QuoteFor those in their 60s, this doesn't apply. But if you were 22 in 1992, you knew exactly what a TS was. I was 10 and I knew.
Well... as someone who was only 7 years old in 1992, I just wanted to add something about this part of the post. (I understand where you're coming from, and yes, sometimes we can been too supportive, but I do take issue with this part of it at least.)
Yes, I did know what a transsexual was while I was growing up. But no, at the same time, I did not. From the limited media exposure that I had as a kid and a teenager, and the limited internet research that I did, I knew that basically transsexuals were men who wanted to become women. And every single time I saw a transsexual, it was either A.) someone who still looked like a man in a dress, or B.) an early-transitioner who they described as having taken "puberty blockers," which, I assumed since I was already past puberty by the time my dysphoria got serious enough to look into it, was too late to do anything for me, or C.) Someone who had gone through a million surgeries... facial surgery, SRS, breast implants, butt implants, and things which I NEVER wanted to have to go through because I despise our plastic-surgery-obsessed culture.
I internalized these things. So as a teen, I assumed that in order to transition genders I would either have to 1.) spend my entire life looking like a man in a dress, and be laughed at. 2.) spend thousands of dollars on surgery after surgery after surgery if I ever wanted breasts or a female butt or a female face. 3.) somehow go back in time to before puberty, so that I could stop my male puberty and have a female one instead. I believed this for FOURTEEN YEARS. And I internalized it. I believed that there was no way that I would ever be a female, that there was no way that I was ever going to be able to undo all of the things that my male puberty had already done to me, and that those changes would never go away, and as such I relegated my transsexualism to the realm of being a "problem" that I had to get over, and thus treated it as such. My logic was "well, I'm never going to have a female body anyway, so why even bother thinking about it? It will just make me depressed and make me wish I was something that I'm not." So I shoved them to the side, and tried to pray them away and ignore them with varying degrees of success for fourteen years. That was, until last November when my 6-year relationship with my girlfriend ended because I wasn't living up to her expectations, and I realized that it was because I wasn't comfortable in the male role of our relationship. And only then did I finally, through pure luck one day on the Eunuch Archive, stumble on before-and-after pictures and videos of those who had gone through HRT. That was the very first time that I realized that it was not too late, that it really was possible for me to still transition and actually get a female body almost completely naturally. And as SOON as I knew that, I IMMEDIATELY got on it, and have been ever since.
What I am saying is that, yes, I did know what a transsexual was back in high school when my dysphoria was at its worst. But at the same time, I did not truly know. Because I did not want to be transsexual if that meant being a man in a dress, or having a fake body that only looks female because of plastic surgery. I wanted to have a female body naturally... and I just assumed that this was impossible. That I would never have smooth skin, and hips, and a female face, and the subcutaneous female fat... and as such, I didn't see the point in even bothering to try, even though I wanted to be a girl VERY badly. And once I starting thinking "it's impossible" due to misinformation, or lack of information, I stopped looking, because I just assumed that I would never have those things that I wanted, and as such it wasn't worth depressing myself by obsessing over them. Once you get that mindset in your head, it's VERY hard to change. So I stopped looking. And every time my transsexual thoughts came back to me, I told myself "NO! You're over that. Quit thinking about it. It will only make you depressed because it's something that you can never have." And that kept me from transitioning for the entire fourteen years of my post-pubertal life, even though I knew full well that I wanted to be a girl.
My point is, although the information was technically there, it was buried so deeply, and there was so much misinformation getting in the way in front of it, that it took me fourteen years to find it. So I don't think it's exactly fair to say that we have no excuse. Yes, it's an absolutely terrible thing when families and relationships are torn apart by transitioning, but at the same time I do not believe that we have reached an age yet where people have no excuse. I was raised on misinformation. As soon as I did find the right information, though, you can bet that I had no damned excuse anymore. And that's why I was on hormones within a month of finally learning about what they could do.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the topic. Yes, we are getting to an age where people are beginning to have no excuses anymore. But we're not there yet. There's still too much misinformation, too much social ignorance, and too much cultural pressure against it, to say that people have no excuse.
