Does anyone have a screepcap or link saved of the interaction about a decade ago when a trans girl on reddit asked an adult cis man how often he thought about being a girl and his answer was something like "I dont think ive ever thought about that".
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@siege I used to be in this post and I don’t like it
…yeah, definitely no signs when you have thought through the exact wording of the demon pact / genie wish…nope, normal cis guy stuff…
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@siege
I kind of want to hang an appendix onto this idea, that some of us pre-transition transes get ourselves into a position where we NEVER think of potentially being the gender we actually are.
Like, I never considered that I was a guy. I've got no memories or wanting to be one, or the thought crossing my mind that I wasn't actually a girl.
What I DO have, are memories of obsessively thinking of myself as a girl, in a "How do I live with being a woman? How do I do girl right?" kind of endless-angst way. As if any lapse in my vigilance would make all my gender evaporate, which would of course be terribly dangerous.
I posit that's another incredibly sad tell.
I think being an enby made it complicated too. Back in the day at least, there wasn't any alternative third thing to long to be.@valentine yeah, like i tend to think of three general categories of trans people coming to realisation:
1. those who boldly as a child walkup to their parents and say "Hey actually im X" - this to me is like a cryptid. I cannot fathom magical formulation exists that allows the trans kid to take everything theyve been told by parents/teachers/peers and say No you're all wrong.
2. those who pubertal changes are so stark it crushes them so heavily that they figure it out.
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also theres all the stuff you cant convey they're not yet understanding like 3 hours after you accept yourself (oh ive always wanted this more than anything and the only person stopping me was myself), 3 days in (i was never a guy and had desperately tried to build an idea of my very-not-a-guy experience as a normal guy experience), and then 3 years in (this isnt a small part of me, this is a fundamental core thing that connects to almost every choice and part of me and has for all my life)
@siege
This is so relatable.
And the feeling, somewhere in the transition timeline, of realising how beautiful who you always were is, and the resulting ongoing rage and sorrow that it was so thoroughly rejected by the world that you're going to spend the rest of your life un-burying it. There was never any intrinsic reason it had to be hidden or delayed. It's gorgeous.
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@valentine yeah, like i tend to think of three general categories of trans people coming to realisation:
1. those who boldly as a child walkup to their parents and say "Hey actually im X" - this to me is like a cryptid. I cannot fathom magical formulation exists that allows the trans kid to take everything theyve been told by parents/teachers/peers and say No you're all wrong.
2. those who pubertal changes are so stark it crushes them so heavily that they figure it out.
@valentine 2 continued: figures it out in early teen years, normally has terrible time trying to negotiate situation with parents, posts always tend to include crying in showers.
3. those who accept what they're told by parents/teachers, that they are their agab, and therefore self learn to crush any internal gender need feelings and build a cage around it, cage becomes more complex as life continues, puberty leads to more intense crushing of needs, mental health cracks begin from closet life
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@valentine 2 continued: figures it out in early teen years, normally has terrible time trying to negotiate situation with parents, posts always tend to include crying in showers.
3. those who accept what they're told by parents/teachers, that they are their agab, and therefore self learn to crush any internal gender need feelings and build a cage around it, cage becomes more complex as life continues, puberty leads to more intense crushing of needs, mental health cracks begin from closet life
@valentine and yeah, the 3 group to me is what you're describing with that "ever vigilance of it all evaporating and then everyone would KNOW (i dont even know what they would know because i cant admit to myself what is inside the box)" of policing self.
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@siege
I kind of want to hang an appendix onto this idea, that some of us pre-transition transes get ourselves into a position where we NEVER think of potentially being the gender we actually are.
Like, I never considered that I was a guy. I've got no memories or wanting to be one, or the thought crossing my mind that I wasn't actually a girl.
What I DO have, are memories of obsessively thinking of myself as a girl, in a "How do I live with being a woman? How do I do girl right?" kind of endless-angst way. As if any lapse in my vigilance would make all my gender evaporate, which would of course be terribly dangerous.
I posit that's another incredibly sad tell.
I think being an enby made it complicated too. Back in the day at least, there wasn't any alternative third thing to long to be.@siege
The fact that I was a feminist living in a hyper-misogynistic region complicated it too. The idea that being a woman was painful, frustrating, and an upsetting fate seemed...reasonable, given what I saw girls around me go through, and what I was put through.
That swamped the dysphoria, which was hiding inside the flood of just Bad Experiences As a Girl.
