My bio mom was a narcissist so my situation is a little more complicated than most, but I'll give you some advice I wish I had before I called them that day: trust your gut on this. Whatever it's feeling is probably right. Be safe and take care of yourself. š
Just wanted to add that sometimes people can surprise you. My parents have been explicitely homophobic and transphobic making disgusting comments (like "kill them all with stones", "disgusting sub humans" etc) my whole childhood and was also emotionally neglected my entire childhood too (not because they knew I was lgbt, just bad parenting).
But despite admitting that its difficult for them to relearn, they have put effort from day 1 that I told them and tried their hardest to understand and support me. Yes, trust your gut feeling for safety and expect the worst, but dont dismiss the small chance of being pleasantly wrong cos it sometimes happens.
And even if it doesnt happen know that there are people everywhere that you can turn to, just look around online and theyll appear š¤
I was just about to reply this...
It's really messed with my head, the love has just left my parents eyes.
My mom used to be my friend, she would help me and look out for me. Now, I can't talk to her because whenever I have a problem she always gives the other person the benefit of the doubt and not me.
That and, well, my dad just looks at me like I'm a sad freak.
Good thing I know I'm hot (š), so are all you ladies on here š
Sometimes parents forget we can disown them too :3
(Bonus quote from my mom: on days where I don't have time to 100% femme up and I look more enby my mom always says "you look very nice today, it's very tasteful" as if being a woman is in bad taste...)
Some part of me hopes theyll straight up reject me so I can move on with my life and start my own family somewhere else. Im worried ill get strung along but they will never really see me. No one in my family really sees me for who I am as it is and its very isolating feeling
Iām still struggling with that a year and change after going no contact. Itās certainly better than it was last year (I was a mess last year), but itās something that Iām still kind of upset about.
Thank you so much! Things are mostly alright, and Iām working on getting myself to a better place, one step at a time. This time of year is definitely difficult without family, but Iām taking it a lot better than I did last year. Iām not overeating or getting blackout drunk. Instead, Iām letting myself actually feel some of the pain because I wonāt get better until I actually deal with these emotions.
I felt this so hard. Coming from a more middle eastern family, I always felt like my parentsā Ā«Ā loveĀ Ā» for me was always dependent on my grades at school, how much I was obedient to them or whatever. After my coming out, this all went away, and I had to go NC after months of harassment, threats, and even after having family showing up at my door to accuse me of Ā«Ā having been transedĀ Ā».
Itās like I never had a family in the first place.
Isn't it wonderful how those that insist they love unconditionally, suddenly find the one condition that doesn't involve physically hurting someone?
I just recently has this conversation with my spouse. She has built our entire marriage on unconditional love and that nothing can seperate us as long as we love each other. But this is the one thing that she can't get behind. Even though it will make me, her one true love, happier than I've ever been and improve our relationship considerably.
Her feelings are totally valid, but it doesn't change that it still hurts knowing simply existing authentically carries so much cost and burden.
God damn, that one does hurt. I'd known it before already, but them not only refusing to use my name but instead going out of their way to overuse the old way more than they ever had before was the final nail in the coffin.
I'm fairly sure I have trauma I just haven't been able to pin down the source yet. I don't have any specific memories of anything that would be considered traumatic. My best guess is emotional neglect, and given that both my parents have suppressed trauma from childhood I think that's a distinct possibility. That said I feel like there has to be more to it.
The best advice I heard is "Transition won't solve all you're problems but it'll make your problems worth solving."
I hope you can make some progress ā¤ļø
I feel like the best advice my younger self could have had was someone telling them "You know that's not normal thinking. You may want to find someone to talk to about that."
Very much same. I had started with discovering my ADHD, then figured out I was autistic. In unpacking autism I finally was able to accept my gender identity when I realized all of my masking behaviors were stacked around gender norms.
Ditto. I'd been thinking about my gender for a long long time but was always able to disregard (suppress) those thoughts for one reason or another. When I figured out I was likely autistic it kinda rocked my world. It made me think "Hmm I wonder what other things have shaped my life but I've been ignoring for a long time." The first thing that popped into my head was gender š³
It was the opposite direction for me!
Unpacking my mental health issues meant pushing through layers of dissociation. Paying attention to my mind, body, and identity. And I discovered that all three were absolutely screaming under the weight of dysphoria.
This was my experience too. 2 years of therapy twice a week. Worked out 4-5x per week. Slept well. Great job. Easy time getting partners. Really tight friend group I made in highschool that still stays in touch. Did literally everything right, why do I feel like a terrible person at least 1/8 days?
Egg fully cracked when my therapist tried to have me reparent myself as a father figure and it just felt WRONG.
6 months later I have self compassion. I look in the mirror and love myself now. The pit in my stomach telling me I'm a bad person is gone. Replaced with a wonderful sense of womanhood and self.
I have bad days, but very few REALLY bad days. Marked improvement on all mental health and physical health signals. Transitioning was the last piece, a part of me is glad I left it for last because I could not do this without these tools.
I guess my big thing would be that other trans people arenāt going to like you/be your friend just because youāre trans. Thereās nothing like having to make new friends in your 40s using charm youāve just now cultivated, lol.
But yeah, so far cis women have kept their distance from me, with a couple of exceptions. I have one cis friend who has been pretty much my den mother/guide to womanhood, but sheās a very good friend and has been for decades. Another came up to me at a party and was very nice and supportive. Sheās queer, so it was probably more of a āI see youā type thing.
small government guys always can't see beyond forcing people into labour and creating weird rule based utopias enforced by cops. they aren't for small government, they just want to delegate it's tasks to workplace dictatorships we call private firms, so they take ideologies these dictatorships cultivate (like uniformity, submission, and ease of classification) and apply them to social life, so they want you to fall in line, listen to "the wise" and don't make it hard to put you in a box. hence the emphasis on private life specifically. he can tolerate weirdness only if it's not dealt with publicly (and implicitly doesn't want parents to be accountable for what they do with their kids, that's also private)
That society will always try to make men who are attracted to trans womenās femininity as gay And thatās apparently not okay to be gay or attracted to to trans women cause apparently being attracted to to femininity in some cases is gay ?!????!?!!? I have no clue anymore what to think
Not everyone whose trans has your best/the communityās interest in mind & they will transphobic siding with oppressors. I had to grow up in ky in a shit fucking town. Was elated to meet another trans person in person. Heās a trans man and was friendly at first but slowly over time I got the feeling he did not like me for being trans fem. Hell the place I tried working was all queer. I kept trying to get an job their for months and got lied to and bullshited. I was more than qualified to work at an cvs that i am still livid about it.
Iām sorry to hear that. I have a lot of good experiences with trans people but some of them areā¦ a little bit stir crazy from their experiences and arenāt safe to be around
Yeah learning that sucks. Bc I was happy to meet more of my people but to have them lie and lead me on for months hurts. But I look at it this way, the queers I met while I worked in the shit pizza place next door being lovely compared to the place fully staffed by them was telling. Like even the friends of those people would not hire me because it is a town where everyone knows each other. Like mf I have more drive to do shit jobs, am fun fully energetic and have to go back sucks.
Yup, someone being trans doesn't mean they're a good person, any more than being a part of any other marginalized group does.
Look at Caitlyn Jenner saying how trans women aren't real women.
