Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.
Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.
The questions I’ve been asked IRL:
- why / how did you pick your name?
- how long have you known?
- how long before you are done transitioning?
- how long do you have to be on HRT?
- is transgender like being transracial?
- what do the surgeries involve?
For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.
If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.
Somewhat related: Australia’s state-funded ABC channel produced a Q&A documentary show called “You Can’t Ask That” with an episode for transgender people. It might be harder to watch outside of Australia but it’s worth the effort. The semi-related Drag episode was also fascinating. Disclaimer/CW: I haven’t watched the full episode in years and suspect there might have been transphobia in some questions.
Official 2 minute teaser question: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSilokmn8zI
(A couple of other countries had localised spin-off versions of the show but I haven’t watched them.)
I might have to try to find this, thanks!
Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid? Transracial identity? Otherkin? Insincere trans identity, such as the recent case of Liebich, a transphobic neo-Nazi who legally identified as a trans woman seemingly just to avoid men’s prison? Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?
I personally think transracial identity is particularly interesting when one considers that race is a fluid social concept rather than an objective concept like genetics (see how in the US and Europe different peoples have historically changed from being considered ‘black’ to being considered ‘white’ over time, see how a person can be considered a race in one society and a different race in another society, such as “mixed-race” people or people with ancestry from the edges of continents). Unfortunately most of the examples of transracialism I’m aware of are cases where deception or fame played a large part in compounding criticism, such as Dolezal and Korla Pandit, leading to claims of their transracial identity being exploitation.
Basically I don’t think otherkin or transracial identities are related to being transgender.
I wrote more extensively on my thoughts on otherkin identities in this comment.
click to read
As far as I can tell, species dysphoria, otherkin, and related ideas are not related to gender dysphoria and natural variation in sex and gender. They are radically different, and we can’t conflate one with the other (just like we wouldn’t say trans-racial identity is similar or related to transgender identity).
I think the reason you might run into hostility is that the anti-trans movement tries to conflate transgender identity with otherkin identities. The public at large already has trouble accepting a transgender identity, despite the scientific evidence and the established cross-cultural and historical record of transgender identities, it strikes most people as wrong - even the idea of transitioning itself is considered immoral to the majority of Americans even as the majority signal support for gender affirming care. In that context, conflating trans identity with something even harder for people to accept (the idea that someone is authentically a different species, i.e. is not a human in their identity / mind) is a win for the anti-trans movement, who primarily want to show that trans people are illegitimate, indefensible, contrary to nature / reality / truth, and are in some way mentally delusional or ill because of their identity.
Matt Walsh, the far-right anti-trans activist, interviews Naia Okami in What is a Woman, his anti-trans “documentary.” Naia is a part of the furry community and is a trans woman and identifies as a wolfkin, here is a clip I found.
Largely this kind of rhetoric is successful at convincing people that transgender identities are illegitimate.
We know even just transgender visibility generates harm to trans people, like from this interview with the trans legal scholar Florence Ashley in The Scientific American:
Trans culture is more visible today than it has been in the past. Does that help, or is increased visibility stirring up the anti-trans movement?
Florence Ashley: Visibility is very much a double-edged sword. There are good sides to visibility, of course. It helps people realize that they’re trans. You have more access to trans narratives, which gives you more space to understand yourself, and that’s very positive. But at the social and political level, it has been quite negative. We’re seeing a lot more people who vehemently hate trans people, who are even willing to harm trans people. Whereas people who are favorable to trans people largely just leave us alone. And a lot of reforms that we were able to achieve with relative ease, in a less visible manner, are now being rolled back.
The trans backlash and moral panic is partially due to the increased visibility and exposure of the public at large to trans identities, and the right-wing anti-trans activists know they can push that alienation and moral panic further by connecting and conflating transgender identities with people who identify as other species.
All this said, even if the trans movement might have some pragmatic reason to maintain a level of respectability with the public, I don’t want to ignore that respectability politics has a lot of downsides. Respectability politics is the idea that some within the community are more respectable than others (i.e. more palatable to the public), and this often leads to pressure for only those respectable elements to be considered valid or legitimate and to receive publicity and support. Undesirables are identified and ostracized from the group to protect the more respectable minority.
This is precisely how you end up with a concept of transgender people that you commonly see in the media: that trans people immediately and always knew their gender identity, that they communicated their identity as soon as they could speak, that trans children refuse to live as the gender they were assigned and insist to live the other way, and so on. (This narrative was on full display on The Problem With Jon Stewart a couple years ago, here is a clip.)
This narrative does describe some trans people, and notably it describes the trans people the public are most likely to have sympathy for, but it leaves a lot of trans people out of the picture (consequences of this include many trans people never realizing they are trans
I wrote more about transracial identities in this comment.
click to read
I have had people IRL who just don’t know better and ask questions about this, not knowing much about either topic and I can see why they might superficially think they could be similar.
