Alright, so I'm pretty sure my brother thinks I'm full of crap when it comes to me being transgender. I came out to him at a not so great time and it's still semi-unresolved. And I'm sure my parents also think that as well,so I need help on how to explain it to them differently?
I basically told me that my body feels wrong, it has for forever, that kind of thing, and that while I knew I was a girl as a kid, I never hung out with the girls, and that I think that I'd do better socializing with boys now. In summary, that I'd be happier as a male, and that I feel like one.
Is this a good way to go about it, or is there another way to explain it to someone who doesn't know what it's like? Cause I'm not really the best at explaining some of the more abstract thoughts I have to other people...
I think that's the best way to put it really, short and sweet. I do find it helps a lot to tell them that you're still the same person, you're not trying to change who you are, you're just changing your body to match how you've always felt.
I've heard it described as "your outside doesn't match your inside"...dunno if that helps.
I suppose being short and straight is the best way.* ;) And make that person feel that asking is possible and is definitely a good thing - and holding something back is silly, he/she may ask you anything if necessary.
But it depends how old is the "insider" and is she/he totally new to the topic or have some strong ideas about the whole stuff. :)
(For instance I didn't come out to my sister yet but because she saw a drag queen couple of years ago and sometimes on TV she finds "men in women's clothes". She doesn't have prejudices or bad words for this - however my mother would have some.)
Like you said... (I tried to explain like this, to my 15-years-old sister and she got it. We were talking about a not-really-passed** MTF girl she saw on the bus. :) )
~ There is a nude body. It's male or female. And there is a brain that contains your emotions, self-image and how see the world. It's male or female. And mostly male body is together a male brain and female body is together with female brain. But sometimes they are not the same, and then the individual feels bad. Becuase the brain can't have the body that it can control. So there are TS people who may want to change their body to fit on well with their brain. And after all - when they can wear clothes, have the body their brains wanted - they live happily. Because it's really painful for the brain to live forever in a wrong body. ~
IDK, maybe for a grown-up it's easier to tell. But the frame, what you wanna say, is exactly the same. You just change the "toddler-words" a bit. :)
*I admit it can be real hard. (I hope it'll work when I date someone or whatever... between friends it's better. :) Anyway, after one or two coming out's it gets better and even better to come out again, explaining being TG.
** this sounds badly, sorry. No offense, to anyone. ???
I like to tell people, "I'm a guy. It's just my body developed wrong in the womb and now is a girl's body instead. So I'm a guy with a girl's body."
Sometimes with friends I add, "Can you imagine if that happened to you? It sucks." In my experience, people seem to be pretty empathetic when I say it like that.
Also, this is a good idea. It worked really with coming out to my sister.
Quote from: Logan Erik on December 29, 2011, 09:04:33 PMYou could have them watch a trans video with you (if they would do that), one of those floating around that interviews trans folks and talks about what it is and how it's like. It might help them with the idea that this is not your half-baked idea, that it's a real thing that really happens just like this. They might see parallels between the interviewees and you.
I've had people who were kinda like uh huh okay, sure, I respect that, and who then continued to not use the right pronouns, and to get annoyed with me for inconveniencing them in one way or another with my gender. The thing that seemed to bring them around best, as far as I could tell, was how little attention I paid to them because I was quietly putting myself through hell with binding, haircuts, trying to hide my tampons, trying to find male shoes that fit, etc.
More than once I had someone kind of carefully and astonishedly say something along the lines of "you really mean this, don't you?," and then any further questions are straight up. They start wanting to know what it's like, and they point out to me how horrible it must be (which lol I just respond in my head, shut up shut up shut up), and they start to really get it.
This is just my experience.
Just say you can't explain it.
Like why gay boys don't marry girls.
Quote from: JohnAlex on December 30, 2011, 12:18:37 AM
I like to tell people, "I'm a guy. It's just my body developed wrong in the womb and now is a girl's body instead. So I'm a guy with a girl's body."
Sometimes with friends I add, "Can you imagine if that happened to you? It sucks." In my experience, people seem to be pretty empathetic when I say it like that.
