Why I want to look like a trans woman
February 25, 2019 7:45 PM Subscribe
"My vagina is made of cock and balls, so the answers were always in my body. That's why I don't subscribe to the idea that trans people are "born in the wrong body". I’ve got a heart that beats, I’m strong, I have a good brain. If this is the "wrong body", I wouldn’t be able to talk, or write. I don’t want to disown this body. But being trans means I’m entitled to have a fluidity about the way my body looks, and the way people perceive it." -- Juno Roche
Sometimes I can't write. A body might be wrong for someone. But there are no wrong bodies. Fuck that shit.
posted by Verba Volant at 10:43 PM on February 25, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Verba Volant at 10:43 PM on February 25, 2019 [8 favorites]
I forgot the part where I was originally going to write something about being genderqueer. But by the time I got to the end of that excerpt, I didn't think that was really the important topic here. Oh well.
posted by Verba Volant at 10:50 PM on February 25, 2019
posted by Verba Volant at 10:50 PM on February 25, 2019
I'm glad that the laser-focus on passing (particularly passing as cis, which I see as distinct from passing as your chosen gender - if you look like a trans woman, you look like a woman) is starting to fall somewhat out of vogue in trans spaces. Or well, that it's starting to be more widely questioned, at least.
posted by Dysk at 2:28 AM on February 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 2:28 AM on February 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
It's hard to overstate just how absent this sort of perspective was eight to ten years ago, and how much hostility there was from most trans communities to anything like it. What we'd call tru-scum today was a lot more mainstream then, and there were entire communities more radical than that (as in, radically conservative) that are almost non-existent today. When was the last time you saw someone claim not to be transsexual, they had Harry Benjamin Syndrome?
The cultural changes that have happened in trans spaces as more people have wandered in, not least a more diverse selection of people, have been unequivocally excellent.
posted by Dysk at 3:18 AM on February 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
The cultural changes that have happened in trans spaces as more people have wandered in, not least a more diverse selection of people, have been unequivocally excellent.
posted by Dysk at 3:18 AM on February 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
I'm loathe to discuss this in a cis space, but I do think we've had changes that are less than excellent (my examples are all fairly transmasculine-specific, fwiw). Are the "transmedicalists" really anything but HBSers all over again? To be fair, people are more willing to confront them directly.
I am presumed to be cis and struggle a lot with the presumption (by cis people) that this means I am "done" being trans. It doesn't mean I have been "fixed", nor does it mean that there was anything to "fix".
posted by hoyland at 4:23 AM on February 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
I am presumed to be cis and struggle a lot with the presumption (by cis people) that this means I am "done" being trans. It doesn't mean I have been "fixed", nor does it mean that there was anything to "fix".
posted by hoyland at 4:23 AM on February 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
I am less plugged in to transmasculine spaces generally. It's also my experience that modern truscum is a much smaller phenomenon than HBSers were at one point, and are less outwardly aggressive, instead more bitter or seething.
posted by Dysk at 4:39 AM on February 26, 2019
posted by Dysk at 4:39 AM on February 26, 2019
Or to put it more simply: Susan's Place and the like may still be somewhat mainstream in transfeminine culture, but it's no longer completely dominant, and it represents the extreme end of mainstream now, not the most reasonable. The average website about being trans isn't just a (very very middle-class, white, hetero- and cis-normstive) guide to how to pass. The gatekeepery transsexual-not-trans people are still there, but they are the fringe now. Not being obsessed with passing as cis and going stealth is no longer seen as weird and threatening or invalidating in most transfeminine spaces any more.
posted by Dysk at 4:49 AM on February 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 4:49 AM on February 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
The author's language choices read as slightly off to me, but I attribute this to different community norms.
I, personally, am uncomfy with "passing," among other things because it hides the subject. If I say I "pass as a man," or if I say you "pass as a nice white lady," I'm describing a series of judgements and social interactions without mentioning the actual actors.
By contrast, if I say "that barista read us as a lesbian couple," it is obvious who made the categorization I'm talking about. If I misread others - as the wrong age or gender or whatever - that's only a little bit about whether they're trying to conform to my expectations about what that looks like, and a lot about what my expectations are.
