Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Kia Ora,

::) Ah the internet don't you just love it...What would we do without it...Information at ones finger tips... :icon_blahblah:

::) One can read coming out 'detailed' stories online, [often resembling ones own life]...One can also self diagnoses using similar experiences online,,, One can have therapy online...Real life Experience online[I guess technical this is also happening online-people being referred to as their preferred gender, and talking about how their lives are going]...

::) About the only thing one can't do is have surgery online, but due to the drastic increase in 'rush-job' diagnoses and surgeries, I wonder with all the info exchanges online is the internet the 'catalyst' ?..

::) Is the internet spreading the GID virus, causing GID to become a worldwide pandemic ?

::) Did you catch GID from the worldwide wed ? 

::) Is it one of the main causes for the increase in 'rush-job' diagnoses and surgeries ?

::) Or have you been immunised ? [Your decision to "transition and or" have surgery, has not been influenced by 'peer-pressure' info on the web-so to speak]...

BTW I just added in the bold so 'non ops' wouldn't feel left out of the discussion....

Metta Zenda :)

The internet didn't even exist when I first acknowledged my desire to transition.

More recently, it's been other people transitioning that have awakened my sense that I can too, mostly face to face, though online too (and in films).

Nowadays, the internet is a great mutual support and information network (peppered with crapola, of course...) for trans people, and I'm very grateful for it.

lol, I didn't even have a computer, or be on the internet before I understood I didn't feel male. If anything, I think more people have found out that there are others like them and treatment is available, information may be an enabler, but certainly not a bad thing.

Um no.  When I first felt the effects of GID there was no such thing as the internet, also, being 2 years old, I didn't know how to read lol.  I used the internet when it first came into being to help convince myself I wasn't TS because I was scared to death that it might be true (mostly because it was lol.)  There was enough misinformation out there to do so, so if anything, the internet may have delayed my transition by a decade or more.  Really hard to say that for sure, but it was definitely something I read on the early internets that helped me dig my heels in.

It later worked as a good tool for support when I realized I could not go on as a male.  And now, I dunno, I don't even think about gender stuff unless I come to Susan's, and I think it's a good idea for me to stay plugged in, at least until the bickering starts poisoning me and I take a break.

I think the real answer is the information that is available now is helping a lot more people realize what's going on, so that is the one way the internet is probably facilitating there being more diagnosed cases.  I think there are a lot of outside factors behind it that aren't the internet though.

Nope, it was Donahue and Rene Richards. ;)

I took info, Old School.  A.K.A the library.  Now i use the net to research things I need/want in order to further my own journey.

I knew I had GID when I was about 4 or 5yrs old, even though I didn't know what it was, i knew I was supposed to be a girl. That was in the late 70's. My first 'coming out' was in about 1990 when I was 16, still no internet... my second attempt at rectifying my situation was in 1998, not much internet apart from dial up porn and email. The internet now is a great resource, and if there had been this much info around then, maybe I wouldn't be transitioning at 37 but would already be 15 yrs post op. But hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Before I could come out to myself about what I'd been experiencing my entire life, I thought that everyone in the entire world had the same thoughts I had about wanting to be the opposite of their birth sex.  Transsexuals were simply people who, because of mental illness, took action upon the thoughts that the rest of the world kept repressed.  But over the years, I caught glimpses of things that baffled me:

John Bobbitt actually wanted his penis put back on?!  Was he crazy?  He was halfway there!

Gardening or explosive accidents resulting in severed members, resulting in depression?  Are they nuts?  I'd be ecstatic!

And on and on and on.  Though I never actually tried to cut off what I was born with, I used to tie rubber bands around it so that the blood flow would be cut off and maybe a doctor would have to amputate.  My child brain thought I could fool a doc into thinking it happened naturally.  I'd get what I wanted, and I wouldn't be one of those people on the television.

You know what I got from the internet?  I learned that the natural state of things is to be content with one's birth sex!  Sure didn't match my lifelong experience.  And then I stumbled upon a YouTube video of a woman who had undergone transition and my mind was officially blown away.  It was like she'd lived in my head, walked in my shoes, and knew all my thoughts.  So I checked out more videos.  The only conclusion I could come to was that I was one of them, not because I was hooked by some propaganda, but because I finally understood what transsexualism was by seeing the human side of the condition as opposed the ACTUAL propaganda I saw growing up.  Early '90s cable TV impressed upon my prepubescent mind the notion that I would do everything not to become the girl I felt I was inside, the girl I'd called Zoë since the age of 7.

