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[someaulone]

I remember when I transitioned back nearly a decade ago I was suffering a lot from feelings of shame and guilt relating to my transition as well as feelings of dehumanisation. I’d experienced a lot of homophobic bullying, social exclusion and isolation growing up. My therapist and social worker and doctor all urged me to go to trans support groups and lgbt support groups. Being around trans people was supposed to help normalise it for me and help me start to accept myself.

It didn’t, it made it worse. Being around other trans people made my skin crawl with shame. I felt even more like an alien and a freak. Being in a group of trans people just made me feel more and more “othered” from people who aren’t trans.

What finally did lead me to accepting myself was the realisation that the vast majority of “trans experiences” are just normal, boring every day human experiences catalysed by something unusual but the end result is the same. My dad, cousins and various cis males I’ve known in my life have struggled with looking very baby faced well into their late twenties, with being short, with being self-conscience accessing male spaces (such as bathrooms) because they are small and skinny.  I can openly talk about being on testosterone without ever outing myself to cis people who are also on long term/permanent medication and be able to identify and relate to each other’s experiences around that.  I’ve been open with having operations with people I’m stealth to; nobody is interested in why I had an operation and I can talk about my operations without risk of outing myself. Cis people have operations all the time so people can always relate to me talking about having operations. Struggling with doctors not listening to your needs, not treating you properly, having poor bedside manners is very common in Ireland so I can talk about how horrible my endocrinologist was to anybody that lives in Ireland and they will be able to immediately relate and have a similar story that happened to them or a family member or a friend. The waiting lists for operations and treatments in Ireland are some of the worst in Europe so being trapped on waiting lists for years is again something everyone in Ireland can relate to.

When I stopped trying to create a “trans narrative” and a “trans identity” for myself and trying to relate my experiences to other trans people and instead started looking at the bigger picture and started relating my experiences to cis experiences that’s when I accepted myself. That’s when I stopped feeling ashamed.

My main issue with the lgbt community is the pressure to be proud. The lgbt community tends to have a black and white view when it comes to pride and shame where your assumed to be ashamed of yourself if you’re not proud. Most of the lgbt people I’ve been friends with over the years have had this attitude towards me that I’m ashamed of myself and I’m just in denial about it. You aren’t going to be one extreme or the other. Most people are going to be a bit of both. It’s perfectly fine and healthy to just be in the middle. A place of self acceptance where you aren’t proud or ashamed of yourself.

The absence of pride does not equal shame.

[roiledclarity]

Listen - I’m a lesbian who “looks like a man”, and that’s on purpose. So it’s not like I’m trying to look some other way and I’m messing up. This is it. This is actually the way I want to look…and the whole “OH MY GOD you look like a dude! I know how you could be pretty!” - guess what? I don’t want to.

Rachel Maddow on “Watch what happens: live!” [May 1, 2013] (via roiledclarity)

[scum2000]

Two and a half years and a whole lot of love later. The kindest thing I’ve ever done for myself is believe that I deserved a body that made me comfortable.

[courteous-lamp]

Being dysphoric and taking off your clothes its like coming home and someone has removed all of your furniture and replaced it with different furniture and like its in your house so it must be yours right? But you’re like no??? Wheres my Ikea desk???? All of this stuff isn’t mine???? It all feels so foreign and wrong but you can’t act like it isn’t there.

[qwear]

How to Wear: Lesbian Farmer Style / Rush Limbaugh’s Worst Nightmare

The #howtowear crew blew us away with their new post! Photography by Cassandra Zetta.

[mchaskell-deactivated20170624]

The defining trait of transsexuality (aka transgenderism aka being trans) is gender dysphoria. This is a fundamental dissonance with one’s sexed traits (primary and/or secondary) that varies in intensity from discomfort to suicidality. People with gender dysphoria face clinically significant mental distress, anxiety, depression, acts of violence, homelessness, abandonment by religious, social, and familial groups, etc., both before and after transition (which lessens but doesn’t erase our suffering). We aren’t all breaking the binary. We aren’t all liberal (or even political). We aren’t all “queer.” We are just people who are easing our discomfort in the only way possible.

I don’t care if nondysphorics change their names or presentations or whatever. It’s a free country. But they, by definition, are not suffering in the same way I do. They are simply choosing to identify as a different gender (usually in safe, accepting environments) whereas dysphoric trans people have no choice. It is tremendously offensive to me that people are claiming to be the same as me while crowing that they aren’t. 

