How to think about trans people

Random thought: one of my design clients does voice training and wants me to feature it more prominently as I put together her new materials.

Voice training thing: Cool. Voices are one of those complicated complicated things...

Lauren McNamara (also known as Zinnia Jones) wrote some rather heated words about the activity around California's AB 1266:

Transgender women in women’s restrooms: A purely imagined harm (Lauren McNamara, Freethought Blogs, 2013-11-12) wrote:

They talk about “rights” as they try to kick her out of a public restroom. They talk about “respect” when they can’t even bring themselves to respect her gender. They talk about “private parts” while making international news out of someone’s anatomy. They offer their meaningless and condescending prayers while refusing to do anything that could actually help this girl. They call it a “problem” when their daughters are “uncomfortable” in the face of no harassment and no inappropriate behavior, yet they have no problem with harassing one girl until she’s almost too uncomfortable to go on living. They don’t even care.

And they think they’re the ones who are uncomfortable? They’re the ones who are “a little bit nervous”? We’re the ones who have to live in the constant fear that just using the restroom might mean encountering someone who doesn’t like how our faces look, how our voices sound, how our necks are shaped, or how tall we are. We have to live with the possibility that at any moment, no matter how unimpeachable our behavior may be, cis people can single us out, question the legitimacy of our gender, and make such an issue of it that it becomes a worldwide headline. And the world will think we’re the ones who did something wrong. We fear this because it’s actually happened countless times before, and it’s certainly going to happen again. Each of us fears that we might be next.

Seems like this year is going to be a good time to support the Transgender Law Center (whose website seems kind of hosed), the National Center for Transgender Equality, and other such organizations.

Edited to add this piece about what exactly the shift in focus of these organizations like NOM to anti-trans-rights efforts could mean, based on what happened historically when anti-abortion groups shifted their focus to anti-gay-rights in order to raise funding.

What the National Organization for Marriage's Shift to Trans-Bashing Means (Michelangelo Signorile, HuffPost Blog, 2013-11-12) wrote:

During the '80s and early '90s, amid the darkest years of the AIDS epidemic and well before the reality of marriage equality, conservative religious groups that were focused on battling against abortion rights would sometimes meet with limited success. The groups often shifted into gay-bashing campaigns (augmenting the work of lesser-known, diehard anti-gay activists) as a way to raise lots of money to re-energize their anti-abortion crusades. The Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA), for example, got an initiative on the ballot in that state in 1990 to require parental notification for abortions by minors. It failed, and the OCA came back in 1992 with Measure 9, which would have had the Oregon Constitution deem "homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism and masochism as abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse."

That failed too, but not until after a long, brutal campaign punctuated by hate and violence in which the OCA and other groups raised a lot of money. The issue of gay and lesbian rights was always a cash cow, because there was much fear and misunderstanding about gays, a tiny and often invisible minority at the time. AIDS only exacerbated that, as the right exploited a panic over the epidemic and further stigmatized gays as diseased, dirty and disgusting. Radical right groups promoted fear and ignorance, putting money in their coffers for the larger ideological battles they were waging against women's right to choose, secular society, free speech and what they saw as widespread sexual immorality -- battles that have re-energized them over the years and which they are still waging, sometimes with alarming success (as evidenced by recent anti-abortion legislation in the states), using the Republican Party to do it.

I really hope that history doesn't repeat in the way he suggests it may. :l

Ok, so gender confusion is confusing. Duh.

I'm doubting that my case is simply being on the wrong side of the binary. Without getting too graphic... uh, one day I'll want a particular set of parts, and the next I'll want the other.

I know for a fact that the gender expectations put on men in this culture stress me out. I can't live up to them and I don't want to. Some of it is stupid stuff, like for the longest time I was super conscious about how I stood because a random girl in high school gym class gave me sh*t for standing with my weight on one foot, rather than legs spread and evenly weighted because the latter is more masculine. Or why I've kept my hair "masculine" because some random dude (also in high school) at a time when I kept my hair long, and well conditioned came up to me in the lunch room and asked me if I was a guy or a girl. Or keeping my nails really short because my ex wife (of all people) said something really transphobic (I forget the details) to me when I had happened not to have trimmed my nails in a while.