In particular I had a white liberal friend ask about Rachel Dolezal’s experience and how that compares to a transgender experience.
What helped clarify things was to examine where Dolezal’s transracial feelings came from:
Dolezal was born at home in 1977, “on the side of the mountain” in rural Montana, to a pair of white Christian fundamentalists called Larry and Ruthanne; they entered “Jesus Christ” on her birth certificate as the only other witness to her birth. From a young age, Dolezal and her older brother Joshua were put to work on the family homestead, weeding vegetables, foraging for berries and hunting elk; in full-length homemade dresses and dog hair sweaters, she “looked like something out of Little House On The Prairie”. Dirt poor and uneducated, her parents lived by the Bible, spoke in tongues and beat her.
“I felt like I was constantly having to atone for some unknown thing. Larry and Ruthanne would say I was possessed and exorcise my demons, because I was very creative and that was seen as sensual, which was of the devil. It seems like everything that came naturally, instinctively to me was wrong. That was literally beaten into us. I had to redeem myself,” she says with a light, mirthless laugh, “from being me. And I never felt good enough to be saved.”
Blond and freckled, “like Pippi Longstocking”, she recalls choosing brown crayons to draw pictures of herself with dark skin and curly hair, like the Bantu women she saw in National Geographic. She would hide in the garden, smear herself in mud, and fantasise that she had been kidnapped from Africa. What she describes as a profound sense of not belonging followed her to school, where the other children wore trainers and had Doritos in their packed lunches, not elk tongue sandwiches. She did everything she could to fit in, picking huckleberries to earn money to buy Nikes, “but I knew I wasn’t one of them. I was always on the fringe.” The only person who really understood her life was Joshua, but he was the favoured child, the son, and her relationship with her brother grew increasingly uneasy.
I walked my friend through the story of Dolezal’s formation of an African identity as a form of fantasy escapism while living under extremely brutal and abusive conditions, and how this kind of transracial identity seems to have more to do with her psychology and the need for that identity as a coping mechanism than something truly innate or biological. It at least seems like a plausible explanation for where her transracial identity comes from.
Furthermore, you can point out that transracial identities are not a common cross-cultural phenomenon, and scientists have not found a physical basis for anything like a transracial identity, and even further, race itself is not biologically real, so it’s unclear what it would mean for someone to have an innate sense of race.
Meanwhile, transgender people have existed throughout human history and across cultures, and scientists acknowledge they are a natural part of human variation, with physical evidence of correlated genetic markers and autopsies of brains that have found consistent differences in trans brains. Furthermore, the current evidence is that gender identity is a biologically real thing, and not able to be altered by psychological and social influences (so you can take someone like Dolezal and make them a different race, but you can’t change her gender identity; one is biological, the other isn’t).
My friend seemed satisfied with this kind of answer because it clearly delineates why transracial identities are not like transgender identities, and there just wasn’t much left to discuss at that point. She just hadn’t ever considered it and didn’t know much about either topic.
That said, online it is clear that people who want to debate transgender folks with topics like transracial are usually not acting in good faith, so I don’t want to dismiss your intuition - I just wanted to offer my experiences with a person IRL who was well-meaning but by coincidence did ask about transracial identities.
All bodies contain the ability to differentiate into what we know as male and female, to varying degrees and in various mixtures. Transgender is just a medical variation in how this normally plays out and spans times and cultures, whereas these other things don’t really have a similar basis.
Why are there virtually no FTM sex workers?
Why are there so few male sex workers in general?
I feel pretty comfortable asking questions IRL because over many years I’ve had two friends who are openly Trans. But I want to show some support for the community, so here we go:
A train leaves the station at 9pm… 😆
Love and Respect.
This is super longwinded but I’m having trouble putting the ideas together concisely, apologies in advance to anyone reading.
I generally hear people describe being trans as feeling like you were born into the wrong body, like biologically male with a woman’s soul in some sense. But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to. I identify as a man and would feel out of place in a woman’s body, but if I had been born into a woman’s body I would feel out of place in a man’s. That’s my mental picture of what being cisgendered is. I’m not sure I’m articulating this great but hopefully it’s coherent.
That gives me the impression that being transgendered is an emotional discomfort, and I’ve wanted to hear an opinion on if the resistance to labelling it as a mental illness is because of the societal stigma against mental illnesses and how some people think successful treatment should always mean suppression and never accommodation (which would look like gender-affirming care if being trans counted).
Part of where this is coming from is I’ve been dealing with my own mental demons lately after some traumatic experiences in the past couple years, and the way I think about it is different when I’m looking inward. If it’s another person behaving strangely it is easy to say they are suffering and deserve care, but when it’s me I am a crazy person doing crazy things and I know better.
