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" BellwetherMar 5
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.
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 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 threadCJ "siege" Bellwether

@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

Mar 5 at 5:59pmWeb
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.