And honestly, while I feel like the "I want to be not a dude" or at least "I can't live up to the expectations of dudedom and don't want to" feelings are kind of always there just under the surface, the "I think I want to be a woman" feelings only seem to come up -- in recent memory anyway -- in times of intense stress. I don't know if that means that the stress has cracked open my defenses and my real feelings are exposed, or if they come up as a way to escape the stress. That's part of why I hesitated to post earlier: because I really don't know. I wish shape changing tech existed so I could just change when I wanted to, without it being a big deal.

In any case, I think I'm going to try on the label Genderqueer for size for a while. Which is really just a way of saying I need to learn to be comfortable with myself, and stop worrying about other people's labels for me. I want to experiment with clothing and hairstyles and such and find what works for me, regardless of whether it fits into the binary. Maybe this is a step towards trans, maybe not, but I think it's what I need to do for now, while I think about the rest.

Garden Ninja wrote:

Ok, so gender confusion is confusing. Duh.

I'm doubting that my case is simply being on the wrong side of the binary. Without getting too graphic... uh, one day I'll want a particular set of parts, and the next I'll want the other.

I know for a fact that the gender expectations put on men in this culture stress me out. I can't live up to them and I don't want to. Some of it is stupid stuff, like for the longest time I was super conscious about how I stood because a random girl in high school gym class gave me sh*t for standing with my weight on one foot, rather than legs spread and evenly weighted because the latter is more masculine. Or why I've kept my hair "masculine" because some random dude (also in high school) at a time when I kept my hair long, and well conditioned came up to me in the lunch room and asked me if I was a guy or a girl. Or keeping my nails really short because my ex wife (of all people) said something really transphobic (I forget the details) to me when I had happened not to have trimmed my nails in a while.

And honestly, while I feel like the "I want to be not a dude" or at least "I can't live up to the expectations of dudedom and don't want to" feelings are kind of always there just under the surface, the "I think I want to be a woman" feelings only seem to come up -- in recent memory anyway -- in times of intense stress. I don't know if that means that the stress has cracked open my defenses and my real feelings are exposed, or if they come up as a way to escape the stress. That's part of why I hesitated to post earlier: because I really don't know. I wish shape changing tech existed so I could just change when I wanted to, without it being a big deal.

In any case, I think I'm going to try on the label Genderqueer for size for a while. Which is really just a way of saying I need to learn to be comfortable with myself, and stop worrying about other people's labels for me. I want to experiment with clothing and hairstyles and such and find what works for me, regardless of whether it fits into the binary. Maybe this is a step towards trans, maybe not, but I think it's what I need to do for now, while I think about the rest.

Reading about your open exploration of yourself here is making me a bit giddy - I'm excited for you, I'm so happy that you're looking forward and just trying to find out about yourself. To hell with fitting perfectly into some little box that makes other people feel better about you!

Everything here is positive - even not knowing, and knowing that you don't know, seems like a step forward to me.

Anyway, just wanted to squee over this as a show of total support and encouragement.

Mimble wrote:

Reading about your open exploration of yourself here is making me a bit giddy - I'm excited for you, I'm so happy that you're looking forward and just trying to find out about yourself. To hell with fitting perfectly into some little box that makes other people feel better about you!

Everything here is positive - even not knowing, and knowing that you don't know, seems like a step forward to me.

Anyway, just wanted to squee over this as a show of total support and encouragement. :D

Thanks!:D I know that actually changing my perspective so I'm not always thinking about that box will be a lot of work. Old habits are hard to break, especially if they are the result of 3 decade of trying to be someone you're not. Simply being mindful of the box will help though, and I'm hoping that coming out will help me stay that way.

I struggled with that box for quite a while, even while starting to change my presentation. It's a tough habit to get out of.

I think the biggest thing through my whole experience has been reaching the point where I finally feel I can stop having to lie to people about who I am all the time. Sure, the details are complicated... but in the end, it's all about being myself. Feeling free to even figure out who that is, who I really am, who I really [em]want[/em] to be... Wow. What a difference.

That first (big) step felt pretty good, though. "I know that there are all sorts of things I've been doing just to [em]fit in[/em], and that a lot of them just aren't me. It's been so long that I don't even know which parts are and which parts aren't. But... heck, there's nothing stopping me from experimenting, just with little changes in my life, to see how it goes!"

Human beings are such complicated things.

Mimble wrote:

Reading about your open exploration of yourself here is making me a bit giddy - I'm excited for you, I'm so happy that you're looking forward and just trying to find out about yourself. To hell with fitting perfectly into some little box that makes other people feel better about you!