Also, this is a good idea. It worked really with coming out to my sister.
sounds like a really good idea actually :P
-takes into consideration xD-
I have tried explaining that the area of the brain that determines gender identity is constructed differently in men and women, and doesn't run at all well on the hormones of the opposite sex. Sometimes that area of the brain develops on the wrong track in the womb, and you end up trying to run it on the wrong operating system. Like a computer it will keep crashing until you upgrade it and change the OS. After that it runs fine.
In my personal experience I tried to relate it to something.
I call it forcing a puzzle piece of space into a puzzle that resembles the beach. If you have a 100 piece puzzle that is supposed to represent the beach but one of the pieces is actually a piece of a space puzzle and you force that space piece into the beach puzzle the whole thing will eventually split and everything around changes because of that one piece and thats how I explain it. Since the mind is diffrent from the body your whole life changes and is revolved around that.
I usually tell people I have male brain chemistry, but the body of a female. I talk about how a baby progresses in the womb from female to male, and that my mind kept changing but my body was left behind. It's a very simplified version of the truth, but most people understand it a lot better than anything else I could tell them.
I will often explain about how I always felt like it was someone else in the mirror until I starting trying to look different.
Also I find most people are thoughtful if you ask them how they would feel if every day they had to deal with people using the wrong pronouns for them. And it wasn't out of malice, or anything, just that they had to move through the world with every single person relating to them as if they were someone else. And how jarring and horrible that is.
Well, for me, explaining trans wasn't easy. Especially because my father for one has always been pretty Republican. I grew up with him telling me that gays and the like belong in the closet and should never come out for the good of everyone around them. Seriously, I was like eight and he was telling me this kind of stuff. But that's beside the point. Anyway, when it came to me telling him, I just told him that I was a man and that I intended on getting a sex-change one way or another. He already knew what trans was, because of the Chaz Bono stuff all over the TV, thank goodness for that.
But even now that I've been out and openly transitioning for over eight months now, I still get asked, "Wait...what's trans? Does that mean that you have both parts?" Seriously, I get that question a lot, and after I laugh my ass off, I simply reply, "No. What I mean is that I was born into the wrong skin, and since I was, I'm fixing it so that my skin matches the rest of me," I don't know if that kind of description would help you though.
Honestly, I think the description depends on the kind of person. You could have twenty people, explain to all of them at the same time, and have two thirds of them staring at you like, "Was that in English?" Think about the way that different people learn. I don't mean, draw a picture, but say...maybe the people you're dealing with are more logical and statistical, you could talk about it from a biological standpoint. Whereas more creative or non-linear people might connect better if you give them examples of your feelings and the way that it makes you feel to be perceived as a man. I don't know if any of this helps or if I'm just over-analyzing, but regardless, good luck!
Personally, I use a medical matter-of-fact sort of approach, which works well for me.
I start out explaining how the brain has an internal map of your body that it knows what you have and how to control it (this is why people who lose a limb often get that phantom limb feeling), and how my brain literally has a male body map.
If they want to know anything more, I go on to explain how transsexualism is an intersex birth condition, and that 'transition' is simply correcting this so I can live my life normally.
This got me thinking about how I actually explain it to people when they ask 'what's trans?' without wanting my whole lecture on sex and gender. I remember at one point I just said to my boss point blank "I'm getting a sex change. I've legally changed my name from X to Y." Lol. And you know, it was honestly the best thing - he had a great response and asked me what, if anything, I would need from him.
As a cisgender who is passionate about transgender issues, I have actually gotten a few people to completely change their mind and lose their judgements based on the following example.
Say you had a hermaphrodite baby that was born with both a vagina and a penis and so in the hospital you as the parent made the decision to choose the baby to be a boy or a girl. So you had a surgery and elected to raise the baby as a girl. You also gave the child mild hormones that you expected to escalate when the child hit their teens. After a few years your daughter started telling you "Mommy (or Daddy) I know I'm a boy.....I feel like a boy" what would you do?
How would you feel? Would you feel like "Oh my god I made a huge mistake!" or would you feel that the child was wrong and insist on raising the child as a girl.
