i thought it would be nice if we shared some general expiriences. i list some of my learnings below. feel free to add! :))
note that i was a part of my local queer spaces for longer already, so my thoutghts on networks might seem obvious to you. but since i gad my inner coming out my love for my communities has only intensified.
local networks are key
there are a lot of good reasons to seek out for other queer people in your area (be it a queer party or a self help group). the obvious downside is that you need to trust those people. especially in harsher political/societal environments it might be a hard decision, who to trust. my pros:
- you will find people who live in the same city/region and who can give you important advice.
- you can exchange contacts of doctors/practioners and learn who to avoid.
- you will find yourself in a (more) accepting space, where people will sit next to you while you vent your frustration and share your joy.
- you will find radical friends. solidarity is strong. queer groups tend to make happen a lot of crazy stuff for their members. you will be adopted by them.
being out might not just help you
this is anecdotal but i have helped some people navigating early transition, which i could not have done in the same way, if i hadn’t been out to my friends and haven’t had the confidence to (quasi) publicly share my expiriences. similarly i know a person who is very stealth (transitioned as teen, moved …), and is only out to a few close friends. she is scared of the political climate and with this very alone. when i came out to her, we talked a while and i promised to be a proxy for her to our local groups, if she doesn’t want to out herself but needs help.
don’t get too excited – but celebrate steps!
i’d advice general scepticism. your hormones might get lost in the mail, your surgery postponed. or some other shit doesn’t go as planned. there is a lot of potential to get your hopes crushed. believe it when you have it.
frustration will build up. so celebrate any little step you achieved.
being yourself is so much easier than pretending
first i was afraid, (i was petrified), it would be hard to play a new role, that i needed to put in hard work to convince people i was a woman. in the end i am still myself but i don’t police myself as much anymore. sure i have done a lot more shopping lately, but that was fun, not a chore. i wear what i deem fitting. in short, i stopped worrying, if i was presenting too fem and just started to go for it. and that’s so much easier.
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so, first of all, yes - I completely affirm your point about how crucial trans community is (and I mean trans, i.e. other people who are in transition or planning to transition)
and though I’m stealth with most people where I live, I still connected with trans folks and made connections to the local trans community so I have that - I’m only out to other trans people, basically
transitioning has taught me so much:
- that biological sex really is plastic, not fixed, and that trans women are not just women but also biologically female (I really didn’t think this was true, and it took me a long time to accept or see this as true - it was ultimately debates about what to tell hospital staff and digging into the scientific literature that made me realize my body is really female in most relevant ways now)
- I used to think that gender was pretty much just social and arbitrary (and that we should basically be hostile to gender and try to abolish gender, similar to race), but now I know that gender identity is fixed and biological - hence conversion therapy is not effective, you can’t socially influence someone to become trans or to make someone not trans
- I learned that people care way less about being visibly trans than I thought - it’s really a small minority of people who bothered me, for the most part I was shocked by the indifference and tolerance the average person projected; when I was “a man in a dress” - most people didn’t bother me or threaten me, etc. - my fear was way overblown, and the risks were much less than I expected
- it was also shocking to learn what counts as passing to other people (both in terms of looks and voice), I was shocked by how genuinely clueless cis people are (esp. for how confident they are with their “we can always tell” mindset); it’s especially ironic because of how easily other trans people can spot one another while cis people remain clueless … this was all unexpected - I thought I would just forever be too “trans-looking” to ever pass
- how transphobic the trans community is - we have all internalized transphobia, and because I’m passing now, the most invalidating experiences I have now are with other trans people; I didn’t really expect to experience dehumanizing / degendering and invalidation in trans communities, and I didn’t expect to find the most validation and affirmation of my gender from mainstream cis society (through passing, ofc)
- getting a passing voice was both harder and easier than I thought: Zheanna Erose’s timeline made me think it would take 5+ years of intense training I would never be able to do as well as her, etc. and that a passing voice was many years away - but I had a passing voice within 8 months, and habituated it enough to no longer need daily practice or weekly speech language pathologist sessions after 12 months.
