ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
I have no interest whatsoever in judging people for what they wear. I wore a dress all weekend with no more thought given to it than putting it on, and no one thought twice about it because I have boobs. I didn't go out of my way to look nice for the dress, I threw the damn thing on and walked out because it's easier for me to move in when I travel. Why couldn't a cis guy do the same thing? Why do I get to judge what people wear or how they wear it?
In my high school there were a few guys who wore a dress every year for the holiday. One just wore a dress, the others usually put it on over other clothes. They didn't wear makeup or fix their hair or anything.. they put on dresses and it was as simple as that. They didn't go "ha ha look at me I'm a dude in this dress isn't that ridiculous?" They threw on a dress and walked around all day in it and were just themselves wearing dresses.
I always thought it was the best thing ever. They were all really nice guys. I really don't see what's wrong with that at all.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Why is it not even an issue for women to wear tuxedos and jeans and men's shirts and shoes but men get super judged for wearing women's clothing? How did that even start? Men weren't even judged back in Elizabethan times for wearing more effeminate clothing. What caused the great shift, and is it just in the US?
Why is it not even an issue for women to wear tuxedos and jeans and men's shirts and shoes but men get super judged for wearing women's clothing? How did that even start? Men weren't even judged back in Elizabethan times for wearing more effeminate clothing. What caused the great shift, and is it just in the US?
Because Masculinity in the US is for some reason the most important thing a person can have no matter their gender and insinuating that it's anything less than 200% at all times is just a sin of the highest nature.
Women get judged for dressing in a masculine fashion all the time, though!
Timely example: Just this past April a person had to fight a Dress-Only rule so that they could wear a Tux to the Prom! They won! (yay!)
Women get judged for dressing in a masculine fashion all the time, though!
Timely example: Just this past April a girl had to fight a Dress-Only rule so that she could wear a Tux to her Prom! She won! (yay!)
Women get judged for dressing in a masculine fashion all the time, though!
Timely example: Just this past April a girl had to fight a Dress-Only rule so that she could wear a Tux to her Prom! She won! (yay!)
Oh yeah I remember that! That girl is a badass.
Aaaand I shouldn't have gendered my pronouns! Profuse apologies! Those habits are proving very hard to unlearn.
Why is it not even an issue for women to wear tuxedos and jeans and men's shirts and shoes but men get super judged for wearing women's clothing? How did that even start? Men weren't even judged back in Elizabethan times for wearing more effeminate clothing. What caused the great shift, and is it just in the US?
Because Masculinity in the US is for some reason the most important thing a person can have no matter their gender and insinuating that it's anything less than 200% at all times is just a sin of the highest nature.
Masculinity is probably the number one killer in men ages 10 to 50, probably. Dumb dudes doing dumb shit to look more manly to other dudes.
Look, masculine Chad-people: try being sensitive and tolerant instead of a dudemanbro chugging Natty Ice and the world might be a better place.
Nothing inherently wrong with "masculinity" (a fact I have to remind myself of constantly because I fucking loathe stereotypical masculinity)
Indeed, the term masculinity itself doesn't actually mean anything in the broader sense. What is masculine for someone may be considered feminine to someone else. It's just down to personal identification.
Toxic masculinity, on the other hand, is a much more specific thing, and a tremendous issue
Nothing inherently wrong with "masculinity" (a fact I have to remind myself of constantly because I fucking loathe stereotypical masculinity)
Indeed, the term masculinity itself doesn't actually mean anything in the broader sense. What is masculine for someone may be considered feminine to someone else. It's just down to personal identification.
Toxic masculinity, on the other hand, is a much more specific thing, and a tremendous issue
Yeah that's much more what I was subtly hinting at in my post.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
I'm so over people using ignorance as a defense for transphobia. It's 2015, you have a goddamn computer in your pocket that has access to all recorded human knowledge. Get educated or get fucked.
I'm so over people using ignorance as a defense for transphobia. It's 2015, you have a goddamn computer in your pocket that has access to all recorded human knowledge. Get educated or get fucked.
I actually don't totally agree.