Most people will freak out at the idea that you had both genitals and elected to remove the "wrong one" and it seriously does get a cisgendered person to understand how drastic of an "off" it is, when the outside doesn't match the inside.
That's been one of my most successful examples. Most people I talk to will then say that it makes sense to stop the hormones and switch to the opposite gender to correct the mistake.
It's important to show the many different examples of ways the body comes out different or wrong rather than diving into solely transgender issues. That makes people realize that it's not so cut and dry when it comes to body matching the mind.
AIS is also a good example.
"Women With Male DNA" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETIxoQGVjos#)
I once watched a small child and an adult argue in front of me whether I was a he or a she. The little boy kept refusing the lady's correction, and kept insisting that he wanted to know HIS name (while pointing at me) not her name. The woman seemed so nervous and apologetic and tried finally convince the boy by appealing to my daughter ("isn't this your mom?"). My daughter stood silent. I decided to answer the boy, since it was his question anyway. I knelt down and told him that yes I am Leah's mom, but I'm a boy and my name is Felix.
The kid wasn't surprised or confused, and he didn't even play I Told You So with the lady. He just said "Hi Felix, look at this!" and showed me a drawing he'd just done.
I wish I could get that kid to explain things for me.
Quote from: mixie on January 02, 2012, 07:07:08 PM
Say you had a hermaphrodite baby that was born with both a vagina and a penis and so in the hospital you as the parent made the decision to choose the baby to be a boy or a girl. So you had a surgery and elected to raise the baby as a girl. You also gave the child mild hormones that you expected to escalate when the child hit their teens. After a few years your daughter started telling you "Mommy (or Daddy) I know I'm a boy.....I feel like a boy" what would you do?
No.
Hermaphodite is not an appropriate term for people, it's a word surrounded with stigma and usually is a source of ridicule. No intersex people are born with both a vagina and penis, that is just not how intersex conditions work and no one should perpetuate that myth.
Quote from: Andy8715 on January 03, 2012, 01:24:51 AM
No.
Hermaphodite is not an appropriate term for people, it's a word surrounded with stigma and usually is a source of ridicule. No intersex people are born with both a vagina and penis, that is just not how intersex conditions work and no one should perpetuate that myth.
I know. The point of the story is not to discuss hermaphrodite issues. It's to create a situation that would explain the sort of situation that occurs, the moment of choice. Generally this argument has been successful for me when discussing the idea of giving hormone blockers to young children. Some people are morally opposed to that.
So the example gives them a situation where the question was simply "I made a mistake, the child identifies their gender in a way that doesn't match the outside, what should I do."
I would then go on to explain that the mistake really is the "assignment at birth" not necessarily anything to do with the child or the physical appearance of the body.
This is also a helpful allegory because many people consider SRS a genital mutilation. IOW the body is perfectly healthy there is no reason to change it. So it's necessary to create a situation where you would have to do a SRS.
I suppose then, if you don't understand how I'm using the allegory, it would be better to avoid it completely.
But not every trans person has SRS or even feels it necessary for them. It's not helpful to make cis people, who don't have experience with the trans community, think that it is. I think there are better ways to explain it to a cis person than the method you are using.
I didn't say it was the only way to do it. Do you want me to just repeat what others said in the thread? Of course there are other ways. I posted my experience of what worked.
I went through two different debates on two different websites with a group of "lurkers" and a group of "fundy judgers" and this is the thing I posted that caused several people to change their previously bigoted stance to one of acceptance. This was after 15 odd pages of explaining it the right way.
So I shared it. If you don't agree why don't you suggest your own way of doing it instead of obsessing on what I do?
Also the reason this way was successful was because it distinguished between sexuality and gender which is always confusing. Many people think that transgender people are doing this as a choice or a whim, they don't understand it.
By making it a medical issue in the way I did they realize in that scenario that there is no CHOICE for the child. Someone made a mistake. This is the thing that makes them see it differently IMO.