The internet empowered me to do what I wanted to for as long as I can remember: turning my internal reality into my external reality.  I respond best to emotions and eloquent speech.  If it weren't for the the internet and the videos I saw, I may never have learned the truth about transsexualism and I'd have lived a short miserable life as a result.

Quote from: Zoë Natasha on September 11, 2011, 05:29:26 PM
I thought that everyone in the entire world had the same thoughts I had about wanting to be the opposite of their birth sex.  Transsexuals were simply people who, because of mental illness, took action upon the thoughts that the rest of the world kept repressed. 

Wow that's almost exactly how I thought when I was little. I used to imagine it was like everyone flipped a coin when they were born and those that guessed right got to be girls and those that guessed wrong were stuck being boys. Sort of like how someone has to take the black pieces in chess - it sucks, but you have to do it. I was totally shocked when I discovered that other boys actually LIKED being boys.

I didn't live under the illusion quite as long as you did. But then most of my friends were boys, and the differences became rather obvious when we all hit puberty.

Kia Ora

::) I guess for some of the young ones [and I'm guessing old ones too], if they happen to live out in the wild, isolated from the real world 'big towns or cities', the invent of the net could be seen as a blessing..."Hey there's folks like me out there !"...So yes, there's no denying the fact  the net has been a valuable tool for some GID sufferers...

::) I, like others here too no doubt, transitioned long before having access to the net. I was introduced to it's power[emailing researching non trans topics of interest] shortly before having my surgery in 2005, by this time I was already around four and half years living full-time...I didn't actually connect with any trans-group online till 2007 and now use it to stay in touch with what's going on with the worldwide "Trans-Community"...

However the question remains, would you[the internet user] say it has also contributed to the influx of GID cases now being diagnosed ?

Mental health professionals being confronted with more and more copy cat cases of patients with the same[almost identical] GID experience...

Coincidence or what ?

Metta Zenda :)

Sorry but not; it is a mutation that runs in my family. I have MTF uncle, and 2 gay cusins. My children are unaffected.

Jen61

Wow, 2 very similar stories to mine...  I didn't know how I felt until I was about 11.  At least, I didn't consciously realize the reason I felt the way I did.  From some of my earliest memories I have always hated the thing between my legs.  I tried to hide it because I was embarrassed to have it.  Still am, to be quite honest.  In elementary school I never wanted to play with the competitive boys, but didn't mind playing fun things with the others.  I couldn't understand the obsession with football and baseball at all, so I got into soccer so I wouldn't have to use my arms.  I also prided myself on trying to be as flexible as the girls at recess and played hopscotch and jump rope.  On a conscious level I knew I was a boy, but on a subconscious level something wasn't clicking.

My first realization came at a friend's house watching Ranma 1/2.  Before this, I had always assumed boys just pretended to like being boys.  But Ranma wanted to change back to a boy every time he was turned into a girl.  So I started actually paying attention to those around me and it became obvious that other boys did indeed like being boys.  Why it took me until I was 11 to realize this, I have no idea.  But at this point I didn't know it was possible to do anything about it.  My parents were pretty much nazis regarding anything to do with sex, and I didn't even know girls had different parts until I was maybe 8.  (On a related note, I didn't know what masturbation was until I was 19.  Yeah, I was sheltered)  I eventually was able to use the internet to figure out what I thought I was - a crossdresser.  But none of them wanted to be a girl, so I kept searching and years later found the website of a girl around 18 years old that was on hormones.  I finally found the word for what I was.  I didn't read about Richards and Jorgensen until I was in college, where I was finally free to do research away from my parents' prying eyes.

The internet didn't convert me, it just helped me find what I'd be looking for my whole life.  Without it, who knows where I'd be right now?  Probably dead.

You know what I got from the internet?  I learned that the natural state of things is to be content with one's birth sex!  Sure didn't match my lifelong experience.


Ditto

Of course I got GID from the internet. I read all the awesome things that trans people get to do and go through, and how great their lives are just by being trans. Being trans is like the funnest coolest thing evar.

Lol

I'm sure GID is more frequently diagnosed due to internet info.

Me, I started getting completely stressed around 1996,but had no Internet connection.

I had dysphoria long before I was using the internet.

However, I have complete confidence that it is possible to infect someone with GID via a forum member's Custom Status.

Oh noes, I think I've been infected by your signature!  Mmm cake...

So, I think the internet of the 90s had a lot of misinformation and bad examples that may have discouraged transition more that it encouraged.  The internet of today probably helps people that should be diagnosed get diagnosed and treated, making it part of the reason for more diagnoses.

