#likely i won't change the asker's mind but hey i know i probably won't change my position on this by a whole ton

[uncanny-tranny]

Transition status does not necessarily equal medical transition. The more important aspect to look at is social transition - lived experience outside the binary assigned to you due to sex characteristics. Dysphoria and (ideally) lived experience is what qualifies a person as transgender, that's what gave us modern trans folks access to the resources to change our bodies until the whole inform consent thing took off.

- a trans person, 7+ years of lived experience out as trans and 6 years of hormones and two gender affirmative surgeries later.

I think my problem with this stems from both the dysphoria aspect and the lived experience part.

See, dysphoria isn't required to identify as trans or to know you're trans. It might help you parse out how you identify (what makes you feel most at home versus what doesn't), but many agree it doesn't make you trans. I've been diagnosed by a few professionals with dysphoria, but that didn't magically make me trans. Nor did my dysphoria itself. Is dysphoria a big part of some or many trans peoples' experiences? Obviously it is, it should be respected and people who are dealing with dysphoria absolutely deserve the resources to address it if they'd like. But it isn't everybody's experience.

As well, lived experience as the "opposite" gender really doesn't mean much for some, I believe, in that you can still know you're trans even without "lived experience." Like... even when I wore dresses with sneakers, I still knew something didn't feel right, and that's when I was between five and seven. And did lived experience suddenly validate that and "make" me trans? Lived experience after I came out didn't tell me I'm trans, it kind of just confirmed what I already was very very very well-aware of (which I suppose may be a reason why people believe this). It also rubs me the wrong way when people use lived experience to bar those from transition, mostly because it takes agency away from patients and puts it up to others (who, let's be real, are likely transphobic) to decide of you're "worthy" enough to them to transition.

I do agree that social transition is important - just as important as medical transition is, in fact, because all forms of transition are important. Though I do not believe it "makes" you trans - I don't think transition has that kind of power. I believe transition is a way to affirm how you feel (such as I feel affirmed that testosterone has made my voice deeper, for instance). But if I decided to never have socially or medically transitioned, nothing would change about my identity. I'd still identify as male more or less, and pre-T and pre-coming out, that's pretty much how I felt, as well.

#ask #anon #trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #i'm always paranoid my thoughts don't translate well into words so if that's the case here i guess i'll just commit treason #in my experience my dysphoria took a while to recognize and feel and process... #...and sometimes i'll realize that something makes me dysphoric when i used to think it didn't... #...and that's a sentiment shared by many. so i don't really place my identity on something like my dysphoria... #...because i still have a lot to unpack and discover about it. would i still identify as trans if i wasn't dysphoric though? #i think so because being me feels *right* and this is just me #likely i won't change the asker's mind but hey i know i probably won't change my position on this by a whole ton #i understand where anon is coming from but it just isn't where i'm coming from #i hate when i have a lot of thoughts all at once and i try to catch them in my net and they just don't cooperate 💀