Quote from: TanyaG on April 06, 2025, 09:27:52 AMI wonder if one of the reasons why there's been such a peak of children entering gender affirming care is not because there's a sudden rush of people discovering they are trans, but instead that what we're seeing would have been how it was in say the seventies if awareness of trans had been greater and communication about it had been easier?

Personally, TanyaG, and only half of my tongue is in my cheek, I blame nanoplastics for the trans male increase among adolescents. But thank you (and April Marie and Ashley) for sharing valuable insights consistent with my own experience of growing up different. My gay nephew claims we have alien brains. That's why we understand each other so well.

Quote from: Mrs. Oliphant on April 06, 2025, 10:23:39 AMI blame nanoplastics for the trans male increase among adolescents

It's a symptom of the times that when my dad discovered I was wearing women's clothes he didn't even know the word '->-bleeped-<-' and ended up using 'hermaphrodite' when he had a wobbly in front of my mother. It's howlingly funny in retrospect though it wasn't at the time.

Nanoplastics are everywhere :-) Maybe, after all the use I'd made of it, they were what stuck the pages of dictionary together in the T section when he got there?

Quote from: TanyaG on April 06, 2025, 10:14:39 AM'If you want to dress in my clothes, let's do it'

Good afternoon, TanyaG--For the first time, I purposely did not change out of my burgundy skirt and rust blouse before my daughter got home from work. For the first time, she did not roll her eyes when she saw me. I finished what I was doing and then went to my room and changed. We didn't say one word about it to each other. All in all, it was one best conversations I've had with my daughter.

Quote from: Mrs. Oliphant on April 06, 2025, 04:55:05 PMFor the first time, I purposely did not change out of my burgundy skirt and rust blouse before my daughter got home from work. For the first time, she did not roll her eyes when she saw me. I finished what I was doing and then went to my room and changed. We didn't say one word about it to each other.

So often this is how it goes. What happened there mirrors the conversations we have with ourselves. To begin with, we avoid accepting we might be trans, then we go through a period where we semi-accept it, and test the idea without openly admitting it. Finally, we accept it and open discussion can begin.

The first person we go through this exercise with (ourselves) is the often the hardest. After that, the next is usually someone very significant to our life and that's as hard, if not harder, but after that, it becomes easier with every person we meet until finally, the need to do it at all more or less goes away.

As a lifelong student of body language, even the eye-rolling stage is a sign instant rejection is not going to happen. It's more an expression of 'I feel uncomfortable with this' and I've found it's often worth acknowledging that you understand that and that it's a legit feeling. Get there and you can open up the conversation about how uncomfortable being trans has made you feel at times and from there it's a short step to, 'but I felt many times more uncomfortable having to conform to something I was not, and I've decided to be honest with myself and everyone here about it for the sake of my mental health and because secrets aren't good.'

Take it slow and let her go at her own pace, but your timing's been good so far. The more she sees a feminine you, the more she'll accept it's the actual you and the more the old you will seem like a false you.

Quote from: Sephirah on April 03, 2025, 06:11:11 PMHad to look for your intro

The 'Imitation Game' more than lived up to your recommendation. The relationship between Benedict and Keira was a theatrical masterpiece. Of course, I cried at the end. Suicide at 41. What a loss (though I do take some comfort knowing I've never passed the Turing Test and hope I never do).

Following up on the Imitiation Game, if you want a film about the most amazing person, try Oliver Sacks, his Own Life. It's a similar story, but much of it is told by Sacks himself. Very affecting because he faced the same struggles and had many of the same reactions trans people do to being trans, although in his case, he was gay like Turing.

The way Sacks tells the story is very open and affecting. His mother rejected him when he came out and he went through a period of hypergendering, as many of us do. It's driven by almost the same motivations in gay people when it happens, although not quite.

I cheekily invited Sacks to a student led medical society and to my astonishment he came and proved to be as inspiring as John Bowlby. Both helped change my life. Sacks was a medical hero at the time and well known because of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, but in person he was like meeting a six foot plus capacitor on full charge. Magnetic, but modest and he comes over as he was in the film, which is neat.

Thanks, TanyaG--I will definitely look for Mr. Sacks movie.