I am still very early in this whole process, and there is still a lot of self doubt, so I am reading a lot of literature on “Am I trans” and dysphoria.
One concept that people often like to propose in these ressources is the button that makes you the opposite gender, and, crucially, also makes everyone else believe that you have been that way forever.
I don’t really like this, because my time as a boy/man is part of who I am. I would not be me without it, and despite all of the problems I had and have due to my gender, it is still part of who I am. I fought through all of this and worked to find out who I want to be by myself. I wouldn’t wanna be cis, and I also don’t want to cease being the me born out of this struggle.
I think that question is more designed to cut through internalized transphobia. Our culture is still extremely transphobic, so I think it still has value. It doesn’t really seem to apply to you, which is fine, but I also don’t think anyone asking that question would hear your response of “well I want to be trans without erasing my own identity and past” and conclude that you are cis.
based materialist transition does not acknowledge liberal fantasists’ tautological propositions
seriously tho i couldn’t be prouder of a long-time user discovering yourself. you’re straight up my idol for actually going to central asia and you’ve gone even further and made me question my own gender expression
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sorry if this is weird but i just realized you made those central asian posts and i’d love to hear more from someone who’s actually been there. it’s just a dream to me here on the wrong continent. but i read about the MELONS and i can’t escape it
Oh thank you, that is very kind. I didn’t expect to be recognized as a longtime user. I don’t post much. You can DM me for questions, if you want. Central asia does not only have melons, it also has giant lenin statues overlooking love themed (red hearts etc.) parks/wedding venues.
It’s a common feeling for a lot of us, some others wish they could have been born cis. Both are valid and have their reasons, both are beautiful. You don’t have to be or think a certain way for you to be valid. If you wanna be a girl just go be a girl, you don’t need to justify anything to anyone. If you want to explore these questions, do it for your own understanding of yourself.
I feel this super fucking hard. Wanting to feminize my body is not the same as me wanting to be a cis woman. Like, NOT AT ALL. I do not want to be cis, that is completely irrelevant to my transition process. There’s cis women that look more masculine than pre transition me (which, btw, is completely ok, no shade here), the entire idea of linking transition progress to being more cis like is transphobic, mysogynist bs. I do not even care about passing anymore, i’m fine when people can’t tell if i’m a boy or a girl, it’s actually hillarious that some of the cissies break so easily that they need to know this. That i keep transitioning further is (apart from one procedure i have deeply personal and to a straight guy forever inscrutable reasons for), more of a quality of life update at this point, because HRT is fucking magic and has done things unimaginable to me, in spite of not making me the tiniest bit more cis. If i keep getting blasted with lasers on top of that is now a question of how often i need to shave and how much concealer i need to put on, no longer one of stalling the body horror that sprouted from my upper lip. None of that has anything to do with being cis, either. I could press the button and always have been a cis woman that is able to grow a beard that connects, something which i have never been capable off in this life. That’s a thing. That’s actually something some cis women have to put up with, i have cis friends who went through as much laser hair removal as me. The button does fucking nothing but giving you menstrual cramps, uncontrolled hormone levels and the risk to get preggers when your goth GF cums inside of you. As hot as my goth gal pal is, neither of us is fit to raise a baby, i’m sorry but that’s how it is. And let’s not even begin on the binary nonsense that is “the opposite gender” that has been sneaked into the wording of the question as the rotten cherry on top. My gender is and actually always has been something like “transbian mailbomber witch”, what is the opposite to that? Jordan fucking Peterson on dubious testosterone supplements? A gay frog? A new type of male somebody on 4chan just made up? Who fucking knows?
And yes, i feel you on my past being part of who i am. Surviving when people tried to break me and shoehorn me into the boy role, finding my gender nonconforming niches to weather the storm until my egg was ready to crack, going through the questioning process and understanding gender in ways that just aren’t accessible to cis people, living my wild and wonderful and weird experiences as a nonbinary transfem lesbian are what has made me the communist monster woman i am today and i’m fucking proud of all of that. It wasn’t the happiest life, but it’s mine and if i’m being honest, it’s cool af.
The button test conflates basic comfort and survival needs like not wanting to feel dysphoria or not being exposed to transphobic hate crimes with the asinine, unattainable and actually undesirable idea of wanting to be cis. It is the pure distillate of the conditions under which gatekeepers struggle to reconcile the clinical reality of us existing and sitting in their practice with their need to keep believing in the actual existence of two neatly seperated boxes named MAN and WOMAN. Fuck. That. Noise. Gender is made up nonsense, even biological sex is just the reification of a loose cluster of optional characteristics, we are just blessed by the accident of our birth as trans people to realize that and be free to live the way we want to.
Let me tell you something: If i could choose between two buttons, one that instantly transforms my body into the likeness of Tailor Swift and one that instantly makes all transphobes shit themselves to death in agony, i’d immediately opt to live in a world with still just one Tailor Swift, but zero J.K. Rowlings.
The button test conflates basic comfort and survival needs like not wanting to feel dysphoria or not being exposed to transphobic hate crimes with the asinine, unattainable and actually undesirable idea of wanting to be cis.
Yeah, this is kickass, true, and also reveals the horror in those (CW: extreme transphobic language meant to hurt people)
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“you’ll never be cis” hate comments some people make. They’re trying to do the same thing and conflate being cis and feeling dysphoria, etc, and they are doing so specifically to threaten you with discomfort and dysphoria. Transphobes are literally physically threatening people, but because we’re so entrenched in this idea that cis is better, we don’t even notice it unless we’re both trans ourselves and have gone through all of this analysis. Sure, we can feel hurt and feel the pain of being told we’re never going to be cis, but the most malicious part of those statements takes so much digging to realize that most people probably never do
Also I’m scared??? Did my gf start using Hexbear and listen to my rants more than I thought?? Are you her account?
A lot of thos sorts if questions and stuff are a holdover from a bygone Era of 10 years ago. Jokes aside things have changed so much so fast in the last decade that a lot of the legacy trans culture feels increbly archaic and wrong. This is because for a long time, for lots of reasons, there really wasn’t a “trans community” within which to have large scale dialogs. A lot of this stuff wasn’t meant to help other trans people, it was meant to try and justify ourselves to cis people. So yeah a lot of this stuff is just weird and bad, especially laden with transmedicalism. If you want a real laugh check out this stupid shit:
https://www.transsexual.org/cogiati_english.html And this was for trans women to help trans women. Can you rotate a cube in your head comrade? Lol
Thank you. That test is absurdly funny, didn’t expect to get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.
You are at a meeting. Everyone at the meeting is the same sex as you. The leader of the meeting announces that it’s time for hugs all around! How do you feel about this?
I would hate this
You are parking your car. You must reverse into a somewhat narrow space to park. What do you do?
Is this implying that driving skills are related to gender identity?
Yeah because only male brains have spacial reasoning dontcha know! Pink lady brains can’t do hard stuff like math or imagining cubes. Like this shit was what us closeted messes were interacting with back in 1999. And I must emphasize, this was 100% serious and meant to help trans women.
The sincerety and care shows, there is probably a lot of effort put into this. I can appreciate it for that. It is still very funny though. I like the question on HRT, like at that point the case seems pretty clear, especially if one managed to clesr the barriers that probably existed in the 90s.
Wait I thought that if you could rotate the cube it meant you were trans though. I’m pretty sure us trans girls are the best mental cube rotators, that’s why they banned us from competition
god this is funny
i was a category 4 transexual, i assume because i am autistic and have a hard time remembering people and that’s feminine
