Quote from: FTMDiaries on August 21, 2013, 05:50:08 AM
Yes, there are problems with transitioning in rural areas where everyone knows who you are... but there are also problems with transitioning in inner-city areas that have high concentrations of recent immigrants (and their children) from communities where being LGBT isn't tolerated. Imagine transitioning in a class full of students whose parents raised them to believe that LGBT people deserve to be killed...

This. This is the biggest thing for me. I don't live in a rural area, I live in city where my school has about a 15-20% of white British students. I felt completely isolated there because of the prejudices of the other students. It was hell. My parents asked me why I didn't protest to wear a suit to my prom. The answer was simple: I didn't want to get killed. Even if you appeared to be gay, that's it, you'd be bullied. I once stood up for gay people and was told that if I didn't shut up I would get pushed down the stairs and the boy would pee in my mouth because 'only Allah can judge'. I never transitioned at school. I didn't even cut my hair shorter until I'd very almost left the sixth form. Teachers knew, but there was no way the kids would find out. That was the hardest part for me. Having to put it off because I was so afraid of the reaction at school. I already got followed home and almost spat on, just for being white.

What would help? More education in schools and the general community. My school was massively uneducated on LGBT issues. We've challenged homophobia which had a positive impact, but transphobia is yet to be covered. I don't see anything for trans people anywhere. They say LGBT, when really it's just focusing on LGB issues, forgetting the T completely. The LGBT equality teacher person at my school still thinks being trans means you're really just gay and can't cope with it and calls FTMs 'she' and MTFs 'he'. I think the most important thing to do for young people is more training, education and awareness in schools. Not only for the students but for the staff too. It will help young trans people to feel less isolated.

Quote from: Joey. on August 21, 2013, 04:45:47 PM
This. This is the biggest thing for me. I don't live in a rural area, I live in city where my school has about a 15-20% of white British students. I felt completely isolated there because of the prejudices of the other students. It was hell. My parents asked me why I didn't protest to wear a suit to my prom. The answer was simple: I didn't want to get killed. Even if you appeared to be gay, that's it, you'd be bullied. I once stood up for gay people and was told that if I didn't shut up I would get pushed down the stairs and the boy would pee in my mouth because 'only Allah can judge'. I never transitioned at school. I didn't even cut my hair shorter until I'd very almost left the sixth form. Teachers knew, but there was no way the kids would find out. That was the hardest part for me. Having to put it off because I was so afraid of the reaction at school. I already got followed home and almost spat on, just for being white.

What would help? More education in schools and the general community. My school was massively uneducated on LGBT issues. We've challenged homophobia which had a positive impact, but transphobia is yet to be covered. I don't see anything for trans people anywhere. They say LGBT, when really it's just focusing on LGB issues, forgetting the T completely. The LGBT equality teacher person at my school still thinks being trans means you're really just gay and can't cope with it and calls FTMs 'she' and MTFs 'he'. I think the most important thing to do for young people is more training, education and awareness in schools. Not only for the students but for the staff too. It will help young trans people to feel less isolated.

Oh I know what you mean with the whole LGB so much! I keep saying to myself that the T needs to be scrapped because whenever they say LGBT they really mean LGB, which can all be covered under the term homosexual tbh. T's do not fit under that umbrella. We still have mountains to climb in comparison to them!

I think the reason why we're under the same umbrella is because we all have the same people spitting on us . And I also get really sick of people trotting out LGBT on autopilot when it's just an unconscious shorthand for sexuality issues - it just over and over again gives us trans folk false hope that we're included in the equation when we very often aren't, and makes us mistrust the LGBT organisations that actually are taking trans issues into account.

But yes, education is key - most of the other people on this panel are actually involved on a national level with the whole area of educating schoolchildren (and teachers) about diversity and moving away from homophobia and transphobia within the education system. It's going to be a really interesting brainstorming session, I hope.

Quote from: Joey. on August 21, 2013, 04:45:47 PM
This. This is the biggest thing for me.