I mentioned this in the last thread, but as an actual transgender woman, who's been privately carrying around at least some degree of a feminine identity since at least 2002, I didn't know shit about transgender anything until literally 2013, from this very forum. Because there was just nothing out there for me to latch onto. Prior to the Caitlyn Jenner discussion exploding just now, what other trans people are the average individual exposed to? It's been, like...Quagmire's transgender father on Family Guy, Mrs. Garrison on South Park, a random smattering of generic sex criminals or generic victims of sex criminals, and that's pretty much fucking it. Prior to the last year or two, in my experience it was vanishingly rare to randomly stumble upon an honest depiction of a transgender person or a real transgender person's story even one time in your entire life. If I, of all people, never felt safe or confident enough to actively hunt outside of what I'll charitably call my comfort zone for that information, how can I expect anyone else to?
So I cut people a certain limited degree of slack when it comes to saying some unfathomably stupid thing, because there is a very realistic chance that that conversation is literally the first time they have ever spoken or thought about the subject for longer than ten consecutive seconds. It's not really equivalent to ignorance about race or sexuality, because you couldn't have avoided discussion of those subjects if you tried during my lifetime. But the level of trans representation in media or the general public consciousness is abysmal, and mass ignorance is the inevitable consequence. I can't heap all of the blame for that on the average consumer.
Obviously if someone is deliberately recalcitrant after you try to educate them then that's a different story, but you get one freebie from me, at least for now. I have high hopes for awareness of trans issues to become much more prevalent over the next couple of years given some of the stuff we're starting to see now.
I am having a very bad brain day. I really wish I could stop being so afraid of what being trans means for my future. I just get so scared sometimes that I wonder if I should just stop and turn around, but I also know that being on estrogen just feels so damn right.
I'm so over people using ignorance as a defense for transphobia. It's 2015, you have a goddamn computer in your pocket that has access to all recorded human knowledge. Get educated or get fucked.
I actually don't totally agree.
I mentioned this in the last thread, but as an actual transgender woman, who's been privately carrying around at least some degree of a feminine identity since at least 2002, I didn't know shit about transgender anything until literally 2013, from this very forum. Because there was just nothing out there for me to latch onto. Prior to the Caitlyn Jenner discussion exploding just now, what other trans people are the average individual exposed to? It's been, like...Quagmire's transgender father on Family Guy, Mrs. Garrison on South Park, a random smattering of generic sex criminals or generic victims of sex criminals, and that's pretty much fucking it. Prior to the last year or two, in my experience it was vanishingly rare to randomly stumble upon an honest depiction of a transgender person or a real transgender person's story even one time in your entire life. If I, of all people, never felt safe or confident enough to actively hunt outside of what I'll charitably call my comfort zone for that information, how can I expect anyone else to?
So I cut people a certain limited degree of slack when it comes to saying some unfathomably stupid thing, because there is a very realistic chance that that conversation is literally the first time they have ever spoken or thought about the subject for longer than ten consecutive seconds. It's not really equivalent to ignorance about race or sexuality, because you couldn't have avoided discussion of those subjects if you tried during my lifetime. But the level of trans representation in media or the general public consciousness is abysmal, and mass ignorance is the inevitable consequence. I can't heap all of the blame for that on the average consumer.
Obviously if someone is deliberately recalcitrant after you try to educate them then that's a different story, but you get one freebie from me, at least for now. I have high hopes for awareness of trans issues to become much more prevalent over the next couple of years given some of the stuff we're starting to see now.
I hadn't really considered it along these lines, to be perfectly frank. You've given me some things to ruminate over.
Edit: I just... I get so angry and frustrated by this shit. It gets me so worked up so quickly that I just can't see straight and it just leaves me seething and it's tough to think rationally like that.
I am very much in support of people wearing whatever the fuck they want regardless of gender, and I apologize if my last post gave the impression otherwise.
I am having a very bad brain day. I really wish I could stop being so afraid of what being trans means for my future. I just get so scared sometimes that I wonder if I should just stop and turn around, but I also know that being on estrogen just feels so damn right.
This is really hard.
Don't let it get you down. You've got plenty of support from multiple sources, just keep being yourself and doing what feels right.
I am having a very bad brain day. I really wish I could stop being so afraid of what being trans means for my future. I just get so scared sometimes that I wonder if I should just stop and turn around, but I also know that being on estrogen just feels so damn right.
I am having a very bad brain day. I really wish I could stop being so afraid of what being trans means for my future. I just get so scared sometimes that I wonder if I should just stop and turn around, but I also know that being on estrogen just feels so damn right.
This is really hard.
Don't let it get you down. You've got plenty of support from multiple sources, just keep being yourself and doing what feels right.
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
I am having a very bad brain day. I really wish I could stop being so afraid of what being trans means for my future. I just get so scared sometimes that I wonder if I should just stop and turn around, but I also know that being on estrogen just feels so damn right.