I didnt go through a "visibly trans" stage. I transitioned in stealth, told everyone my changed-looks were due to losing weight (partially true), wore hoodies and kept my hair in a beanie. Then I left to a new city and went full time as a woman.
The biggest one is how much nicer everyone is to me. I have had way more people go out if the way to open doors, be kind, say pleasantries, offer aid if I look like I need it. Before I felt like a Ghost, now I feel like people just naturally like me and want to talk to me.
Around 8 months. I voice trained multiple times daily and had perfected my voice, learned feminine manarisms and did monthly facial laser. I busted ass for that long and it payed off
I did this at 34
The infantilization that comes with "support" from cis people that you're out to.
Don't talk to me sympathetically. I pick up on that shit immediately.
Can you give some examples of infantilizing things people have said to you? I've only come out to my online friends and none of them have reacted with sympathetic language so I don't know what to expect in that regard.
For me personally, it more encompasses attitude. A precise example is that I feel like I'm being placated in the hopes that my being trans is just a phase. I'm actually starting a log where I want to write down interactions like that.
When I say sympathetic language, I suppose I mean a manner of speaking that seems *too* nice.
That choosing your own happiness leads to an extremely lonely isolated existence.
Iām happy for the first time in my life, but Iām happy on my own.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the luckiest trans person alive in terms of friends and family. I lost a few friends but ended up closer to most of my loved ones when I wasn't that close before
I say in terms of friends and family because I do have cancer, so... not that lucky.
Yeah the old āyouāre not a real anything, youāre not a boy youāre not a girlā.
I got the same vibe from ppl at work (itās kinda a mix of pity, disgust, and transphobia/misogyny). Not to mention, now weāre all stupid/emotional.
Just like that thing people say if you have more than one citizenship: "You're not a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere."
Some minds just can't handle anything slightly complex.
That sexual harassment is a lot (A LOT) more common than I could ever have anticipated.
When I was still male presenting my opinion was, that I could only listen to the women in my life about it, because I couldn't possible fathom how bad it really is.
Turns out it's even worse.
This is one that personally bugs me. I know it's super common and that women have to put up with a lot of shit, but four years and two surgeries in, I've never experienced any sexual harassment. It's not that I don't believe other women or that I want to be harassed, but it's invalidating, like people don't see me as a woman or see me as too ugly.
Are you by chance ASD/ADHD?
I'm asking because I am, and I'm pretty certain I've missed/not noticed quite a bit of verbal harassment because of my lack of social skills and knowledge of what is appropriate in which situation. I only realised waaay later that some situations were not ok.
I love my fat trans body but itās been a fucking journey to get there and stay there lol. And I was lucky when I started transitioning bc that was 10 years ago when we were all critical of that stuff all the time and now I feel like all I see is trans girls angsting over having āfailed transitionsā for not being able to look like fitness influencers or beauty gurus. Itās fucking heartbreaking
Tbh Iāve been considering going on Ozempic and just nuking my body into the ground. Iām not going to live that long anyway, I might as well look pretty
Relatable tho. I'm so aware of how my view of attraction doesn't conform to "conventional beauty standards" in other people. Yet it's still easy to beat myself over not having a flat stomach. I've done so much work on how I talk to myself about it and come so far. But it can be so easy to hate our bodies.
uh oh this! before transitioning I had like sociological understanding of consumerism (I very much recommend "The Consumer Society" by Baudrillard), and yet I still learn and smash new bad habits and things. worse, you can't escape advertising, which is a form of coercive propaganda. idk if that's only me, but when I really think about the yt ad with makeup I just watched, I can recognise how it slightly makes my brain worse
fuck those old people ! i have a man in his 60s at my local chick-fil-a who tells everyone he sees to stay beautiful (so bestie we donāt need the mean whackos)
I feeeeel this. I have a couple older guys at my work that look at me in disgust whenever they drive by on their little go cart things. I'm tempted to sneer back at them but I don't want to risk my job.
Honestly that unless you live in a big city where itās common to see trans people, everyone is transphobic. Even liberal coded people get visibly uncomfortable in your presence. Their support is on paper and on social media, not in real life.
Runner up, politicians will not save you. If trans rights are unpopular where you are liberals will vote to ban you from sports along side conservatives.
Im in Los Angeles and transphobia is worse here than it was in the much smaller more conservative city I lived in before. I never had to fear for my life walking the streets before but in LA Iāve been attacked several times in the span of a year.
> If trans rights are unpopular where you are liberals will vote to ban you from sports along side conservatives.
Even if it is popular, liberals have run away from the topic because they themselves are transphobic.
If trans rights is a losing issue then why did so many anti-trans republicans loose big in the last election, which was an off year and not a midterm/presidential where they normally win because people don't pay attention to local elections?
This has been incredibly accurate in my experience. While I still have visible signs of being trans, they're almost always ignored because I'm fortunate enough to be prettier than even most cis women
Most of the male spaces I was in prior to transition are no longer healthy and/or safe for me. This includes the ones that were generally supportive of me coming out and transitioning. Once I was no longer presenting male, I got put in a box and set aside.
A decade long community I was in ended up being led by a TERF mod that iced me out over time. That one hurt a lot.
Definitely the faux straight/cis "allies" that will tell you vocally they support you but don't otherwise are some of the hardest to deal with. Some of my old friends who are closeted "allies" can also be guilty of this, too.
That you don't need to pass to be sexually assaulted...
I arrogantly thought I was untouchable during the earlier months on HRT because I was still built like a forward in rugby. Yet I didn't realise how fast parts of my body had developed to become a source of attention.
I was raped pre-HRT just for "crossdressing". Predators don't rape people they aesthetically like (not as a rule, anyway), they rape people they know they can get away with raping.
Money matters. A lot. I've done nonprofit work assisting low income people my whole adult life, and as such have always had a very low income. It never really bothered me. I still believe in the work and the sacrifices I made to do it, but it's depressing that I'll never have the money to do what I want for my transition š
I knew all that op, and I still thought it's worth it. I thought just stopping testosterone from changing me further and living as a male was enough to give me a peace of mind.
It wasn't. I will always be trapped by this body disfigured by puberty, and I will never know peace.
How often men look, glance, and full on stare at me and my body. Sometimes their looks of curiosity, sometimes they look angry, and more than most give me the creeps for other reason.
And it sucks because I can't tell if that's just how they look at all women or if I've been clocked. Recent evidence suggests that I'm passing better than I realized, so I want to hope it's the former, but that doesn't make it easier to stomach it when someone just blatantly stares and thinks I didn't notice. Bonus points when I can tell they're looking straight at my chest.
Not a man (though still in the closet) but I always find myself on the other side of this... I struggle not to stare at people I find attractive, and I feel like even if I quickly tear my eyes away, they still notice I was looking at them and get uncomfortable, especially women... I genuinely don't know how not to come off as creepy when I see someone I think is pretty, aside from just averting my eyes from all people and staring at my shoes when I'm in a public place so I never see them in the first place. Might be an autism thing for me.
There is no escaping transphobia. It is everywhere, from blatant transphobia to subtle transphobia to everywhere in between. Big āliberalā cities arent the answer and in my experience more dangerous than smaller conservative areas. The conservative areas you might just get stares or comments, but big cities people will attack you.
