CJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

Does anyone have a screepcap or link saved of the interaction about a decade ago when a trans girl on reddit asked an adult cis man how often he thought about being a girl and his answer was something like "I dont think ive ever thought about that".

That interaction broke so many people and i wish i had properly secured it for posterity. My brain remembers the guys handle had Panda in it iirc.

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
obligatory "man who secretly thinks about being a woman" is not a type of man thats a trans woman in the closet and "woman who secretly thinks about being a man" is not a type of woman, thats a trans man in the closet.
Show threadCJ "siege" Bellwether
this comes up a lot for me because interacting with people on the verge of figuring things out have specific complexities of the world they've built up to project/hide who they are that tends to be the same shape as everyone else in that situation so its very familiar and knowable but theres always a bit of a game of cat and mouse of trying to side step that projection to speak to the real person on the other side.
Mar 5 at 5:09pmWeb
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

eg: closeted trans girl who will state "im not sure if im trans, i dont hate being a guy, im not sure if i want to be a woman but its an idea that comes up sometimes"

translation: I would make a pact with an unholy demon to be turned into a girl right now, please, are you an unholy demon? please tell me you are

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
also theres all the stuff you cant convey they're not yet understanding like 3 hours after you accept yourself (oh ive always wanted this more than anything and the only person stopping me was myself), 3 days in (i was never a guy and had desperately tried to build an idea of my very-not-a-guy experience as a normal guy experience), and then 3 years in (this isnt a small part of me, this is a fundamental core thing that connects to almost every choice and part of me and has for all my life)
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
this was just brought to my attention so im including it for any cis people who have read any of this and are curious what sort of shape the people im talking about are in:
Show threadMaltitaMar 5
@siege GIRL
Show threadMaltitaMar 5
@siege literally teenager me thinking is completely normal and straight behavior to fantasize about kissing your girl friends in the lips
Show threadFaith, Purple haired feminist 🧋   Mar 5
@siege OMFG! That's the most eggy thing I've ever read. Also, I could have written it 5 years ago.
Show threadSophieMar 5
@faithisleaping @siege okay wait, who downloaded the thoughts from my brain three years ago and posted them?
Show threadglowing taterlyMar 5

@siege The sentence-to-sentence juxtapositions are next level.

"it hurts"/"no pain"

"no desire for change"/"yearn [...] to be reborn"

I hope she figured herself out.

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
@glowtayto hey look, i cant judge, i managed to have a whole heart to heart conversation with one of my closest friends where i came out as trans to them. And then a week later I realised i was trans.
Show threadglowing taterlyMar 5

@siege Oh, no judgement. I used to fantasize about waking up one day having been somehow Freaky-Fridayed into a girl's body, so I feel her vibe. Yet it still took me until my late 30s to figure myself out.  

More the English nerd in me being like, "Ah, masterful use of contrast to demonstrate a state of inner turmoil."

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

@glowtayto i am quietly plotting a freaky-friday marathon on my discord movie night crew.

All films where people swap bodies or create a version of themselves in another body (preferably gender swapping) ala Virtual Sexuality

Show threadTattieMar 6
@glowtayto wow, well noticed! That's some serious cognitive dissonance. I remember it well.
Also, hello fellow potato! 🙋‍♀️
@siege
Show threadZoë, in bed 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈Mar 5
@siege
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
@moiety i love that no matter how many years go by, we are still the same shape. No amount of trans awareness can compete with the power of self denial
Show threadHannekeMar 6
@siege oof rough one that 🫂
Show threadundead enby of the apocalypseMar 27
@siege i think it’s interesting how so much dysphoria expresses itself as self-doubt about wether you could actually be trans.
Show threadundead enby of the apocalypseMar 27

@siege I thought i had put this behind me after more than 5 years of knowing i’m trans, but now that i’m closer than ever to accessing testosterone, there’s this part of me that says stuff like “are you sure you are really trans enough to medically transition? You are way too feminine and girly to be transmasc, and especially to be a man. Are you sure you wouldn’t regret it?”

And then when i try to find out where this is coming from, that idea that i’m way too feminine and girly always is not just internalized transphobia but most of all dysphoria about my body or my voice or how I’m perceived by others or about mannerisms that i picked up while learning to mask as an in denial autistic transmasc person trying to fit in.

Or it’s this weird imposter syndrome about how i don’t fit gender norms that are completely based in toxic masculinity enough. “Oh you cried recently? That makes you a woman because only women have feelings!! You are way too weak and soft to be a guy!!” It’s ridiculous and all based in dysphoria. I have to remind myself that if i wasn’t trans, these thoughts wouldn’t hurt so much. If i wasn’t trans i wouldn’t spend so much time thinking about how much i want testosterone and top surgery.