Thanks Joey. In all honesty, I was thinking of you when I wrote that paragraph.

*Manly hug*

Thank you. 

Quote from: Padma on August 21, 2013, 05:02:33 PM
But yes, education is key - most of the other people on this panel are actually involved on a national level with the whole area of educating schoolchildren (and teachers) about diversity and moving away from homophobia and transphobia within the education system. It's going to be a really interesting brainstorming session, I hope.

Possibly the most important take-home lesson that I for one would love these educators to have, would be to get it into their heads that many trans* people know from a very early age that we have problems with our gender. Enforced gender roles are incredibly harmful, and it is in all children's best interests to let them decide for themselves what they like and dislike, rather than discouraging them from anything that is considered inappropriate for their apparent gender. A lot of well-meaning adults with the best of intentions think they're doing the right thing by, say, stopping a boy from playing with dolls because they don't want him to be bullied. They're focussing on the wrong person: they should be correcting and educating the kids who do the bullying instead.

Quote from: FTMDiaries on August 21, 2013, 05:21:13 PM
Enforced gender roles are incredibly harmful, and it is in all children's best interests to let them decide for themselves what they like and dislike, rather than discouraging them from anything that is considered inappropriate for their apparent gender. A lot of well-meaning adults with the best of intentions think they're doing the right thing by, say, stopping a boy from playing with dolls because they don't want him to be bullied. They're focussing on the wrong person: they should be correcting and educating the kids who do the bullying instead.

This reminds me of when I was in primary school and we used to play 'Mummy and Daddy'. I was almost always the Daddy, because I didn't want to be the Mummy and the other kids were absolutely fine with that. It was my teacher who said 'you're a girl you should be the Mummy.' I remembered getting upset, saying I was the Daddy and the other kids backed me up. I was very young, and the other kids simply didn't care if a 'girl' was the Daddy. It was the teacher who had a problem with it. If they just let kids express themselves and didn't have a problem with it, the kids wouldn't grow up having a problem with it. Children learn from adults. If their favourite teacher who they respect in school sticks up for a transgender student, they probably will follow that because they already look up to that member of staff. Teachers have such a big influence on a child, it's important that they realise this and set a good example.

Agreed - this needs to start young, with the teachers counteracting any reinforcement of transphobia (and homophobia, racism, sexism etc.) that kids are getting from their parents at home. Unfortunately, many teachers still seem to be on a bit of a power trip when teaching children, and enjoy assuming they have no real feelings or sense of themselves yet and are readily dismissed as "seeking attention" if they display any erring from "the norm". I have a teen trans (and queer) friend whose coming-out was delayed by a couple of years by a teacher telling him "you're just doing all this to show off" - this is in fairly rural Illinois.

I'm on rural Suffolk at the moment, but I've never been anywhere else so it's hard to compare it to what it would have been had I lived elsewhere.

The main issue, like a lot of people said, was transport. If I wanted to see my GP while I'm here I would have to either use the very poor bus service (four busses a day with a choice of either returning within half an hour or four hours), walk along a very busy road where most people speed and there's not always even a grass verge to the town, or rely on my grandparents. Not everyone has grandparents, and mine hare bigoted and homophobic, so I doubt they're particularly trans friendly either. My other alternative would have been to bunk off college and get the train back to my own to see the GP when I should have been getting an education. Not the best of options.

Having a lack of facilities in the area. I don't know if after the recent changes they still insist on CAHMS giving you the all clear to be referred to a GIC, but that was one of the main reasons I haven't transitioned yet. My CAHMS doctor, who I was seeing for other reasons anyway, was a complete and utter sadist. He would talk this airy fairy nonsense, make assumptions that were completely illogical and wouldn't take being corrected, and I would leave feeling suicidal after going in relatively fine. My school nurse who attended a lot of the time actually rang me when I got home a couple of times to check if I was okay. The only time he was happy was when I was raging with anger at him, and started talking patronising bs about how if I was younger he'd put a teddy on a chair, call it Andy, and tell me to "shout at the Andy why I hated him." Maybe just ask? My parents, my GP, my school nurse and me all thought he was doing more harm than good, and he admitted he couldn't help, but as I'd been hospitalised after a suicide attempt a few month before they couldn't let me stop seeing everyone altogether. The shrink wouldn't let me see anyone else either because if he couldn't do it, then none of the more junior members at the centre could. Luckily, he wanted a 11 people meeting to discuss it, which we cancelled because we didn't agree and I slipped through the system and we never heard from him again. I've not dared go to a doctor since.