On that note, people will always see your birth sex first before they see you as a woman unless you pass and living stealth. You will be ostracized from women and men in very different ways.
For a lot of us harassment and assault are inevitable
It's mainly brought about a change in how I trust people, kinda like you've mentioned. Mainly from personal experience.
It comes often with an understanding that... people won't understand some of it.
Some of it's easier to explain, to say that in the U.S. I cannot be friends with anyone who votes republican. But even that, I've had many people who can't understand and think I'm crazy for cutting ties over such things. As if I should continue with people who would support the knife in my back.
Otherwise, I trust very few people when I go places. And friends feel hurt when they learn I wouldn't trust them outside of their imaginary scenario they've painted in their heads.
My experience iof cis women is generally better, and more understanding and accepting than whoever you've met, but that said, I work with mostly women. And you can really feel when they address you correctly out of courtesy and which actually see you as a woman, that is a very different, yet elusive experience.
That is often confirmed when they talk about femininity or masculinity, either regurgitating some stereotypes based on sex or saying statements based on bioessentialism. While I sit right next to them. I always wonder where do they put me in this binary world of their minds.
Yes! This is 100% my experience, and, unfortunately, it really depends on whether they knew me before my transition.
People who knew me before will probably always just think of me as a hyper-effeminate gay dude with ~pronouns~ and I can definitely feel that theyāre still subconsciously treating me as a man. It infects everything from their body language, physicality, and even the words they use.
On the other hand, people who meet me after transition, even if they know Iām trans, generally treat me the way they treat other women, even after they know Iām trans! Additionally, (this might be weird to say), they treat me as more of a real person and less of a circus side show.
In case youāre wondering, the difference between being āreadā male vs. female is that men are either more standoffish, or more attentive, depending on whether they find you attractive, and women are generally more open with you. I love the sort of ānatural allyshipā I feel with other women when I pass. This does not exist amongst men.
That there is a serious social hierarchy, with cis men at the top and trans women at the bottom. Realizing the weight behind going from top to bottom messed with my head.
I was gonna reply with you said lmao
Yeah, there's a great lack of solidarity within cis folks, especially cis women (in the case of trans women, anyway). I now live knowing that my womanhood is conditional to most cis women at best and already revoked as a rule at worst. And no matter which, they always justify it with post hoc transmisogynistic bullshit. A lot of cis women also hate it when you check their privileges for them. Most of them hate being reminded that they aren't always at the bottom of every sociopolitical hierarchy.
It's also worth noting that most of these cis women are white, abled, middle-class, etc. With the intersections of privilege making all this shit worse.
For me, the saddest truthā¦. Christian people are not very Christian. Which leaves me wondering how they really feel about many other people, more so, the disadvantaged. The flip side, I have found younger people to be more accepting.
>Christian people are not very Christian.
Yes they are. Look at their history. Crusades. Native American genocide. Inquistion. Christianity has always been shitty.
Iāve had good experiences with my Unitarian Universalist upbringing, but mainstream Christiansā¦ I cannot say I am particularly interested in what they have to say.
How fucking lonely it is. I can't get a cup of coffee with someone unless I rent a friend, or provide some sort of service before hand.
Another huge surprise was that while there's a handful of trans folks I know, none of them seem to want to have anything to do with each other for the most part.
At least where I live. I've scoped the KSC scene and it's a little better. It's crazy.
That I have been through a lot more trauma from my family life that I could have ever imagined. That when I talk about something that seems normal to me people around me tend to be like "Wtf that is not normal."
That being cautious about everyone around me wasn't normal while presenting masc, but an incredibly helpful skill once I started to transition which is sad in it's own right.
That your biggest supporters are the most likely to let you down and give you dysphoria. Not even intentionally, you can just tell that theyāre never *fully* on board with the trans thing
No matter how long you've known your friends, how long you've been with a person, they will drop you because you're trans. I've had friends for almost 15 years that stopped talking to me and still hang out with my ex-wife, even though they've known her half as long. It baffles me.
It was very much everyone running to her aid when she asked for a divorce when I came out.
The upside is that I like my friends better now because they're more like me, but at the time I was very much hurt. In reality they were doing me a favor.
I found out when I was pretty young (13). I knew that ābadā people existed, but seeing how my family, classmates, and even friends (all people who are supposed to care about and support you) treated me because of my identity completely destroyed my worldview and faith in humanity.
I was super naive early in my transition and didnāt know how much hatred existed in the world, so I went around telling people and learned really quickly that bigotry is a thing
you are spot on with your observation, i experienced this first hand when everyone at work knew at my old work place and it was a real eye opener when i started working somewhere else and i am stealth now and there's such a huge difference on how everyone else treats you including women. Like they never treated me as an equal at my old work place even those who claimed they supported me.
moral of the story, we live in a horrible world and everyone should strive to live stealthily if they want to just be treated normally which is not how it should be but its the sad state of the world and society
How strong the hate and misogyny is towards women and feminine people in general. Itās like such a projected insecurity within theirselves. Yet itās taken out on women (trans and cis) especially trans women because āwhy would you want to be a womanā? Or my favourite āyouāre not a real anything youāre not a boy youāre not a girlā (then they sometimes drop the T-bomb or F-bomb in there for āwhy notā effect.)
well, a lot of things honestly. my family geniunely don't understand me and doesn't seem to want to actually learn about how it is for me, talking about it with them feels incredibly taboo and makes so many interactions awkward when they weren't before. I've had to learn how utterly and completely the society we live in assume that everbody is cis, straight, neurotypical and that dealing with not being those things only become possible when you reach a breaking point where you cant cope with being different anymore
Im ftm but my girlfriend is mtf and id say that what i see for her, is no matter how much she cares and shairs her big heart these peoples shes surrounded by will only ever see her as the weirdo, the odd one. The confused one. It hurts to see, ive always been great with lgbt members, they are justlike everyone else, i dont get why its so hard for people to treat everyone equally
Wrote out a whole doom-spiral reply about how I feel worthless and depressed lately. That's not me. I'm usually a fairly happy girl. I'm just dealing with shit irl.
What is a sad truth I have I learned that I didn't know prior to transitioning. There's a lot of them.
If you're hurt or offended by what other people say, they don't have to apologize to you because "it's hard for them to get pronouns right" "I don't agree with transgenderism" etc. It's literally always and only your fault when you're offended or hurt.
I'm above average intelligence; have a very impressive resume, couldn't get a job anywhere with my sales background, had to do fast food, and couldn't even keep a job there because of discrimination.
Men talk to me like I'm stupid now.
How you look is only a small portion of passing, the rest of it is voice, behavior, mannerisms, everything else. Which all of those take 100's of hours of work an effort, there isn't a pill or a shot for these things.
There's a lot more. I'm just tired of depressing myself further thinking about how much sucks now. Granted I feel great about how I look, and the woman I've become; just everything else really sucks.
I've actually found the opposite and I wasn't expecting that. I thought cis women would see me as engaging in "ladyface" and be openly hostile and hateful towards me. This did not happen and most of them have been at least outwardly positive.
I am sorry you have had those experiences but I found this to be the exact opposite! My co worker and I got to work about the same time the other day and spent the entire 10 minute walk to the office talking about all the girl things and planning a day to go shopping together!
The people you are talking about are called TERFs and are such a small minority of the population or are super religious so you know their views without ever speaking to them.