I do feel inclined to see being trans as a mental illness (for the reasons I’ve given above). I believe I’ll be open to hear what I’m getting wrong there. It’s not something I’ve ever been comfortable enough to ask though because I expect that statement to be received offensively (for the reasons given above). I get a lot less hostility in general over who I am and I still sometimes have a very strong gut reaction to perceive that stuff as an attack.
The current science points to gender dysphoria being caused by the brain developing as one sex while the body develops as another.
If you ask whether someone is primarily their brain or their body, I think most would say identity resides in the brain and subsequent mind. In that sense, gender dysphoria is a genetic and hormonal disorder, basically a condition of yes, having the “wrong body” for the brain they developed as a fetus. This glosses over a lot of details and sex is complicated, but that’s the rough sketch. The condition arises from the brain and the mind, and in that sense can be labelled a mental illness, but that would ignore a lot of context and evidence we have about what is going on.
It is with this understanding and with the guidance of substantial empirical evidence that transition and gender-affirming care are recommended - it is the only treatment that alleviates symptoms (conversion therapy, for example, increases risk of suicide), but also these are treatments with a very high success to failure ratio. Gender affirming surgeries have lower regret rates than practically any other surgery, much lower than knee replacement surgeries, for example.
So we deal with gender dysphoria differently than we deal with other mental illnesses because of what we know about the condition. We know that people with body dysmorphia like anorexics feel distress about their body and might seek surgery to “fix” their bodies, but we don’t have the large body of evidence that those surgeries improve patient outcomes, relieve symptoms, or are low risk. So we treat anorexia differently than gender dysphoria, because they have different causes and require different treatments.
So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer). We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.
Don’t you think transitioning reaffirms gender roles and stereotypes? I’m probably missing something, but why isn’t being a really effeminate man enough, that there’s the need to take hormones and change your pronouns?
I basically believed this most of my life, and it was a big part of why I never transitioned. I felt it was offensive to women for me to claim to be one. Even once I transitioned, I had a really hard time using makeup because I felt like a traitor.
Ultimately, I found reading Julia Serano really helpful. I learned that my fear of embodying feminine stereotypes was more about not wanting to appear feminine (even as a woman), and that ultimately this was more about an entrenched anti-femininity perspective than anything like feminism. I learned that makeup is pragmatic and useful, a way for me to alleviate dysphoria, to help me cope, and that I am not a “traitor” for using it. Being pretty and feminine is important to me, as a woman, and it’s not surprising other women want to be pretty and feminine too. They shouldn’t feel bad for wanting to be that way, even if not everyone woman should feel obligated to only be one kind of hype-feminine woman.
Regarding being an effeminate man: I have had conservatives tell me this, that I need to just live as a really effeminate man. I just don’t know what to tell you, being a man is not right. When I first transitioned, I didn’t care as much about the social elements. It turned out testosterone was ruining my mental health - I had severe depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation - all of which cleared up quickly after blocking the production of testosterone and getting on estrogen. Estrogen consistently makes me feel high, it’s better than opiates. Not every trans person is this way, but a lot of us are. It’s called “biochemical dysphoria”. In a way, I would have been willing to settle for having an orchi and living as a eunuch with estrogen supplementation - it would be a lie to say I was a man, and I would know that, but if I could have estrogen and live without testosterone in my body, that is most important to me. Living as a woman has always been important to me, but I never thought I could - that was a dream too far, in a sense. It felt like how I should have been born, but since I wasn’t, I resigned myself to living as a man. That estrogen will make me look like a woman and i am able to live and be a woman now is like going to heaven, it’s a dream I never thought I would live.
So, tl;dr I have to take hormones because I was born with a condition where my brain can’t handle testosterone, and I would have probably killed myself, and generally I lived a very low quality of life before HRT. I was a burden to those around me, and I transitioned for my health and to be a functioning person in society.
I think we all live within the language of gender, and trans women who have lived as men and are insecure in their womanhood often lean heavily into feminine roles as a compensation. I did this even before I transitioned, but it didn’t feel like I was contributing to a stereotype of women as a man - I was “gender non-conforming” then. But as a woman the very same behaviors become stereotypical. I like to cook, sew, bake, etc. and those were comforts to me before I transitioned, but are also important to me now. If anything, once I transitioned I felt more freedom to stop clinging to more stereotypical roles, and the more I can validate my womanhood, the more freedom I feel within my womanhood. Either way, I tend to make an exception for myself when it comes to being stereotypical - I figured being trans is rough enough, I can’t solve patriarchy all by myself, and it’s not up to me as an individual to overcome such huge social and structural problems. I like being feminine, and I am lucky enough to enjoy it now, so I will. If anything, I’ve learned to stop judging other women for when they are feminine, as a whole I have become more embracing of women as a result of transition.