Good thread. Lots of great suggestions so far, I'm interested to see more. I've been wondering this as I stem out to try to explain to more people who don't know me as well.
mixie, thank you for sharing your method. I agree that it seems to me a lot of people DO see it as a choice or a whim, as you said. As my mother keeps telling me, "You've had a very long time to think about this, just give them some time." It's true, this is something that we think about for most of our lives, depending on individual experience of course, and is most certainly not something that one just wakes up and says "I think I'll go get SRS on the way to work today!" It seems like describing it in a way that others can visualize with the hypothetical "both parts" metaphor would help them relate a bit more emotionally. I might try that if the situation arises. Good video, as well.
Also, Felix's story made me grin. Aren't children just lovely! :angel:
The key to that example is to get the other person to realize that Gender is assigned at birth based on what the physical body looks like. Gender is simply assigned based on the body.
By using the example it creates a paradigm where the parent or other cisgender realizes that this assignment is based on the opinion of people simply looking at a baby.
By having the "choice" be made by the parents and doctors it raises a sense of fear in the decision. Did we make the right decision? In every transgender case the answer is NO.
It's hard to get that across to people and using the hermaphrodite baby story emphasizes that issue.
The point is not to describe what it means to be transgender but to explain to people why a transgender would be in a position where the outside doesn't match the inside.
Additionally it's important to keep it medical not mental. The way people turn it into a psychological issue is based on the history of nature versus nurture and the damage done by John Money.
Showing videos of David Reimer is also helpful. My husband is a big burly Greek man who is absolutely horrified at the pain that transgenders go through. He made a good point. He said most of the women and men he's looked at on this site would pass 100 percent because of the hormones and the youth of the person when they started the transition.
This is why it is so important to honor the decision as soon as possible. So your mother should consider the life struggles you will face the longer you wait.
There are many glitches in how babies are born with genital issues, like micro penis, women who are born with two vaginas and other such things. The AIS woman really made it clear to him.
Good luck!
Quote from: mixie on January 03, 2012, 10:27:23 AM
The key to that example is to get the other person to realize that Gender is assigned at birth based on what the physical body looks like. Gender is simply assigned based on the body.
By using the example it creates a paradigm where the parent or other cisgender realizes that this assignment is based on the opinion of people simply looking at a baby.
By having the "choice" be made by the parents and doctors it raises a sense of fear in the decision. Did we make the right decision? In every transgender case the answer is NO.
It's hard to get that across to people and using the hermaphrodite baby story emphasizes that issue.
The point is not to describe what it means to be transgender but to explain to people why a transgender would be in a position where the outside doesn't match the inside.
Additionally it's important to keep it medical not mental. The way people turn it into a psychological issue is based on the history of nature versus nurture and the damage done by John Money.
Showing videos of David Reimer is also helpful. My husband is a big burly Greek man who is absolutely horrified at the pain that transgenders go through. He made a good point. He said most of the women and men he's looked at on this site would pass 100 percent because of the hormones and the youth of the person when they started the transition.
This is why it is so important to honor the decision as soon as possible. So your mother should consider the life struggles you will face the longer you wait.
There are many glitches in how babies are born with genital issues, like micro penis, women who are born with two vaginas and other such things. The AIS woman really made it clear to him.
Good luck!
I think you mean sex is assigned at birth based on what the physical body looks like.
Transgender is not a noun. It's an adjective.
It's important to use terms correctly so that you will actually be able to speak knowledgeably to others with little to no experience on the subject.
No I mean GENDER is assigned at birth based on what the physical body looks like. To parents the Gender is based on the SEX of the child and this is a mistake. The parent takes the child home and considers the child's GENDER the SAME as their SEX. This is whole point of using the hermaphrodite example. How do you really know "which" gender is the correct one in that case. The example shows they chose the wrong one. You don't understand the example or what I'm addressing so perhaps try considering it more before you speak.
David Reimer is a good example of what I mean. His gender was assigned. They took him home and tried to force him to be a girl based on what his sex organs looked like. This is what happens to many transgender people.
I used it as a noun. I chose to for a reason.
Do you have anything to add?