Almost nobody gets read how they want all the time, especially if they interact with people far enough outside their communities that the social signals they're trying to send are illegible. Leaning into those signals or cues can be super uncomfortable - the sort of alienation of trying to evaluate your clothes and body language to conform more thoroughly to the stereotypes others believe about your social group(s).
At the same time, trying to get read in preferred ways is sometimes a matter of safety, solidarity, or comfort. I feel like I'm not super qualified to talk about the self-expressiony bits, as at this point I'm mostly trying to get read as "queer and not a fascist."
posted by bagel at 5:02 AM on February 26, 2019 [21 favorites]
I, personally, am uncomfy with "passing," among other things because it hides the subject. If I say I "pass as a man," or if I say you "pass as a nice white lady," I'm describing a series of judgements and social interactions without mentioning the actual actors.
By contrast, if I say "that barista read us as a lesbian couple," it is obvious who made the categorization I'm talking about. If I misread others - as the wrong age or gender or whatever - that's only a little bit about whether they're trying to conform to my expectations about what that looks like, and a lot about what my expectations are.
Almost nobody gets read how they want all the time, especially if they interact with people far enough outside their communities that the social signals they're trying to send are illegible. Leaning into those signals or cues can be super uncomfortable - the sort of alienation of trying to evaluate your clothes and body language to conform more thoroughly to the stereotypes others believe about your social group(s).
At the same time, trying to get read in preferred ways is sometimes a matter of safety, solidarity, or comfort. I feel like I'm not super qualified to talk about the self-expressiony bits, as at this point I'm mostly trying to get read as "queer and not a fascist."
posted by bagel at 5:02 AM on February 26, 2019 [21 favorites]
By contrast, if I say "that barista read us as a lesbian couple," it is obvious who made the categorization I'm talking about
That's fantastic for talking about specific incidents, but the passing nomenclature remains incredibly useful for talking in generalities - when I say I don't pass particularly, I'm explicitly and specifically not talking about individuals, I'm talking about broad trends. I find that implicating a subject in that context obscures more than it enlightens.
But that there's a greater variety of ways to talk about and express trans experiences is fantastic!
posted by Dysk at 5:26 AM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
That's fantastic for talking about specific incidents, but the passing nomenclature remains incredibly useful for talking in generalities - when I say I don't pass particularly, I'm explicitly and specifically not talking about individuals, I'm talking about broad trends. I find that implicating a subject in that context obscures more than it enlightens.
But that there's a greater variety of ways to talk about and express trans experiences is fantastic!
posted by Dysk at 5:26 AM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
To be clear, I think we've moved in a positive direction (and unsurprisingly Susan's doesn't feature that prominently in my experience; I also came through a very specifically queer community), but I do think there have been losses along the way. (My concrete examples are transmasculine-specific, but I feel comfortable making the same statement about all-gender trans spaces.) Of course, it may just be the passage of time--I need something different from trans spaces now than I did a decade ago.
posted by hoyland at 6:10 AM on February 26, 2019
posted by hoyland at 6:10 AM on February 26, 2019
I don't think anyone is oblivious to the shortcomings of "passing" as a term, whether they choose to use it or not.
posted by hoyland at 6:15 AM on February 26, 2019
posted by hoyland at 6:15 AM on February 26, 2019
I do think there have been losses along the way. (My concrete examples are transmasculine-specific, but I feel comfortable making the same statement about all-gender trans spaces.)
You're hinting around this--could you be more specific?
I know that my transmasculine, genderqueer experience is that the older emphasis on binary passing sent me deeper and deeper into the closet. I am largely disinterested in medical transition, for a bunch of reasons (though if you'd asked me at age 10 if I wanted to grow up to be a man or a woman the answer would have been very, very easy for me). I'm usually read as a cis butch queer woman. But this form for my body has taken me through a lot and I'm not in a space currently where the pain of being misread is greater than my fondness for my body and the pleasures it gives me, personally. I spent my whole post-puberty life to try to get it to conform to standards so that other people could enjoy it, and I just don't want to swap one box for another, these days.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:02 AM on February 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
You're hinting around this--could you be more specific?
