This is the thread for “alternative sexualities and identities” so stuff like being gay, bi, trans, and so on. People who are questioning are also more than welcome to post about however much of their issues they feel like sharing.
Being a thread for queer folks, bad faith posting will absolutely not be tolerated. Non-queer people can post, of course, but be mindful and courteous. We want a welcoming and supportive thread, so just behave yourself, okay?
Also, I’m trans and gay. How about you???
Posts
I'd love it if you took a look at my art and my PATREON!
Oh no
We did NOT bang because she had some medical stuff going on but we did make eyes at each other a lot and hold hands and watch a movie together so that was real nice
I'd love it if you took a look at my art and my PATREON!
Stick me in your mouth and taste the pink unicorns. :P :tell_me_more:
making eyes is the best
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
Got home and realised i could have just said cool dress or something. Damnit.
I gotta lose forty pounds this is bullshit Hurghlahfhaha
So, I'm not entirely sure why I did this, but I wrote up a pre-transition timeline summary for myself. I've felt stuck dwelling on the past way more than usual the last few days, to the point of having a hard time concentrating on anything, so I guess this is a way to try and get it out of my system. Maybe it'll resonate with somebody, I dunno.
~2000 - I have a dream where I'm a girl. This piques my curiosity on the subject. I try to replicate the dream to little avail. These are the earliest trans thoughts that I was actually cognizant of.
Summer 2001 - Curiosity gives way to obsession. I'm fantasizing about being female regularly now.
2002 - My first year of high school. The daydreams are unrelenting. I still haven't really figured out what it means, but I don't resist the thoughts.
Autumn 2003 - I stumble across some trans-adjacent media, which helps to focus my thoughts on the subject a bit. I fully come to grips with the direness of my situation and go spiraling into a depression which will get steadily worse over the next ten years.
Early 2004 - Dysphoria worsens, with body hair being the worst of it. I can barely walk down the hallways at school without wincing. Aside from a couple of old friends I try to avoid talking to anyone, doing anything socially, or drawing any attention of any kind.
Summer 2004 - I can't take it anymore and shave my legs for the first time one night while everyone else is out of the house. When my parents find out the next day their first reaction is to get upset and yell at me. I resolve never to talk to anyone about my real feelings.
Early 2005 - I start playing World of Warcraft. My main is a female Night Elf druid. I join a guild of people who only know me through my character, and it becomes the only feminine social outlet I'll ever have pre-transition.
2006 - First year of college. Despite my best efforts I'm trapped in an all-male dorm, which is awful, but beyond that I'm doing a bit better than usual emotionally. I've convinced myself that some miraculous turn of events might somehow save me or give me some sort of direction in life, and college is the most likely place it is to happen. I meet a couple of new friends and have at least a vague wisp of a social life.
2009 - I stop playing World of Warcraft after most of the people I knew quit or splintered off into other guilds. Nothing replaces its role as the one place where I feel like people see me as something resembling my real self.
2010 - I graduate without the tiniest glimmer of hope for the future. I move back home with my family.
2011 - I work on applying to grad schools but don't go through with it. I lose contact with all of what few friends I had except for one or two and see them very rarely.
2012 - Nothing. Absolutely nothing happens.
2013 - The very first "Ask me about being transgender" thread appears. It is the first scrap of direct, honest information about what it means to transition I've ever seen. It still all feels out of reach in a hundred different ways, but it helps at least a little. I follow the threads obsessively when they're up and fall deeper into despair when they're closed. (Unrelated, I'm also taking online courses in a new field during this time.)
2014 - I get my first real full-time job and move into my own apartment. I literally never leave the house for anything other than work or groceries. Continuing to read stories in the trans threads improves my thoughts about transitioning from "it's probably impossible/not good enough" to "it really would make me happier but I could never go through it alone".
March 2015 - Transgender Day of Visibility. I am jealous of every single picture I see without exception.
May 2015 - I can't take it anymore and resolve to transition no matter what happens.
December 2015 - First hormone dose!