Everything here is positive - even not knowing, and knowing that you don't know, seems like a step forward to me.

Anyway, just wanted to squee over this as a show of total support and encouragement. :D

+1!

I had to look up Gender Fluid vs Gender Queer. It appears, based on at least one site, that GF is a subset of GQ, which makes sense. GF is where I feel I fit right now. I fluctuate.

I mentioned that stress brings these feelings out. They are not pushing constantly at my thoughts now, and that may be because I feel free of my relationship, or because I've started allowing myself to express "girly" in some ways.

I've stopped worrying so much about how I stand, and I bought myself a plushie to sleep with. Last night I went out for a drink and hot wings alone. I had on my leather jacket, and I felt strong and masculine, but I came home and snuggled into a pillow nest with my plushie for bed.

Garden Ninja wrote:

I've stopped worrying so much about how I stand, and I bought myself a plushie to sleep with. Last night I went out for a drink and hot wings alone. I had on my leather jacket, and I felt strong and masculine, but I came home and snuggled into a pillow nest with my plushie for bed.

There's something deeply empowering about this paragraph. I hope we can all eff the haters and be who we are with pride and confidence. (And respect for others. Sorry, Hitler.)

That's putting it mildly. This is clearly a case in which the children's best interest was definitely not upheld. I'm just seething right now.
I disagree with the article, though, I actually think it is discriminatory for the grandparents to be hateful to their son-in-law. But obviously, yes, they're right, the courts have no right to rule in their favor. It's just wrong. Especially when you know how many very, very bad parents there are out there. Just makes me so angry, especially since I've seen the fallout of this in the ER.

On a happier note, I've been lurking a while, and just wanted to echo Mimble's "squee over this as a show of total support and encouragement" towards GardenNinja. It can't be easy, but you're moving forward, right?

Last week, a court removed the twins from their home and gave custody to the grandparents.

Wait... WHAT?! WHAT THE FLYING F*CK?!

Without any demonstrable harm to the children... they just took them away from their parents and gave them to their grandparents (who I'd be willing to bet being older, are going to have something of a harder time handling the two concurrent terrible-two's)?!

*brain ragequits*

Wow, ugh. This is not an uncommon sort of occurrence for trans parents who have split with their partners... but to remove custody from both parents when they've not done anything wrong and are still together (and in fact were together before deciding to bring children into the world) is taking things to a ridiculous level. :l

The worst prejudice in this case is not that of the grandparents, it is that of the public officials who've decided that a transgender parent is a good enough reason to remove custody, despite lack of any lawbreaking or reported harm to the children. It's basically saying "you harm your children just by existing". Just... ugh.

As usual, some of the comments are infuriating, too. #18 bugged me for a number of reasons.

Time for reality check. When someone makes the decision to transition a woman goes outside, the chance of losing employment being raped should always be taken into account.

With the added bonus of "in most places in the U.S., firing someone or refusing to hire them because they're trans is totally legal". And, socially acceptable. Doesn't matter if they're transitioning on the job, have transitioned, or haven't transitioned, or even don't intend to. Doesn't matter if you're really trans or if people just suspect that you are. (And hey, all of this goes for being gay, too.) And if you live in one of the places where you are protected, good luck proving it.

Which, sadly, means that yes, people do have to take that into account pretty seriously. :l I wish it weren't so, but until a law like ENDA finally gets signed, it's something we have to think about. And after, well, then at least we'll be able to say that "No, I shouldn't have to think about that, legally. I still do have to think about it, but it's because people break the law."

But there is of course a big space between "people can legally fire you for any reason they care to that isn't forbidden by law" and "the court system needs a legal justification for removing custody of children from their parents".

In this case, it sounds like the father transitioned a while back and it isn't obvious to people that he's trans, to the extent that the grandparents had to be [em]told[/em]. So it all comes down to "you're an unfit parent because of what kind of plumbing you had when you were born, and your wife is an unfit parent because she's OK with that."

On Transgender Day of Remembrance we want to honor all of the people who died. We want to make sure that they are not forgotten. One way to do this is to celebrate the lives of trans* people and appreciate those we still have with us. So today we're presenting you a list of some of the awesome things that trans* people did this year and some of the victories that we've won.

I say Yay to Hypatian, for teaching me awesome things this year.