I know that my transmasculine, genderqueer experience is that the older emphasis on binary passing sent me deeper and deeper into the closet. I am largely disinterested in medical transition, for a bunch of reasons (though if you'd asked me at age 10 if I wanted to grow up to be a man or a woman the answer would have been very, very easy for me). I'm usually read as a cis butch queer woman. But this form for my body has taken me through a lot and I'm not in a space currently where the pain of being misread is greater than my fondness for my body and the pleasures it gives me, personally. I spent my whole post-puberty life to try to get it to conform to standards so that other people could enjoy it, and I just don't want to swap one box for another, these days.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:02 AM on February 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm loathe to discuss this in a cis space
Speaking as a cis lurker, I can't express to you how grateful I am that you are. I have become a much better person thanks to discussions like this.
posted by acrasis at 7:30 AM on February 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
Speaking as a cis lurker, I can't express to you how grateful I am that you are. I have become a much better person thanks to discussions like this.
posted by acrasis at 7:30 AM on February 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
Also I know that there are cranky old lady truscum but my experiences have largely been with fifteen year old trans boys on tumblr and youtube, sneering at boys who don't fit their ideal of masculinity. Which is, I guess, a great way of passing. Hamburger.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:45 AM on February 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:45 AM on February 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm loathe to discuss this in a cis spaceI understand that, but I'm grateful when other trans folk do. When I didn't know I was trans, I didn't hang out in trans spaces. Coming across trans viewpoints in cis spaces helped put some of the pieces in place that would eventually wake me up.
My experiences aren't the same as the author of the article, of course. No two people have identical experiences. She knew she was a girl. I thought I was a boy but wanted to be a girl. But I, too, never felt that I was "in the wrong body." It might not be shaped how I want it (although it's getting closer, these days), but it's my body.
Almost a year ago, shortly after going full time, and having been on HRT for four months, I wrote up my feelings on the subject of passing. tldr; I would love to be able to totally pass for cis, but not because of the passing itself, but because of one implication of that: That my body was closer to the ideal vision of me that's lived in my head practically my whole life.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 7:54 AM on February 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
I've always had the impression that the dynamics around attitudes to passing and community-policing are pretty different in transmasculine and transfeminine communities/spaces.
I see a lot more community and solidarity in transfeminine spaces these days than even five-six years ago, particularly those more focused on or dominated by people early in transition. Well over half the people I knew from trans communities back in the day are dead. Most were younger than me. There were so few communities that didn't at least heavily feature a contingent of absolute doomsayers - 'I'll never pass out be beautiful, so there's no point transitioning, the cis world hates us and you'll never be happy, you shouldn't transition either, oh you have and are happy, well let's just snipe and undermine you or put you in a pedestal and sigh about how we'd love to win the generic lottery like you'. It killed a bunch of people I considered friends. I know that tendency still exists, but I see far less of it, and far more mutual support and understanding, less lashing out at whatever is nearby (inevitably each other) out of fear, anger, bitterness, or some mix of them.
posted by Dysk at 7:57 AM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I see a lot more community and solidarity in transfeminine spaces these days than even five-six years ago, particularly those more focused on or dominated by people early in transition. Well over half the people I knew from trans communities back in the day are dead. Most were younger than me. There were so few communities that didn't at least heavily feature a contingent of absolute doomsayers - 'I'll never pass out be beautiful, so there's no point transitioning, the cis world hates us and you'll never be happy, you shouldn't transition either, oh you have and are happy, well let's just snipe and undermine you or put you in a pedestal and sigh about how we'd love to win the generic lottery like you'. It killed a bunch of people I considered friends. I know that tendency still exists, but I see far less of it, and far more mutual support and understanding, less lashing out at whatever is nearby (inevitably each other) out of fear, anger, bitterness, or some mix of them.
posted by Dysk at 7:57 AM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm very glad to see more perspectives like this out there. Looking for trans information or community online almost always means running into people publicly self-harming about their bodies. It's both heartbreaking and harmful to me to see. I'm grateful that I encountered the idea of body acceptance (can't remember if that's the right phrase!) from a disability perspective, because I see how hard this is for others.
posted by gaybobbie at 10:15 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by gaybobbie at 10:15 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Oh wow. Hugs to everyone who wants them in this thread. I do.
There's so much I want to say, but it feels like for once, for one rare moment, others are saying much of what I need to say for me, and while difficult it's wonderful.