[notquiteawerewolf]

Are you a gay trans man or woman who has been able to medically transition without your sexuality getting in the way? You have a trans man to that for that.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 16, 1951 Lou Graydon Sullivan grew up with a complicated relation with gender and sexuality. Pre-transition in his publication “A Transvestite Answers a Feminist”, he says, “at age 5 I had a Davy Crockett birthday party. The climax was when I appeared. I was Davy Crockett and I can still remember my thrill at the moment”.  At age 17, he had a self-described “feminine” male partner. The two of them played with gender roles and were very attracted to the gay liberation movement. From early in his life he felt an attraction towards effeminate gay men especially.

In 1973 he was identifying as a female transvestite. He immersed himself and was accepted by the Milwaukee gay drag scene. During this time, he began to furiously research historical FtM transsexuals, disparately searching for another gay trans man but continually coming up empty. He would sometimes wonder if he was delusional.

In 1975 he moved to San Francisco. By this point he was recognizing himself as FtM, but felt isolated in the exclusively MtF community. The day he was to start individual therapy, the story of another FtM man broke. Steve Dain had transitioned in the Bay Area and desired to continue to work in the school where he taught, though switching from girls to boy coach. This was Sullivan’s first contact with another FtM individual and he followed the story (the principal reacted phobically, Dain won a series of lawsuits and ultimately was forced to leave his job. He did, however, find success as a chiropractor.). He contacted Dain, making his first contact with another FtM man.

When Sullivan attempted to start physical transition, he was routinely denied on the basis of his sexual orientation. At the time, heterosexuality was a prerequisite for transition. He  campaigned for, and was eventually successful in, removing homosexuality as something that barred a person from transition. He was able to obtain hormones and top surgery. However, when seeking a phalloplasty, the gender clinics still denied him even though he had happily been living as a gay man for years. He eventually went to a doctor and in 1986 obtained what the doctor called a “ganitalplasty”. It was after this surgey he was diagnosed with Aids and given ten months to live.

Upon his diagnosis, he wrote, “I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I’m going to die like one.” He ultimately died on March 2, 1991 at 39 from AIDS-related complications. He left an organization, now known as FTMI, or Female to Male International and a series of books and pamphlets he wrote for FtM individuals that are still used to this day. He was identified as the first trans man to die from AIDS.

He is largely the reason we see sexuality and gender as separate entities. Lou Sullivan is a trans man who left the world better for being in it. I, as a gay trans man, owe him a debt for being able to live as I do.

[transcultist]

Why I Chose Not to Detransition

Nearly a year ago, five years after coming out and beginning my transition, I entered a period of crisis. I suddenly found myself feeling disgusted by the path that I had taken and fantasizing about the life I could have lived if I had allowed myself to grow into an adult gay man. I grew mistrustful of the doctors who had treated me as a teenager, including the psychiatrist who referred me to what would become my gender clinic and the well-known endocrinologist who administered my hormone therapy. I wrote a number of blog posts in which I essentially alleged that these individuals had allowed me to mutilate my body when they should have instead encouraged me to accept myself as a feminine gay male. 

All of this represented a complete abandonment of the view of transsexualism that I had previously espoused, and thus this shift understandably bewildered a number of people who read my blog regularly. At the time I brushed off the encouragement offered by these people as kind, but ultimately useless to me due to the fact that I viewed what I was going through as a kind of epiphany. I saw myself as having been enlightened to the evils of transsexualism by my exposure to gender abolitionist and radical feminist ideologies, which were at the time still quite new to me. As far as I was concerned, I had discovered the truth and that was that; all that was left was to decide how to go about making my next move.

In retrospect, it is clear to me that I was right that the root of my internal turmoil was my introduction to new schools of thought, but that beyond that my interpretation of my feelings was far from accurate. Engaging with gender abolitionist and radical feminist works had not allowed me to see some sort of previously hidden conspiracy within the medical treatment of transsexualism, but rather had forced me to confront a number of distressing aspects of my life as a transsexual person for the first time. Up to that point, I did all that I could to distance myself from the person I had been prior to my transition. I deliberately used language that suggested that I had never really been a gay male, and, had I been presented with it, I would have balked at the idea that assimilating into society as a woman was a conservative act. The shift in my conception of gender politics forced me to recognize the uncomfortable truth that, by transitioning, I had erased myself from the social world as a visibly gender nonconforming person. 

