As a trans woman, I really, really, don't appreciate people acting like they know what it was like for me growing up. Like yeah, I realize that your childhood was like that and I'm sorry that you were treated that way. But don't act like that's how it is for everyone.
I was very much seen as one of the guys growing up. I went to "boys nights" with the guys, which typically consisted of very masculine activities, I had gay cis dudes hit on me, I never once was seen as anything other than a dude.
Guys never once mistreated me, or saw me as anything other than a man. Even through University, I was seen as a man to the point where my University friends were shocked when I came out to them as a trans woman.
I was even treated as "one of the safe ones" all through high school by the girls I hung out with. I had an all female friend group that I hung out with and gossiped with, and was allowed to hang out with them in and out of school, because friendship with me never came with the possibility that I was gonna make things weird and try to fuck them. I showed no interest in dating them and treated them like any other person.
They literally called me a "Girl's guy".
So, your experience isn't universal, and I really wish people would stop acting like their trauma is standard. Because it's not.
And then there's my husband, who hated being a girl, hated femininity, was bullied by girls growing up, never had any friends aside from a few guys in high school, and was never accepted as a girl by girls.
Trans experiences aren't universal.
They truly aren’t, because I for one actually grieve the boy I used to be, even though that isn’t who I am anymore. I mourn what could have been and yet I’m excited for what is going to be. I felt fine being a boy, and was very much seen as one of the “bros” once I finally found a friend group (even if they still treat me as one of the bros but that’s a separate matter) I personally had very little trauma surrounding my identity growing up as a young lad, even if I constantly felt out of place. Just like being trans is a spectrum, so is trauma. No one’s trauma is the same and you CANNOT presume what other people have gone through.
I have such complicated feelings about my body and gender and growing up, like... I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't been an Oldest Daughter and an Oldest Of Three Sisters in a very conservative rural home*. I loved being successfully pregnant! I hated everything else about having a uterus. Once we were done working together, I wanted it gone.
There is not one true way to be Trans any more than there is one true way to be a man, a woman, or non-binary.
*my brother and I had a loooong conversation about that once we both came out, bc like... having been that thing was important to both of us, but so was no longer being that thing. And it felt shitty to me to deny our sister's life experience too by saying "sorry, that didn't actually happen. We were never sisters."
I said "when I was a little girl" to TH recently, and bless him, he tried to correct me.
"NO, Imi. You aren't a girl."
Sweetheart, back then I thought i was.
"NO"
Which is to say, gender can't be flattened without losing something. It's a social construct. It's a set of traits linked to secondary sex characteristics. It's a spectrum. It's a Potato Head of expression and performance and identity. It's all of those things and none of them and I'm going to shake it shake it shake it shake it until all the weird stereotypes fall out and then I'm going to EAT IT with GLITTER and KETCHUP.
And if there's one universal way to experience any of that^, I'll eat that too.