The whole politics and history in trans spaces of ultra-passing and "true trans" or whatever has been pretty harmful to me personally and kept me out of those spaces as well as put barriers in the way of seeking treatment or even accepting myself and allowing space to define myself.
There's so many facets and angles to this for so many MTF trans people, from internalized and/or institutional transphobia and misogyny, to internal TruScum bigotry to being repeatedly thrown under the bus by the LGB part of the queer community to massive hurdles and barriers to obtaining professional treatment and therapy - and these are technically alleis!
And then on the other side there's the cold, hard anvil of society, culture, patriarchy, overt and acute misogyny and everything else.
I'm still struggling to accept myself and not let myself be defined either by what I actually look like or wish I looked like. To not be defined by what changes I need to make whether in voice, or social presentation, or medical treatment.
I'm still struggling a lot to simply be, to not feel like everything is on hold or in a state of stasis, even if it's stasis through flux and change. To allow myself room to be.
While it may be similar, this kind of striving is a wholly different thing than the kind of striving for self improvement one feels to, say, go to school, or learn a new language, or train for a marathon.
Imagine if Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs had a few negative or orthogonal axis numbers that kept interfering with the normal scale, and even if someone had most of those needs met but not these hidden off axis numbers, everything still wasn't right and there was no base to that conceptual pyramid.
And this is why this self acceptance - and the social and cultural acceptance of that self acceptance - is deeply essential. It helps secure the path for solving these problems for a lot of transgender people, because then true self expression is a whole lot less threatening and more valid.
So right now I might resemble Sasquatch, if less and less so.
A good friend has reminded me I'm also an Amazon, and that has a whole lot of strength and beauty to it.
posted by loquacious at 10:33 AM on February 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
There's so much I want to say, but it feels like for once, for one rare moment, others are saying much of what I need to say for me, and while difficult it's wonderful.
The whole politics and history in trans spaces of ultra-passing and "true trans" or whatever has been pretty harmful to me personally and kept me out of those spaces as well as put barriers in the way of seeking treatment or even accepting myself and allowing space to define myself.
There's so many facets and angles to this for so many MTF trans people, from internalized and/or institutional transphobia and misogyny, to internal TruScum bigotry to being repeatedly thrown under the bus by the LGB part of the queer community to massive hurdles and barriers to obtaining professional treatment and therapy - and these are technically alleis!
And then on the other side there's the cold, hard anvil of society, culture, patriarchy, overt and acute misogyny and everything else.
I'm still struggling to accept myself and not let myself be defined either by what I actually look like or wish I looked like. To not be defined by what changes I need to make whether in voice, or social presentation, or medical treatment.
I'm still struggling a lot to simply be, to not feel like everything is on hold or in a state of stasis, even if it's stasis through flux and change. To allow myself room to be.
While it may be similar, this kind of striving is a wholly different thing than the kind of striving for self improvement one feels to, say, go to school, or learn a new language, or train for a marathon.
Imagine if Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs had a few negative or orthogonal axis numbers that kept interfering with the normal scale, and even if someone had most of those needs met but not these hidden off axis numbers, everything still wasn't right and there was no base to that conceptual pyramid.
And this is why this self acceptance - and the social and cultural acceptance of that self acceptance - is deeply essential. It helps secure the path for solving these problems for a lot of transgender people, because then true self expression is a whole lot less threatening and more valid.
So right now I might resemble Sasquatch, if less and less so.
A good friend has reminded me I'm also an Amazon, and that has a whole lot of strength and beauty to it.
posted by loquacious at 10:33 AM on February 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
In one of my AskMe posts, someone recommended author Casey Plett, so I read her novel Little Fish, which was very good and, although fiction, is based on her experiences being trans. This article reminded me of some of the thoughts and feelings of the main character of that book.
