Y'all do realize the more you call trans kids “transtrenders” and that they’re “faking it” the more parents aren’t gonna support even Actually Real Dysphoric Trans People, right?
i actually experienced this last summer.
my mom is friends with this trans woman, who was really sweet and she was super cool, but then i tried to come out after my mom expressed how much she liked her trans friend and how amazing she is. i told my mom about my crippling chest dysphoria and how much i’d love to be called by he/him pronouns and my preferred name. i told her about how i’ve always felt this way and i’ve known since eighth grade.
well the thing is, her friend is a transmed.
my mom is an uninformed person on trans issues, because she didn’t really care about them until recently. she took resources from her transmed friend and it ruined my life. she went off about how i’m not really trans because i didn’t come out sooner, i have piercings, my hair is always a crazy color, i still like girly things, and my glasses are weird. she kept yelling about how i didn’t have dysphoria before, so i obviously have the wrong definition. she told me if i was trans it would’ve been diagnosed by my therapist already, and it was just a cult bandwagon phase. i was locked away from the outside world for a month.
when my next year of high school rolled around, i was out as trans. my partner provided me with a binder and all was well. i came out to all my peers at the beginning and about halfway through the school year to my teachers. it was quiet, under the table. i told them my mom didn’t know and under our school guidelines, they were not allowed to tell my mom that sort of thing. well, one of my teachers ended up being lgbtphobic and i didn’t know, and announced to the class that she didn’t “agree with the lifestyle” and that “gay marriage isn’t what god wanted.” my mom got an email that day about me being out as trans at school. i wonder who could’ve sent it?
my mom blew up. she was sending me treat after threat because i was a trender, all i did was lie for attention, that i chose to be trans because it was trendy and that real trans people wouldn’t flaunt their transness. of course, she got these resources from her transmed friend. she pulled me out of public school and cut my contact with the outside world for three whole months. i didn’t get back into school until february.
DO NOT TELL ME THAT PEOPLE WITH DIFFERING OPINIONS ISNT TRANSPHOBIC AND HARMFUL BECAUSE EVEN AS A DYSPHORIC TRANS PERSON, TRANSMEDICALISM HAS RUINED MY HOME, MY FAMILY, AND MY LIFE. I WILL NOT STAND FOR TRANSMEDS OR PEOPLE WHO ALLOW THEIR INTERACTION. THEY ARE EXTREMELY HARMFUL AND NEED TO BE STOPPED BEFORE MORE LIVES ARE RUINED.
I mean: we did this with bi kids and particularly bi girls, right. With people my age.
We got super gatekeepy and “you must be THIS GAY to ride this identity” and we complained at length about it being “trendy” and how girls only did it to be “cool” and to get attention.
And so among other things I know one person I love is, for example, only JUST getting to have her FIRST relationship ever with a woman at slightly older than me because this shit got into her head and she didn’t think she was “allowed”.
So watching people turn the same bullshit on even more vulnerable kids?
This is a problem. This is lateral violence. And it needs to fucking stop.
Let me be clear, even if Transtrending was a thing (I do not think that it is), I would still much rather hear a 15 year old tell me that they thought they were trans and then realized they weren’t after a few months of playing with the idea, than hear about a 30 year old who finally transitioned after having a mental breakdown because they spent their life thinking they weren’t trans enough and therefore weren’t allowed to transition.
Fighting the Transtrender Boogeyman isn’t protecting the integrity of trans rights, it just makes the struggle of atypical trans people harder.
THIS SHIT NEEDS TO STOP
Can cis people reblog?
My best friend and I are literally late twenty something people who put off transitioning for years partially bc we didn’t think we were trans enough. That’s WAAAY more common than people who regret transitioning because they realize they weren’t trans later
It’s worth mentioning though that OP’s mother is outright transphobic and almost certainly would have reacted badly to his coming out even without truscum ideology.. A lot of times cishet ppl who accept lgbt ppl they know casually will flip out when their child comes out. I think his mom is probably using that ideology as an excuse to be transphobic and abusive. The irony is that truscum seem to think that their gatekeeping will get cis people to accept “legit” trans people if they disavow the “less acceptable” ones but what actually winds up happening is that transphobic cis people just use transmed ideology as a justification for invalidating any trans person they want. Anyone can be made out to be “not trans enough” or painted as not meeting an arbitrary standard. This is because trans identities are ALWAYS suspect in our society. Transmed ideology just gives cis people another way to misgender and mistreat trans people.