- that passing is far more common and easier in general than I expected - I thought probably most people my age would never pass, and I was just wrong - probably most of us pass eventually; I know women much older than me who transitioned later and who still pass; I signed up for transition under the assumption I would forever be visibly trans, and did not at all plan for success
I signed up for transition under the assumption I would forever be visibly trans, and did not at all plan for success
TIL there might be hope, actually.
regarding trans people clocking trans ppl: a few month ago i got asked (unprovoked) by a person if i thought their boyfriend was cis. and while that’s a weird way to out your boyfriend, i realised that i just took him by his appearence, and didn’t have a second thought. i am not that naïve anymore and it’s sad. i learned a bad thing there and i catch myself sometimes trying to clock trans persons. i hate that …
It’s not a bad thing. I absolutely want trans people to see me and clock me.
The bad thing is outing another trans person before you know how they feel about it. Simply seeing and recognising another trans person isn’t bad in the slightest.
yes, I find myself sometimes “transvestigating” cis people even; that could have been another item for the above list of things I learned: cis people are far more gender-diverse than I ever realized! But honestly I don’t beat myself up about it, I think my brain is just wired to do this because it’s a survival strategy - my need to pass leads to heightened sensitivity about those factors that might cause me to not pass, and living under so much pressure to pass led me to really notice fine details most people don’t notice and gloss over.
I refuse to feel bad about this, it’s more like something that happens to me because of my environment than some kind of willful choice I made. Obviously it would be weird to get obsessive about someone or to take it too far, I just mean I don’t feel bad for my brain “seeing” gender in a way I can’t unsee now, and in a way that picks everything apart and is constantly scanning for signs of “transness”.
Even when someone visually passes, it’s usually the voice gives it away (particularly with transfems); even when a voice is good it’s still usually clocky to me. The only trans people who I can’t clock are usually trans men. (Though that’s not universal either - there is a characteristic “gnomish” overfull voice that trans men often have where their vocal tract just sounds too small for what you would expect - so trans men can absolutely have clockable voices, it’s just not as common ime.)
That no matter how much of an ally you try to be to women, you can never really understand the shit they’re going through unless you’re one yourself. Misogyny is EVERYWHERE. It’s fucking crazy. It radiates from interactions with people, it’s dripping from the ceiling, it’s crawling at you from the roots at your feet. It is incomprehensibly everywhere.
yes, this was my experience too - I was a very passionate feminist before I transitioned and I thought I understood how women experienced the world, but until I was a woman and felt the extreme vulnerability myself, I really didn’t understand how the threat of violence (and sexual violence particularly) ends up influencing your experience of everything.
I also really didn’t understand that women really are still second-class citizens, people really won’t take you seriously about anything if you’re a woman. Doctors won’t listen to you, people don’t expect you to be anything serious or of note. It’s like being a child again, where all the men get to be adults with the rights enjoyed by citizens, etc. - but you’ll always be something less than a citizen, something less than an adult.
It’s really frustrating, tbh. I knew I was passing when people started treating me like I was much younger than I am, that’s what it was like to be seen as a woman.
So, it makes a lot of sense to me now why women so often try to project themselves as men to be taken seriously - adopting their clothes, their aggression, their deeper voices, etc. - masculinity becomes a model by which women can work towards autonomy and respect. Wearing a skirt becomes a choice to debase yourself in a patriarchal society that sees women who wear skirts as less serious.
everything is overgendered
same :(
At least english doesn’t assign feminine or masculine to every fucking word like french! But, yeah, shit that has no business being aligned to a gender being gendered is out of hand.
worse! russian
I learned what it is to truly be an enemy of the state while existing peacefully.
I am not as introverted as I thought, I just hated existence before transitioning.
YES! this happened to me too, now I go out and have social plans, I go dancing at the club, etc.
family who knew me pre-transition still struggle when they hear that I went dancing, etc. - it’s hard for them to imagine
I was the grumpiest person on earth before I transitioned, and now I’m just happy and carefree.
@phr @Duke_Nukem_1990 Fucking mood. Don’t get me wrong: I still enjoy my alone time. But I also enjoy being around people who I like, whereas before it was more of a challenge to even meet someone without it feeling like a burden.
first i was afraid, (i was petrified)
Kept thinking I could never live as who I was inside
But then I spent so many nights afraid of doing something wrong
And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along
And now I’m out, on HRT,
A skater skirt and painted nails and socks pulled up above the knee
I should have thought about the clock, ticking on through puberty,
If I’d have known for just one second I could be the real me… sorry, don’t know what came over me …
Wdym, that’s amazing! 😭🥰