I really wish all the YouTube channels that exist today were there when I was younger.

I got it from a dirty toilet seat...

-Sandy

When I was growing up, the other kids always said if you touched a girl, you would get her kooties. Guess that's what happened to me. But that was more than ten years before DARPAnet came into existence.

More cases of GID I would say probably have to do with better accesses to information and differing attitudes about Gender and Sexuality in general. Like it or not, the Trans Community is linked the the LGB one, and if you look at workplaces and state nondiscrimination policy you will see that in the last 15 years massive strides have been made in protections for LGBT people in America. Since the United States seems to make up the bulk of the internet I think this has also been a change clearly shown in the web as well.

There were probably always this many people with GID or for that matter other LGB people, now there are many more people who would admit to being part of the LGBT community, but that is like I said probably a shift in culture, rather than people looking online and being copycats to try to solve a problem they never had. Trans people, have always existed, but many of them just thought they were "normal" or that they were the only ones that felt this way.

I guess it is just hard for me to see someone "catching" GID from anywhere, no more than I would "Catch" wanting to sleep with men from hanging out with people who do. Do people get confused? Sure, but that is what the Standards of Care are for, I am sure that if someone doesn't really have the desire to live as a different gender that only a very small percent would get past the point of RLE and have surgery.

In ~ 1954! I wanted to be rid of my 'extra' , be girl! No web then, no information, no doctor knew a thing, no nothing!
Just shut up your face don't act like a lunatic --- yep, lots of that there was then.

The web did help, MUCH later though, to figure out what on earth was going on with me, feeling like a girl inside.

Still LOTS of non-information on our GID subject. Not one councillor, therapist, awareness group trainer knew --- at least didn't want to know.
It was all just too much, too off-the-wall, even for mainstream psychologists, at least in SA, and also in Munich Germany in the 90s still!
If you found one that WOULD listen, you could look forward to be getting electro-shock therapy – get welcomed to the cuckoo's nest. Fancy that?
Better to shut up and keep pushing it down.

It was an UNSPEAKABLE, THE unspeakable, thing. You just push it right back down, cram the lid back on. Be a man, if you can't take it – put a bullet through your head. That was the solution – with VERY few exception.

Male-lesbian as I felt, when mentioning it to ANYONE, they think you plumb crazy.

Yes, in the end the web helped to understand what the heck was going on inside me.
THAT I WAS NOT CRAZY, that there actually was a thing like GID.

Even today, only ONE psychiatrist is "qualified" to deal with this issue in SA, as a "gatekeeper"! Old style. Maybe because he is gay? Yet, as a gay male to get into our MtF heads is on another page. He actually can't and is not interested either. Just ticking off boxes.
I suffered this individual for 1 year. So, the web also became my support group. There is NONE in the whole (SA) Gauteng province!!!
By that token we still live in the dark ages as to what GID is concerned, at least in SA.

My 2 cents, eh
Axelle

Let's see...well it started when I was in preschool, around 5 or so, when I wondered to myself, "What would happen if I went to preschool as a girl?" The thought ended up becoming more and more appealing, and I even asked my sister if I could go to preschool as a girl. She said something along the lines of, "Nobody would know who you are, though," which was a good enough answer for my 5 year old brain at the time.

Later, I was watching a rather distasteful contest on TV with my sister where I first found out that a man actually could become a woman. It was a show where they took a bunch of cis-women and trans-women and judges had to guess which was which. I look at the idea of that as idiotic and discriminatory now, but it planted a seed in my head that continued to grow over time. Or maybe the seed was already there and that was the fertilizer. Hmm...

Now the internet comes in. A few years after I finally started using the internet on a regular basis (I was probably 9 or 10 at this point), and on a whim I decided to look up a term I thought I had made up: Sex Change. It turned out that I hadn't made up that term whatsoever. Instead, I found hundreds of articles about men who had become women and women who had become men. Not all of them were necessarily good, mind you, but I finally was starting to learn that I kind of wanted that to happen to me. Over the years I would keep coming back to the web whenever I had a big "I want to be a girl" phase, and the urge eventually got larger because I kept learning and learning and learning everything I could about transition, about the different types of people that felt the same way I did, and about how I felt.