To what degree do you believe is binary transgender identity appropriate? Does it validate the false gender dichotomy of the common mainstream binary model of gender (and sex)?
Is it unfair to see it as unfortunate and ignorant, or to see it as a realist mechanism to adapt gender transgression to a binary society? (e.g. where a society doesn’t have any real recognition of non-binary identity, or where it’s just easier for 99% of people to understand “M->F/F->M” over non-binary identity)
I don’t know what to tell you, most aspects of being a woman feels right to me. Even without knowing consciously a specific change will feel good, making changes that make me more like a woman end up feeling good. There is nothing about being a man that seems right to me.
I think we can’t choose to be binary or non-binary, just like cis people can’t choose to suddenly be the opposite sex and be trans. Gender identity seems to be biological, and we can’t change it (e.g. through conversion therapy, it’s just not effective). if we could change gender identity, probably the conservative medical establishment would recommend those methods rather than transitioning, but as is, transitioning is the only effective way to alleviate gender dysphoria.
So there are problems with the binary model, but I do believe some people are women and some are men, anyway, including trans people. Not everyone is non-binary, or find an identity like that affirming or “right”.
While I can see there are many problems with gender, I don’t think trans people should feel primarily responsible for those problems. We live and breathe within gender, as do cis people, but trans folks are the least advantaged in that context. We struggle to live as our gender, so when we use gender to feel ourselves, I don’t think it’s this horrible act of reifying gender as a sin, but instead I think it is a positive and life-affirming activity. That’s not to say there isn’t anything toxic about gender, or even problematic about the way trans people use gender, but I’m not going to wring my hands about this any more - trans people were dealt a bad hand, they’re trying to survive within their context and we should grant them some space for that.
What are the practicality regarding sport, especially during transition? There is a big trans athlete discussion, but every sport hall I went had ladies/gentlemen changing room with communal showers. People would definitely see the extra/missing bits. Moreover, I see why other people would be uncomfortable with a person suddenly going from one gender space to another.
It’s a non issue. Broadly speaking, trans people are far more afraid of rejection and violence from cis people than cis people are of seeing unexpected bits. Which is to say, this idea that trans people are just wandering around bathrooms flashing their bits at people is nothing but a narrative designed to stir up fear and anger aimed at trans folk. In reality, we tend to do everything we can to make ourselves small and invisible in spaces like that, because there is no safe way to navigate it
Yup. Before I came out, as a kid we often had shared showers and drying rooms. Pretty chill actually, we learnt to interact and talk with each other that way, instead of being segregated and correspondingly implicitly seeing the other side as something forbidden, mythical – when they’re just… people, really.
At what age do you think it’s appropriate for someone with gender dysmorphia to make a decision to go through the medically assisted chemically induced transition process?
Ada already covered this.
“chemically induced transition process” is not the right language - you would do for a trans person the same thing you would do for a cis person undergoing problems with puberty, something that children have been safely doing for decades, and which cis children with precocious puberty continue to do even as trans children are banned from having access to the same care.
The answer to your question is determined through a discussion with a doctor, mostly with the aim of reducing the harm for a trans child of going through the wrong puberty, and that’s just whenever puberty starts in their body.
This pausing of puberty is the only care minors usually receive, it does not “induce [a] transition process”, it pauses a transition process until they are of legal age and can decide to undergo the puberty of their choice.
Here is a decent article written by a bioethicist covering how trans affirming care for minors came about, and why it is endorsed by every major medical association: https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/care-not-controversy
dysmorphia
Dysphoria
At what age do you think it’s appropriate for someone with gender dysmorphia to make a decision to go through the medically assisted chemically induced transition process?
This is another one of those questions that exist as a wedge tactic designed to make trans people sound dangerous.
The reality is, the only medical option offered to young trans kids is the option to pause their puberty until they’re old enough to be responsible for their own decisions, at which time they can choose which puberty they want to experience.
And what time is the right age for that? Whenever they need to do it, because going through the wrong puberty is a traumatic experience.
Me and basically every other trans person wishes they could have started sooner
yes, desperately wish this - it is a nightmare that I went through the wrong puberty, and I will be trying to recover from this the rest of my life.
Trans care for minors saves lives.
When ever a doctor thinks is suitable
This is a good answer.
It’s not like doctors are always right, but they will almost always have a better understanding of how you can go about the process of transitioning, the risks of doing so, and determining if it’s the best course of action for you, given those risks, then refer you to specialists that know how to handle your particular case.
I trust a doctor to be right on medical issues more often than I trust a politician to be right on anything.
As soon as puberty starts, they should at least have the option to delay their choice with puberty blockers, and probably soon after to start HRT, if it’s clear it’s a permanent thing.