Thank you to all of you who are posting with your personal experiences in this thread. I am trying to educate myself more about trans issues and perspectives, and am appreciative of being able to learn so much from reading people's lived experiences.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:29 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thank you to all of you who are posting with your personal experiences in this thread. I am trying to educate myself more about trans issues and perspectives, and am appreciative of being able to learn so much from reading people's lived experiences.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:29 AM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
And another thing. I am so happy to see a positive trans narrative in the mainstream media. So often the media loves to play up the sad state of being trans. If your a trans person willing to write about how miserable you are, you've got a much better chance of getting published. (Very bad NY Times opinion piece from December, I'm looking at you)
I am not miserable. I love my life. I'm truly happy that I'm trans. If I were cis I wouldn't feel this burst of euphoria almost every time I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I wouldn't feel joy just walking through the grocery store as myself. I wouldn't have that rare experience of having lived in society as both a man and as a woman.
I know not all of my trans siblings have such a positive experience. I hate that. But many of us are having the times of our lives, and I want to see that out there, too.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 12:17 PM on February 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
I am not miserable. I love my life. I'm truly happy that I'm trans. If I were cis I wouldn't feel this burst of euphoria almost every time I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I wouldn't feel joy just walking through the grocery store as myself. I wouldn't have that rare experience of having lived in society as both a man and as a woman.
I know not all of my trans siblings have such a positive experience. I hate that. But many of us are having the times of our lives, and I want to see that out there, too.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 12:17 PM on February 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
I use the terms “lost body” “lost experiences” and “found body” and “found experiences” because I’m agender and the way trans attaches my experiences to gender pisses me off and so I made up language that describes me outside gender in a way that also doesn’t invalidate my relationship to gender as an oppressive Eurocentric force.
posted by nikaspark at 1:14 PM on February 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by nikaspark at 1:14 PM on February 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm in a lousy place. Pretransition and stuck in a closet. I won't be surprised if transition experiences (should I ever get there) change my perspective.
But what I can say, and I don't think it's going to change, is that my desire to pass as my own gender is part of simply wanting my life to not be defined at every moment by being transgender.
To not feel that revulsion and disconnection I get looking in a mirror and being wrong.
To know that I can pursue those gender-unrelated dreams I have which struggle out in moments when the dysphoria and the depression and the disassociation are at their lowest.
To pursue these dreams without the endless weight of dealing with other people's bullshit about who I am.
Yes, I'm conflating my internal acceptance with my perception of external acceptance. But they both exert pressure on each other. And if you sort out internal but not external, you spend your life in a war, fighting to preserve your internal reality against a reactive, hostile world.
It's great the author has embraced her body in its transness. But while being transgender is an inescapable part of me, and will always influence how I experience life, I really just want to be able to live and have that aspect of myself be no more remarkable than, say, red hair. And as culture doesn't move that fast, the only ways I see to that for myself is by either being able to pass, or living in a queer-only community. And that fills me with despair. Because I'm unlikely to manage the latter, and even less likely to sort out the former.
TL; dr - I feel like passing, though in many cases probably not attainable given the strict physical gender gatekeeping of western culture, is the only path to not having to live with being trans being treated like a chronic physical disability.
posted by allium cepa at 1:38 PM on February 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
But what I can say, and I don't think it's going to change, is that my desire to pass as my own gender is part of simply wanting my life to not be defined at every moment by being transgender.
To not feel that revulsion and disconnection I get looking in a mirror and being wrong.
To know that I can pursue those gender-unrelated dreams I have which struggle out in moments when the dysphoria and the depression and the disassociation are at their lowest.
To pursue these dreams without the endless weight of dealing with other people's bullshit about who I am.
Yes, I'm conflating my internal acceptance with my perception of external acceptance. But they both exert pressure on each other. And if you sort out internal but not external, you spend your life in a war, fighting to preserve your internal reality against a reactive, hostile world.
It's great the author has embraced her body in its transness. But while being transgender is an inescapable part of me, and will always influence how I experience life, I really just want to be able to live and have that aspect of myself be no more remarkable than, say, red hair. And as culture doesn't move that fast, the only ways I see to that for myself is by either being able to pass, or living in a queer-only community. And that fills me with despair. Because I'm unlikely to manage the latter, and even less likely to sort out the former.
TL; dr - I feel like passing, though in many cases probably not attainable given the strict physical gender gatekeeping of western culture, is the only path to not having to live with being trans being treated like a chronic physical disability.
posted by allium cepa at 1:38 PM on February 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
I know that my transmasculine, genderqueer experience is that the older emphasis on binary passing sent me deeper and deeper into the closet.