Also the title of the thread is not "explain what trans means" It is "How to explain better to a cisgendered person" so that's what I'm addressing. I would wager that a few posters who try this will have more success in getting it across than the traditional methods. But I do agree that you need to know what you are talking about and use terminology correctly.
I am assuming everyone here does.
I understand what mixie's saying here. I've tried to explain being trans in a similar way before as well.
With friends I just try to be quick and simple. but I'm working on coming out to my grandparents, who mean a lot to me. So I wanted them to fully understand this about me.
They didn't know anything about transgendered people. And I was afraid that they would think it was a choice. So I first told them about people born intersex, and the parents sometimes think they have to chose the baby's gender/sex. My grandparents actually saw the Law and Order SVU episode that had an intersex boy in it, roughly based on a true story too.
So after I explained to my parents about intersex people (which they exclaimed, "Oh, you mean hermaphrodites!" and I facepamled, lol)
Then I told them about transgendered people by saying, "And sometimes people are born with genitalia that appear perfectly normal and fine, but the child still grows up insisting he or she is a different gender than we thought.
And my grandparents, who very much hate gay people, were actually very sympathetic to intersexed and transgendered people.
So I do think that explaining transgenders by starting off with explaining the intersex condition can help people see how it's not a choice.
But I do also understand the importance of explaining/including the fact that being transgendered is different for everyone. And there is no one way or right way.
I once went to a seminar through my high school's GSA where a transwoman came up to explain/educate us about transgenders. But I didn't like the way she did it, because she explained how it was for her. She said that she is only part-time female, and half the time goes out dressed as male. (She was MAAB) And that for her it was like a fetish or sexual related for why she cross dressed. But she called herself transgendered as well.
While her way of being transgendered is completely valid, I personally didn't think she put enough emphasis on how that is NOT what it means to be transgendered for everyone else. I was afraid that some people walked away from that seminar thinking that being transgendered is a fetish for everyone.
Hey thanks John Alex.
I thought of this thread a lot today. As an advocate and compassionate and pissed off person at the stupidity of some, I try my best. I don't know why this issue means so very much to me. I think it has to do with identity. It has to do with feeling on the outside and trying to explain yourself to the "crowd" where everyone seems to understand things in a way you don't. For me I am an INTP. This honestly means I'm too smart for my own good. Some of you younger folks might remember the movie Flubber or the Absent Minded professor.
Well I'm the absent minded professor. I have my own company and I teach test prep for teaching certification exams. And one of the things I've had to learn is that often it's really important to "dumb it down" in order to explain it better.
Keep in mind, most of you are transgender and are explaining a "feeling" to people who have no idea what you are talking about. It doesn't make sense to them;
And Andy I have to apologize. I got a bit defensive. Please understand that I'm giving you my advice as a cisgendered woman. And I have been beating my head against the wall for over twenty years with this. So my feathers got ruffled a bit in being read the rules.
I'm sorry I was snappish.
So this is a "results based" answer. It seems that when I explain it this way people suddenly go "Ohhhhh!" and they get it.
That's why I use the term "transgender" as a noun in the explanation. Most people have no idea what gender means. I know gender between the ears, sex between the legs.
But honestly one of the biggest problems in explaining this to cisgender is the LBGQT stuff. The T is stuck in with sexual orientation which is completely different. So most cisgenders I speak to think it's a sexual orientation gone haywire. They don't understand.
Quote from: mixie on January 04, 2012, 01:34:05 AM
But honestly one of the biggest problems in explaining this to cisgender is the LBGQT stuff. The T is stuck in with sexual orientation which is completely different. So most cisgenders I speak to think it's a sexual orientation gone haywire. They don't understand.
I think you're onto something there, mixie. That's something that has crossed my mind before as well and I wondered if it affected public perception in any way. What got me thinking was that I identify as two letters in that acronym as a TL. So, something didn't seem right in the groupings there. Now, what can be done about that? Not much I take it.