How did all that relate to being rural? If I had lived in a larger area, the chances are there would be more than that one centre who could deal with minors, and I wouldn't have to have suffered that toss pot. Maybe someone would have even reported him if he was exposed to more people (I didn't because I just wanted out at the time, but now I wished I had because of how awful he made me feel), my friend who was going there for EDNOS met him once at a weigh-in session, and she immediately knew who it was although she never heard his name. She disliked him, and she's much more tolerant of people like him than I am.

Everyone knows everyone is a big thing too. They'll all know my business, and the chances of me running into someone I knew if I did use the male bathroom would be high, and awkward.

I don't think education should count as a rural issue, because it's prevalent everywhere. I know trans people in a city in Scotland who were hounded out of a LBGT group for being trans, and they're not really marginalised there. They're both white in a white majority area etc. We had a speaker in to talk to us about sex ed (we were mostly 16+, a bit late for the majority in that hall...) and she grouped the T with the LGB and didn't explain one was sexuality and one was gender identity.  It was her job though, and she works in the cities too, so it's not a rural problem, or at least wasn't for me.

Agreed, education is a universal issue. I suppose I see it as a more long-term solution for rural areas: to ensure that kids in rural areas are well educated in diversity, so that if they grow up to be the adults in rural areas, they'll be way more supportive of each other's issues and the issues of the next generation to come along.

And yes, the lack of choice of healthcare practitioners in rural areas is a real problem, if the ones who are there are bigoted (or just bad at their jobs in general). I've mostly been lucky with GPs, though there was one I saw at the local surgery who was (probably through inexperience) very inappropriate in her language and use of pronouns etc. - she phoned up the pharmacy in front of me, and referred to me by "he's not a woman yet." I ended up sending her a copy of the NHS guidelines for treating trans patients, with an accompanying letter explaining about use of pronouns, but she never replied to it.

This week I requested unsuccessfully to have my psychiatric assessment next week done by a woman psychiatrist. After asking me why I wanted that (which I think was a very unprofessional question), the receptionist ended up saying "Erm, we don't have any female psychiatrists on the books." I've checked, and there is only one up-to-date listing of a female psychiatrist in Devon who doesn't just do child/adolescent psychiatry.

And so on. One other thing I'd like to get involved with is advocacy - for example, accompanying young trans people to meetings with healthcare practitioners so they're less likely to get bullied or not express what they need to express there.

i'm just a couple years too old for this, so... i think i'll try to give my own answers as well.

i'm not out, and have no idea how to come out. if i were transsexual, i wouldn't have that much of a problem, i'd be able to convince the people here just like the gay guy managed to convince people that he really just is born that way.

but i'll just be seen as a somewhat masculine woman. history and people's memories are full of those. and in the very small community that i belong to, they make sure to tell me that. "but his grandma was a lot like you, would rather cut firewood than knit, maybe he'd be a good match for you."

in small communities where everybody literally knows everybody, people also have a tendency to take responsibility for everyone else's children just the same as their own. especially when meddling in matters where questions of morality and the word of god come in, but also when it comes to proper conduct. rumors are way too common, gossip is almost a rule (we just care that much about each other...). and everybody hs an opinion on everybody else. this makes appearances rather important, and in the case where our first gay couple got married, there were no "god forbid"s, but instead people asked about who was going. "oh, if they go, then i can too. thank you for the invitation."

