haired persons (rather than rejecting them out of hand because they don't know what to make of them), hair dying is seen as the best possible solution, but to anyone else or on people with obviously red or brown natural hair, it's treated with a great deal of stigma (and bad dye-jobs are a common stereotype associated especially with brown-lefts who dye their hair). In more conservative areas, legislation prohibits people with dyed hair from places associated with the handedness they dye their hair to match, or from dying their hair in the first place (especially since hair dye has permanent effects on existing hair and is prohibitively expensive to import for some reason). Many religious sectarians, as well, wage a fierce ideological campaign against proponents of same-hair-color marriage, though the latter have gained some traction with the general populace in more recent years; people with dyed hair are distinct from them but are often lumped in with this group anyways (or associate with them on purpose due to facing similar pressure from this sect, or having a similar worldview in certain areas).
Specific to this course of discussion, the rationale against people with dyed hair largely assumes that all brunettes are right-handed, and that (aside from the letter of the law prohibiting brown-lefts from red hair dye and similarly for the opposite) they cannot properly use left-handed facilities or would pose some danger to regular red-lefts by trying (with a similar chain of logic for redheads being lefties, though in practice redheads are held to a lot of brunette standards anyways). However, on the flip side, most attempts by non-dying brunettes to behave in a left-handed way are socially frowned upon at best and illegal at worst, so while some brown-lefts manage to adapt to using right-handed tools and habits (often to a lesser proficiency than regular brown-rights), many cannot adapt as easily and find it difficult to function like a brown-right in society at all. Due to the intense social pressure to be a brown-right or red-left, many such citizens choose to live in other countries if lucky enough to have the means, or continually dye their hair the color that matches their handedness (where legal) in order to fit in better (though people more often point out the hair's roots, or flaws in the dye-job), or as a last resort, choose to take exile (at which they lose all their possessions, can never enter the country again, and for the sake of severity, are treated as a criminal wherever they go).
Question 7: Would this be a good system for any real culture to practice even if such a majority happened to fit in the red-brown left-right split? ((I hope the answer would be no.)) Question 8: Why not? ((I assume a common answer would be that even if there's a strong correlation for whatever reason, there's no absolute link between handedness and hair color, and a rigid binary system like that doesn't fit everyone in the first place.))
The metaphor is probably incredibly obvious by now even if it wasn't posted on an LGBTA etc. thread, but in any case, replace "left-handed/right-handed/ambidextrous" with "female/male/fluid/non-binary gender identity", "natural red/brown/other hair" with "female/male/intersex birth sex", "brown-left/red-right/non-red-or-brown" as "transgender people", "hair dye" as "transition", "exile" as "suicide", etc. and you're getting fairly close to the way gender is treated in our culture.
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Post by Mail on Mar 23, 2015 14:33:21 GMT -5
*rolls in* I gotta lot of school stuff on my plate to deal with at the moment but it seems whenever that lightens up, this becomes the next main issue.
I don't even know where to begin asking people to address me by my preferred pronouns in real life. I think I should start with friends and slowly approach the topic, maybe. But I know parents is something that just isn't going to happen, likely at any point in my life.
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Post by Arielle on Apr 5, 2015 19:10:35 GMT -5
*waves* Hi guys, I'm back. Not sure if anyone posting here now remembers me xD Used to post in this thread all the time.
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Post by Coaster on Apr 16, 2015 1:09:59 GMT -5
Good news: got prescription last week, should be able to start sometime after an appointment tomorrow getting blood work and such, if all goes well.
Bad news: told my family and the past few days have been a non-stop phone barrage of texts from all three (plus my nana), all obviously well-intended but mostly suggestions to wait a while (indefinitely) before starting, or to take further conversion therapy, and such gems as "If marriage is not going to be a factor why can't you just crossdress?"
*facepalm*
On top of that, they've "spilled my T" on pretty much everyone I know in family-town.
(...more good news, I heard that phrase "spilled the T" just a short while ago and I find it hilarious)
I think at this point all I can ask them is to give it some time and trust me to deal with it.
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Post by Arielle on Apr 16, 2015 11:17:31 GMT -5
Wow sorry to hear that. That really sucks. *major hugs*
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on May 13, 2015 10:10:03 GMT -5
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Post by Ginz ❤ on May 13, 2015 18:44:25 GMT -5
Hey guys! I just watched a really nice coming out video from a trans man I follow on youtube, and although I don't relate to his experience personally, I found it really inspiring and encouraging, so I wanted to share it with you, in hopes that you will too. Unfortunately, I can't link it here, because it contains swearing (literally only one swearword in the whole 12 and a half minute video, but still.)
So if you have the time and like that kind of thing, I recommend you look up "jackisnotabird" or "coming out jackisnotabird" on youtube. I definitely think it's worth watching.
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Post by kookybloo on May 15, 2015 0:37:52 GMT -5
I'm 30 and what is this.
I mean, why can't I come out? I can barely come out to myself, telling myself I'm "not really bi" and "practically straight" because I'm attracted to women so much more rarely than I am men, even though I've researched it and found out the attraction isn't necessarily split 50/50. I know I can't come out to my family. I know I have to come out somewhere, because I keep having weird nightmares where I have to catch myself before it slips out. Might as well be here.
I don't even know how to end this post. I need sleep and I need Tylenol.
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Post by Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff) on May 15, 2015 8:17:41 GMT -5
Is it wrong to call a transgender person they?
I was at the checkout for Banana Republic and wasn't sure of this person. The voice was what I associated with masculine, and a gentleman in front of me asked if I needed help. Just before that I heard the other person say, "Next!"
I kept my eyes down and said, "He--" I looked up. Whoops. "They--said next first."
I was not sure but through peripheral glances and polite conversation I found the person appeared to express as female. I couldn't judge and couldn't ask.
This happened three months ago and I guess I'm looking for closure or an answer. Did I truly screw up...?
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Post by Coaster on May 15, 2015 11:49:59 GMT -5
Is it wrong to call a transgender person they? I was at the checkout for Banana Republic and wasn't sure of this person. The voice was what I associated with masculine, and a gentleman in front of me asked if I needed help. Just before that I heard the other person say, "Next!" I kept my eyes down and said, "He--" I looked up. Whoops. "They--said next first." I was not sure but through peripheral glances and polite conversation I found the person appeared to express as female. I couldn't judge and couldn't ask. This happened three months ago and I guess I'm looking for closure or an answer. Did I truly screw up...? From what I hear it's best to just ask, since you really can't tell much from the way someone looks. xD You could make an assumption based on how they present regardless of their body, but that doesn't always work. You could probably call them "they" informally if you don't know (as people use such gender-neutral language to talk about people in general anyways) but some people might think it invalidates their identity, akin to "it", etc. In my opinion, though, "they" is better than a wrong gendered pronoun (and many people go by "they" anyways, especially non-binary like Lizzie here on the forum) so that's probably the best thing you could have done in that short time frame (unless it specifically came up in conversation). As long as you correct yourself quietly rather than making a big scene out of it. ...and on top of that, in this culture it would be unreasonable to assume everyone is well-versed in transgender issues, so this person probably gets a lot of wrong pronouns regardless, and if they noticed, they're probably glad that you made the effort to correct yourself.
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