Even more difficult than acknowledging my past was coming to grips with the reality of my future. The truth was that despite all of my talk of having a logical and pragmatic view of the possibilities and limits of medical transition, a small part of me still held out hope that somehow, someday, medical treatment would allow things to fall into place and make me whole. That piece of me believed that eventually I would finally rid myself forever of my male biology, my dysphoria would disappear completely, and I would find the social acceptance I had craved since childhood. I would no longer be something foreign, strange, or in between, people would never again hate me for something I could not control, and I would at last be worthy of romantic love and partnership. Of course, the reality is that none of this is fully true. Medical transition can and has changed the sexed appearance of my body, but it will never make me female. I will never be able to menstruate or become pregnant, and thus my dysphoria will never fully disappear. Even after I have undergone the final step in the transition process, genital reconstruction, my biology and social past will make me abnormal. I will always exist in a kind of uncomfortable middle ground, and this will always make pursuing relationships challenging in a way that they are not for most people. Coming to terms with all of this was incredibly painful because, as a Tumblr acquaintance put it at the time, I had accepted the limits of transition on a logical level but not an emotional one. 

I slowly began to understand this true source of my distress over the following weeks and months. My mood brightened, I stopped fantasizing about an alternate life in which I had not transitioned, and I began to feel optimistic about the future again. Above all else, what helped me leave the period of struggle I have discussed behind was the realization that I am worth more, both to those I care about and the world in general, as someone who is alive, functional, and assimilated than I would have been as a dead, gender nonconforming gay teenager. There is a lot of talk within gender abolitionist and radical feminist circles about how transition, particularly when it is undertaken by young people, is a kind of tragedy because it erases homosexuality and gender nonconformity. I do not disagree with the latter part of this assessment, but in my case, I believe that the true tragedy would have been forgoing transition, as I never would have survived if I had not pursued medical intervention for my dysphoria. By the time I came out at age fifteen, I was so intent on self-destruction by any means necessary that it would only have been a matter of time before I was in the ground. I may not be a challenge to the social order as a gender conforming straight woman, but I am alive and present, and I think that counts for a lot more than some sort of unintentional martyrdom would have.

I have been able to reach a similar place of acceptance when it comes to my body and the physical limits of transition as well. I will never truly be female, and that will always be a source of some pain for me, but what matters most is alleviating my dysphoria to the greatest extent possible. I will be booking my genital reconstruction surgery within the next few weeks, and I could not be more excited to complete my medical transition next year and to finally have a body that I can feel comfortable with and enjoy. Taking this step will also help to mitigate the ambiguity of my situation somewhat and should also make pursuing relationships easier, but these are factors that will always complicate my life to a greater or lesser extent and I have made peace with that.

Struggling as much as I did with the consequences of my transition was incredibly difficult, but ultimately I am grateful for it because of the perspective it has given me. What I hope those of you who read this post will take away from it is this: we are all imperfect beings living in an imperfect world, and we can only make the best of our respective circumstances. You are under no obligation to sacrifice yourself for a lofty political aim or to apologize for doing what you need to do to keep yourself alive and stable. There is no shame or cowardice in pursuing medical and social transition, despite the practical shortcomings and unfortunate social realities of these processes, nor in starting on that path, realizing that continuing down it would be a mistake, and detransitioning. I think that those of us who suffer from sex dysphoria would do well to extend a little more kindness and understanding to ourselves, and this is why, these days, I choose to allow myself to be flawed. 

[ftmmagazine]

I’m not happy with my transition, but I’m glad I transitioned | FTM Magazine

[invictusbro-deactivated20230828]

”I have not come to terms with the childhood I lost while being perceived female. I have not accepted that I’m trans, that my story matters at all. I don’t feel like there is a place for me in the trans community because I pass. And the biggest issue is that I haven’t forgiven myself for being born female. Forgiveness, acceptance, and peace seem forever out of reach because of this anger I’m holding. I don’t know how to look at my body and look at my life and see the positive. If I knew how, what would that even look like? There is no end to transitioning and change is inevitable I just hope I can navigate this new self discovery with kindness. And I hope that you do as well.”

