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 threadJuniper 🏳️‍⚧️🌲Mar 6

@siege @valentine there is a fourth group which is small but may hopefully get bigger: people who were told all their lives, by at least some of the people around them, that they are the ones who ultimately know their own gender, that being trans is an actual possibility for them. I know some kids like that.

It seems a little like the tragectory that sexuality has taken (and some of this will likely depend on where you are). Nowadays, there are a lot more kids who grow up knowing that they might be gay, that they can just pay attention to their own feelings of attraction. It's not perfect; those kids are still moving through a highly heteronormative world. But it is easier than it was thirty years ago.

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@eruonna @siege I totally agree.

I'd only add that I would love to see an increase in discourse about the different ways that gay attraction can feel from straight attraction when you're young. Queer attraction is not just about who it's aimed at -- it's a difference in vibe altogether.

Essentially, how being attracted to guys can often feel really different when you're also a guy, than attraction to guys feels when you're a girl.

That shit would have REALLY helped me out when I was going through puberty, because I knew *for sure* that I was attracted to guys. It would have helped to understand that I was attracted to them in a boy-way.

It's hard to parse out exactly what that means, and I think some people would push back if they thought the description of it took anything away from the ways women could be attracted to men.

But like, I think everyone would accept that being attracted to women is a different sentiment for a lesbian than it is for a straight man. It is qualitatively different. The same goes for a little gay boy in a girl's body, vs. a little straight girl.

My sexual orientation was set -- it was just mis-labeled due to my looking like a girl, and the intensity of it was one of the things that kept me assuming I was a straight woman for a tragicomically long time.

I hope that gay and lesbian trans people can start putting their early experiences out there, so that pre-transition kids can see what they vibe with, and gain some validation from.
Show threadFaith, Purple haired feminist 🧋   Mar 6

@valentine 1000%

I swear gay trans people have a very different experience to straight trans people for exactly this reason. When you're straight, you're criticized and shamed for being attracted to your AGAB but at least you know you're different and you process that early.

When you're gay, it's really easy for gender feelings to get mixed up with sexuality. "You don't want to be a girl/boy, you're just attracted ti girls/boys. Stop being weird about it!" My egg would have shattered in middle school if I'd able/allowed to tell the difference between attraction and gender envy. But literally everything I was told by the society that raised me was that my gender envy was probably just really fucked up attraction.

@eruonna @siege

Show threadJojo 

@faithisleaping @valentine @eruonna @siege

Yeah, 6th grade I had so much gender envy that I chalked up to attraction. And it wasn't attraction at all.

But yeah I just believed everyone that told me I was a boy. I questioned it a bit around 5th 6th grade when gender envy started hitting me. But I eventually chalked it up to these weird crushes, that weren't crushes at all.

Mar 6 at 6:22pmWeb
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@jojo @faithisleaping @eruonna @siege I hear you.

It hurts to think about.

There are some guys I knew I liked back then, that I often wonder if they were in your exact shoes. They seemed to have some issues with how exactly they wanted to be close to girls -- to date them, or be a kind of friends that seemed to include a lot of self-reflective longing?

And that isn't even including the dudes I dated who I now know had to have been some kind of closeted gay. I was part-beard and part crush to them, and it jangled both of us in bad ways. That because of their upbringing often led to violence. 😞​

It is an interesting exercise to me to look back on the guys I was interested in, and try to parse out which ones I wanted to date, and which ones I wanted to be them or be in their friend group.