Demosthenes wrote:

I say Yay to Hypatian, for teaching me awesome things this year. :D

Hyp, Hyp, Hooray!

IMAGE(http://www.kazoos.com/images2/greenplain.jpg)IMAGE(http://s4.evcdn.com/images/block/I0-001/013/625/935-5.jpeg_/4th-july-fireworks-spectacular-35.jpeg)

Garden Ninja wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I say Yay to Hypatian, for teaching me awesome things this year. :D

Hyp, Hyp, Hooray!

IMAGE(http://www.kazoos.com/images2/greenplain.jpg)IMAGE(http://s4.evcdn.com/images/block/I0-001/013/625/935-5.jpeg_/4th-july-fireworks-spectacular-35.jpeg)

Indeed! Thanks, Hyp - I've learned a lot from reading your posts here and the articles you've linked to.

+1 I'm definitely not the most knowledgeable out there, but I'm willing to learn and you've offered great opportunities for that, opportunities which I would have have been unable to take advantage of otherwise.

Unlurking to jump on the positivity train. A big (belated) hi5 to Hyp, Clocky, Garden and all the trans* GWJers. Thanks for helping us understand; I hope we can make the lives of trans* people better because of it.

Recently, an equality effort in Florida was defeated by appealing to the ‘trans people = rape’ meme. As it turned out, appealing to this meme was deliberate and is, in fact, part of a curriculum currently being taught to anti-LGBT activists. The TransAdvocate obtained audio from one of the training sessions given by the Christian Family Association (CFC) on October 5th, shortly after their successful defeat of a Florida equality measure that included trans people.

Going to make a post. It will re-hash some things I said in here before.

As I continue my regimen of injecting testosterone as part of testosterone replacement therapy, one would think that I would feel more like a male. With all this testosterone surging through a person, one should feel like a male. But I don't. The more I take, the more I want to be a woman. Half of my thoughts throughout the day just seem to go towards this vision I have of myself as a girl. I imagine myself in all these scenarios. I have long, curly red hair with delicate features. I would dance, do ballet, and all these feminine things that I would love to do. I wouldn't be constantly trying to measure up to this male standard I cannot possibly reach. I would be able to become what I should have been all along. It is unfortunate because I do not work too well as a male. I did TRT because I thought it would let me become something I am not. If I couldn't be a woman, I could at least be a masculine man. Which might sound strange for someone that would have liked to have transitioned, but if you can't do the one thing you want, then you might as well try to do the thing you can as well as possible. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but it is what I have got. I can pass as a male even if I feel like a fraud. If I transitioned, I feel like I would be stuck in some kind of gender purgatory where I am neither male nor female and acceptable to no one, least of all myself. If I had known about transitioning when I was younger and had understood more about myself, it could have been a really strong possibility.

That's my rant, though. Take it for what you will if you happen to read it, good gamers with jobs. If you are transgendered and thinking about TRT and all that crap to cope with being a male, take it from me: don't do it. You won't be any happier. You'll just feel even further alienated.

Hey Zane,

I'm sorry that you're going through this - it's hard to come to terms with something you want to be that involved such a drastic change to who you appear to be. I don't want to tell you what to do, since I'm not in your situation and not sure if you're looking for advice or just wanted to vent.

Feel free to send me a PM if you want to commiserate.

I spent twenty years thinking exactly those same sorts of thoughts "I would be a monstrous freak as a woman, so I may as well try to be the best guy I can be. It's too bad I wasn't able to do something before my body got so masculinized." Eventually, I realized that being the best guy I could be was killing me. Slowly, it's true, but... I was so broken. It took so long that I never noticed it happening—it wasn't until my feelings kind of broke over me by happenstance and that made me take a good hard look at my life that I realized how messed up I was.

I wasn't sure at that point that I wanted to make a try at transition... but, it did give me the drive I needed to break through all of those barriers, to try to look at myself and keep looking until I could see past all of my fears and self-loathing. And eventually, I realized that... it wasn't as impossible as I thought it was. Even twenty years on from the first time I thought "I could never manage this", it wasn't too late. It wouldn't be easy, but... I had seen the kind of wreckage that not doing anything had made of me, so I decided to try.

