Quote from: Jonathan L on June 07, 2016, 11:56:26 PM
Mom's texts:
"I think that some of those different categories of Trans take you right back to your primary sex as male or female (I mean the one you were born with). I think that everyone is a spectrum and taking steroids to take you where you are in the first place is a waste of time and physical health. If you want to be who you are stand in the spot on your spectrum you will have more room to breathe. If you take yourself further and further into a narrow definition you may be trapped. If you take yourself through all the categories - well that sounds exhausting.
Who says testosterone will take you to a narrower definition of anything any more than the estrogen that your body is already producing does? A lot of the time cis people seem to think that we're 'neutral' or somehow blank slates pre transition - forgetting that usual puberty has already 'irreversibly' altered our bodies... As for physical health, as long as your testosterone levels are monitored properly there is no risk to your physical health.
Quote from: Jonathan L on June 07, 2016, 11:56:26 PM
What if you are a complex mix? That's okay. But altering your body is worrisome. If you want to be a boy who has the freedom to wear dresses - okay - but how is this different from wanting to be a girl and wearing pants? If it is beyond clothes then why are you busy pulling together a wardrobe of pants? If you want to be who you are and you are a boy/girl with shades of both or one more pronounced than the other - why put yourself inside of a definition? Why not be both? Why change your body when your soul is already there?
People alter their bodies all the time. Male babies are routinely circumcised in many parts of the world -- that's not easily reversed. My Dad's very into sports and 50 years of it has damaged most of his joints irreversibly. Does your mother wear earrings? I know the holes will close up eventually, but if you start to really think about pushing bits of metal through your flesh for no real reason at all it does start to seem quite an alien concept. It's always struck me as strange that it's acceptable for 12 year old girls to have their ears pierced but to many a nose or an eyebrow piercing, or a tattoo is a 'mutilation'. The truth is that people are hypocritical and mistrust things that aren't familiar just because they're unfamiliar.
I've also noticed that cis people often have trouble getting past clothes. I suppose it's the only part of other people that they really see. In normal circumstances most people can get the idea that clothes or fashion sense are a small facet of a person and don't tell you everything about them -- until it comes to trans people, and suddenly all they can think about it skirts vs trousers.
Then again she said it herself -- altering the body is 'worrisome' and difficult -- so why not use clothing (which is so easily changed back again) to experiment and express yourself while waiting on those things that we can't change on our own? It's not a complex concept.
I don't know if there's a real point in trying to explain what physical dysphoria is like because not many metaphors really do it, and the odds are you've already used the simplest terms, i don't see why a more convoluted explanation would work. The only thing you can really do is give it time, stick with your plans, and eventually people will see that it's not a whim and will get used to the idea.
Quote from: Jonathan L on June 07, 2016, 11:56:26 PM
It's not that I don't get it or need to absorb it - I get it. But what I don't get is why narrow your space? If you were feeling like you were a boy/boy then well okay. But a mix of masculine/feminine obviously you are that already. Why punctuate one over the other with steroids? Why put your body into a place where your soul as a boy/girl won't be free? How can you give up that space in the middle? That genuine place where you don't have to contradict or arrest any one aspect of you?
That's what I don't get. Relinquishing that place. It's hard won."
Again your space is already narrowed. She seems to think you're exactly 50% male and 50% female and if that's not true try explaining that.
Personally, I don't feel 100% male but that's a personal feeling, and because of what I want my body to be like and how i want to be perceived to the casual eye, I'm going for a fairly binary transition. I'm happy with male pronouns and a male name. I've not told anyone really about feeling a bit non-binary because of this exact situation. It might sound cowardly but ultimately it's not anyone else's business how i identify to myself.
I'm not planning on getting into a dress again any time soon because atm, pre-everything, if i did so i would look like and be read as a female. I would not be percieved as 90% male and 10% female or w/e I am and that's why I'm not doing it. That's why I'd take T and have top surgery first. Because as long as society perceives gender as binary the way it does we're always going to be slotted into one hole or the other and not placed inbetween, even if that's how we feel. It's pretty naive of your mother to imagine at being exactly in the middle would be easier than being weighted to one side of the binary, and so if exactly centered isn't what you want, then why struggle with that?