And when i try to figure out what would make this dysphoria go away, the answer always amounts to something i can only reach by medical transition, like “have a deeper voice”

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
This is so relatable.

And the feeling, somewhere in the transition timeline, of realising how beautiful who you always were is, and the resulting ongoing rage and sorrow that it was so thoroughly rejected by the world that you're going to spend the rest of your life un-burying it. There was never any intrinsic reason it had to be hidden or delayed. It's gorgeous. ❤️‍🩹
Show threadDanielle CrawfordMar 5

@siege oh yah, that was me 😅

EDIT: I was not the person @siege asks about in the OP! But i definitely thought about selling my soul for transition

Show threadJo - pièce de résistanceMar 5
@siege they could be non-binary. I am. I have behaviors & likes that are gendered male BY PATRIARCHY. I prefer male style. It never felt taboo bc women could play with menswear. But I have a very feminine body I find sexy even to myself. I feel whole & balanced having the body I was born with & my mind with both socially constructed genders as just one ‘me’. But I did check in with myself & it’s how I know.
We may be queer and not fit into your binary about what trans is, but we are here.
Show threadprince lucijaMar 5

@JoBlakely

We may be queer and not fit into your binary about what trans is, but we are here.

this!

Show threadtoni / link Mar 5
@prinlu @JoBlakely hello yes I fell seen
Show threadJo - pièce de résistanceMar 5
@linkplay @prinlu
🫶
Show threadepsilondeltaMar 5
@siege oh wow this described me so well
Show thread'i am no man' Charlotte Eowyn!Mar 5
@siege can I screenshot or quote this thread?
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
@CharlotteEowyn for sure
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:Mar 5

@siege

Verbatim.

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
I kind of want to hang an appendix onto this idea, that some of us pre-transition transes get ourselves into a position where we NEVER think of potentially being the gender we actually are.

Like, I never considered that I was a guy. I've got no memories or wanting to be one, or the thought crossing my mind that I wasn't actually a girl.

What I DO have, are memories of obsessively thinking of myself as a girl, in a "How do I live with being a woman? How do I do girl right?" kind of endless-angst way. As if any lapse in my vigilance would make all my gender evaporate, which would of course be terribly dangerous.

I posit that's another incredibly sad tell.

I think being an enby made it complicated too. Back in the day at least, there wasn't any alternative third thing to long to be.
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

@valentine yeah, like i tend to think of three general categories of trans people coming to realisation:

1. those who boldly as a child walkup to their parents and say "Hey actually im X" - this to me is like a cryptid. I cannot fathom magical formulation exists that allows the trans kid to take everything theyve been told by parents/teachers/peers and say No you're all wrong.

2. those who pubertal changes are so stark it crushes them so heavily that they figure it out.

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

@valentine 2 continued: figures it out in early teen years, normally has terrible time trying to negotiate situation with parents, posts always tend to include crying in showers.

3. those who accept what they're told by parents/teachers, that they are their agab, and therefore self learn to crush any internal gender need feelings and build a cage around it, cage becomes more complex as life continues, puberty leads to more intense crushing of needs, mental health cracks begin from closet life

Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
@valentine and yeah, the 3 group to me is what you're describing with that "ever vigilance of it all evaporating and then everyone would KNOW (i dont even know what they would know because i cant admit to myself what is inside the box)" of policing self.
Show threadbMar 6
@siege @valentine i feel like i was some combination of 2 and 3. i never had the conscious thought of "i want to be a girl" before i realized i was trans (when i was around 17 years old), but i was very uncomfortable with masculinity in general and tried to avoid overt expressions of it when i could. but i was also deeply afraid of expressing any sort of femininity, or even wanting to do so, because i was taught by society that was something terrible and weird and wrong, so i subconsciously repressed a lot. i was very uncomfortable with puberty in a very vague way (which i assumed was the normal awkwardness everyone said was normal), so i ended up dissociating a lot and just not even noticing what was happening to my body. i escaped into my computer, coded things, hacked on things, to avoid having to exist in my body

and even after conclusively figuring out that i wasn't a man, it took me years to figure out that i was a woman and be comfortable expressing femininity
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
Yeah, this third one!

I always tell people that I was in a closet WITHIN another closet.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
I think you're spot on with these categories.

I've felt for some time that there needs to be much more frank and open discussion of "how to tell if you might be trans."

I know people will scream because any one piece of evidence or clue doesn't "mean anything", and folks are especially overprotective of clues that might overlap with just being a gender-nonconforming woman.

But I'm also at the point where I don't care if people get upset, I'd love a long list of "things I didn't know were a sign I was trans" for all genders, to be floating around the internet. And people with like 5 of them could be "hmm!" and people with 50 of them could have a good cry and a life change. 💜
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5
@valentine yeah the "femboys exist, boys can just want to be girls, that doesnt make them trans" argument.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
Yeah. I've got no idea, beyond transphobia, why those arguments exist that go, "What's wrong with just being a femboy (or tomboy)?"