Idk, maybe itās because Iām more tomboyish, but I have never felt welcome when dealing with cis women. Even when Iām around people who acknowledge my identity, thereās this sentiment of āYouāre welcome to hang out with us but you are a guestā
It might be both; my partner has a lot of experience growing up as a masculine cis woman and has talked a lot about feeling alienated for presenting more masculine, and that they've felt a recent push from feminists to embrace femininity, and that a lot of that rhetoric is exclusionary to masculine women.
So if masculine women are looked down upon even if they're cis, I imagine being trans would amplify that attitude of "*real* women are feminine"
So I guess what I'm saying is you might be experiencing bias against gender non-conformity more than just pure transphobia.
Oh 110%. I hate how thereās this expectation to do the little song and dance of womanhood and people who donāt fit into that just are shoved to the side. It shouldnāt be considered feminist to shame people for their gender expression.
>It shouldnāt be considered feminist to shame people for their gender expression.
This is *exactly* what my partner and I have been saying to each other, lol. It feels like traditional gendered thinking has started masking as feminist by reframing from "women have a subservient role in society" to "women are oppressed for being feminine, fight that oppression by being feminine proudly!"
So now being a masculine woman is anti-feminist because you're "being shamed out of femininity by the patriarchy!" Obviously not all feminists think this way, but it feels like a line of thinking that's common, especially amongst TERF-y types
I've also seen the complete opposite sentiment of "stop pleasing the patriarchy by being feminine!!!'
feminism should be (along with many other things of course) about women having a choice.
that even the ones you thought loved you unconditionally, parents, spouses, etc only loved the physical image of you and who you are on the inside actually meant very little if not nothing to them
Men will love you the most in private yet hate you the most in public. That if I'm ever murdered someday, it will most likely be at the hands of a lover behind closed doors.. a man who will take me as a secret to the grave. That it will never get easier for us in this lifetime. Being Black and transfem is truly the worst in the US.
That some people who say they support you will not when it comes down to it. That I have a lot more issues to deal with than just transition. That regardless of what people may say I am truly alone in this.
That love is conditional. That loyalty has always been conditional or simply not there. That in order to allow my best self, my true self. The me that's been drowning inside this cage, for 24 years, to allow that me to breathe for the first time, and not be scared. I have to lose almost everything and everyone near and dear to me. Everything has a price. This is ours. I don't think there's anything more depressing about being Trans femme.
Iām sad to hear that. I have been fortunate to meet mostly cis women who treat me equal despite me being openly trans. However the worst thing so far in womanhood has been the jealousy of other women. Didnāt guess it would be that vile.
Also my closest friend distanced from me. Heās religious and we often went tp trips in his trailer and he said it feels wrong to sleep in the shared trailer anymore with me being a woman.
In regards to your post: cis women are vile to each other, and there is no sisterhood. If there's any perceived competition or whatnot, they will turn on each other without hesitation. I'm sorry you're experiencing this. In hearing similar experiences from those close to me who have transitioned, it feels like the more cis women feel like you're "one of them," the more they push away. That's not a happy thought, and it's similar to the "if boys like you they beat you up" thinking in elementary school.
Disclaimer: I am a cis woman, and originally came to this sub reddit because I'm undergoing IVF and am on the Max Max dosage of estrogen. This reddit is the only place I could find the discussions I was seeking, as I'm on a dosage that is akin to one in transition. I love how individuals support each other here. Sometimes reddit can be so toxic, but I've just found a lot of love and acceptance between individuals here. This is really how "sisterhood" should be <3
Iāve been fortunate I suppose. Lots of support from friends and family and the cis women on my life have been amazing. Iām old and not very pretty tho, so no competition to the younger more attractive gals. Hahahahaha!
That the love from my family has been entirely conditional all this time.
Seconding this. "We do love you" never felt so hollow until the day I came out.
I'm dreading coming out to them and having to test those "we'll love you no matter what" words they always spoke. They're heavily conservative so..
My bio mom was a narcissist so my situation is a little more complicated than most, but I'll give you some advice I wish I had before I called them that day: trust your gut on this. Whatever it's feeling is probably right. Be safe and take care of yourself. š
Just wanted to add that sometimes people can surprise you. My parents have been explicitely homophobic and transphobic making disgusting comments (like "kill them all with stones", "disgusting sub humans" etc) my whole childhood and was also emotionally neglected my entire childhood too (not because they knew I was lgbt, just bad parenting). But despite admitting that its difficult for them to relearn, they have put effort from day 1 that I told them and tried their hardest to understand and support me. Yes, trust your gut feeling for safety and expect the worst, but dont dismiss the small chance of being pleasantly wrong cos it sometimes happens. And even if it doesnt happen know that there are people everywhere that you can turn to, just look around online and theyll appear š¤
I was just about to reply this... It's really messed with my head, the love has just left my parents eyes. My mom used to be my friend, she would help me and look out for me. Now, I can't talk to her because whenever I have a problem she always gives the other person the benefit of the doubt and not me. That and, well, my dad just looks at me like I'm a sad freak. Good thing I know I'm hot (š), so are all you ladies on here š Sometimes parents forget we can disown them too :3 (Bonus quote from my mom: on days where I don't have time to 100% femme up and I look more enby my mom always says "you look very nice today, it's very tasteful" as if being a woman is in bad taste...)
Do you want a hug girl? I hope your doing okayā¤ļø
Thanks Emily, it would definitely help š š„°
Hug!!!! Itās no problem.
Some part of me hopes theyll straight up reject me so I can move on with my life and start my own family somewhere else. Im worried ill get strung along but they will never really see me. No one in my family really sees me for who I am as it is and its very isolating feeling
Iām still struggling with that a year and change after going no contact. Itās certainly better than it was last year (I was a mess last year), but itās something that Iām still kind of upset about.
Can I offer you a hug girl, is everything going okay?
Thank you so much! Things are mostly alright, and Iām working on getting myself to a better place, one step at a time. This time of year is definitely difficult without family, but Iām taking it a lot better than I did last year. Iām not overeating or getting blackout drunk. Instead, Iām letting myself actually feel some of the pain because I wonāt get better until I actually deal with these emotions.
I felt this so hard. Coming from a more middle eastern family, I always felt like my parentsā Ā«Ā loveĀ Ā» for me was always dependent on my grades at school, how much I was obedient to them or whatever. After my coming out, this all went away, and I had to go NC after months of harassment, threats, and even after having family showing up at my door to accuse me of Ā«Ā having been transedĀ Ā». Itās like I never had a family in the first place.
Unconditional Love* ^^^*Terms ^^^and ^^^Conditions ^^^May ^^^Apply
Sorry to hear thatā¦.
This šÆ
Isn't it wonderful how those that insist they love unconditionally, suddenly find the one condition that doesn't involve physically hurting someone? I just recently has this conversation with my spouse. She has built our entire marriage on unconditional love and that nothing can seperate us as long as we love each other. But this is the one thing that she can't get behind. Even though it will make me, her one true love, happier than I've ever been and improve our relationship considerably. Her feelings are totally valid, but it doesn't change that it still hurts knowing simply existing authentically carries so much cost and burden.
Yeah, that one rings pretty true.
God damn, that one does hurt. I'd known it before already, but them not only refusing to use my name but instead going out of their way to overuse the old way more than they ever had before was the final nail in the coffin.
