Im struggling with something.
My sister said something while we were discussing my transition, along these lines....

"Well, fat people wanna be skinny, girls want lipo, facelifts, big breasts etc.  We can't all just get what we want.  You dont think theres thousands of people out their uncomfortable in their skin???  Its all just external anyways and wont really bring real happiness in the end.  Because happiness is inner happiness.  Transitioning falls under this umbrella, its just a seeking of external things, when really its just the inner work that needs to be done. Authenticity wont just magically happen when you transition, its spiritual work"

I don't necessarily disagree with where she's coming from on that....but still somehow think that transition is a completely different thing altogether??  I KNOW for a fact, authenticity will just naturally follow transition.  Theres no way it can't.

Because its not JUST an outer change.  Its an aligning. Its a hormonal/brain/emotional change.   Its a societal change.
We only really NEED to change the outside version of ourselves, so that we can also get society to treat/see us as the person we know we are.

I told her that if I could just make people see me as a women, without needing to outwardly do anything, I would obviously just do that, because it's clearly the the much easier route. (no FFS, no laser, no makeup etc etc)

She keeps saying things along the lines of 'inner happiness', 'spiritual work', 'accepting oneself' to me, and its really frustrating me.  Its like she either doesn't get it, isn't even trying to, or is trying to educate me on how silly I'm being.

How can I make her understand that a girl wanting lip injections, or a boob job, is nowhere near the same thing as someone wanting to transition?? She seems to view both of these things as some sort of 'empty/hollow' external thing, that only unhappy people would contemplate, and if you somehow fix your unhappiness inside, all this stuff will naturally go away.

Any thoughts?

I don't see a comparison between a sex change and wanting to be skinier or having bigger breasts.
Transition is not just a cosmetic change, it changes who you are (or at least enables you to be who you feel you should be) and how people see and interact with you.

Your sister has bought into the general perception that being trans is a mental/social problem.  But it isn't.  The brain has a physical gender.  If yours is female, then there is no spiritual, psychological or therapeutic work you can do to make it work like a male brain.  The only cure for gender dysphoria is to allow your female brain to express itself to whatever degree it needs to through feminine presentation and feminine social interactions.  And, if the dysphoria is strong enough around body image, through physical changes to the body.

You can't reprogram a female brain to be male.

Tell your sister that I spent my whole life, from birth until age 53, trying the be the boy and then the man my parents wanted me to be.  I got so good at it, and so deep in denial that I convinced myself that I was that man. 

Unfortunately this set up a huge and horrible conflict within myself.  I suffered from horrible anxiety, vivid nightmares, somnambulism, and immune system issues my entire life, and from chest pains, irregular heartbeats, high blood pressure, TMJ flare ups, neck pains, jaw pains, and inflammatory arthritis for the last eleven years. 

During all the chest pains and irregular heartbeats, my doctor and cardiologist found nothing medically wrong with me, and my doctor told me that it was panic attacks, and work related. 

When your sister tells you that means it was time for me to see a psychotherapist, tell her that is exactly what I did.  I was diagnosed as transgender, and placed on HRT. 

HRT fixed everything, except some residual low level panic attacks, and presenting and interacting as female fixed that.

This is not a fetish.  It is not sexual.  It is not a "lifestyle choice."  This is who I freaking am, and I know this because I gave away more than half of my life trying to be who other people wanted me to be. 

In order to please my parents I became a lawyer, married twice, fathered a child, raised two stepchildren.  I'm done.  I paid my dues. The rest of my life is mine.  For me.  To do with as I please, regardless of the necessity of it or not.

But the bottom line is, I could have been happy and healthy if I had been allowed to choose my own path.  And I lived in misery for more than fifty years because I was not allowed.

In terms of facial feminization surgery and other "cosmetic" procedures?  I am a trial lawyer.  Therefore I am in the public speaking business, and my face and voice are my livelihood.  I don't view getting face and voice feminization surgery as any different than a laborer who is born with a hand missing getting a hand transplant so that he can be a better worker.