I’m glad to see things being written by post-transition men gaining traction recently, warts and all.

[transgenderproblems]

Hey, here’s a thought: if someone asks me anything related to my gender, I can answer it. You don’t need to tell anyone I’m trans because, now stay with me here, that’s none of their business OR yours.

[public-rhetoric]

Let them know

[sarahwendell]

The in group should be tiny. Like his hands.

[dovsherman]

[memorian]

One of the best Pokemon Go stories so far. 

[bana05]

This is lovely.

[bravelittletran]

Hello and welcome to Luke’s monthly soapbox, this month’s topic is:

My increasingly complicated relationship with visibility and why you need to reexamine your motivation.

For anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock, Transgender Day of Visibility was this past week. Even I, a man who lives under a rock, knew this. On paper– it’s a great day, at least it is a great intention. I agree that people of trans experience deserve recognition on a day that isn’t to commemorate those lost in the past year and previous. 

What I don’t like however is this evolving tone activism and the activists who perpetuate it are taking. I first want to clarify in block letter: I am not criticizing or condemning people who wish to be out, proud, open, insert synonym for transparent about their transition, status, whatever. I take issue with the idea that they’re doing it for anyone but themselves. 

Whether intentional or not, many people’s TDOV posts reeked of stealth shaming, it felt like a backhanded slap to me as a stealth man. Peppered with phrases like “I choose to be my most genuine self” or “I don’t know where I’d be if the people who went before me had chosen to hide.”

I want to make two things clear: 1) my most genuine self is a man, not a trans man. My transition is incidental to my “most genuine self”, but it does not define it. This not mean you are any less genuine of a man if you choose to publicly identify as a trans man, it just means that our concept of genuine is subjective. 2) I am not hiding, I am not in the closet, I also do not owe you my privacy or mental well-being just because you think seeing post transition men will help young kids feel accepted. I am sorry that I do not take up banners and scream about trans pride. I am not proud,but I am not ashamed, and I will help people in ways that do not jeopardize my longevity as a stealth man.

Be out and proud for you. Don’t do it because you think you deserve a reward or praise for being “brave”. Don’t do it because you think it will eliminate the need for people to live stealth. Even if I lived in a world where there was no stigma towards my transition, I still wouldn’t wear it on my sleeve. It’s my medical history and mine alone– I disclose it to friends and loved ones who I deem fit. I have some amazing friends who don’t know and I don’t think it makes our friendship any less genuine– I am still the same guy they are friends with, it’s not a betrayal that they don’t know. 

I feel like more and more activists are preying on the idea that trans people live stealth for safety. For someone people, this might be the case and I can’t understand the fear you live with. I, however, am not unsafe– I would never want people to think those are the options a) open and safe or b) stealth and unsafe. I am perfectly safe, not living in fear of being witch hunted in bathrooms or abandoned by my family or friends. I hope this doesn’t come off as gloating, but rather I want people to know that there is nothing hidden in the terms and services of transition that says you need to be out to be genuine, safe, or happy.  

[pikkulaku]

Imagine being a kid in school. Your teacher comes up with an idea for class picture. Every student will draw pictures of their friends.

Everyone starts drawing enthusiasticly, and can’t wait to see what they look like in the drawings. When pictures are ready you notice that popular students have more pictures than rest, but nobody has done a drawing of you. The teacher notices that too, and asks if someone would do your picture. To your horror the class clown takes the job, and comes up with a caricature of you. Others are laughing, but you’re not. You feel awful. The teacher notices that. and asks again someone to do a drawing of you. One of the ‘good students’ starts drawing, but the result is forced. It’s just a drawing of a generic child wearing a shirt of same color as you a wearing. There’s no spirit, no soul in it. You start sensing that the class is geting frustrated with you. They want to be done with this. You ask quietly the teacher if you could do a drawing yourself.

After school your classmates confront you. Why did you have to make such a big deal out of it? The first picture was funny. The second picture was just fine! The drawing you did yourself wasn’t right, do you think you are that good-looking? There were other kids who got only one or two pictures of themselves. Who are you to demand special treatment? Maybe there would have been a picture of you if you weren’t such annoying baby, nobody likes you anyway, and nobody’s going to if you keep on being like that, you don’t deserve a drawing!