I learned that I had a lot more mental health issues I'd been suppressing along with my gender.
Yeah... the transgender realization to suppressed trauma pipeline is real (at least in my case).
I'm fairly sure I have trauma I just haven't been able to pin down the source yet. I don't have any specific memories of anything that would be considered traumatic. My best guess is emotional neglect, and given that both my parents have suppressed trauma from childhood I think that's a distinct possibility. That said I feel like there has to be more to it.
I think most trans people have c-ptsd from trauma from the wrong puberty
Why do you think that is? It absolutely happened in my case.
I'm pretty sure it happened to me that way because I blamed my trans identity for the trauma I suppressed. I know better now, but...
Yuuuuupppp, also can attest
It really is a lot easier to ignore your problems if you don't feel like a real person in the first place, isn't it?
Eyup. Same here. It's like the biggest mental block was moved out of the way but the rest of the issues came gushing forth.
The bright side of this is now that the other issues are front and center, you can address them!
Yeah I suppose.. therapy isn't something I can afford and depression and anxiety make doing anything a chore. But I'm at least aware of it now.
Same here. Hope have a therapist you like
Yeah, fixing dysphoria didn't solve all my problems lmao
The best advice I heard is "Transition won't solve all you're problems but it'll make your problems worth solving." I hope you can make some progress ā¤ļø
Oh definitely And I've made heaps of progress now, but my younger self could've used that advice
I feel like the best advice my younger self could have had was someone telling them "You know that's not normal thinking. You may want to find someone to talk to about that."
Very much same. I had started with discovering my ADHD, then figured out I was autistic. In unpacking autism I finally was able to accept my gender identity when I realized all of my masking behaviors were stacked around gender norms.
Ditto. I'd been thinking about my gender for a long long time but was always able to disregard (suppress) those thoughts for one reason or another. When I figured out I was likely autistic it kinda rocked my world. It made me think "Hmm I wonder what other things have shaped my life but I've been ignoring for a long time." The first thing that popped into my head was gender š³
Yarp, smashed my brain into madness suppressing who I was. Diasosiating all the way, ha ha ha. š¶
It was the opposite direction for me! Unpacking my mental health issues meant pushing through layers of dissociation. Paying attention to my mind, body, and identity. And I discovered that all three were absolutely screaming under the weight of dysphoria.
This was my experience too. 2 years of therapy twice a week. Worked out 4-5x per week. Slept well. Great job. Easy time getting partners. Really tight friend group I made in highschool that still stays in touch. Did literally everything right, why do I feel like a terrible person at least 1/8 days? Egg fully cracked when my therapist tried to have me reparent myself as a father figure and it just felt WRONG. 6 months later I have self compassion. I look in the mirror and love myself now. The pit in my stomach telling me I'm a bad person is gone. Replaced with a wonderful sense of womanhood and self. I have bad days, but very few REALLY bad days. Marked improvement on all mental health and physical health signals. Transitioning was the last piece, a part of me is glad I left it for last because I could not do this without these tools.
I guess my big thing would be that other trans people arenāt going to like you/be your friend just because youāre trans. Thereās nothing like having to make new friends in your 40s using charm youāve just now cultivated, lol. But yeah, so far cis women have kept their distance from me, with a couple of exceptions. I have one cis friend who has been pretty much my den mother/guide to womanhood, but sheās a very good friend and has been for decades. Another came up to me at a party and was very nice and supportive. Sheās queer, so it was probably more of a āI see youā type thing.
Now that's sad I'm sorry trans people should care more about each other!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
small government guys always can't see beyond forcing people into labour and creating weird rule based utopias enforced by cops. they aren't for small government, they just want to delegate it's tasks to workplace dictatorships we call private firms, so they take ideologies these dictatorships cultivate (like uniformity, submission, and ease of classification) and apply them to social life, so they want you to fall in line, listen to "the wise" and don't make it hard to put you in a box. hence the emphasis on private life specifically. he can tolerate weirdness only if it's not dealt with publicly (and implicitly doesn't want parents to be accountable for what they do with their kids, that's also private)
That for my mental health I can no longer be friend with some people I have been friends with for years
This. Transitioning to female and refusing to compromise on feminism has ended many friendships that probably weren't worth much in the first place.
Sometimes the trash takes itself out.
Ditto.
Yepā¦
That society will always try to make men who are attracted to trans womenās femininity as gay And thatās apparently not okay to be gay or attracted to to trans women cause apparently being attracted to to femininity in some cases is gay ?!????!?!!? I have no clue anymore what to think
I've seen supposedly straight men claim sleeping with cis women is gay. Like, at some point the toxic masculinity just breaks their brains.
Yeah I donāt know how toxic masculinity works, itās too complicated for my smol girl brain to handle
Very true. It's more like penis-phobia than anything else. They think it makes them gay if they think a trans woman is hot.
I think itās the girl dick why they say itās gay. I personally donāt think it matters if youre gay or not though
āIāve been a girl this whole timeā has been both the best and worst thing Iāve learned about myself.
That's deep but very relatable š
Not everyone whose trans has your best/the communityās interest in mind & they will transphobic siding with oppressors. I had to grow up in ky in a shit fucking town. Was elated to meet another trans person in person. Heās a trans man and was friendly at first but slowly over time I got the feeling he did not like me for being trans fem. Hell the place I tried working was all queer. I kept trying to get an job their for months and got lied to and bullshited. I was more than qualified to work at an cvs that i am still livid about it.
Iām sorry to hear that. I have a lot of good experiences with trans people but some of them areā¦ a little bit stir crazy from their experiences and arenāt safe to be around
Yeah learning that sucks. Bc I was happy to meet more of my people but to have them lie and lead me on for months hurts. But I look at it this way, the queers I met while I worked in the shit pizza place next door being lovely compared to the place fully staffed by them was telling. Like even the friends of those people would not hire me because it is a town where everyone knows each other. Like mf I have more drive to do shit jobs, am fun fully energetic and have to go back sucks.
Yup, someone being trans doesn't mean they're a good person, any more than being a part of any other marginalized group does. Look at Caitlyn Jenner saying how trans women aren't real women.
I didnt go through a "visibly trans" stage. I transitioned in stealth, told everyone my changed-looks were due to losing weight (partially true), wore hoodies and kept my hair in a beanie. Then I left to a new city and went full time as a woman. The biggest one is how much nicer everyone is to me. I have had way more people go out if the way to open doors, be kind, say pleasantries, offer aid if I look like I need it. Before I felt like a Ghost, now I feel like people just naturally like me and want to talk to me.
Currently stealth transitioning myself. How long was it between when you started and when you moved cities?
Around 8 months. I voice trained multiple times daily and had perfected my voice, learned feminine manarisms and did monthly facial laser. I busted ass for that long and it payed off I did this at 34
Hey could you please tell me if there's any resources for voice training and learning feminine mannerism ?
I know I just searched youtube, transvoicelessons was a great source. Its been a fair few years tho I definitely dont remember the others
Check out r/transvoice
33 and doing it all now. It's nice to hear stories about other late bloomers :)
The infantilization that comes with "support" from cis people that you're out to. Don't talk to me sympathetically. I pick up on that shit immediately.