Also, I did have the "crushed by puberty changes." If I'd have been left to my own devices -- AND if cultural knowledge of non-binary people had existed in 1991 like it does now -- I'm almost certain I'd have figured it out. And probably done something about it, even if I'd had to run away to New Orleans or something.
Instead, I was severely bullied right at puberty for *not being feminine enough*, based mainly on having small boobs and being gifted, both anathema for a girl in Florida.
So like...I blamed myself for not being enough of a girl, and got obsessed with the conflict between that demand and my feminist beliefs. The social consequences of that were much more painful and immediate than the
self-authenticity pain of not being able to express some amorphous non-binary male gender that was 25 years too early to even have language for it, let alone Tumblr aesthetic boards to clue me in.
Being AFAB and genderqueer in the pre-internet deep South SUCKED. -
@valentine 2 continued: figures it out in early teen years, normally has terrible time trying to negotiate situation with parents, posts always tend to include crying in showers.
3. those who accept what they're told by parents/teachers, that they are their agab, and therefore self learn to crush any internal gender need feelings and build a cage around it, cage becomes more complex as life continues, puberty leads to more intense crushing of needs, mental health cracks begin from closet life
@siege
Yeah, this third one!
I always tell people that I was in a closet WITHIN another closet. -
@siege
Yeah, this third one!
I always tell people that I was in a closet WITHIN another closet.@siege
I think you're spot on with these categories.
I've felt for some time that there needs to be much more frank and open discussion of "how to tell if you might be trans."
I know people will scream because any one piece of evidence or clue doesn't "mean anything", and folks are especially overprotective of clues that might overlap with just being a gender-nonconforming woman.
But I'm also at the point where I don't care if people get upset, I'd love a long list of "things I didn't know were a sign I was trans" for all genders, to be floating around the internet. And people with like 5 of them could be "hmm!" and people with 50 of them could have a good cry and a life change.
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@siege
I think you're spot on with these categories.
I've felt for some time that there needs to be much more frank and open discussion of "how to tell if you might be trans."
I know people will scream because any one piece of evidence or clue doesn't "mean anything", and folks are especially overprotective of clues that might overlap with just being a gender-nonconforming woman.
But I'm also at the point where I don't care if people get upset, I'd love a long list of "things I didn't know were a sign I was trans" for all genders, to be floating around the internet. And people with like 5 of them could be "hmm!" and people with 50 of them could have a good cry and a life change.@valentine yeah the "femboys exist, boys can just want to be girls, that doesnt make them trans" argument.
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@valentine yeah the "femboys exist, boys can just want to be girls, that doesnt make them trans" argument.
@siege
Yeah. I've got no idea, beyond transphobia, why those arguments exist that go, "What's wrong with just being a femboy (or tomboy)?"
Or the idea that people transitioning to male is "butch erasure."
Plenty of otherwise progressive or queer people take refuge in this either-or framing when they haven't confronted a really subtle, deep-rooted discomfort with trans people and transition as a concept.
I think it should be less either-or and more "yes, and." Yes, femboys AND trans girls. Yes, butches AND trans guys, AND dandy gay trans boys, and butch trans girls, and...
The more the merrier. -
@siege
Yeah. I've got no idea, beyond transphobia, why those arguments exist that go, "What's wrong with just being a femboy (or tomboy)?"
Or the idea that people transitioning to male is "butch erasure."
Plenty of otherwise progressive or queer people take refuge in this either-or framing when they haven't confronted a really subtle, deep-rooted discomfort with trans people and transition as a concept.
I think it should be less either-or and more "yes, and." Yes, femboys AND trans girls. Yes, butches AND trans guys, AND dandy gay trans boys, and butch trans girls, and...
The more the merrier.@siege
"What's wrong with just being a (non-transitioned person)?" is a pretty revealing question, sadly.
Like, none of us should go any closer to transy stuff than we ABSOLUTELY have to.
That attitude sucks enough when it comes from a cishet person. From someone who has in their lives attended a Pride event? Kind of reprehensible.
I don't think we should stay away from trans stuff and from transition as long as we're able to.
I think we should approach it and embrace it as soon in life as we can, with as open a heart as we can. What's the worst that could happen? A person realizes they're actually cis, and files it away with their gay-kiss high school experimentation? So what? -
@siege
Yeah. I've got no idea, beyond transphobia, why those arguments exist that go, "What's wrong with just being a femboy (or tomboy)?"