I'd say I didn't "catch" this problem from the internet, but it definitely showed me that something could be done about the way I feel, and that if I really wanted to I could successfully live as a woman. It also allowed me to go through the many stages leading up to acceptance a lot faster than I would have otherwise. While I do not doubt that some people use the internet to lull themselves into the thought that they are transgendered when they really are not, I also believe that the number of those people is relatively small. I believe the internet can serve as a learning source for people who feel "different" to find out that they may not be so different after all, that they are not freaks, and that something can be done about the way they feel. On the other hand, I did fall into some seedy sites when I was younger that I wish I had never seen, so it's not like the internet is all good for this sort of thing...

Kia Ora folks,

::) Because of some of the comments so far I just thought a poll would be of interest...

Thanks for your participation so far

Metta Zenda :)

I think the internet speeds the process up for a lot of people. When I believed myself to be TS, it certainly accerlarated my ideas, added pressure to them and made me very unhappy with myself, but it was also the internet that led me to the concept of androgyne.

Haha, my story is pretty funny.

I've always LONGED to be in possession of a male body. Most recently, when I saw the character Mystyqe transform into a man at will, I was envious. I've always wanted a super power that would turn me into a man.

...I actually wasn't aware of surgeries that were available for people like me back then. I always thought it impossible to become a man physically.

Then I found the Internet (as in, I actually researched instead of waste my time on games). It told me that sex-reassignment was possible! You should've seen my face. So here I am, making friends with people who understand how I felt. (envy, dysphoria, and other terrible feelings)

...boy, I sure felt stupid for not knowing.

I had no idea transitioning was possible until I stumbled across some Youtube videos about 2 years ago.  Without the internet, and happening upon those videos, there's a good chance I still wouldn't know today.  I was looking for answers, I just didn't know the right questions to ask.  (I Googled things like "I hate being a girl," "I want to be a boy," "I want a mastectomy and a hysterectomy," etc., but I didn't find what I was looking for.)  So I voted yes, "very helpful."

I found the internet to be a good source of info as long as I made sure it was correct by multiple checks.  Up until recently I was living in a rural area with limited direct contact with GLBTI people, so it has helped get over any isolation.
And it let me find you all. Thanks.

Karen.

QuoteIn ~ 1954! I wanted to be rid of my 'extra' , be girl! No web then, no information, no doctor knew a thing, no nothing!
Just shut up your face don't act like a lunatic --- yep, lots of that there was then.

The web did help, MUCH later though, to figure out what on earth was going on with me, feeling like a girl inside.

Still LOTS of non-information on our GID subject. Not one councillor, therapist, awareness group trainer knew --- at least didn't want to know.
It was all just too much, too off-the-wall, even for mainstream psychologists, at least in SA, and also in Munich Germany in the 90s still!
If you found one that WOULD listen, you could look forward to be getting electro-shock therapy – get welcomed to the cuckoo's nest. Fancy that?
Better to shut up and keep pushing it down.

It was an UNSPEAKABLE, THE unspeakable, thing. You just push it right back down, cram the lid back on. Be a man, if you can't take it – put a bullet through your head. That was the solution – with VERY few exception.

I very much relate to this, but my story took place in America a few years later.
I really wish the competitive folks who like to number their transness and judge those who get here later could grasp that reality.
We are some tough old farts.  ;)

QuoteI've always LONGED to be in possession of a male body.  ...I actually wasn't aware of surgeries that were available for people like me back then. I always thought it impossible to become a man physically.

Then I found the Internet...boy, I sure felt stupid for not knowing.

And that pretty much sums up the rest of it for me, too.

The internet for me sped up the desire to transition once I found out that many others did it.  Growing up when I expressed similar feelings the response from family would be "you just need prayer" and I believed them and just did nothing about my feelings but now that I have access to the internet to see that this is not just all inside me head the respones will still be "you just need prayer" but at least I know that this is a documented condition.  Thanks internet!

Put me under the group who knew since they were young (age 6 for me), but didn't know there was anything to be done about it. Personally, I did the "just get over yourself and deal with it, you're a weirdo so you should keep it all hidden" thing. Then one night after a semester where my depression really hit bad, I remembered that I was always sad as a child because I didn't like who I was at some very core level (ie, that I was born male). Searched for transgendered people/transsexuals on YouTube and Voila! I had a big list of people's transition stories that mirrored mine exactly... to a T ;)

It didn't help me diagnose, I was already past that, however it did save my life in getting me to believe it was true and providing a structure for me to handle it and move towards transition. (Whoah! Run on sentence... Sorry, my brain is fried from writing all day... lol)

  It was the mid 60's when I saw Christine Jorgenson in a local interview on TV.  I caught it later in the library.  No WWW back then.
  Joelene