As far as the Youtube thing goes, do any of you happen to look at comments on ANY videos? There's always some ->-bleeped-<- who comes along and starts something or spouts off like they think they know it all or try to degrade the person in the video. Doesn't matter what the video is about. I think over the years the internet has just bread a particular brand of idiot who probably has a lot of life issues of their own but likes to go around and try to post things to harass or degrade other people and make themselves feel better. It's classic psychology in action and it knows no boundaries.
While we may all have one or more things in common (being trans, having dysphoria, similar life experiences regarding feelings of being in the wrong body or wrong role in society, etc. etc.) there's a hell of a lot that makes up each person and it's why we're all individuals and not carbon copy clones. Variety is the spice of life, as they say, but the problem is that people like to associate more often with people who are more similar to themselves than dissimilar. When putting that theory under the trans microscope, gender identity and physical presentation would be pretty important, major issues. Therefore, you get very masculine trans guys having a large commonality just like you have femme guys having a commonality and hence the different "factions" or groups. I think it's more inherent human behavior to do something like that than it is to just accept everyone 100% and have no problems with differences. If humans really were like that there's be no hate, discrimination, etc. in the world.
To me, what needs to happen is that people need to realize that the aspect we all share with the most importance is still being trans. That's still the #1 thing we all have common. Now if you're not really trans, but identify as more genderqueer or something else, that's okay too because it falls under the same larger, all-encompassing umbrella of "gender identity".
I'm going to go on a tangent here but bear with me because I think it has relevance to the "larger picture". So there's an LGBT community/movement, right? Lesbian ... gay ... bisexual and then transsexual. To me, one of those things is not like the others. Sure, people can say that they were "born this way" in that they did not choose who they are sexually attracted to. But that's still sexual attraction, which to me, is different from gender identity. Transsexuals do not choose to be transsexual. It's my belief that we are born this way. But it doesn't have anything to do with sexual attraction – that's another layer on top of trans. So you can be trans and gay, trans and lesbian, trans and bi, trans and poly, etc. Right there is a fundamental separation between the T's and the rest of the LGB's and in my personal opinion I feel like an outsider even in that larger community. Now, since the T's are already a little like outsiders I think a lot of the behavior could be a result of this. We're not fully accepted by "cis" people and we're not fully accepted by the LGB's because we just flat out different on a level that they don't and they can't fully understand it. They can sympathize with some of the things we've had to go through (discrimination, being chastised by family, losing friendships/relationships, etc. etc. all because of who you are), but they can never understand what it's like to have the "wrong body" and fully be aware of that 24/7. Because your sexual preference is not hetro, you do not need to undergo medical treatment or change your body at all to align with your mind (I won't go into the fact that there once was a medical treatment for being gay ... just talking present day here). Still LGBT is all one supposed community. But I think the fundamental differences are what has created some of the unsavory behavior. For instance, certain butch lesbians who hate trans guys. All sorts of issues like the, "You just want to be a man to have that male privilege" I think can be related here. Because a large portion of trans people just want to disappear into the binary world, they take crap from a lot of different angles.
I'm certainly not saying that the the majority of people act this way. One of my best friend's is gay and totally accepts me and my lifestyle. But there's a percentage that are going to have issues.
"Cis" people will also never truly understand. I've tried to explain it metaphorically to people but they just can't grasp the concept. It's absolutely foreign to them. And with a segment of the population, anything "foreign" like that is going to cause them to put up their defenses. And sometimes those defenses are lashing out at those who are different.
As for liking certain things and acting a certain way and looking a certain way ... that should be strictly up to the individual and people should not get sh*t about that, but we're circling back to the beginning again where people who like certain things, look a certain way, etc. are going to associate most with other people who like the same things, etc. That's not to say people don't associate at all with others who are different. To me, that's what makes life fun. If I only hung around with or talked to people with my same interests, I'd personally find that boring as hell.
I like guns, muscle cars, horror, sci-fi, comic books, action/adventure, camping, fishing ... and I also like stuff like baking cookies, art, fashion, sewing ... These are all things that make me, me. And I happen to look andro/more female because I really can't do anything about that, so that's just me too. I don't like being lumped into the categories of "female"and "femme" because I'm not, but I am all the time just because of the way I look. What's worse is that I'm mostly okay with the way I look, which opens me up for even more of that crap. I've gotten plenty of the "you're not really male ... not male enough ... not trans enough ... blah blah blah."