That’s my stance as well, although I’d start puberty blockers a little before puberty starts. So around 6/8 yo, and HRT around 12/14. And also without parental consent needed, a lot of trans youth have strict parents which damages their prospects on that.
Obv, the blockers and hrt should occur with informed consent regardless, but yeah.
Oh yeah, parents should not be allowed to veto their childrens’ choice at all
I used to work with a trans woman who was a huge bitch, at least some of the time. Like actually shouting at coworkers for tiny mistakes, all-caps shouting in company chat at people trying to help with stuff, thinking she’s the smartest person in any room, that kind of stuff.
i’ve always wondered if she’s just a bitch or if at least some of it could be a side effect of hormone therapy? I mean, completely changing the hormones for your body must have some pretty dramatic effects in many areas and might take a long time until your body adjusts.
but a definitely won’t just ask ‘yo. Are you just a huge bitch or is it your medication’ in a corporate setting.
[edit] just for clarity, she started transitioning about 1 month after she joined that team and I left after about a year and a half, in part because of the mood on the team going to shit, among other reasons. But so I couldn’t compare to pre-hormone therapy or anything like that.
It’s complicated, hormones can influence behavior, but most trans women who take estrogen don’t subsequently shout at people as a result. We don’t know what was going on with her, but it’s not just the hormones, even if they may play a role.
For what it’s worth, I became a much more pleasant, well-tempered person as a result of hormone therapy. Calmer, happier, and more social, and I attribute that mostly to the benefits of being on the right hormones.
I guess there are multiple factors. I think the biggest one is just the personality of the person. But starting taking hormones is basically a second puberty for the body. Most trans folks do not become as irretable as a person in their puberty but if one has a predisposition to it, a transition may trigger that a bit.
Are there cis people that are angry and emotional all the time for reasons you don’t understand?
Well, it’s the same thing when you see it from trans folk…
Of course there are. But I mean, women’s hormones do affect mood during the menstrual cycle (my wife certainly says she’s more iritable before her period), and afaik the hormone therapy is some of the same hormones, so it didn’t seem far fetched at all to me that it could play a role. hence me asking.
but could as well have been some deep seated anger at the world or similar, or something in between. Mostly I was just trying to think of reasons for why she might not be as bad as she was seeming, benefit of the doubt kind of thing.
Right, but if your wife was yelling at people all the time, and writing emails to co-workers in all caps, and constantly getting on peoples bad side, you wouldn’t go “Oh, she’s hormonal”. You’d probably assume that there is something else at play.
Same assumption applies here.
For me it was the opposite, I became way calmer and happier once I started HRT.
Ok, this could really help us.
A friend’s now-daughter made it very clear what her new gender/name/pronouns were - great.
A neighbour seems to be transitioning to female but hasn’t in any way offered new pronouns.
We want to be supportive but not intrusive. Is it better to use “they” until they initiate/clarify? My wife said she’d ask their partner but I feel that’s trying to lead the conversation and could be pushing them before they’re ready.
Thanks
You don’t want to stigmatize or make assumptions, so it’s best to let people determine what they disclose and when, and to just respect people’s pronouns and self-identification.
Unfortunately nothing is universal, they/them can sound like a great way to politely handle the ambiguity, and it can still accidentally make someone feel bad, even if it’s reasonable and ultimately their fault for not disclosing their pronouns.
It sounds like your mindset and intentions are good, so just keep going with that - signalling you are trans-supportive will make people feel more safe and willing to disclose around you, but in the meantime just let people come to you and disclose. Using neutral language in the meantime is just a bonus!
The way to approach this is to make it absolutely clear that you’re supportive. Use “they/them”. Tell your neigbour about your friends kid and how happy you are for them etc. And then just follow their lead. They’ll tell you what they need when they’re comfortable doing so, but you’ve just made it a lot easier for them to get to that point
Yes, they is a good default for anyone you don’t know the pronouns of, in general. And it’s great that you care about doing what’s right already!
When I was younger, I assumed that trans people wanted to transition because they felt their personality wasn’t their “assigned at birth” sex. And thus, because of society’s expectations that “men should dress and act this way” and “women have to do/be this,” a lot of people who didn’t meet that would be trans. But as I met and talked to more people, both trans and agender/genderfluid/etc., it does seem like those with body dysphoria actually feel uncomfortable in their bodies, and want a different body. But I’ve never actually asked any trans friends about it, because it does feel too personal, even though some of them are very good friends.
So, my question: if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition? Would that answer change if surgery/hormones aren’t desired, and you instead do want to keep the body you were born with?
There being no gender norms would actually be even more liberating. It means we’re not pressured into only wearing femme clothing (when going the estrogen route) or masculine ones (when doing testosterone).