My heart and soul are female, and I deserve to be perceived and treated as female in public.  Therefore I am entitled to have every male gender marker eliminated from my face, body and voice.  Frankly, for cisgender females, cosmetic procedures may or may not make them look more feminine, but are unquestionable to make them more attractive.

I don't necessarily need to look more attractive, but I have an inalienable right to look and sound female.

What your sister is trying to do is blatantly manipulative and extremely insulting.  Her words imply and she will probably refuse to admit, that she thinks she knows who you are better than you do.  She wants you to accept not yourself, but her idea of who you should be.  My father was the same way -- and it took five years to get him out of my head after a stroke finally silenced him when I was 46.  Don't even think of throwing your life away for relatives the way that I did.  No one who loves you will weaponize their words to try to force you to question your own identity.

"I KNOW for a fact, authenticity will just naturally follow transition.  Theres no way it can't."

Careful with that belief.

Your sister is right that self acceptance is the key. After all, thousands of years of transgender people had to make do without hormones, surgery, and therapists before our generation.

Hugs, Devlyn

Maybe there are people on this world who could resist an urge as strong as this and still be totally happy, but those people are probably saints who can rise above any kind of discomfort and I think they might be a very small minority.
All the evidence suggests that ignoring, fighting or repressing this is not going to solve anything and while inner peace and self acceptance is needed to be happy, one can hardly find happiness when there is this very strong conflict between inside and outside and it's up to you to find the best balance of self-acceptance and surgeries.

Ask your sister how much self-acceptance and happiness she'd feel if she were forced to present and live as a man.  Or better than that, don't.  If she's as smug as she sounds, she'll probably give you a bull**** answer.  Just think it to yourself.  Personally, I'm done trying to "happy think" my way out of needs that might make other people uncomfortable.  I have to live with me 24/7, so I'm living in the way I think I can best make myself happy.  You deserve the same.   

Kayla your sister does have a point in her argument, but as mentioned above she is coming at this from the stand point that this is a mental illness we have and it can be treated with being happy on our inside. I tried being happy as guy and I was happy for a time. I tried to be a family man and support a family but, I slowly got depressed nothing helped me. Was this all in my head? Why didn't having my own family make me happy? I wasn't happy with myself and who I was and never was comfortable being a man. There were expectations that I didn't like and things that I couldn't do that were "feminine". So I don't think this inner happiness bs gives us the full help and what we need. It is true what was said above that we do have a gender in our brain. They have done studies on brains and found that transgenders brain is exactly like the brain of the cis-gender that they identify as. So when we say that we were born a girl in a boys body, that sums it up fully!!!!

I think being authentic leads to being happy. Most people aren't authentic and it's my opinion that it leads to all sorts of maladaptive behavior.


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Your sister has no reference. She can not grasp the magnitude of the difference between cosmetic and ender.

Hormones and brain gender alignment is essential. Looking male when female is different than looking female with small boobs and being female.

I think she is saying things that are like when you come out as trans and a person says I know a lot of gay people. That one comment defines the volume of missing information. How do you explain a volume, You do not. For those that count it is a slow process of education. Be patient with her and help her see you for who you are. How you got to this point is not that important.

Kayla,
   It is your life. You have desires, you make decisions, and you live with the consequences. I would look at her and say, "Maybe  we disagree on some things, but I want your support. I am asking for your support, for you to be there for me." She is probably in the denial phase, thinking she can talk you out of moving forward. If moving forward is right for  you, at some point it will become the new  reality and she will see it. She may not like it, but she will probably see that you are happier, and maybe she changes to a believer. What others are telling you, I think, is not all issues are fixed by correcting the gender issue. Don't go into it thinking it is a cure for everything.
Moni

Honestly, your sister sounds like one of those types that posts memes about walking in the woods as a cure for clinical depression. In any case, you are absolutely free to ignore the opinion of any cis person who claims some special insight into the trans experience. You can also ignore any person, cis or trans, who tries to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body.

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Transsexualism is not like wanting a prettier nose or a bigger bust. Those things can be lived without and don't cause the level of pain and mental blockage this condition does. You generally don't feel invalidated as a being by your nose. You might feel ugly if you think you have an ugly nose, but it doesn't invalidate your identity.

