VirulentAura
Yeah, that was about the extent of it. Walk to the fridge in the buff at midnight to get a drink for the wifey, or basically other “between clothes” bits. It’s not like I was flopping around 24/7. Hanging out, watching TV, playing games, eating, w/e I was clothed. I’m not a prude, but I’m not a weirdo either
Respectfully, I don’t tell you how to live your life, so please don’t tell me how to live mine. In many, many cultures, the human body isn’t immediately sexualized and nudity is common, or at least not looked at with disdain. Part of my thought process is that the human body isn’t shameful. Even in “civilized” culture, first world countries, whatever you want to call it, plenty of countries have much more lax viewpoints than puritanical America. Nude beaches for example, arent sex crazed erection centrals. People have often sexualized breasts, but there’s that whole “free the nip” and equality for walking around topless. The human body isn’t something that is inherently shameful.
Friend, I’m going to try to be gentle, and honest, and I hope you will listen with an open heart and mind.
I came out to myself, and my wife and kids about a week ago. I was born with the mind, the spirit, the personally, the essence, whatever, of a woman 37 years ago. I have been living as a man, conforming to society’s rules for 37 years. It took me four days, two hours at a time, to feel 40% of the way you do, just by waking up.
Note: I don’t know what gender you are. I don’t actually give a flying fuck. The point is, if you want to go sit in a sauna with your peers, you can. I can’t. All the normal experiences you had, weather you was born as a girl, and was annoyed that your mom made you sit still so she could fix your hair, or as a boy playing catch with your dad or working on the family car, you got that. You got to go to prom wearing what you want. Hell, you can go take a shit at the mall without people giving you dirty looks.
I can’t.
Trans people don’t want to insert themselves anywhere. Society wants to exclude them from everywhere. It may seem pointless that it’s just some beauty pageant, but imagine you have this beautiful car you built, by hand. You even had to so much custom shaping and fabrication, but goddamn is she pretty. Let’s take her to a car show, shall we? Wait… You can’t show off the car you’ve literally spent years on? After all this time, after you spent all this money, all this time, hiding away. You are scared. This isn’t a mass manufactured car, what if you get made fun of? It’s fine, it still has the shape of a car, and it’s so pretty, and you are so proud!
What… it isn’t allowed? It is a gorgeous car though… They say it isn’t actually a car, just a bunch of shit someone slapped together. You can’t just take a Ford, strip it down to it’s frame, rebuild it peice by peice, and still call it a car. You cheated, and it’s wrong. Hell, for good measure, they tell you you can’t even register to drive it. It now sits in your garage. Collecting dust.
If you don’t understand my allegory, you are you, the car is your true sense of self, your “transgenderism” if you must call it that, the car show was gonna be the pageant but I spaced out and it became representative of society as a whole for a minute…
You are absolutely right that we want to be accepted. You’re accepted. Why can’t I be like you? Why do I have to be scared my step brother is going to beat the shit out of me just because I have to take a piss? You can go to the store and just… Grab a gallon of milk without having to worry about some bigot stalking you and hurting you just because you wore yoga pants because you think you have a nice ass. I’m nervous to step into my own backyard to have a cigarette without an entire man-costume on. You can literally put on whatever the hell you want, step outside, and and shout at the top of your lungs “I’m here!” And nobody will bat an eye.
If I put on whatever I wanted, stepped outside, and met you for the first time, pleasant as can be, your preconceived notions would be that I’m some weird bundle-of-sticks-word that need to go inside and has no place in society.
TL;DR: Trans people are people too
That’s cool, except if only certain people with certain body configurations have the uncontrolled freedom to be themselves, that’s still a problem.
Or, as long as people who do not identify with the body they were given are ostricized, there are problems. As long as there are people who are groped because their body is different, lynched because their skin is different, or kept out of certain rooms just because of growths on their bodies they have no control over, there are problems.
Just because you remove a label doesn’t mean there isnt a problem any more.