My bmi was over 30 and my weight was never even brought up in my consult or during my stay at the hospital/convalescence center.
My healing was pretty easy, and when I went for checkups he asked to take a picture for the office's records because I had exactly what he wanted to achieve when he operated.
The only complication I had was that two of the codeine/oxy (I can't remember what it was) pills were too strong and left me light headed and dizzy, but I was fine with one pill.
it's something doctors often obsess over, even when it has no relevance to why someone is seeking medical advice in the first place
this isn't an unknown thing
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
BMI 33, no issues. Definite side eye to the people who use weight as surgery contradindiator on it's own.
"Bisexual" is my sole queer quality, but that's plenty because everybody wants the B. :winky:
hmmm
I'm Erin. I'm a trans woman and am poly and pan and tall and a huge goddamn dork
It can be, but generally only if someone is like...hundreds of pounds overweight. There is a definite tendency to act like people who are even minorly overweight are going to die on the table, it's really bizarre.
Queer and Present Danger is an amazing phrase.
Shit feels really slow a lot of the time so it's nice to see I've actually made progress.
It is now.
yeah, it's fucking wild how fast it comes at you at first
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I didn't think anybody paid attention to those haha
Speaking of my reading list I got through most of The Well of Loneliness before finally stopping because it's kind of just super miserable all the time. But it's also super interesting as a bit of queer history. It became like a hugely influential lesbian novel and influenced a lot of future female queer writers. But reading it from a modern perspective it's almost shocking how clearly it describes a straight trans coming-of-age. Like usually there's always a bit of a cultural translation gap between historical concepts of gender and sexuality and our own, and so it can be tough to fully confidently say that like, ok so and so historical person was "gay" or "trans" or "lesbian", they might be close, they're certainly queer, but they're operating on a different social framework and so inherently it can't be a 1:1 translation. So it's kind of fascinating to read Radclyffe Hall and be like, oh, no, this really is 100% a modern trans viewpoint, she* is just lacking the vocabulary to describe it, or sometimes straight-up inventing that vocabulary to describe it.
*Speaking of vocabulary, Radclyffe Hall and her protagonist Stephen both use female pronouns. But then if it had been an option, if Hall had perceived it as an option, I have very little doubt they'd both be using "he." So then I end up awkwardly avoiding gendering Hall at all, because do you honor Hall's obvious gender identity, or Hall's own use of gendered female pronouns? One feels like misgendering and makes me uncomfortable, but the other is also super presumptuous. And then just using the non-gendered 'they' removes gender from the conversation entirely, which kind of flies in the face of Hall's entire point of writing The Well of Loneliness in the first place.
Anyway, an interesting book but not exactly one I'd recommend for fun reading.
Transition things are going slower than I would like.. but hey. Slow progress is progress all the same. I made it through the last decade hiding myself, I can last a few months more.
But mostly on lurker mode in these parts for a month or so, because it's been a Season of Being Angry At Things, and I don't have tremendous faith in my ability to be a productive community member at the moment.
I'm a demi poly lesbian trans woman and I am still here, world on fire be damned.
Writing down your thoughts like this can be really helpful in sorting them out - something about the act of expressing them in words, preserving them in a concrete form to look at from a distance, and freeing up those brain cycles sustaining them in active memory to better interpret them.
It also just feels good to do, in my experience.
Also I predict that second panel getting a lot of use around the thread forum internet
And it is, of course, completely our fault for not coddling his insipid concern-trolling.
I also think I might be bi but I never really had much chance to figure out my own sexuality. My lingering unease at being assigned male always made it difficult to form a connection.
Last time I saw him retweet some TERFy shit there were maybe two replies of lukewarm agreement and about 300 people telling him what a fucking idiot he was. So for what it's worth, he is not being allowed the comfort of an echo chamber.
(I only saw it in the first place because he gets retweeted by some Doctor Who alumni that I used to hold in high esteem. It's one of the reasons I deactivated my account recently, on top of all the other shit that Twitter does, it has just become a service for delivering highly granular disappointment in my heroes.)