It’d open up a ton of possibilities for cis and queer people alike; wearing skirts on warm days for men also, or wearing pretty nail polish, or short hair for women…
I’m a trans woman. I’ve never been feminine. No one picked on me because I was “girly”. No one secretly thought I was gay. My interests were geeky, but they were “boy” geeky.
I don’t believe in gendered personalities. People have genders. Personalites don’t.
it does seem like those with body dysphoria actually feel uncomfortable in their bodies, and want a different body
That’s often a part of it, but it’s not universal. There are many trans and gender diverse folk who don’t experience things through this lens.
if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition?
Yes, but it would look different. The social part of my transition was important to me, because it influences how people see me. It shapes whether they see me accurately, or see me as someone I am not. My appearance can cause them to stick me in the wrong gender box, and that is something that I needed to change.
But if we existed in a world where there were no gender boxes, where gender was as diverse as people themselves are, then my transition would have looked different. I’d still needed to have addressed the physical aspects of my body. But socially? If my birth name didn’t automatically carry a gender with it, if my clothes and my presentation didn’t automatically carry gender with them, then my social transition would have looked very different.
So, my question: if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition?
Yes. The evidence of that is that butch/masc leaning trans women and femme leaning trans men both exist.
Yes, HRT both improved my mood, and I also feel far more comfortable in the body it’s giving me. Fuck gender stereotypes, though.
Yes, without gender norms or social expectations, I would still transition, at least medically.
Testosterone made me depressed, anxious, suicidal, anhedonic, and gave me night terrors. That was true for me even when I socially transitioned and lived as a woman full-time in every part of my life. Estrogen’s impact on my mood is hard to overstate, and those benefits happened well before there were changes to my body. This has been called “biochemical dysphoria”, and not every trans person experiences it, though it is common.
When I transitioned, it was mostly for my health and well-being. I had little hope of ever passing because I transitioned so late in life, so my goals were fairly minimal - basically I just realized I was a burden to the people in my life who cared about me (like getting those phone calls that I was in the ER again), and I realized being a repressed trans person might be causing problems for me and making me this way. I felt an obligation to do what was right by me, so I could be a better person for those around me. I underestimated the effect hormones had on mood and well-being. If I knew what I know now, I would have transitioned much earlier. I have no idea how I survived so long (looking back, I really almost didn’t).
So yes, I transitioned without the social aspects ever being the main goal, because I never was motivated by that primarily. I felt dismissive of gender (I even hated gender) and whatever gendered desires came up were a low priority to me. I would never be so selfish as to prioritize those needs over practicalities like holding down a job, or not being a hate crime statistic. It turned out my closeted cross-dressing wasn’t just about a silly desire to wear dresses and skirts, I didn’t know that.
I gave some feedback to someone on Mastodon who had been going to voice training. I was kind of curious how that works - what the journey is like. I could definitely tell a difference for them.
For me, it looked like doing voice training. It was largely self guided, watching videos here and there. This was in the time when trans instructional videos were far less common than they are now, so it was a bit hit and miss. But, I got my voice to a point where people didn’t know how to gender me by voice alone, and looked for other cues and clues.
Ultimately, I ended up getting vocal surgery to shorten the length of my vocal cords.
Sure, I can talk extensively about that - what are you most curious about?
I should also say, it’s different for men vs women, because testosterone will thicken vocal chords and make the voice more masculine naturally, so trans men on HRT have an advantage this way, though trans men still often have to voice train, learning to pitch lower and trying to open the vocal tract more to have a larger, deeper voice both have to be learned.
(This all assumes puberty blockers were not provided and the transition is happening as an adult, which with the healthcare bans for minors in the U.S. is an unfortunately common reality.)
On the flip side, trans women don’t see any improvement from estrogen to their voice - the vocal chords remain thickened, and their vocal tracts remain larger.
When I socially transitioned I tried to teach myself and voice train by myself, but after months of little progress, I decided to go to a local speech language pathologist (SLP). I continued to teach myself and train on my own, but the speech language pathologist was able to help direct me, and crucially, to demonstrate principles to help me learn.
I learned some of the basics of vocal training in general - how to sustain pitches and strengthen the voice, practicing SOVTEs, and other exercises singers or actors might do.
Voice training is grueling, one of the worst parts of transition. Vocal dysphoria is a nightmare, and in my experience even once my voice passed all the time (i.e. on the phone people hear a woman and I get “miss” and “ma’am”, as well as in person), the voice still sounds wrong to me, and I can’t hear it as a woman’s voice. In that way it’s similar to other kinds of dysphoria - I am much more sensitive, so even once I look like a woman to other people, I still see a man or boy in the mirror.
But with vocal dysphoria, you are constantly exposing yourself to your voice. With other forms of dysphoria, you can get breaks by not looking in the mirror, not having sex, and generally checking out of life - escapism and dissociation can be really effective, but vocal training demands regularly paying attention to your voice, and persistently altering it. It’s psychological torture, and a lot of us struggle to make progress because of it. Some even use it as a form of self-harm.