This is really hard.
hey, i love you
you will always, always have our support, okay?
i can't wait to see you in december!
hi i love you too
december is gonna be so great, i wonder what i'm even gonna look like by then
And it occurred to me today also that if I actually wanted to stop being on HRT or anything, I probably would have actually just...done it by now. Being on estrogen makes me really happy most of the time even if my emotions are pretty wild right now.
I hope it doesn't feel like I'm hogging the thread! I kinda like talking out what I'm thinking about.
I just don't wanna make anyone else feel like they can't post because I'm talkin' about stuff is all.
I'm feeling a lot better now than I was earlier. It seems like every time I have a freak out like this, a little bit later I come back down and feel really happy about being a girl.
Please talk more because the more other people talk the more I want to just sit back and read/watch/lurk the thread as opposed to talking when tbh I don't feel like I have anywhere near as much to say as I have to learn.
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I already have a lot of pre-existing anxiety about how I'm perceived by people. If the question is just 'Hey Mallory, how do you feel about being trans?' in a vacuum, my only answer is 'Totally good!'. When it comes to asking me how I feel about it compared to how people might end up seeing me, I'm a lot more worried about that.
Me changing my body on my own is very much my own decision and I'm happy with it when I'm not having panic attacks about the implications of it in the outside world. Part of that might just be because I spend every day at work + school being misgendered and getting deadnamed, who knows.
I feel like I'm really shitty at explaining this right now. I love having discovered that I'm a girl and it makes me so happy! But I have a ton of anxiety attached to myself changing, I guess.
Please talk more because the more other people talk the more I want to just sit back and read/watch/lurk the thread as opposed to talking when tbh I don't feel like I have anywhere near as much to say as I have to learn.
also please listen to people who are not necessarily me about trans things because i am such a baby and have no idea what i'm talking about a lot of the time other than gut reactions about things being kinda gross
but you guys are really sweet for insisting that i should talk
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's more like keeping aware that it's okay to be afraid of how people are going to treat you and your ability to endure that stress, while simultaneously being 100% confident that you identify as a woman and will be much happier with yourself and your body on hormones (at least in private).
As opposed to allowing your social anxiety dupe you into thinking that transitioning is a wrong idea IN GENERAL, which would be bad.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've wished I was a woman for like 13 years and I've been anywhere remotely close to confident enough to consider actually transitioning for less than two. I know from personal experience that not having the knowledge or emotional language to navigate that disparity fucked me up pretty badly for a really long time. Which is why I'm now trying to force myself into an attitude of, "I know for a fact that I'll be happier with myself if I transition, I DESERVE to be happy with myself, and I'm just going to commit to it and cross and/or burn all those scary social bridges later when I come to them, and I know that none of the fallout could possibly harm me more than giving up and doing nothing."
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I already have a lot of pre-existing anxiety about how I'm perceived by people. If the question is just 'Hey Mallory, how do you feel about being trans?' in a vacuum, my only answer is 'Totally good!'. When it comes to asking me how I feel about it compared to how people might end up seeing me, I'm a lot more worried about that.
Me changing my body on my own is very much my own decision and I'm happy with it when I'm not having panic attacks about the implications of it in the outside world. Part of that might just be because I spend every day at work + school being misgendered and getting deadnamed, who knows.
I feel like I'm really shitty at explaining this right now. I love having discovered that I'm a girl and it makes me so happy! But I have a ton of anxiety attached to myself changing, I guess.
You could get bombarded by cosmic rays and get superpowers and be the superhero known as Ms. Gendered! Your one mission in life to go around the world, educating people on how to not be shitlords to eachother, preaching tolerance and acceptance, punching criminals in the head and being loved by all!
I will be honest in saying I have no idea where to find any cosmic rays, though.
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's more like keeping aware that it's okay to be afraid of how people are going to treat you and your ability to endure that stress, while simultaneously being 100% confident that you identify as a woman and will be much happier with yourself and your body on hormones (at least in private).
As opposed to allowing your social anxiety dupe you into thinking that transitioning is a wrong idea IN GENERAL, which would be bad.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've wished I was a woman for like 13 years and I've been anywhere remotely close to confident enough to consider actually transitioning for less than two. I know from personal experience that not having the knowledge or emotional language to navigate that disparity fucked me up pretty badly for a really long time. Which is why I'm now trying to force myself into an attitude of, "I know for a fact that I'll be happier with myself if I transition, I DESERVE to be happy with myself, and I'm just going to commit to it and cross and/or burn all those scary social bridges later when I come to them, and I know that none of the fallout could possibly harm me more than giving up and doing nothing."