It depends on who you're coming out to. Because when I first started accepting myself I did a ->-bleeped-<-ton of reading on trans issues as well as sex, gender and the role of a biased medical tradition that claims to be unbiased, I kind of took the approach with my mother that I took with accepting myself. I basically just started talking to her more about how I'd always felt, and then went into a lot of gender theory and reproductive science stuff. She still in some ways tries to deny certain memories that are important to me, and while I see that as her way of dealing it is still really hurtful. But its the research I started talking about, and which she started doing on her own that really made her more accepting, I think.
With other people, I just had to basically come out to them and they accepted it (mainly my best friend), while with others they outright rejected and no amount of information would ever change their minds.
That's the unfortunate reality. Some people are going to put their prejudices behind them and consider what you have to say and the materials you can recommend, while others are going to try to deny it.
Quote from: pidgeontoed on January 04, 2012, 05:54:23 PMI think you're onto something there, mixie. That's something that has crossed my mind before as well and I wondered if it affected public perception in any way. What got me thinking was that I identify as two letters in that acronym as a TL. So, something didn't seem right in the groupings there. Now, what can be done about that? Not much I take it.
I used to kinda have a problem with LGBT because the T didn't see to belong. But with the extended letters I'm seeing sometimes now, LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Questioning, Queer, Intersex, Asexual). And I felt better having them all grouped together when I saw it like that. Because our LGBT community is really much more than just Gays, Lesbians, Bi's, and trans. It's everything in between.
I mean we could have two different communities for LGBA, and TGGI. But since these two groups (sexual orientation minorities and gender identity minorities) are kinda the most accepting of eachother, I think it's fine if they merge together.
Just my opinion.
Quote from: JohnAlex on January 04, 2012, 09:25:53 PM
I used to kinda have a problem with LGBT because the T didn't see to belong. But with the extended letters I'm seeing sometimes now, LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Questioning, Queer, Intersex, Asexual). And I felt better having them all grouped together when I saw it like that. Because our LGBT community is really much more than just Gays, Lesbians, Bi's, and trans. It's everything in between.
I mean we could have two different communities for LGBA, and TGGI. But since these two groups (sexual orientation minorities and gender identity minorities) are kinda the most accepting of eachother, I think it's fine if they merge together.
Just my opinion.
That's exactly right and I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that this stance isn't shared by the general population. I've never seen AQI included in any publications or just casual speaking about the subject. The only time I really see every group acknowledged is by people within the communities involved. That might be just something specific to my tiny little corner of Ohio, but our campus group just recently began using LGBTQ. That's what I was referring to in my post, wondering if the more inclusive acronyms can be brought into popular use by straight cispeople as well.
Quote from: pidgeontoed on January 04, 2012, 09:59:57 PM
That's exactly right and I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that this stance isn't shared by the general population. I've never seen AQI included in any publications or just casual speaking about the subject. The only time I really see every group acknowledged is by people within the communities involved. That might be just something specific to my tiny little corner of Ohio, but our campus group just recently began using LGBTQ. That's what I was referring to in my post, wondering if the more inclusive acronyms can be brought into popular use by straight cispeople as well.
By "general population" do you mean of
everyone, or just the general population within the LGBT community?
Just in my experience, the general population doesn't even know the letters LGBT.
The only places I've ever seen more letters than LGBT was within the LGBT community, on flyers or something.
Personally, I think all the letters is kinda annoying. Even LGBTQQIA left out Pansexual and Polyamorous. And probably more still.
I think we just need one word, like Queer. And that's a lot easier, imo. We can be the queer community. I'm sure not everyone in the LGBT community wants to identify as queer, though. But it is more practical than to use all the letters so that no one is excluded.
On my phone right now, but yeah by general population I mean everyone. Things would certainly be easier with an overarching term. How about "Alternative"? :D
Quote from: JohnAlex on January 04, 2012, 10:10:53 PM
By "general population" do you mean of everyone, or just the general population within the LGBT community?
Just in my experience, the general population doesn't even know the letters LGBT.
The only places I've ever seen more letters than LGBT was within the LGBT community, on flyers or something.
Personally, I think all the letters is kinda annoying. Even LGBTQQIA left out Pansexual and Polyamorous. And probably more still.