there still aren't any lesbians who are out here. maybe because women are too good at telling each other what is proper and whom they should marry. i know of no transsexual in an area with a big enough population that there should be at least one or two. i don't count myself, since i'm something else. kids in school also care too much about what their classmates think, and do their best to conform, as well as living up to their parents' expectations of conformity at least.

so, if i'm going to get very out and about as a non-binary, i'd first have to know the right persons to out myself to. i don't know who they are yet.


then of course there's the matter of professional aid. a two hour drive to the nearest traffic lights is extremely rural imo. i know there are therapists about that far away, or an hour more, but none have the first idea about how to treat some odd case like me. hrt is somewhat unimaginable to get anywhere close enough to get there and back in one day.
the therapists who come by this area once in a while are also few enough that they're likely to know at least half of my family, so getting help with any other mental issues is a challenge as well. i can't get a gp whom my mom doesn't know either. and everybody will know if i go to see a doctor, since there are no ways to lie about where i'm going (everybody really does know everybody here, i can't just say i went to see someone else, they'll find out even if i go to the slightly bigger city, because they have relatives living there too).

as if it wasn't enough that my parents think my life is their business....

and support groups. well, there are none. can't just go 500 miles only to attend a rare meeting in another city.

Quote from: Padma on August 19, 2013, 07:57:49 AM
Hi - next month I'm going to be on a panel for a discussion entitled "How can we best support LGBT young people in rural areas?" and as the only trans person on the panel, I want to represent as broad a range of views as possible - so if you're a "young trans person" (they're mostly talking about the 16-25 age group) and up for doing this, please could you say in this thread what are the 3 things you find most difficult about being trans (whether you're out or not, transitioning or not, binary or not, I'm interested) living somewhere rural, why they're difficult, and what you think would be of most help to you in dealing with those things?

Thanks in advance for any responses - this is happening on September 17th, so you have time to mull it over .

I'm a trans girl living in Georgia. I guess I'll jump in to the three things...
1. The school I go to won't allow "boys" to even wear ear-rings, let alone feminine clothing.
2. My doctor is very religious and has a tendency to pep-talk me about it. I feel like he'd have a bias or straight-up anger against me if I brought it up.
3. None of my peers would support or understand, save the small LGBT group of friends I have, and being in the south, I'd likely be picked on all day, which is stress I just don't need.

I really think that if there was some kind of way that I could show people that I'm not a weirdo for feeling how I do. That I'm not alone. I have no idea how this could be done, but I hate having to wait until I'm independent to blossom as a girl. Hope this helps!

Yes it does, thanks. All these responses are very useful to me.

I'm adding onto my list of proposed things that could be done to help people in these situations:

Run gender/sexuality diversity sessions at rural doctors' surgeries - for the staff. The better these professionals are prepared to respond appropriately to LGBTQI young folks, the easier it will be for them to come out, and to get good treatment.

Sounds great!

The other day I got some bad monetary news and it depressed me and I was all like what's the point I'll never afford SRS and I should just stop HRT. Then I thought well I'll get paid next week and that will be enough to buy a bundle of X and I will X it and that will be the end of me. My mom will think it was an accident and that I turned back to the darkside. I've been really happy lately so no one would think I offed myself.

That scared the shiite out of me as I was very serious. I wouldn't want to live if I had to stop HRT and not pursue SRS. I don't mean stop for a little bit, I mean stop forever.

So, I won't ever think of even thinking of detransition. For me, there simply is no option other then becoming female. Actually, lately I view myself as female. And thru my expereinces I'm certainly getting a crash course in female world. But I really believe God is on my side and is carrying me and i believe God will show me the way and guide me to a place that will help me get surgery. God did find me a Boyfriend. I really believe that was fate. So does he.

So I have thought about it but I am 100 percent confident I made the right choice and couldn't be happier. Well I could be at the beach in a cute bikini and some boy shorts that will hide my dirty little secret. That would be great. Oooh, and if I was able to drive stick and had a cute little old school purple VW Beetle. That would make me happier. And if I got married...and had kids...okay that would be Heav.en.