Or the idea that people transitioning to male is "butch erasure."
Plenty of otherwise progressive or queer people take refuge in this either-or framing when they haven't confronted a really subtle, deep-rooted discomfort with trans people and transition as a concept.
I think it should be less either-or and more "yes, and." Yes, femboys AND trans girls. Yes, butches AND trans guys, AND dandy gay trans boys, and butch trans girls, and...
The more the merrier.@valentine yes, 100% with you.
like on the face of it, i love that femboy exists as a (sometimes positive) term now. Because growing up the term for that space which i too inhabited, was crossdresser.
exact same discomfort that many i speak to in the "questioning" stage who use that label, if i speak with them in DMs enough the reality that emerges is to them femboy = hot and trans woman = deluded old disgusting
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@valentine yes, 100% with you.
like on the face of it, i love that femboy exists as a (sometimes positive) term now. Because growing up the term for that space which i too inhabited, was crossdresser.
exact same discomfort that many i speak to in the "questioning" stage who use that label, if i speak with them in DMs enough the reality that emerges is to them femboy = hot and trans woman = deluded old disgusting
@siege
Goddamn that last bit is so sad. I hope in my lifetime I can see the last of that weird stereotype idea die.
Trans women are beautiful.
And, beauty isn't necessary for infinite value to be present. In any gender. -
@valentine yes, 100% with you.
like on the face of it, i love that femboy exists as a (sometimes positive) term now. Because growing up the term for that space which i too inhabited, was crossdresser.
exact same discomfort that many i speak to in the "questioning" stage who use that label, if i speak with them in DMs enough the reality that emerges is to them femboy = hot and trans woman = deluded old disgusting
@valentine its those who use femboy as just the new term for trap,
thats where its like ah yes, tale old as time, every generation thinks just be young, hot and in denial forever is the solution to being trans.
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@valentine yes, 100% with you.
like on the face of it, i love that femboy exists as a (sometimes positive) term now. Because growing up the term for that space which i too inhabited, was crossdresser.
exact same discomfort that many i speak to in the "questioning" stage who use that label, if i speak with them in DMs enough the reality that emerges is to them femboy = hot and trans woman = deluded old disgusting
@siege I think all the queer genders get hit with that capitalist-driven fuckability yardstick.
It is so unfair.
And I hate how we police each other and ourselves on it. -
@valentine its those who use femboy as just the new term for trap,
thats where its like ah yes, tale old as time, every generation thinks just be young, hot and in denial forever is the solution to being trans.
@siege
I'd love it if we could live in a world where being trans didn't need a solution, that it WAS the solution. -
eg: closeted trans girl who will state "im not sure if im trans, i dont hate being a guy, im not sure if i want to be a woman but its an idea that comes up sometimes"
translation: I would make a pact with an unholy demon to be turned into a girl right now, please, are you an unholy demon? please tell me you are
@siege Wait, ARE you an unholy demon? You have to tell me if you are
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@siege Wait, ARE you an unholy demon? You have to tell me if you are
@DuchessOfSnork I have it on good opinion from a trans elder that i respect that we all are. We are all Baphomet.
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@siege
I kind of want to hang an appendix onto this idea, that some of us pre-transition transes get ourselves into a position where we NEVER think of potentially being the gender we actually are.
Like, I never considered that I was a guy. I've got no memories or wanting to be one, or the thought crossing my mind that I wasn't actually a girl.
What I DO have, are memories of obsessively thinking of myself as a girl, in a "How do I live with being a woman? How do I do girl right?" kind of endless-angst way. As if any lapse in my vigilance would make all my gender evaporate, which would of course be terribly dangerous.
I posit that's another incredibly sad tell.
I think being an enby made it complicated too. Back in the day at least, there wasn't any alternative third thing to long to be.@valentine omg 🥺 maybe this is a common thing but i've never heard anyone but me describe it...during the last year before i finally came out, i found myself obsessed with the idea of what it meant for me to be "a good man" and how to be a man correctly.
it wasn't until i came to the conclusion that anything that makes a good man could apply to being a good woman that i was finally able to admit to myself that i was enby
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@agturcz @JoscelynTransient yeah, i do love to when i can sneak in a line of "cis guys dont ever make wishes to imagined beings / gods / demons / fairy godmothers / birthday cake candles to wake up as a woman, nor do they ever try to figure out how to ensure they have a dream where they turn into a woman either"