This could be story of bullying, but it’s also about how I see portraying LGBTQ+-people and PoC in mainstream entertainment.

Thanks to Fandoms and Feminism for inspiration!

[trans-vegan-deactivated20240708]

It sounds like you decide who is transgender and who isn't. Doesn't self identification mean anything to you?

Considering the fact that science backs up the claim that transsexualism is a medical condition, if that makes me “decide who is transgender and who is not” then sure. I honestly don’t understand how you and many other people pull that out of thin air.

IF you self identify as trans without dyshoria of any kind, it doesn’t matter. You’re not trans without dysphoria. It’s like otherkin hijacking lycanthropy and making a joke out of it. Both transsexualism and lycanthropy are serious conditions and this website has made those appropriating the terms into little angels. 

Transsexualism is a medical condition:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

If you do not feel dysphoria, the symptom of transsexualism, how could you even think you’re transsexual? That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve been trying to explain this to you the whole time. 

The above studies I gave you even talk about the brain chemistry of transsexual people. By saying transsexualism is not a medical condition you and everyone who claims that is only making it harder for transpeople to even get access to the heath care they need to live.

Medical insurance companies will not cover something unless it is medical. Considering many insurance companies and the general population thinks transsexualism is a choice not a medical condition, that is why it is so hard for transsexual people, myself included, to have their expenses covered. 

And yes, the idea that transsexualism isn’t a medical condition has affected people. Check out this post by toplioncub. It talks about how this whole umbrella and ~everyone can be trans~ thing has made the process much harder. In fact, the process went from three months to a year because everyone and their brother seems to think they can be trans without dysphoria now. The people on this website confuse gender and gender presentation all the time, and in fact enforce gender rolls. Are you a masculine woman? Damn! You must be trans.

A feminine guy? Well shit! You must be transsexual too! Anyone can be trans! You don’t need dysphoria! It isn’t a medical condition!

Then these same people whine that their hormones aren’t being covered or how their doctor is an evil ~truscum~. I hate to break it to you, but it’s the real world. Medical professionals aren’t going to just change their mind about something that is backed up by medical research because it hurts some teenagers feelings online. 

Yesterday I was having a debate with someone who agreed dysphoria was a medical condition, but tried to claim that transsexualism was not when transsexualism is the condition and dyshoria is the symptom. Essentially, this would be like a straight man claiming he was gay without liking other men. Dysphoria is the one and only criteria to be trans and yet people seem to think we’re gate-keeping by saying that. 

If you, or anyone else that seems to think that having medical studies to back up our claims is false conduct one yourself and prove us wrong. Then, at the same time have fun obliterating any chance of transpeople being able to be insured by medical insurance from that point on. HRT and SRS are not cosmetic. They are medically necessary.

truscumunruhe also has some wonderful point. Their post here, essentially sums up what I just said:

It implies that being trans is a choice.

It lumps gender, gender roles, and gender expression into one giant, swampy lump where anyone who isn’t a masculine man or a feminine woman falls somewhere on a “spectrum” of gender.

It implies that it would be a terrible thing to classify transsexualism as a medical condition, which is ableist as all hell.

If transsexualism were not a medical condition, the chances of HRT and surgeries being covered by insurance is nonexistent, which would fuck over people who can’t spend thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of dollars out of pocket. (Though I failed Economics the first time I took it, my guess is that this would be quite a lot of people.)

It both trivializes gender and makes it out to be the single most interesting thing possible about a person.

It almost never mentions dysphoria, which is the factor common to all transsexuals.

At this point, this is the third time I’ve explained this to you. Read the sources I will know if you don’t. 

[peridamnit-blog]

“Doesn’t self-identification mean anything to you?” No. No it doesn’t.

[earthboundricochet]

Not when it fucks over people who don’t get to choose what they want to “identify as”. Not when “finding the right identity” becomes a more visible issue than the need for proper healthcare and research and rights. Not when movements that were created for people who had no choice and desperately needed to stand against injustices get hijacked by people whose main priority is that people don’t take their “identity” and their “gender feelings” seriously.

[transquotes]

Text Reads: The hardest part of all of this to me at this point isn’t about raising money or seeing the right person to get me where I need to be. It’s coming to terms with [the fact] that I never had a normal childhood and I’ll never get those years back. Submitted by Anon