I got lucky that I started figuring it out last year, I guess. But after eight months of being sure, I just absolutely knew that something had to change. I just...knew that I had to start HRT or else things were not going to get better for me. So I had to make it happen and thankfully I didn't run into many obstacles trying to get it started.
And yeah, that explanation is pretty much where I'm at right now. I know I'm okay with being trans and being on HRT and making changes to my body, but it's very scary to think about how people are going to treat me. Especially people I know and interact with on a day to day basis.
I would think one would have to be insane to not be at least a little afraid.
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's more like keeping aware that it's okay to be afraid of how people are going to treat you and your ability to endure that stress, while simultaneously being 100% confident that you identify as a woman and will be much happier with yourself and your body on hormones (at least in private).
As opposed to allowing your social anxiety dupe you into thinking that transitioning is a wrong idea IN GENERAL, which would be bad.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've wished I was a woman for like 13 years and I've been anywhere remotely close to confident enough to consider actually transitioning for less than two. I know from personal experience that not having the knowledge or emotional language to navigate that disparity fucked me up pretty badly for a really long time. Which is why I'm now trying to force myself into an attitude of, "I know for a fact that I'll be happier with myself if I transition, I DESERVE to be happy with myself, and I'm just going to commit to it and cross and/or burn all those scary social bridges later when I come to them, and I know that none of the fallout could possibly harm me more than giving up and doing nothing."
I got lucky that I started figuring it out last year, I guess. But after eight months of being sure, I just absolutely knew that something had to change. I just...knew that I had to start HRT or else things were not going to get better for me. So I had to make it happen and thankfully I didn't run into many obstacles trying to get it started.
And yeah, that explanation is pretty much where I'm at right now. I know I'm okay with being trans and being on HRT and making changes to my body, but it's very scary to think about how people are going to treat me. Especially people I know and interact with on a day to day basis.
I guess the part where my story is different is that I've been wracked with dysphoria for basically as long as I can remember, and the crippling anxiety and overall revulsion at being seen and treated as a traditional man preemptively sabotaged any sort of social life, such that I don't really HAVE any people I personally interact with on a daily basis.
Which meant that, once I had a safe job and an apartment, I was left with the handy avenue of, "Even if my transition goes as awkwardly as humanly possible, what do I even have to LOSE at this point?"
I could pretend like i've known for a long time but honestly I haven't. There are little clues here and there, and I remember some specific events that kind of made me force myself into acting more 'macho' and less feminine, especially in elementary school. I've always kind of hated my body, but I don't know if I'd link that to dysphoria or just a general distaste of myself after being bullied forever.
I mean whatever it is, I'm definitely happier now. But it's just so interesting how different people come to these conclusions at vastly different times.
Also, the brain is stellar at persuading us that certain things are true when they aren't, especially if the truth is at odds with what we learned growing up.
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
Betgirl, I've felt the exact same way, and also struggled with untangling whether my fear was due to being unsure of my identity or due to social anxiety. My therapist gave me an interesting article to read (I wish I had a link for it) when I was still debating on whether to transition. Basically, my problem boiled down to "I'm not sure!" I wasn't sure if this was 100% right for me....and there was this nagging anxiety that kept telling me, "what if you're wrong about yourself?" Basically I was letting my fear of being wrong about myself, overshadow what I felt that I really wanted for myself. Anyway, the gist of the article was, you're never going to be 100% sure, and you kind of won't really know until you try, but having these feelings in the first place is a pretty strong indicator that this is what you really want.
I'm getting jealous reading about all of the changes you've been feeling. I've been on hormones for just over two weeks and haven't noticed much of a difference (other than my libido crashing, lol). I know it's still really early, but I wouldn't mind at least some indication that something is happening!
There wasn't too much change, it's mostly been subtle so far! You might start getting a sore chest here soon, I know that came up in the second week. I'm in the third week now and well...it was kinda fun at first and now it is definitely not.
i appreciate you talkin' about that article though. i know that questioning is often a really good indication that there's something up, and I'm definitely happier being seen and referred to as a woman!
MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
Also, I would have resisted coming to the conclusion that I was actually trans, much much less if I wasn't attracted to women at all. Let me tell you how much trouble I had untangling my attraction towards women vs. the desire to be a woman, and worrying about how my desire to be a woman was merely just a product of my attraction to woman. That I didn't REALLY identify as a woman. That was something that I struggled with and honestly felt a little ashamed about because I felt that I wasn't genuine in my desire. It sucked and still does suck to a degree. Like I know this is basically autogynephilia and I know that autogynephilia is a load of bunk, and I've heard that study where 80+% of ciswoman would meet the criteria for autogynephilia, but unfortunately it was still a hard monkey for me to shake and I still struggle with it a little bit from time to time.
I think, what made it really hard in my case, was that my feelings manifested in a sexual nature and then branched out from there. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! Like rationally, I know there's nothing wrong with that. But, and maybe this is part of my upbringing that I'm still trying to shake subconsciously, I felt for the longest time that it meant what I was feeling was wrong somehow. Anyway, I guess that's enough spilling of my guts for now lol.
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In my high school there were a few guys who wore a dress every year for the holiday. One just wore a dress, the others usually put it on over other clothes. They didn't wear makeup or fix their hair or anything.. they put on dresses and it was as simple as that. They didn't go "ha ha look at me I'm a dude in this dress isn't that ridiculous?" They threw on a dress and walked around all day in it and were just themselves wearing dresses.
I always thought it was the best thing ever. They were all really nice guys. I really don't see what's wrong with that at all.
The break at 2:45 in Los Angeles holy shit.
Because Masculinity in the US is for some reason the most important thing a person can have no matter their gender and insinuating that it's anything less than 200% at all times is just a sin of the highest nature.
Timely example: Just this past April a person had to fight a Dress-Only rule so that they could wear a Tux to the Prom! They won! (yay!)
they do but sometimes they get judged as being cool or baddass or etc
for men it's ALWAYS done as self deprecating humor unless it's a drag performance which is a different thing all together
Oh yeah I remember that! That girl is a badass.
Aaaand I shouldn't have gendered my pronouns! Profuse apologies! Those habits are proving very hard to unlearn.
Masculinity is probably the number one killer in men ages 10 to 50, probably. Dumb dudes doing dumb shit to look more manly to other dudes.
Look, masculine Chad-people: try being sensitive and tolerant instead of a dudemanbro chugging Natty Ice and the world might be a better place.
Indeed, the term masculinity itself doesn't actually mean anything in the broader sense. What is masculine for someone may be considered feminine to someone else. It's just down to personal identification.
Toxic masculinity, on the other hand, is a much more specific thing, and a tremendous issue
Yeah that's much more what I was subtly hinting at in my post.
I mentioned this in the last thread, but as an actual transgender woman, who's been privately carrying around at least some degree of a feminine identity since at least 2002, I didn't know shit about transgender anything until literally 2013, from this very forum. Because there was just nothing out there for me to latch onto. Prior to the Caitlyn Jenner discussion exploding just now, what other trans people are the average individual exposed to? It's been, like...Quagmire's transgender father on Family Guy, Mrs. Garrison on South Park, a random smattering of generic sex criminals or generic victims of sex criminals, and that's pretty much fucking it. Prior to the last year or two, in my experience it was vanishingly rare to randomly stumble upon an honest depiction of a transgender person or a real transgender person's story even one time in your entire life. If I, of all people, never felt safe or confident enough to actively hunt outside of what I'll charitably call my comfort zone for that information, how can I expect anyone else to?
So I cut people a certain limited degree of slack when it comes to saying some unfathomably stupid thing, because there is a very realistic chance that that conversation is literally the first time they have ever spoken or thought about the subject for longer than ten consecutive seconds. It's not really equivalent to ignorance about race or sexuality, because you couldn't have avoided discussion of those subjects if you tried during my lifetime. But the level of trans representation in media or the general public consciousness is abysmal, and mass ignorance is the inevitable consequence. I can't heap all of the blame for that on the average consumer.
Obviously if someone is deliberately recalcitrant after you try to educate them then that's a different story, but you get one freebie from me, at least for now. I have high hopes for awareness of trans issues to become much more prevalent over the next couple of years given some of the stuff we're starting to see now.
This is really hard.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
I hadn't really considered it along these lines, to be perfectly frank. You've given me some things to ruminate over.
Edit: I just... I get so angry and frustrated by this shit. It gets me so worked up so quickly that I just can't see straight and it just leaves me seething and it's tough to think rationally like that.
Don't let it get you down. You've got plenty of support from multiple sources, just keep being yourself and doing what feels right.
hey, i love you
you will always, always have our support, okay?
i can't wait to see you in december!
