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Looking inside ourselves (sorry if ranty)

Started by Joanna Dark, March 07, 2013, 10:49:31 PM

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Anatta

Quote from: Brooke777 on March 08, 2013, 12:28:09 PM
Like me...definitely. Like you...not so much. >:-) :-*

Kia Ora Brooke,

::) But I'm like you  ;) ;D

Metta Zenda :)
"The most essential method which includes all other methods is beholding the mind. The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included !"   :icon_yes:
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Brooke777

Quote from: Kuan Yin on March 08, 2013, 12:31:49 PM
Kia Ora Brooke,

::) But I'm like you  ;) ;D

Metta Zenda :)

Oh dear, this world is really going to be messed up if there are two of us running around.  ;D
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Anatta

Quote from: Brooke777 on March 08, 2013, 12:44:14 PM
Oh dear, this world is really going to be messed up if there are two of us running around.  ;D

Kia Ora Brooke,

::) Not really...Just think, what weird, whacky, wonderful world it would be-If all the people were wonderful, whacky and weird, like you and me !  ;)

Metta Zenda :)
"The most essential method which includes all other methods is beholding the mind. The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included !"   :icon_yes:
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Anatta

Quote from: girl you look fierce on March 08, 2013, 12:56:24 PM
. I just want people to stop lying once they *do* know. 

Kia Ora GYLF,

Why ? How will it impact on/improve your life if this were to happen ?

Metta Zenda :)
"The most essential method which includes all other methods is beholding the mind. The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included !"   :icon_yes:
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Brooke777

Quote from: girl you look fierce on March 08, 2013, 12:56:24 PM
@Sarah Louise and Lorri Kat

It's none of my business but I'm sorry if I don't really buy it.  Not in my lifetime.  I've had my fair share of pressure to fit in as a male, I felt it much more strongly than most people do and it ruined my life, it didn't force me into a male role because there was no way I could or would live in that  role.  I still don't believe people are being honest when they say it was pressure that made them live how they did.  Like what, you didn't love your wife?  Just married her cause ya had to?  I don't believe not knowing about the possibility of transition can make a man out of someone who is just not a man. 

There have been lots of trans resources for a long time now and people are still discovering at 50 or later that they want to transition.  Those people who struggle on a fundamental level with these issues will find out about it, they would have found out about it even in the 70s because they would do research and reach out for people who understand what they're going through.

So sorry, I don't buy it.  That is probably rude of me but I don't.  You can call me privileged by the era I was born in, but that's not how I lived my life, even before I knew you could transition, even with a very healthy dose of pressure to be more male.  But again, it's not my business and I don't care... I am not assessing legitimacy and I don't have a right to. I just want people to stop lying once they *do* know. 

OK, you are starting to get into an elitist type of conversation here. You are putting down all late transitioners and essentially calling them bad people. I strongly advise you to stop making these types of statements. If you would like to discuss it more, I am willing to try and shed some light on it via PM. But please, do not continue this on here as it has a strong potential of hurting others.
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Brooke777

Quote from: girl you look fierce on March 08, 2013, 01:00:58 PM
It's not about my life, I just feel so terrible for the wives who go through this, it's not fair to them and there's no reason I should be supportive of anything that is hurting a large number of people.

And there is no reason for you to put down those who have taken a different approach to life than you have. Fine, you don't understand and you don't agree. You have voiced that opinion many times over. Let's move on.
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Sarah Louise

Girl you look fierce, I don't expect you to buy it, your of a different generation, your 21.  There is no way you can understand what it was like 50/60 years ago, and I don't expect you to.

You have your right to your opinion and I respect that.

I do agree, once you understand yourself it isn't right to lie to a spouse.
Nameless here for evermore!;  Merely this, and nothing more;
Tis the wind and nothing more!;  Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!!"
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Heather

Quote from: girl you look fierce on March 08, 2013, 01:00:58 PM
It's not about my life, I just feel so terrible for the wives who go through this, it's not fair to them and there's no reason I should be supportive of anything that is hurting a large number of people.
I think your right the wives did not ask for this. I personally made the decision when I was 18 that could not get married. There was only so far I was willing to take the straight guy act I was somewhat putting on at the time. The more I thought about it the more I realized how much pain I would cause so I stayed single despite great pressure from family to get married and have kids.
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Carrie Liz

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.
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Jamie D

#29
I understand what Pretty is saying.  I respect that.  There comes a different perspective with age, that's all.

It is a different world, even than it was a generation ago.

You know what?  I am feeling ancient.
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Shodan

The thing that I'm taking issue with is the assumption that one knows, from birth what one is.

In 1992, I was 19. I was kind of aware of transsexuals, but like Cheetaking, I thought it was something completely unobtainable. I also was still very attracted to women and I thought that, moreover, there isn't any point in transitioning since I already had all the correct bits to love the gender of my choice. In 1995 I met and married my wife. I love her very much and love her very much still, and according to some posters here, I've been lying to my wife all this time.

This is not the case.

I have been lying to myself all this time. This is a very real, and very different difference. If I had thought, when I was 22, that I could transition, I would have. If I had thought that my transsexual thoughts were normal, and not me being stupid and crazy, then I would have told her, but the fact of the matter was, at the time, I did not consider myself transsexual. I considered myself cis-male who was very, very screwed up in the head.

When I finally came to the realization that I wasn't, that it was okay to be trans, that I could achieve what I've been wanting my entire life, I went through two weeks of agony trying to figure out how to tell my wife. I didn't want to lose her, but she needed to know. Is this tearing our family apart? By no means. Is my wife having difficulty accepting this? Indeed. But she still loves me and wants to support me, and she recognized that, when I let my guard down, when I was my true female self, that was the person she fell in love with, and that person had been absent for increasingly longer periods of time.

I never set out to deceive my wife, and the insinuation that I did infuriates me. I plead guilty for deceiving myself, however, and wish I could take that back with all my heart.




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Lorri Kat

Quote from: girl you look fierce on March 08, 2013, 02:08:02 PM
I understand, but just to clarify, I don't think it's fair for a person to assume that because they are old, they know how everyone else feels.  I'm not coming forth to criticize people, but a lot of time there is a sentiment here that is not challenged because a large number of MTFs here are older and feel the same way, that if any of the young transitioning MTFs were born in the past, they would have lived like men.  Again, that is not fair to assume.  :-\ Being old and experienced does not mean those people have been in my shoes, or have had my experiences.

Yes it's 2013.  No, the world is still not universally tolerant.  Individual families or social groups still put immense pressure on their children to be one thing or another.  People used being older and more experienced in the same way before to tell me, a teenager, things about myself that I knew weren't true.  It was the same thing.  "When you're older you won't be saying you don't want to marry a woman and have kids... you'll understand."  I knew that was false then and I know it now and I never lived my life to the contrary.  They could not make me into something I'm not, they could only treat me like crap for being myself.

Transsexualism and sexual orientation are two very different things.

If one didn't live during a certain time period they shouldn't assume they know how it was.   I would never have presumed to school my Grandparents on how it was during the Great Depression which they actually lived thru from what I had read.   
=^..^=
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Devlyn

I think we've established that everyone faces different circumstances in life, and that no one can experience life through anothers eyes. I'm going to ask everyone to find another topic to post in, this one is locked. Hugs, Devlyn
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