It took 8 months of weekly visits to a SLP and daily, full-time training (i.e. every day I had exercises and I was intentional with my voice, and basically was voice training 24/7, always paying attention and changing my voice) before I saw a shift. The progress for me felt like a major shift all at once, a lot more of the work was cognitive than I expected, more about the ability for my mind to recognize what I’m supposed to be doing. In a way it felt like I suddenly just realized I always knew how to sound like a woman and it just clicked. The time it takes varies, generally voice training is a life-long effort and it never ends. My vocal dysphoria is some of the worst dysphoria I suffer on a daily basis, and some day it would be nice for me to train with the goal of helping alleviate my dysphoria, but up to now I have been more pragmatic and focused on having a voice that other people hear as natural and female. Here is a voice clip I uploaded 4 months ago - to me this voice reminds me of a gay man’s voice, I can’t hear a woman. :-/
Anyway, let me know what further details you might be interested in 😊
Your voice sounds great! The pitch, resonance, and inflection all seem pretty much perfect. There is a certain tambre that trained voices tend to have, its there but its really subtle, and I think I can only pick up on it because I’m working on voice training. You sound young, probably 20s or 30s and convincingly a woman.
I don’t think anyone can accurately assess their own voice. Despite the work I’ve done myself I still hear a man in recordings, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. I should reach out for help, but I’m not ready yet.
Listening to that voice clip I think you sound very femme, and not just in your voice itself but your speech patterns. Like if you removed all tone hints from your voice and made me guess guy/girl I’d guess girl with no hesitation even tho I can’t pinpoint exactly why - is that something you taught yourself consciously, or is it just kinda a natural product of being a woman in western culture?
Also you said in the voice clip you wanted impressions, not sure if you still care given that was four months ago but I hear your voice as a woman in her 20s, maybe early 30s? I’m not great at guessing ages even when I’m standing in front of someone tho, so take that with a grain of salt lol
Anyway thank you for doing this Q&A, I always love to see new perspectives on the trans experience!
To me you don’t sound like a gay man in that clip, but like a woman. I think your hard work is paying off.
This is just a fact I learned along the way, not so much personal experience, but I thought it was super interesting to learn that apparently one of the biggest differences between masc and femme voices isn’t just pitch but more constant variation in pitch.
Afab folks are typically less monotone and use pitch more excessively throughout their speech which I thought was really neat. Unrelatedly, I also heard Hank green explain the physiology of voice recently and how your voice can “break” or what the difference between your “head voice” and “chest voice” is, and the reason amab folks vary pitch less seems almost certainly a product of different vocal cord physiology after experiencing puberty (your vocal cords change in a way that makes it harder. Those same changes are what’s responsible for your voice breaking more often, as you struggle to control the now sharper difference between lower and higher pitches you can create. Where afab and prepuberty folks can more easily manage a smooth gradient in pitch), which is also really interesting!
If anyone wants a video on the vocal cords explanation stuff I can link to it, it was from hank’s “ask Hank anything” with Jacob Collier
I think this is a link to the video you are talking about: https://youtu.be/Q0_W4SWHeWY?t=1652
A few distinctions:
“head voice” vs “chest voice” is more of a distinction about resonance and the way the voices sound, mostly related to the “size” quality of a voice, a smaller voice is usually more “in the head” sounding (think Mickey Mouse), and a larger voice is usually more “in the chest” sounding (think of a giant saying “fee fi fo fum”), but in terms of physiology the main difference is not chest vs head, but more that the space the sound travels through is larger or smaller - like if a glass is more or less full.
Falsetto is its own distinction from head vs chest voice, and Hank’s explanation is about pitch rather than resonance. Higher pitches pull the folds tighter, while lower pitches are more loose. This is why vocal fry (a common facet of female voices) is often a problem for transfeminine voices, because it gives an impression of a weighty and lower pitched voice.
Generally with falsetto the pitch is high, but trans women shouldn’t aim to use falsetto because it is usually unsustainably high, sounds unnatural, and could cause injury through straining. Instead, when the goal is a female voice, it is more important for a voice to sound small and light (about size and weight) than high in pitch, which luckily can both be achieved without straining.
Variations in pitch are more common in feminine voices, but this is connected to how expressive women are - a pitch sliding up and down, and being elongated, is often conveying emotions. As I understood it, this difference is mostly cultural, so this is the first time I’ve heard someone say the reasons for monotone voices in men might be physiological - I am immediately skeptical, but intrigued. As a clear counter-example, gay men have the physiology of male vocal folds, but they are commonly found to have pitch variations similar to women. Still, breaks are more common and men can experience physiologically limited pitch ranges, and I certainly struggle with this myself - my desire to be expressive is undermined by the limitations of my voice, I just can’t go as high as my mind thinks my voice should be able to go.