I know lots of people who would change some superficial features of themselves if they had the money. But it doesn't stop those people living full lives that they don't, they aren't in therapy for it, they don't contemplate suicide because it causes so much endless misery. It's not considered a medical condition. Being trans is a different thing, much more serious.

She's looking at trans conditions as if they are a matter of vanity. In most trans people I read about or talk to, they would rather be a less than stunning specimen of the right sex than a good-looking or normal looking one of the wrong sex.

Quote from: Devlyn Marie on October 30, 2017, 03:35:04 PM
"I KNOW for a fact, authenticity will just naturally follow transition.  Theres no way it can't."

Careful with that belief.

Your sister is right that self acceptance is the key. After all, thousands of years of transgender people had to make do without hormones, surgery, and therapists before our generation.

Hugs, Devlyn

  And for most of that time we lived in misery.

Quote from: Stevie on October 30, 2017, 08:14:22 PM

Quote from: Devlyn Marie on October 30, 2017, 03:35:04 PM
"I KNOW for a fact, authenticity will just naturally follow transition.  Theres no way it can't."

Careful with that belief.

Your sister is right that self acceptance is the key. After all, thousands of years of transgender people had to make do without hormones, surgery, and therapists before our generation.

Hugs, Devlyn

  And for most of that time we lived in misery.

Yet we accomplished great things. Some people count the blessings they have, not the blessings they don't. Those are the happy people. 

Hugs, Devlyn

Sister sounds like she's rationalizing her own fears of you changing your body and hence her direct perception of you.  In other words, she's trying to hold on to the past, rather than embracing the future. 

I think that maybe you're misreading your sister.  It sounds to me that she is worried that if you are trying to find happiness by looking like society's accepted best examples of a female you may never be satisfied.  In the end we will have to accept ourselves, however close we may come to society's standards, and feel good about who we are, not what someone else thinks we are.  I agree with Devlin, that's when we will find peace.  If all we are doing is following trends, and remember they change all the time, we'll be playing catch up for the rest of our lives.  Yes, acceptance is part of it.  I want to be accepted because then I know it's OK to be who I am inside.  That has to do with the people you surround yourself with.  I am concerned about PRESENTING mostly to be safe and hopefully minimize the chances of some male being threatened by li'l ole me.  My alignment is much more about the internals, the rest is fun and icing on the cake.  Toni 

Quote from: Toni on October 31, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
  I am concerned about PRESENTING mostly to be safe and hopefully minimize the chances of some male being threatened by li'l ole me.  My alignment is much more about the internals, the rest is fun and icing on the cake.  Toni 

Yes, this is me as well.
Like I told her....if I could just be perceived by others as the women I am, without having to present, I would.

I was trying to make her see that the outer stuff, is more for society/safety etc, than for vanity.
You can't just magically make people think you're a women, without looking like one. 

Quote from: Toni on October 31, 2017, 08:29:49 AM
I think that maybe you're misreading your sister.  It sounds to me that she is worried that if you are trying to find happiness by looking like society's accepted best examples of a female you may never be satisfied. 

I don't think I'm misunderstanding her at all, because I do agree with what she says, just not in the case of transitioning.  It can't be treated the same as a boob job, or butt lift out of vanity.  Its just worlds apart imo.

I think I agree with what has been said in this thread, that she is perhaps afraid of losing who she knows me as, and is trying everything in her power to get me to change my mind, so that nothing changes, and life goes on normally.

Hi Kayla,

I guess all the mental health professionals that created the recommendations in DSM-5 never considered "Don't worry be happy".  If the Tony Robbins approach worked, don't you think there would be a lot less suicides, depressions, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse in our community?  What we really need is for society to let us be who we are.  We don't need them to tell us how we should live or be.

I'm guessing your sister knows all this because she has gone through significant trauma and is now the happiest person on earth.

Take care,
Paige

 

Quote from: kayla1618 on October 30, 2017, 01:07:18 PM
'inner happiness', 'spiritual work', 'accepting oneself'

These things had to come first for me.
For most of my life I fought against my feelings, against myself. It wasn't until I came to accept my inner self that I started feeling right with showing the world my femininity.