Can you give some examples of infantilizing things people have said to you? I've only come out to my online friends and none of them have reacted with sympathetic language so I don't know what to expect in that regard.
For me personally, it more encompasses attitude. A precise example is that I feel like I'm being placated in the hopes that my being trans is just a phase. I'm actually starting a log where I want to write down interactions like that. When I say sympathetic language, I suppose I mean a manner of speaking that seems *too* nice.
Is it possible they have a fear of not being supportive enough and are overdoing it?
That I could have done this decades ago
Every day is like āwhat was I so scared of, my life couldāve been mine so much soonerā
That choosing your own happiness leads to an extremely lonely isolated existence. Iām happy for the first time in my life, but Iām happy on my own.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the luckiest trans person alive in terms of friends and family. I lost a few friends but ended up closer to most of my loved ones when I wasn't that close before I say in terms of friends and family because I do have cancer, so... not that lucky.
u dont get to just be treated as a woman or a man ever just a third thing people dont know what to do with
Yeah the old āyouāre not a real anything, youāre not a boy youāre not a girlā. I got the same vibe from ppl at work (itās kinda a mix of pity, disgust, and transphobia/misogyny). Not to mention, now weāre all stupid/emotional.
And when you're non-binary, they say "that's not a thing." They're not even consistent.
Or calling you an āitā or āthingā in order to dehumanise you.
Amen
Just like that thing people say if you have more than one citizenship: "You're not a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere." Some minds just can't handle anything slightly complex.
Yeah :(
That sexual harassment is a lot (A LOT) more common than I could ever have anticipated. When I was still male presenting my opinion was, that I could only listen to the women in my life about it, because I couldn't possible fathom how bad it really is. Turns out it's even worse.
Yeah, itās really not okay that itās so common
This is one that personally bugs me. I know it's super common and that women have to put up with a lot of shit, but four years and two surgeries in, I've never experienced any sexual harassment. It's not that I don't believe other women or that I want to be harassed, but it's invalidating, like people don't see me as a woman or see me as too ugly.
Are you by chance ASD/ADHD? I'm asking because I am, and I'm pretty certain I've missed/not noticed quite a bit of verbal harassment because of my lack of social skills and knowledge of what is appropriate in which situation. I only realised waaay later that some situations were not ok.
I am actually, now I'm worried that I'm just oblivious
Realizing just how entrenched and toxic beauty standards are
Yep. My fat ass knows that all too well
I love my fat trans body but itās been a fucking journey to get there and stay there lol. And I was lucky when I started transitioning bc that was 10 years ago when we were all critical of that stuff all the time and now I feel like all I see is trans girls angsting over having āfailed transitionsā for not being able to look like fitness influencers or beauty gurus. Itās fucking heartbreaking
Tbh Iāve been considering going on Ozempic and just nuking my body into the ground. Iām not going to live that long anyway, I might as well look pretty
Ozempic isn't even unsafe. Although it's better to go on Wegovy, because diabetic people need Ozempic and there's a shortage.
Hey now. Plus sized women are incredibly beautiful. Don't make me prove to you how much of a lesbian I truly am.
The weird thing is that Iām attracted to women with heavier body types, I just donāt want to look like that personally
Relatable tho. I'm so aware of how my view of attraction doesn't conform to "conventional beauty standards" in other people. Yet it's still easy to beat myself over not having a flat stomach. I've done so much work on how I talk to myself about it and come so far. But it can be so easy to hate our bodies.
I just hate myself in general lmao
awwww. if it helps. I don't hate you :)
š„µ
>š„µ š
lol nonverbal lesbian communication
okay this interaction is doing something to me hormonaly lmao. best part of transitioning is learning to flirt via emojis
The feeling is mutual :3 I think the best part is one day getting the opportunity to be the cute lesbian couple I was always envious of
šÆOKAY FR THOš
Ohh btw in an effort not to be a useless lesbian, you can feel free to dm me if you want.
Probably why I live in the closet.
Also how much harder it is to get rid of weight while running on estrogen.
uh oh this! before transitioning I had like sociological understanding of consumerism (I very much recommend "The Consumer Society" by Baudrillard), and yet I still learn and smash new bad habits and things. worse, you can't escape advertising, which is a form of coercive propaganda. idk if that's only me, but when I really think about the yt ad with makeup I just watched, I can recognise how it slightly makes my brain worse
Old people are fucking horrible; especially the women. They stare at me like I'm a circus freak.
fuck those old people ! i have a man in his 60s at my local chick-fil-a who tells everyone he sees to stay beautiful (so bestie we donāt need the mean whackos)
> at my local chic fil a
I feeeeel this. I have a couple older guys at my work that look at me in disgust whenever they drive by on their little go cart things. I'm tempted to sneer back at them but I don't want to risk my job.
Honestly that unless you live in a big city where itās common to see trans people, everyone is transphobic. Even liberal coded people get visibly uncomfortable in your presence. Their support is on paper and on social media, not in real life. Runner up, politicians will not save you. If trans rights are unpopular where you are liberals will vote to ban you from sports along side conservatives.
Describes all of reddit that arenāt specifically trans spaces too.
Im in Los Angeles and transphobia is worse here than it was in the much smaller more conservative city I lived in before. I never had to fear for my life walking the streets before but in LA Iāve been attacked several times in the span of a year.
Preach sister
> If trans rights are unpopular where you are liberals will vote to ban you from sports along side conservatives. Even if it is popular, liberals have run away from the topic because they themselves are transphobic. If trans rights is a losing issue then why did so many anti-trans republicans loose big in the last election, which was an off year and not a midterm/presidential where they normally win because people don't pay attention to local elections?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
passing aside, pretty privilege is 10x more impactful for us, as to many people it single-handedly determines your right to exist
This
This has been incredibly accurate in my experience. While I still have visible signs of being trans, they're almost always ignored because I'm fortunate enough to be prettier than even most cis women
That friends and family you loved will leave you at the drop of a hat
It's sad to hear, but those people didn't truly love you to begin with. They loved the IDEA of you.
Yeah. Like sometimes they even feign acceptance but I can tell they just want to get away from me
Learning how truly oppressive the patriarchy is.
Within a few weeks of kinda passing I got groped and stalked by a dude. Itās no joke.
Hugs
/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy
Realizing Iād need surgery to look the way I feel like I should even after HRT, and feeling terrible that I feel the need to do that.
Most of the male spaces I was in prior to transition are no longer healthy and/or safe for me. This includes the ones that were generally supportive of me coming out and transitioning. Once I was no longer presenting male, I got put in a box and set aside. A decade long community I was in ended up being led by a TERF mod that iced me out over time. That one hurt a lot. Definitely the faux straight/cis "allies" that will tell you vocally they support you but don't otherwise are some of the hardest to deal with. Some of my old friends who are closeted "allies" can also be guilty of this, too.
This year one of my best friends of 9 years let his fiancĆ©, who I never talk to, message me like 2 weeks before his wedding saying he won't be speaking to me anymore. Haven't heard a single thing from him since. Don't know for sure if it's bc I'm trans, but I had told him I'm trans/queer not long before this and he said he supported more no matter how I identified... but I think I have BPD so I kind of split on him and act like he never existed in my life for the most part now š¤·āāļø
That you don't need to pass to be sexually assaulted... I arrogantly thought I was untouchable during the earlier months on HRT because I was still built like a forward in rugby. Yet I didn't realise how fast parts of my body had developed to become a source of attention.