Yeah. The problem is trying to separate 'I am afraid of my own body changing' versus 'I am afraid of how the world is going to perceive and treat me after I transition'.
hi i love you too
december is gonna be so great, i wonder what i'm even gonna look like by then
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
I hope it doesn't feel like I'm hogging the thread! I kinda like talking out what I'm thinking about.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
This is your space, you don't have to feel like that.
I'm pretty sure everyone is even less likely to have a problem with you talking about your stuff here, no matter how much.
I just don't wanna make anyone else feel like they can't post because I'm talkin' about stuff is all.
I'm feeling a lot better now than I was earlier. It seems like every time I have a freak out like this, a little bit later I come back down and feel really happy about being a girl.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
So you mean you're trying to not mix up your base fear of change versus fear of the implications on how being trans will affect your life. Is that right?
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I already have a lot of pre-existing anxiety about how I'm perceived by people. If the question is just 'Hey Mallory, how do you feel about being trans?' in a vacuum, my only answer is 'Totally good!'. When it comes to asking me how I feel about it compared to how people might end up seeing me, I'm a lot more worried about that.
Me changing my body on my own is very much my own decision and I'm happy with it when I'm not having panic attacks about the implications of it in the outside world. Part of that might just be because I spend every day at work + school being misgendered and getting deadnamed, who knows.
I feel like I'm really shitty at explaining this right now. I love having discovered that I'm a girl and it makes me so happy! But I have a ton of anxiety attached to myself changing, I guess.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
Could you expect a teenager to eloquently talk about what they were going through?
You're learning! That's okay!
also please listen to people who are not necessarily me about trans things because i am such a baby and have no idea what i'm talking about a lot of the time other than gut reactions about things being kinda gross
but you guys are really sweet for insisting that i should talk
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
As opposed to allowing your social anxiety dupe you into thinking that transitioning is a wrong idea IN GENERAL, which would be bad.
That's how it is for me, anyway. I've wished I was a woman for like 13 years and I've been anywhere remotely close to confident enough to consider actually transitioning for less than two. I know from personal experience that not having the knowledge or emotional language to navigate that disparity fucked me up pretty badly for a really long time. Which is why I'm now trying to force myself into an attitude of, "I know for a fact that I'll be happier with myself if I transition, I DESERVE to be happy with myself, and I'm just going to commit to it and cross and/or burn all those scary social bridges later when I come to them, and I know that none of the fallout could possibly harm me more than giving up and doing nothing."
You could get bombarded by cosmic rays and get superpowers and be the superhero known as Ms. Gendered! Your one mission in life to go around the world, educating people on how to not be shitlords to eachother, preaching tolerance and acceptance, punching criminals in the head and being loved by all!
I will be honest in saying I have no idea where to find any cosmic rays, though.
I got lucky that I started figuring it out last year, I guess. But after eight months of being sure, I just absolutely knew that something had to change. I just...knew that I had to start HRT or else things were not going to get better for me. So I had to make it happen and thankfully I didn't run into many obstacles trying to get it started.
And yeah, that explanation is pretty much where I'm at right now. I know I'm okay with being trans and being on HRT and making changes to my body, but it's very scary to think about how people are going to treat me. Especially people I know and interact with on a day to day basis.
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Which meant that, once I had a safe job and an apartment, I was left with the handy avenue of, "Even if my transition goes as awkwardly as humanly possible, what do I even have to LOSE at this point?"
I mean whatever it is, I'm definitely happier now. But it's just so interesting how different people come to these conclusions at vastly different times.
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Also, the brain is stellar at persuading us that certain things are true when they aren't, especially if the truth is at odds with what we learned growing up.
I'm getting jealous reading about all of the changes you've been feeling. I've been on hormones for just over two weeks and haven't noticed much of a difference (other than my libido crashing, lol). I know it's still really early, but I wouldn't mind at least some indication that something is happening!
i appreciate you talkin' about that article though. i know that questioning is often a really good indication that there's something up, and I'm definitely happier being seen and referred to as a woman!
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I think, what made it really hard in my case, was that my feelings manifested in a sexual nature and then branched out from there. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! Like rationally, I know there's nothing wrong with that. But, and maybe this is part of my upbringing that I'm still trying to shake subconsciously, I felt for the longest time that it meant what I was feeling was wrong somehow. Anyway, I guess that's enough spilling of my guts for now lol.