I definitely feel like this was/is my experience, but from the other side? Recently I was recalling how way back in '02-03-ish I followed the blogs of a half dozen or so perfectly average trans women/femme-identified people at various places on the gender/transition spectrum and how, while I learned a lot and took comfort in watching them voice a lot of my own anxieties, my own inability to think outside some gendered binary, or maybe more to the point, my idealization of something fixed in a gender binary that seemed impossibly out of reach, kept me from seeing my own experiences in theirs and would continue to do so for some years that followed.
Anyway, I found Roche's Queer Sex informative. You can hear a recent interview with her at the JKPBooks podcast. (CW for some explicit talk of sex and surgical details.)
So often the media loves to play up the sad state of being trans.
I have laughed my ass off at Theda Hammel's and Marcy Rodman's Nymphowars podcast. It's vulgar, and very millennial, and sometimes I feel like I'm not nearly trans enough to be allowed to listen to it, but it's glorious to hear two trans women being so funny about the world from a trans/queer perspective.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:57 PM on February 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
I definitely feel like this was/is my experience, but from the other side? Recently I was recalling how way back in '02-03-ish I followed the blogs of a half dozen or so perfectly average trans women/femme-identified people at various places on the gender/transition spectrum and how, while I learned a lot and took comfort in watching them voice a lot of my own anxieties, my own inability to think outside some gendered binary, or maybe more to the point, my idealization of something fixed in a gender binary that seemed impossibly out of reach, kept me from seeing my own experiences in theirs and would continue to do so for some years that followed.
Anyway, I found Roche's Queer Sex informative. You can hear a recent interview with her at the JKPBooks podcast. (CW for some explicit talk of sex and surgical details.)
So often the media loves to play up the sad state of being trans.
I have laughed my ass off at Theda Hammel's and Marcy Rodman's Nymphowars podcast. It's vulgar, and very millennial, and sometimes I feel like I'm not nearly trans enough to be allowed to listen to it, but it's glorious to hear two trans women being so funny about the world from a trans/queer perspective.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:57 PM on February 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
(Edited *Macy Rodman*)
posted by octobersurprise at 2:03 PM on February 26, 2019
posted by octobersurprise at 2:03 PM on February 26, 2019
PhoBWanKenobi, I me-mailed you.
posted by hoyland at 5:19 PM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by hoyland at 5:19 PM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think every human has that sense of longing, and... nostalgia I guess, this yearning for the metaphorical sea. Being trans and transitioning gives me a real palpable sense that, like, "I did it, I did the thing" that resolves that yearning? In a way that I imagine being born in a cis version of my real gender would in no way give me? Does that make sense?
Like I dunno I almost worry that I come across as bragging or arrogant sometimes, how I love being trans so much. And like, I have no expectation that I'll ever really "pass", there are problems I have with my body that cis people of my gender wouldn't have to deal with (and cis people of the gender I was originally assigned wouldn't consider problems).
It is difficult and it is so so very specific and different for every single individual, but I literally thank the goddess--who I have started sincerely worshiping since starting to transition--every day for making me trans and for letting me realize it.
Sorry but this exact laser-focused topic--loving being trans specifically, not just getting to be your real gender, though that is also great--is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
posted by elsilnora at 7:33 PM on February 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
Like I dunno I almost worry that I come across as bragging or arrogant sometimes, how I love being trans so much. And like, I have no expectation that I'll ever really "pass", there are problems I have with my body that cis people of my gender wouldn't have to deal with (and cis people of the gender I was originally assigned wouldn't consider problems).
It is difficult and it is so so very specific and different for every single individual, but I literally thank the goddess--who I have started sincerely worshiping since starting to transition--every day for making me trans and for letting me realize it.
Sorry but this exact laser-focused topic--loving being trans specifically, not just getting to be your real gender, though that is also great--is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
posted by elsilnora at 7:33 PM on February 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
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I don't mean to detract from the rest of the article, the body positivity is great and I'm glad she's able to accept her body. I'm nowhere near that level of acceptance, but even if I were, that doesn't mean my body isn't wrong, it just means I'm able to cope with its wrongness.
posted by floomp at 9:50 PM on February 25, 2019 [23 favorites]