I think we just need one word, like Queer. And that's a lot easier, imo. We can be the queer community. I'm sure not everyone in the LGBT community wants to identify as queer, though. But it is more practical than to use all the letters so that no one is excluded.
I honestly thought the word "queer" did apply to the entire alphabet community until pretty recently. It apparently still sparks bad memories for some. I persist in using it, though. I just don't know how to come up with anything better.
I do think that people are much more compassionate about the idea of being born in the wrong body than simply choosing to change sexes. I also think a large part of the problem has been the way this has been sensationalized by shows like Maury and other shows that lump ->-bleeped-<-s in with transsexuals. It creates the idea that this is a parody of being a woman.
There have also been shows and references in movies that have created this "game" of tricking people like Ace Ventura Pet Detective. I watched that recently as was horrified at the way the character was outed at the end of the movie. And there was a reality show that was done called "There's Something About Miriam" which was horrible.
Quote from: Logan Erik on December 29, 2011, 09:04:33 PM
You could have them watch a trans video with you (if they would do that)
That can also backfire. I tried it with my family before I came out to them just to gauge their attitudes and it wasn't pretty. They were making fun of the people on the screen the entire time. It was hard to sit through. They were also refusing to use preferred pronouns for the transguy the video was covering. He was already on T and had just had top surgery, so he passed amazingly well and my sister who had just started watching was like "is he going to start dressing more like a girl?" and I asked her what she meant and she said "well if he wants to be a girl, shouldn't he start dressing more like it?" and I told her he was an ftm and she immediately started referring to him as she. Even though it didn't help anyone in my family understand where I'm coming from and open their eyes to it like I was hoping, it definitely gave me a sense of what I was going to be up against when I did come out, so that was good.
btw-- I came out to my entire family last April and every one of them is acting like I never said anything at all, except for my mom who every once and awhile will mention my facial hair (I'm pre-t but still have a LOT for a woman) and say disgustedly "you're not taking any
drugs or anything, are you?" and it was obvious by the tone and context she meant hormones. Although I can't complain entirely about her-- she bought me two men's dress sweaters for Christmas and suggested I buy a men's dress shirt (mostly because it looked almost the same but was cheaper than the women's).
Quote from: Devin87 on January 05, 2012, 10:18:49 PM
That can also backfire. I tried it with my family before I came out to them just to gauge their attitudes and it wasn't pretty. They were making fun of the people on the screen the entire time. It was hard to sit through. They were also refusing to use preferred pronouns for the transguy the video was covering. He was already on T and had just had top surgery, so he passed amazingly well and my sister who had just started watching was like "is he going to start dressing more like a girl?" and I asked her what she meant and she said "well if he wants to be a girl, shouldn't he start dressing more like it?" and I told her he was an ftm and she immediately started referring to him as she. Even though it didn't help anyone in my family understand where I'm coming from and open their eyes to it like I was hoping, it definitely gave me a sense of what I was going to be up against when I did come out, so that was good.
btw-- I came out to my entire family last April and every one of them is acting like I never said anything at all, except for my mom who every once and awhile will mention my facial hair (I'm pre-t but still have a LOT for a woman) and say disgustedly "you're not taking any drugs or anything, are you?" and it was obvious by the tone and context she meant hormones. Although I can't complain entirely about her-- she bought me two men's dress sweaters for Christmas and suggested I buy a men's dress shirt (mostly because it looked almost the same but was cheaper than the women's).
This made my blood boil as a mother. I literally want to reach through the screen and slap the stuffing out of your mother. Sorry. Hang in there. The world is a big big beautiful place with lots of room and plenty of places to go.
ETA read that a bit wrong. But hey she got you sweaters so at least she's trying. So I'll just scowl and the screen instead of reaching all the way through it.
:police:
Quote from: Felix on January 05, 2012, 12:08:42 AMI honestly thought the word "queer" did apply to the entire alphabet community until pretty recently. It apparently still sparks bad memories for some. I persist in using it, though. I just don't know how to come up with anything better.
Hey! I like that, the alphabet community :D where no letter is excluded, lol.