#...i have found that my dysphoria has narrowed (especially since going on testosterone) and i feel more at peace | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

my-darling-boy · 5 years

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SO I’ve been getting people in my inbox asking me if I could explain the struggles of being trans. Obviously I’m willing to educate but there’s a LOT to unpack on understanding that, so to narrow it down, I’ll list things I or some trans people close to me have gone through to give you an idea of the difficulties. I obviously don’t speak for all trans people but as a trans man myself, I have Been Through Some Things

//Rape mention, self harm mention, suicide mention//

•When I came out at 14, I lost all my friends aside from one. I was bullied extensively behind my back. I was dragged to church by my friends who wanted to cleanse me of my “sin”

•I was the only out trans man in my entire school of 2000 students. I knew zero trans people. Everything I had to learn as a kid about being trans was done so entirely by myself. Additionally, the school’s Gay-Straight-Alliance Club kicked me out because I was a masculine trans man

•My parents lied and told me I had certain health concerns which would prohibit me from medically transitioning because they didn’t want me to do it

•I had zero support system. I almost attempted suicide at 14 and self harmed frequently from 13-18 years old

•Many trans people develop eating disorders; for a lot us, we feel we can avoid being misgendered if we look a certain way. It can be caused by depression or from a means of “controlling” something about ourselves when our lives are out of control; I developed anorexia at 16 and struggle every day with it still at 21

•I was constantly told by cis “friends” even cis LGBQ+ “friends” that I would never find anyone to love me because I was trans

•I should point out, I’m not trying to attack other cis LGBQ+ people, I’m trying to point out that injustices and bullying towards trans people happens WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community by cis members. As in, being gay doesn’t mean you’re immune to being a transphobe

•Starting at 14 when I came out, I was constantly asked about how I would have sex since I was trans by both adults and classmates

•I was preyed upon in high school by a guy who had a trans man fetish. The vast majority of trans people will experience a form of sexual abuse/harassment at least once from cis people. Trans people are sometimes seen by cis people as being part of a fetish or like a “sex toy”, thinking we’re just here for their disgusting kinks

•Kids in the hall would pass me at school and make comments like “is that a boy or a girl? *laugh*” or refer to me as an “it”

•There were so little resources for trans people where I lived that I became the trans man every trans person came to for advice meanwhile other cis members of the LGBTQ+ community had many friends to confide in. Trans people are often barred from being accepted into these cis LGBQ+ circles

•A trans man friend of mine, who was a minor at the time, was raped by an adult cis man in a men’s restroom minutes from where I lived. I refuse to use public restrooms due to this fact alone, no matter how cis I look when entering a men’s restroom

•In many places throughout the world, it is illegal to use the restroom of a different gender than you were originally assigned. Even just minding our own business and using the restroom is for some reason an issue among cis people. In one restroom I could be harassed and in the other, I could physically assaulted. Or arrested! Testosterone was the only way I could go into the men’s restroom without being preyed upon by cis men and even then, I have to wait for the place to be empty, even if it’s legal for me to be in there

•When visiting dangerous areas, I have to bind my chest for 12+ hours because I never enter a place where I can take the binder off. In a very conservative area that strictly prides itself in male/female cis people, trans people feel forced to make sure we LOOK either way or else we could be harassed/jumped, as there are places not far from me where non-binary/trans/trans-nb people will not venture to because it’s unsafe. It would be easy to hide I’m gay in a dangerous area, as I just don’t mention being gay, and you can’t inherently “see” as person is gay as it’s a sexual orientation. But in a dangerous area, if I say I’m a man and someone catches on to the fact I’m not a cis man, bad things could happen to me. (I’d like to add that the vast majority of trans hate crimes have been against black trans women and murders in general of trans people have skyrocketed in recent years. A vast majority of these hate crimes are committed by cis white men.)

•A lot of emphasis is put on cis appearances in the trans community, which isn’t always the product of just wanting to express yourself in ways that are traditionally cis. Sometimes we are put in certain situations where we unfortunately MUST look either strictly, stereotypically male/female in order to avoid harassment, and it’s completely anxiety inducing and/or degrading. Some trans people sometimes feel forced to transition to fit in, and a lot trans people are AFRAID to transition or dress without accordance to their original assigned gender because of how we are mistreated by cis people when we do so

•Touching on that, I have encountered people referred to as “transmeds” which are those trans men who think trans men must have gender dysphoria in order to be trans, or that you must want to medically transition to be trans; they commonly place stereotypical, often conservative and toxic, masculine requirements to be a trans man. Many trans men like myself speculate they are the reason why toxic masculinity still thrives like a disease among the trans community. Conservative ideals like this damage the trans community by asserting a trans person DOES look and act a certain way, which is an idea incidentally trans people strive to dismantle among cis people

•Since I’m a trans, gay man, not only can I be bullied by CISHET MEN but also CIS GAY MEN and additionally even other conservative TRANS MEN. If you’re a gay, bi, etc trans person within the LGBTQ+ community, you often face more types of discrimination than cis LGBQ+ people, especially if you are asexual on top of it all, like myself

•Trans people also often encounter terfs, cis “feminists” who believe trans women aren’t real women, and these individuals are found to confidently defend racist, N@zi, white supremacist, and other bigoted attitudes, so just..... gross people

•As a trans person, you’re sometimes made to feel as though you can’t be proud of yourself the same way you can be proud of being gay or lesbian. I’ve witnessed people praising someone for talking about being gay everyday while those SAME PEOPLE complained a trans person talking about being trans ONCE was “annoying” and just “ vying for attention”. Cis people, lgbq+ or not, are sometimes made so uncomfortable by trans people they think calling them annoying will silence them. It’s happened to me almost every single time I’ve tried to come out which is what ultimately led me to be ashamed of myself for many years

