Quote from: Sno on November 27, 2018, 08:37:21 PM
It's interesting taking a little time here and there to read some of the posts that have passed by, whilst life is busy.
Our view is fairly black and white - we believe that the binary never question their gender seriously, which, yes makes the trans population quite large.
For some of us, it's a switch from one to another, to remain. For others it's a fluid journey, where we have to respond to our true selves as required. That fluidity may be slow - from one to another, and back; or it may be fast swings between them, but anyone who feels this is a welcome part of our community - even if it is protracted self exploration, they will end up with a very different perspective on the world than those who are a part of the cis community, no parts or fractions, no 'you were, but you're not now' once steps on the rainbow have been taken, you'll always be a part of it all.
Would a slow tempo fluidity be less stigmatised than the word detransition.? We don't know.
(Hugs)
Rowan
I'm not sure if I agree, unless I'm misinterpreting somehow. I don't tend to like it very much when others just promptly decide I must be trans. I've been fighting a lot reclaim my cis identity. I don't wish to argue or be feisty, I just wish to explain why I see things differently, from my detransitioning perspective.
Yes I made changes to my body and I used to identify my gender differently, but I don't think my gender has actually changed. Only my perception of it, and my feelings towards it, have changed. The cake is still a cake, no matter how much I believed it was a pie.
There are several reasons as to why I consider myself to be cis, despite my transitional gender journey... "There and back again" like Bilbo Baggins says. And I think of that line quite often, cause in many ways, transitioning to male was for me much an adventure like Bilbo's journey also was. I think a lot in metaphors, and the way I see my femaleness vs my maleness is that the former is a home for me, while the latter was a really great vacation. And after 9 years as a man... I got homesickness. I may still love my vacation spot. It's like a beautiful, peaceful lake house surrounded by a protective forest. But it's not where I live or truly feel at home. And I miss my home.
In my detransition I did figure out that me thinking of myself as male was never the true me, it was only a mask, or a shield. I was desperately trying to escape growing up to become a woman, but my subconscious fought me furiously and now that I finally listen to it and all of my conflicting and confusing feelings, no matter what they tell me: in my heart I am female and always have been. Despite my masculinity and also despite my love for maleness. It's a comfort blanket, but it's not my actual skin. This essentially means I'm dysphoric about my male traits I got from transitioning, but I still feel a certain fondness and attachment towards them. And it also means sometimes I get the vague, abstract feeling that "I feel like a man" even in my detransition, but I don't actually think I am a man. It's nostalgia.
I don't think I'm nonbinary or that my gender is fluid (although I used to think that might be a possibility, so yes I have looked into it) because I don't feel any genuine connection to any other kind of gender than female. And I feel very strongly female. My androgyny sometimes confuses my gender-feelings but at heart I know it's separate from my actual gender.
I have hated my own gender, my biological sex and being a woman so much that I suppressed it, rejected it, abused it, hid it and made every attempt I possibly could to rid myself of it. I was even at the cusp of getting irreversible ftm genital surgery. In my native language "transition" directly translates to "sex correction" and I cannot even breathe that term when talking about my own journey, cause of how much it was not a "correction" in my case but much more a destruction. Although I truly believed it was a healing move at the time. But no matter how much I hated my gender in my past, it was still my gender, all along. And it always will be. The cake was always a cake, even though I furiously hated it, beat it and screamed at it and tried desperately to make it into a pie. Now I love being a woman, but that doesn't mean I wasn't a woman when I hated being one and escaped into the disguise and self-deception of thinking of myself as a man.
I don't mean to sound bitter or accusing you of offending me, cause I'm sure that wasn't your intention and I like keeping a friendly tone. But considering my journey, I do take offense to being referred to as transgender. It does not mean I think it's somehow a bad thing to be trans, cause I don't think that. It's because it took such a long and hard time for me to finally be able to proudly say "Yes, I'm a cisgender woman and there's nothing wrong with that. I love myself for who I am and always was." I am binary, but how I relate to my transitioned body is very complicated and awfully distressing.
Essentially I'm torn between if I should reverse the changes or try to make amends with them. Cause what feeling often comes along with regret? The fear of making more regrets, no matter which way you go. I am scared to make any more permanent changes to my body due to what I personally think is dysphoria, cause I've been wrong before and it had devastating consequences. So like, me trying to reconcile and make amends with my facial hair, deep voice, etc and having decided to keep those things doesn't mean I have no issues with them. I can't connect them to my female gender, but I also don't have the heart to reverse of them, cause my heart is torn between my vacation and my home.
I don't think my past mistakes, my past self-deceit, the way my body unfortunately ended up, or my struggles with reconciling with any and all of that, should really be the deciding factor to whether I'm cis or trans. I'm a binary woman living in an afab body, which sounds "cis enough" to me. Perhaps that can be enough?
Perhaps the reason this gets to me is because most other cis people do not consider me to be "cis enough" and some trans people too. I phrase it like that cause it's the exact same thing as some trans people being told/treated as they're not "trans enough". So yeah, I am being frequently alienated and othered by essentially "my own kind" and it hurts. I think I do still have a place in the trans community, but not as a transgender person myself: I have a place in it as a transitioned cis person with lots to give, and as someone with nowhere else to go.
But also, if you'd (dare to?) take the approach that my gender was male but then changed to female, you should also probably be aware of that the reason my perspecive on my gender changed was because I healed my dysphoria (towards my female traits) with self-therapy. The way I see it is that it wasn't really gender dysphoria I had, but a form of dysmorphia that disguised itself as dysphoria, and it tricked me into thinking I should have been born male. Upon healing it, I connected to my body being female and it also made me connect to thinking of my myself as a woman, cause it healed my psychological wounds that made me want to flee from myself; as well as made me actually dysphoric (although it's fluctuating dysphoria) about the male traits I got from transitioning. But if I'd look at it from your perspective, it would look a lot like I cured my transsexualism, wouldn't it?
I'm just grinding your gears a little with that last paragraph, and I mean nothing else by it. I'm not opening that can of worms, I'm simply pointing at it, with a gentle warning to perhaps not go there, unless of course you'd actually want to. I don't think I cured my transsexualism, I think I was misdiagnosed and never had it in the first place.
You wrote:
"we believe that the binary never question their gender seriously" and I can't help but wonder why you believe that? In all honesty, why would a binary cis person have to be 100% certain of their gender to not get their cis-card revoked? Aren't we all, cis or trans, as people, just as fallible? I'm just curious.
I hope I didn't come off as very defensive, this is meant more as an explanation of my perspective than a self-defensive rant. However.