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 threadSophieMar 6

@valentine This is such a good articulation of this concept! My besties in High School were all girls, and all the girls I liked, I liked in a gay way, although I didn't know it at the time. And I'm not even sure if I can really articulate the difference between straight attraction and gay attraction because... well, in hindsight I was always gay so I never had straight attraction. I just knew that the way I liked girls and the way most of the guys in my school talked about girls were quite different.

Now I want to go see if any research has been done on the ways that queer people and straight people articulate their attraction differently, because the “vibe" of this concept seems right on, but I don't know in what way specifically it is.

@eruonna @siege

Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@sophiesometimes @eruonna @siege It would probably have to be codified in that "here is a bunch of vibes and clues" way that "you might be trans!" has to be defined.

Sexual orientation and gender is such a spectrum that no one experience or piece of evidence really ever defines anything for anyone. Fortunately I think discourse is gradually moving away from that era of trying to super-delineate things, and arguing over one group or another being allowed to claim some flavor of experience as belonging only to them.

That shouting match just felt more fierce back in the 2010s.

It still comes up in the thing @ghost_bird mentioned the other day, of people being weird about labeling a historical figure as trans. And trying to prevent as if it's inappropriate. Trying to list some vibe as part of how gay attraction feels for men vs. straight attraction to men, surely some people will feel their toes are stepped on, or that something is being "claimed" or taken from them.

But it's really not about drawing lines, and saying "this is queer attraction vibes, and over THERE is straight attraction experience."

It's more like trying to sketch out a map and fill in where the general geographic areas are, so that young people can try to orient themselves in sexuality-land, EVEN IF THEY DON'T FIT EXTERNAL IMAGES OF AN AREA'S TYPICAL INHABITANTS. It's another way of saving trans kids' lives and more important than stepping on adults' toes in discourse.
Show threadErosdiscordia
@sophiesometimes @eruonna @siege @ghost_bird It's one of those things I feel like we as trans adults can really do a lot of good in.

Just talking openly with each other, in places where trans teens could access, about our early sexual longings or experiences and how we subjectively perceived them.

And not all trauma either, I think there's plenty of joy in there too, at least maybe in the things we had secretly wanted or loved or appreciated in others (even if envy came on the heels of that).

It would be a way to get information to kids about how trans/gay/queer sexuality feels, without the "PR" risk of talking directly to trans kids about it. And without the need to sanitize it and make it cutesy like sex info is often presented to teens.
Mar 6 at 7:36pmWeb
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@sophiesometimes @eruonna @siege @ghost_bird Obviously they're mostly going to talk about it with each other, which is good.

But it could be really validating for kids and 20-somethings to know they're part of a continuum of people who have felt this way. That they're not busted or weird.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@sophiesometimes @eruonna @siege @ghost_bird And alongside that discussion, trans culture would benefit from more talk about the weird temporal aspect of transition. About how we all kind of start over as pubescent teenagers for a few years.

I think so many people exist in pre-transition "it's too late for me" agony. When there's just no way to explain how profoundly fresh a start it can really be. Trans people actually really do get multiple do-overs of critical parts of our lives, it's weird and awesome.
Show threadErosdiscordiaMar 6
@sophiesometimes @eruonna @siege @ghost_bird I've read some really good links and blog posts about this topic over the years. I wish I'd collected them in a more organized way. Just the non-linear life of queer people. But especially when you have multiple phases of transition.

I think young people right now have a lot of pressure to discover and embody pretty much one Self. Both in a negative sense of real-names and age verification, but also a positive sense of being authentic etc.

I just want them to also know the power of self-reinvention. It feels like a dying art.