•Cis people can often be so unaccepting of our identity that they will intentionally not work on using our correct name/pronouns, withhold using the correct name/pronouns as a form of punishment, or go behind our backs and use the wrong pronouns/name because they don’t think it’s important. Cis people have the luxury of always having their name and pronouns as being a given, and those same people think we are so below them, they think they can choose when we do or do not deserve to be called what we should be called. Deadnaming/intentially misgendering a celebrity you don’t like or person you’re angry with is STILL transphobia

•Just recently, a cis manager outed me to my entire workplace as being trans. Outing someone as trans is VERY DANGEROUS. At the end of the day, you never know who that information could be passed to. Knowing that someone is trans is NEVER your decision to tell people, it’s their private information. If you out someone in a workplace environment, you can and mostly likely will lose your job. However inversely, it is still possible in some places to be fired solely for being trans. If I was in a bad part of my country, her outing me could have cost me my job. Every job I have held thus far has always ended with a cis manager not knowing how to keep their mouth shut about my gender.

Basically, trans people struggle everyday in a vast number of ways and the magnitude of their hardships often go unnoticed due to transphobes or uninformed cishet people trivialising or censoring trans voices. And these are just a FRACTION of things trans people have to deal with regularly. If you aren’t trans, you can’t claim to know what we’re going through. You can only listen to and be there for trans people, read their stories and experiences to be aware of their struggles and how you can make sure you aren’t creating an unsafe space for trans people.

~Terfs and transphobes do not interact~

#I’ll post another answering the people who were asking me what not to ask/say to a trans person #why does this sound so salty I’m sorry #I think it just reminded me of all the times I’ve been harrassed #or seen others get harrassed #lgbtq #transgender #trans #long post

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lids-flutter-open · 7 years

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I've found a subset of detransition blogs that r pretty smart and well articulated (probably bc the ppl r older and didn't get socialized as people on tumblr) having feelings again obviously , most notably about the moment where I watched Alison bechdel on stage and realized I was exactly the age she was when she realized she was a lesbian and started crying and had to talk myself out of detransitioning At That Moment and convince myself all over again that transsexuals existed and could live happy lives . I feel a lot of what detransitioned ppl talk about when they're not being vitriolic at trans women / when they draw comparisons between their experience and trans women's rather than defining the differences between them, and I have finally found a group of ppl who doesn't make me upset to read about so that's chill my main other beef w detransition blog rhetoric that in struggling w rn is when they act like trans activists are the reason medical care for trans people /people with dysphoria is so limited and unsafe and focused on pressing trans people into a narrow physical range of bodily appearance and identification , because it's patently untrue that trans activists (Especially Mascs) dislike nuance or a range of options in terms of dealing w dysphoria like...I think since the 2000s but probably since the 1990s transmasculine people who don't pursue hormones and/or identify as some kind of butch nonbinary boi or whatever has exponentially increased , probably more than the number of adolescents and teens getting hormones has increased . The increased range of options for dysphoric females or whatever ur calling it has indeed shot thru the roof , they just might not call themselves females or women and they may not be into ur politics for whatever reason . Trans people consistently have wacky complicated gender feelings (as do lesbians and gays of the theoretically cisgender persuasion, as do sensitive boys and tough girls everywhere) and generally push for those identities to be seen and respected --but the medical professionals who deal with trans people tend to focus on medical solutions to integrate trans people into heterosexual patriarchy or at least make their bodies something recognizeable as either real women or real men. A lot of wacky trans people dig the surgery and the hormones and work with those doctors but we are not the ones who have ever had the advantage in that situation. As time goes on there are way more trans people who do have relatively more power to set policy on this stuff and we risk reproducing the old rules or making diagnostic categories which seek to reroute any gender deviance toward a certain medical pathway, but I'm pretty confident that trans medical providers are not looking at six year olds who play with trucks and going "you gotta get that kid on puberty blockers" --I'm pretty sure if anyone is doing that it is cis people. I'm concerned abt the generation of trans kids that r gonna grow up w parents who pay for their hormone blockers but don't talk about gender roles or feminism w their kids , bc cis parents like that do exist and I've met the first wave of their progeny --a homophobic trans teen girl from Montana whose parents were okay with having a daughter but less okay with a fag, for example. She would probably be trans anyway but her relationship to her gender and her history is always gonna be fucked bc of her shitty parents . I'm worried about trans boys who come out at age six acting like shitheads their whole lives because they get taught about the world by their middle school boy peers instead of their weird closeted gay friends. I think there are a few trans people who really push the whole gender role thing but I think by and large trans people as a threat to future trans people/dysphoric children/gender non conforming children is not the issue I'm worried about. That said , as stated above kinda, I'm like very into discussing honestly the ways that medicine for trans people is Bad and limited and presses people into Bad Narratives and also how hormones (which I maintain are morally good for the purposes of standing by transsexuality as a means to whatever end anyone wants , survival or whatever else) are still administered by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing or what is going to happen and how the manufacturers of those hormones have very little incentive to try to make sure the things they're producing are safe for people to take long term /are being given in safe doses. The number of trans women I have seen talking about how doctors in Germany and America give completely different doses of testosterone blockers and how many times girls on a high dose feel totally shitty physically , the number of trans men I have seen talking abt changes in their body that their doctor didn't talk to them about -- that does scare me and I think detransitioned people do have some good viewpoints on it as does anyone who has lived thru medical transition , and as long as they aren't blaming the issue on trans teenagers or whatever we can have a p good convo I think

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