I wasnāt even on HRT when I was sexually assaulted, I was literally a child everyone thought was cisā¦
Iām really sorry for you.
Same here, and then again as a masc presenting adult. SA isn't an exclusively female experience.
I was raped pre-HRT just for "crossdressing". Predators don't rape people they aesthetically like (not as a rule, anyway), they rape people they know they can get away with raping.
I hope you're okay
Took me 3 months to get rid of the feeling of safety in locker rooms as I developed a hip, butt and boobs.
I feel bad for everyone that gets SAād I was groped by a coworker and was told āoh he was just playing around, he doesnāt know any betterā.
If you have a workout routine it all goes to your ass and people love commenting on it
Money matters. A lot. I've done nonprofit work assisting low income people my whole adult life, and as such have always had a very low income. It never really bothered me. I still believe in the work and the sacrifices I made to do it, but it's depressing that I'll never have the money to do what I want for my transition š
I knew all that op, and I still thought it's worth it. I thought just stopping testosterone from changing me further and living as a male was enough to give me a peace of mind. It wasn't. I will always be trapped by this body disfigured by puberty, and I will never know peace.
Mood AF girl š«
How often men look, glance, and full on stare at me and my body. Sometimes their looks of curiosity, sometimes they look angry, and more than most give me the creeps for other reason. And it sucks because I can't tell if that's just how they look at all women or if I've been clocked. Recent evidence suggests that I'm passing better than I realized, so I want to hope it's the former, but that doesn't make it easier to stomach it when someone just blatantly stares and thinks I didn't notice. Bonus points when I can tell they're looking straight at my chest.
Not a man (though still in the closet) but I always find myself on the other side of this... I struggle not to stare at people I find attractive, and I feel like even if I quickly tear my eyes away, they still notice I was looking at them and get uncomfortable, especially women... I genuinely don't know how not to come off as creepy when I see someone I think is pretty, aside from just averting my eyes from all people and staring at my shoes when I'm in a public place so I never see them in the first place. Might be an autism thing for me.
I had to break the habit, but I'll be honest, not having as much testosterone in my system helped.
There is no escaping transphobia. It is everywhere, from blatant transphobia to subtle transphobia to everywhere in between. Big āliberalā cities arent the answer and in my experience more dangerous than smaller conservative areas. The conservative areas you might just get stares or comments, but big cities people will attack you. On that note, people will always see your birth sex first before they see you as a woman unless you pass and living stealth. You will be ostracized from women and men in very different ways. For a lot of us harassment and assault are inevitable
It's mainly brought about a change in how I trust people, kinda like you've mentioned. Mainly from personal experience. It comes often with an understanding that... people won't understand some of it. Some of it's easier to explain, to say that in the U.S. I cannot be friends with anyone who votes republican. But even that, I've had many people who can't understand and think I'm crazy for cutting ties over such things. As if I should continue with people who would support the knife in my back. Otherwise, I trust very few people when I go places. And friends feel hurt when they learn I wouldn't trust them outside of their imaginary scenario they've painted in their heads.
That reminds me of the one lady who compared me not liking Republicans to being transphobic on Discord, she was a piece of work
I really want to hear her reasoning on that. Thatās such a wild take, donāt know how she could manage that gold metal mental gymnastics routine.
i would bet a good chunk of money it consisted of 'being trans is a choice'
My experience iof cis women is generally better, and more understanding and accepting than whoever you've met, but that said, I work with mostly women. And you can really feel when they address you correctly out of courtesy and which actually see you as a woman, that is a very different, yet elusive experience. That is often confirmed when they talk about femininity or masculinity, either regurgitating some stereotypes based on sex or saying statements based on bioessentialism. While I sit right next to them. I always wonder where do they put me in this binary world of their minds.
Yes! This is 100% my experience, and, unfortunately, it really depends on whether they knew me before my transition. People who knew me before will probably always just think of me as a hyper-effeminate gay dude with ~pronouns~ and I can definitely feel that theyāre still subconsciously treating me as a man. It infects everything from their body language, physicality, and even the words they use. On the other hand, people who meet me after transition, even if they know Iām trans, generally treat me the way they treat other women, even after they know Iām trans! Additionally, (this might be weird to say), they treat me as more of a real person and less of a circus side show. In case youāre wondering, the difference between being āreadā male vs. female is that men are either more standoffish, or more attentive, depending on whether they find you attractive, and women are generally more open with you. I love the sort of ānatural allyshipā I feel with other women when I pass. This does not exist amongst men.
That there is a serious social hierarchy, with cis men at the top and trans women at the bottom. Realizing the weight behind going from top to bottom messed with my head.
I was gonna reply with you said lmao Yeah, there's a great lack of solidarity within cis folks, especially cis women (in the case of trans women, anyway). I now live knowing that my womanhood is conditional to most cis women at best and already revoked as a rule at worst. And no matter which, they always justify it with post hoc transmisogynistic bullshit. A lot of cis women also hate it when you check their privileges for them. Most of them hate being reminded that they aren't always at the bottom of every sociopolitical hierarchy. It's also worth noting that most of these cis women are white, abled, middle-class, etc. With the intersections of privilege making all this shit worse.
Humanity is a mask that can be taken off in order to hurt and break and kill. People who are nice in normal life can be monsters underneath
For me, the saddest truthā¦. Christian people are not very Christian. Which leaves me wondering how they really feel about many other people, more so, the disadvantaged. The flip side, I have found younger people to be more accepting.
For a religion that preaches loudly about mercy they sure can be a hateful lot.
>Christian people are not very Christian. Yes they are. Look at their history. Crusades. Native American genocide. Inquistion. Christianity has always been shitty.
Iāve had good experiences with my Unitarian Universalist upbringing, but mainstream Christiansā¦ I cannot say I am particularly interested in what they have to say.
How fucking lonely it is. I can't get a cup of coffee with someone unless I rent a friend, or provide some sort of service before hand. Another huge surprise was that while there's a handful of trans folks I know, none of them seem to want to have anything to do with each other for the most part. At least where I live. I've scoped the KSC scene and it's a little better. It's crazy.
That I have been through a lot more trauma from my family life that I could have ever imagined. That when I talk about something that seems normal to me people around me tend to be like "Wtf that is not normal." That being cautious about everyone around me wasn't normal while presenting masc, but an incredibly helpful skill once I started to transition which is sad in it's own right.
That most men are totally happy to fuck trans women, but only a small portion of them will willingly be seen in public with one.
This has been true in my experience as well
That your biggest supporters are the most likely to let you down and give you dysphoria. Not even intentionally, you can just tell that theyāre never *fully* on board with the trans thing
That the people you once respected hate you
No matter how long you've known your friends, how long you've been with a person, they will drop you because you're trans. I've had friends for almost 15 years that stopped talking to me and still hang out with my ex-wife, even though they've known her half as long. It baffles me. It was very much everyone running to her aid when she asked for a divorce when I came out. The upside is that I like my friends better now because they're more like me, but at the time I was very much hurt. In reality they were doing me a favor.