Or the idea that people transitioning to male is "butch erasure."

Plenty of otherwise progressive or queer people take refuge in this either-or framing when they haven't confronted a really subtle, deep-rooted discomfort with trans people and transition as a concept.

I think it should be less either-or and more "yes, and." Yes, femboys AND trans girls. Yes, butches AND trans guys, AND dandy gay trans boys, and butch trans girls, and...

The more the merrier.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
"What's wrong with just being a (non-transitioned person)?" is a pretty revealing question, sadly.

Like, none of us should go any closer to transy stuff than we ABSOLUTELY have to.

That attitude sucks enough when it comes from a cishet person. From someone who has in their lives attended a Pride event? Kind of reprehensible.

I don't think we should stay away from trans stuff and from transition as long as we're able to.

I think we should approach it and embrace it as soon in life as we can, with as open a heart as we can. What's the worst that could happen? A person realizes they're actually cis, and files it away with their gay-kiss high school experimentation? So what?
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

@valentine yes, 100% with you.

like on the face of it, i love that femboy exists as a (sometimes positive) term now. Because growing up the term for that space which i too inhabited, was crossdresser.

exact same discomfort that many i speak to in the "questioning" stage who use that label, if i speak with them in DMs enough the reality that emerges is to them femboy = hot and trans woman = deluded old disgusting

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
Goddamn that last bit is so sad. I hope in my lifetime I can see the last of that weird stereotype idea die. ✊

Trans women are beautiful.

And, beauty isn't necessary for infinite value to be present. In any gender. 💜
Show threadCJ "siege" BellwetherMar 5

@valentine its those who use femboy as just the new term for trap,

thats where its like ah yes, tale old as time, every generation thinks just be young, hot and in denial forever is the solution to being trans.

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege
I'd love it if we could live in a world where being trans didn't need a solution, that it WAS the solution.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 5
@siege I think all the queer genders get hit with that capitalist-driven fuckability yardstick.

It is so unfair.

And I hate how we police each other and ourselves on it.
Show threadJuniper, hinge shortageMar 6
@valentine @siege The GDB was kind of that for me, and I've seen a few other lists floating around (mostly transfem focused, though I don't know if that is a tendency for which lists exist or just my own identity steering what I see).
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@eruonna @siege What is the GDB?
Show threadJuniper, hinge shortageMar 6

@valentine @siege The Gender Dysphoria Bible

https://gdb.fyi

That's Gender Dysphoria, FYI

A resource for those questioning their gender, already on a gender journey, or simply wanting to learn more about what it is to be transgender.

That's Gender Dysphoria, FYI
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@eruonna @siege Oh yeah, that! I remember when I first saw it, someone on here linked me to it a few yeas ago.

Out of curiosity, do you know when this resource first appeared?
Show threadJuniper, hinge shortageMar 6

@valentine

I don't know when it first appeared. @twipped? I read it in early 2021, though.

@siege

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@eruonna @twipped @siege That's around the first time I saw it linked, too. I still have my original bookmark of it. 😁​
Show threadJocelynephiliac Mar 6

@eruonna first draft was january 2019, if memory serves. It started as a blog post before I made it into a separate site.

@valentine @siege

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@twipped @eruonna @siege
It's fantastic. Thank you. 💜💜💜💜💜
Show threadMux2000 (exfoliating)Mar 6
@eruonna
Thank you for about an hour and a half of cathartic crying my eyes out. Never felt so seen in my life.
@valentine @siege
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@Mux @eruonna @siege
💜🫂
Show threadJuniper, hinge shortageMar 6

@Mux

It was basically a whole weekend for me, when I first read it (and read it again, and again, and again...)

@valentine @siege

Show threadMux2000 (exfoliating)Mar 6
@eruonna
I'm already six months into HRT. I can't imagine what reading that during my egg cracking days would have felt like.
@valentine @siege
Show threadJuniper, hinge shortageMar 6

@Mux

I sometimes say it singlehandedly cracked my egg, though that is not completely correct. It did a lot of the work of getting me from "yeah, I'm probably some kind of gender weirdo" to "holy shit, I need to transition yesterday!"

@valentine @siege

Show threadMux2000 (exfoliating)Mar 6
@eruonna
Stop it or I'm gonna start crying again.
@valentine @siege
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@eruonna @Mux @siege
I didn't have a document like this in 2016 when my overt journey started. What I did get super lucky and find was an incredible little group of non-binary Tumblr/Discord friends, who shared with me some of the same insights that are on that site. 💜

They took me from May/Pulse nightclub/"I should probably make an effort to find out if I am actually some kind of LGBT after all" to July/"holy shit I want to be a guy"/how to get my hands on T as fast as possible.

What a rush.