Gender dysphoria makes it really hard to get that clear-eyed view of yourself, I think. We fix on the things that we most aspire to, which are the things that are furthest out of reach... and that makes us lose sight of the fact that those impossible ideals of femininity (or for trans men, masculinity)? They're not just impossible for us, they're impossible for [em]most people[/em]. And we don't need to meet them to feel like ourselves, any more than anyone else does. We might have more trouble with self-image issues... but it's not like cis people don't have those problems, too.

Men and women come in all shapes and sizes, and while there are definitely differences between the average masculinized body and the average feminized body, they're a lot smaller than you might think. A lot of that difference in face and body shape is just fat distribution, and hormones absolutely change that. It's kind of incredible.

I'm bald. I'm really bald. I started losing my hair in my late teens. I have reasonably broad shoulders. I have a big neck. I have big calves. I have an incredibly large amount of facial hair and body hair.

And it turns out... none of these things is the barrier that I thought it was. There are women with bodies shaped like mine. (Modulo the things that hormones are changing.) There are women who have lost their hair. (I'm still really sad about not having hair, and hope that HRT will eventually bring enough of mine back to give me options—but wigs work way better than I ever thought.) There are women with big necks and calves (and honestly, a lot of that on me is muscle that is likely to change over time under the influence of hormones.) It takes a lot of time and money, but hair can be permanently removed.

Anyway, I'm not going to get where I want to be overnight—but realizing that I didn't have to aim for the impossible helped, and realizing that it's OK if it takes time also helped. Nobody gets to look exactly like they want to look. Nobody gets treated exactly like they want people to treat them. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't or can't aim for looking and being treated in a way that makes them [em]comfortable[/em] with themselves.

And honestly, being "neither male nor female" is not as bad as all that. Remember that there are non-binary trans folks out there, and they do OK, too. I'm expecting to be in this sort of middle ground for a while... I've got some boobs going on, but I'm still working on facial hair removal and will be for a while. And... it's just generally not a big deal to people I meet.

Family... well... that's more stressful.

So.. yeah...

It's less hard than you imagine to change your expression, although there are plenty of challenges to being trans. So don't give up hope, and keep the possibility in mind even if you don't think you can do it now. One of the first trans people who I followed online mentioned something that I find true: A lot of us kind of circle around to this decision point periodically. Our dysphoria begins to prey on us, and we have to make a decision. But if we choose to just keep on trying to pretend to be who we're not, we're eventually going to come right back to that decision again, a few years down the road.

And as I've said before: Please do find a good therapist. Someone you can trust. Someone you can establish a relationship with and see every once in a while... to help you deal with what you are feeling, and to help make sure that you stay safe. I don't want anyone ending up in the kind of situation I was in. It's up to you what you want to do—but make sure that you stay healthy and don't succumb to slow poison without ever knowing.

Good luck. *hug*

Thanks for the replies.

I'm extremely hesitant, but I want to make this happen. I can't stand this person I've become. Heh...at least once I stop the TRT, I will have practically no testosterone to worry about.

ZaneRockfist, I'm going to be honest and say that there have been a couple of times when I've been confused and saddened by the way you've acted. I'm airing that out here because your honesty has helped me understand. Thanks for that.

Trying to be anyone other than yourself is no way to live your life, in my opinion. I'm glad to see you making the effort to get rid of the garbage and expectations which have had you at their mercy for so long, and uncovering the real person who has been buried underneath all that. Everyone deserves to pursue, know, and be their own genuine self. No one here could possibly lead you to where you belong, but what you've had to say tells me you're on the path.

ZaneRockfist wrote:

I feel like I would be stuck in some kind of gender purgatory

From experience, that may not be something you need to have any fear of.

ZaneRockfist wrote:

I can't stand this person I've become.

I look forward to the day you post that you finally love who you are.

Everything else feels like it was stated more eloquently by Hypatian.

There are seven billion of us, having experiences all across the spectrum of gender and expression and, honestly, everything else too. You're not as alone as you might fear. You are worthy of being yourself and being happy.

Thanks, good people. Appreciate all the kind words even though I have usually been very short on them in my time here with others.

I'm looking up online gender therapists because there aren't really any resources around here for that sort of stuff. Also, I really hate having to commute to places because I am lazy . If I make this happen, it is going to be weird handling work. It is a very physical, male-dominated field being that it is construction. And this is in an area that is filled with very religious, very provincial people. I'll have to pretend that I am sick as I go off TRT. Those people would kill a trans person.