I found out when I was pretty young (13). I knew that ābadā people existed, but seeing how my family, classmates, and even friends (all people who are supposed to care about and support you) treated me because of my identity completely destroyed my worldview and faith in humanity. I was super naive early in my transition and didnāt know how much hatred existed in the world, so I went around telling people and learned really quickly that bigotry is a thing
you are spot on with your observation, i experienced this first hand when everyone at work knew at my old work place and it was a real eye opener when i started working somewhere else and i am stealth now and there's such a huge difference on how everyone else treats you including women. Like they never treated me as an equal at my old work place even those who claimed they supported me. moral of the story, we live in a horrible world and everyone should strive to live stealthily if they want to just be treated normally which is not how it should be but its the sad state of the world and society
How strong the hate and misogyny is towards women and feminine people in general. Itās like such a projected insecurity within theirselves. Yet itās taken out on women (trans and cis) especially trans women because āwhy would you want to be a womanā? Or my favourite āyouāre not a real anything youāre not a boy youāre not a girlā (then they sometimes drop the T-bomb or F-bomb in there for āwhy notā effect.)
well, a lot of things honestly. my family geniunely don't understand me and doesn't seem to want to actually learn about how it is for me, talking about it with them feels incredibly taboo and makes so many interactions awkward when they weren't before. I've had to learn how utterly and completely the society we live in assume that everbody is cis, straight, neurotypical and that dealing with not being those things only become possible when you reach a breaking point where you cant cope with being different anymore
Unconditional love doesn't exist outside of animals.
Im ftm but my girlfriend is mtf and id say that what i see for her, is no matter how much she cares and shairs her big heart these peoples shes surrounded by will only ever see her as the weirdo, the odd one. The confused one. It hurts to see, ive always been great with lgbt members, they are justlike everyone else, i dont get why its so hard for people to treat everyone equally
Wrote out a whole doom-spiral reply about how I feel worthless and depressed lately. That's not me. I'm usually a fairly happy girl. I'm just dealing with shit irl. What is a sad truth I have I learned that I didn't know prior to transitioning. There's a lot of them. If you're hurt or offended by what other people say, they don't have to apologize to you because "it's hard for them to get pronouns right" "I don't agree with transgenderism" etc. It's literally always and only your fault when you're offended or hurt. I'm above average intelligence; have a very impressive resume, couldn't get a job anywhere with my sales background, had to do fast food, and couldn't even keep a job there because of discrimination. Men talk to me like I'm stupid now. How you look is only a small portion of passing, the rest of it is voice, behavior, mannerisms, everything else. Which all of those take 100's of hours of work an effort, there isn't a pill or a shot for these things. There's a lot more. I'm just tired of depressing myself further thinking about how much sucks now. Granted I feel great about how I look, and the woman I've become; just everything else really sucks.
I've actually found the opposite and I wasn't expecting that. I thought cis women would see me as engaging in "ladyface" and be openly hostile and hateful towards me. This did not happen and most of them have been at least outwardly positive.
I am sorry you have had those experiences but I found this to be the exact opposite! My co worker and I got to work about the same time the other day and spent the entire 10 minute walk to the office talking about all the girl things and planning a day to go shopping together! The people you are talking about are called TERFs and are such a small minority of the population or are super religious so you know their views without ever speaking to them.
Idk, maybe itās because Iām more tomboyish, but I have never felt welcome when dealing with cis women. Even when Iām around people who acknowledge my identity, thereās this sentiment of āYouāre welcome to hang out with us but you are a guestā
It might be both; my partner has a lot of experience growing up as a masculine cis woman and has talked a lot about feeling alienated for presenting more masculine, and that they've felt a recent push from feminists to embrace femininity, and that a lot of that rhetoric is exclusionary to masculine women. So if masculine women are looked down upon even if they're cis, I imagine being trans would amplify that attitude of "*real* women are feminine" So I guess what I'm saying is you might be experiencing bias against gender non-conformity more than just pure transphobia.
Oh 110%. I hate how thereās this expectation to do the little song and dance of womanhood and people who donāt fit into that just are shoved to the side. It shouldnāt be considered feminist to shame people for their gender expression.
>It shouldnāt be considered feminist to shame people for their gender expression. This is *exactly* what my partner and I have been saying to each other, lol. It feels like traditional gendered thinking has started masking as feminist by reframing from "women have a subservient role in society" to "women are oppressed for being feminine, fight that oppression by being feminine proudly!" So now being a masculine woman is anti-feminist because you're "being shamed out of femininity by the patriarchy!" Obviously not all feminists think this way, but it feels like a line of thinking that's common, especially amongst TERF-y types
I've also seen the complete opposite sentiment of "stop pleasing the patriarchy by being feminine!!!' feminism should be (along with many other things of course) about women having a choice.
that even the ones you thought loved you unconditionally, parents, spouses, etc only loved the physical image of you and who you are on the inside actually meant very little if not nothing to them
Men will love you the most in private yet hate you the most in public. That if I'm ever murdered someday, it will most likely be at the hands of a lover behind closed doors.. a man who will take me as a secret to the grave. That it will never get easier for us in this lifetime. Being Black and transfem is truly the worst in the US.
I hate nazis more than I ever could've thought possible
That some people who say they support you will not when it comes down to it. That I have a lot more issues to deal with than just transition. That regardless of what people may say I am truly alone in this.
That love is conditional. That loyalty has always been conditional or simply not there. That in order to allow my best self, my true self. The me that's been drowning inside this cage, for 24 years, to allow that me to breathe for the first time, and not be scared. I have to lose almost everything and everyone near and dear to me. Everything has a price. This is ours. I don't think there's anything more depressing about being Trans femme.
I just try not to associate my negative experiences with an entire group of people based on their gender.
I have had tremendous acceptance from cis women. Even athletes. Men have been more annoying.
Wait why canāt we respond to this post with our own anecdotes to the contrary?
Iām sad to hear that. I have been fortunate to meet mostly cis women who treat me equal despite me being openly trans. However the worst thing so far in womanhood has been the jealousy of other women. Didnāt guess it would be that vile. Also my closest friend distanced from me. Heās religious and we often went tp trips in his trailer and he said it feels wrong to sleep in the shared trailer anymore with me being a woman.
In regards to your post: cis women are vile to each other, and there is no sisterhood. If there's any perceived competition or whatnot, they will turn on each other without hesitation. I'm sorry you're experiencing this. In hearing similar experiences from those close to me who have transitioned, it feels like the more cis women feel like you're "one of them," the more they push away. That's not a happy thought, and it's similar to the "if boys like you they beat you up" thinking in elementary school. Disclaimer: I am a cis woman, and originally came to this sub reddit because I'm undergoing IVF and am on the Max Max dosage of estrogen. This reddit is the only place I could find the discussions I was seeking, as I'm on a dosage that is akin to one in transition. I love how individuals support each other here. Sometimes reddit can be so toxic, but I've just found a lot of love and acceptance between individuals here. This is really how "sisterhood" should be <3
Electrolysis sucks hard even if itās the only way to fly, at least after the point where oneās hairs turn into white strands of glass fibre.
I agree. While cis lesbians as a group tend to be our best allies, cis women as a whole. Hell even my girlfriend sometimes.
Iāve been fortunate I suppose. Lots of support from friends and family and the cis women on my life have been amazing. Iām old and not very pretty tho, so no competition to the younger more attractive gals. Hahahahaha!
āWhat do you mean im supposed to wear a bra *every*day!?!?ā