EDIT: finished the video you recommended. So, Future Hank was talking about the break that can happen between vocal registers. In voice training this becomes important because you generally want to pitch up slightly (it’s important for feminine voice training to not fall too far below a particular pitch, namely 180 Hz, or around F3 on a piano), and moving between M1 and M2 can often cause a break in the voice (though it hasn’t been much of an issue for me). Not sure what to make of his claim that voice breaks are more common in boys because of puberty causing a very sudden change in vocal fold length - I wonder if that means it would stabilize and as adults men don’t have breaks as much?
Having a thread for people to ask stuff is a good idea
thanks! my only hesitation is that I don’t want to create a moderation burden, but I hope people will both be civil, but also willing to open up about their concerns, questions, and perspectives - I find the trans topic is weirdly taboo IRL (at least with people who know I’m trans), so it’s hard for people to have honest conversations and learn anything (and also, for me to understand what they’re feeling and wondering about).
That said, I notice this most with liberals and cis allies, people who wish to be polite and respectful are the most likely to not talk about it.
Conservatives and anti-trans people are more willing to share their opinions, but also usually less willing to listen or take seriously any information or perspectives that are presented. That said, I still have found respectful conservatives more willing to talk about trans stuff than liberals, and early in transition I found that more satisfying and helpful, it made me feel less alone and gave me a way to think with people in a way I couldn’t get from my liberal friends. That’s really unfortunate, I think (for lots of reasons, it’s not exactly healthy for me to be exposed to anti-trans views, even when I can see why they don’t make sense rationally).
Idk if this fully explains the weird taboo you described, but I’m personally reluctant to ask people questions I know they must get all the time. It can get annoying/draining fielding the same questions from every second person even if they’re mostly well-meaning, so especially in cases where people can’t just not reveal the attribute/hobby/whatever I’m curious about I just try to remember the question to look up later.
Not sure how common that is, but if that’s the cause then what you’ve done with this post is the ideal way to bypass this hesitation imo; just being clear (even just from the context) that you’re choosing to talk about this and not just feeling pressured to explain would make the difference at least for me personally.
Anyway idk if this is relevant at all for you, but if it is I hope it helps :)
respectful conservatives
Did you also find unicorns?!
They do exist in places where it’s just the default politics. One has to suspect that if they seriously learned and thought about things, they’d move left.
if they seriously learned and thought about things, they’d move left.
assuming religious and community ties don’t keep them from doing that, I tend to agree - I think most people are decent, and come to reactionary positions because of exploitation (such as religious indoctrination)
ha, I guess so - both cases are relationships I’ve had for a long time before I transitioned, so there was a lot of good will built-up. Not claiming their views are respectful, or they are respectful to everyone - but at least they wanted to be respectful and polite with me. You have to understand that where I lived at the time, the ratio of conservatives to liberals was 7 to 3, in terms of voters (and probably more than that generally speaking). Ah the South 😅
Do you prefer visual porn, or written erotica/smutty novels?
I don’t ask this both because of the obvious privateness, and because I don’t want to put anyone on the spot if their choice doesn’t align with what’s typical for their gender identity, but I do wonder.
I like Hentai manga best, personally. The story does add to the experience
Unrelated to being trans (well, at least I think it is), but I have aphantasia. Written erotica is basically useless to me, because I can’t visualise!
As a child, written. (I remember the best were the write-in sex stories in Cosmos magazine.)
Sometime as a teenager it became a mix (socially adapting to boyhood), but probably 80% visual, 20% written. Erotica was more like a special occasion, like taking a hot bath and having a bottle of wine - more fulfilling and valuable, but more occasional and requiring more time. Visuals were more pragmatic, quick, and frequent.
Now I find the ideas are more important than the visuals, so even when visuals are involved it’s more about the scene or idea than just the visuals. I would have said that was true before, but testosterone libido is more nagging and you don’t always feel like investing in such an unfulfilling activity.
Libido on testosterone was impulsive, animal-like, and disturbing to me. Like a cigarette addiction. I hated living that way.
On estrogen, it’s not that my libido feels lessened (in some ways it feels stronger, I swear it made me more horny, which I was disappointed by), but it feels less impulsive, more connected, and generally deeper.
I like the comparison of estrogen libido being like a hot coal, while testosterone libido is like quick-burning pine.
I feel like the need for a quick hurried scared to get caught masterbation experience favors quick and shallow. I think that if you can talk your time there’s more artistic latitude to explore the finer details. I feel like there’s be more and better porn of artistic merit that way
maybe, but reading erotica is already gives you that space - usually people can’t tell what you’re reading …
Interesting! Thank you.
