I have been going through this same issue with my family. My parents are divorced and my dad called me every name in the book and we don't speak anymore. My mom actually kicked me out at the beginning of this year and I had nowhere to go I had to sleep in winter shelters and it was a living nightmare. I came out to my family 5 years ago and they didn't accept back then. I had to live on the street back then too and I was so young it was too hard so I had to go back to being a boy. That wasn't any easier. The end of last year I told them I couldn't take it anymore and I had to leave again and my job began harassing me so I quit and it has just been a huge mess since then. When I first came out I turned to prostitution because all the ts's I met were that way and I thought it was what ts's did. I hated it, it was not who I was, and I had to go through a lot of pain because of it. When I came back out recently my family expected me to just become a whore again. I definitely had that option but recently I had fallen deeply in love with someone who lived far away on the other side of the country and there was no way I could have sex with anyone let alone sell myself again. I had an offer to go live with someone who pay for all my surgeries and I would have my own room and anything else I wanted but the catch was I had to have sex with him.
I was going to go with him but I just couldn't get myself to go! It was not because of the sex it was because of my love for this other guy who did not feel mutual about me but it kept me from moving in with someone who would have saved me from the terror of the homeless life and given me all the changes for my body of my dreams. It has been 6 months since then and I never went with the guy with money or had sex with anybody since I have been out here and I have an even stronger relationship with the other guy who I fell in love with. My whole family couldn't believe I did not have sex with anyone or go with the guy who offered to help me for sex. They assumed I was some kind of slut as most all of society feels about transgendered women. Whether that is the case or not it is not right for people to treat others bad on that standard in my opinion because many, many, many straight people are very promiscuous and slutty but they receive no recourse for it from society(very backwards mentality). I had told my family about this situation of falling in love and begged them to not throw me out so they heard from me often and could see I was not a woman because of the sexual identity but as a gender one. This made them respect me a lot for this. When I use to dress a couple years ago I wore wigs, breast inserts, and lots of make up including very feminine clothing. This time I wore very little if any make up, very neutral androgynous clothes, and I was getting a lot of harassment form people around the cities I was surviving if you will.
Thank God my mom was there for me even though she is the one who put me in this situation. If she had turned her back completely on me like my dad did I would have had no choice but to become a whore for this other guy and broken my heart for leaving the man I love. Can you imagine how much I cried? How bad that hurt to be a phone call away from being forced to have sex to survive? Well my mom would let me come over more and more often and she even opened up a lot about me as a girl. I still don't dress very feminine, I have short hair just covering my ears still, I haven't had laser on my face, my voice is deep, it is a nightmare, but she has become very supportive considering she practically threw me to the wolves just months ago. I can't explain to you how hard this has been for me. People are ruthless in my city. They scream at me and call me names, and tell me I am going to hell, and not only give me dirty looks but do not acknowledge me if I am next in line, or tell me I am not a woman. I can't even believe this is my life every morning I wake up.
It makes me really sad as well when my family wont call me she. My sister was on the phone with a friend and she said, "all of my mom kids have issues". I have more issues than being transgender of course but when my family thinks of me and my issue they consider being trans as an "issue". When I talk to my family about it they become silent. At first when I use to tell my mom she use to ignore me, get angry at me, or there were times she mocked me, or told me those things that her son was "dying". After I have proven myself in a way that I am who I am because of who I am and the people who treat me bad are really the mean and wrongful people who are the ones who are evil not me my family really begin to open up to me. Yesterday my mom and I had a really nice talk about her calling me she. She wont admit it but she refuses to call me she simply because she does not want to and there is absolutely nothing I am going to be able to do about it. A few years ago I legally changed my name(my dad would never refer to me as it, it is my screen name). My mom and the rest of my family had no problem calling by my name change but as for making the switch from he to she they have not been as understanding. When I changed my name a counselor told me it was perfectly fine to address people that my name was what it is now and not what they are saying, and to say it politely and never aggressively. I have been taking the same approach with the "she" pronoun. The counselor told me it is important to remind people that they have acknowledged you incorrectly and correcting them is actually the expected way of reacting.
There have been times when people are rude or harass me I have stood up for myself and told them "I am a mother->-bleeped-<-ing woman" or "actually it is she not he and I would appreciate if you would have respect for me as you want respect". Lots of people will not have respect for you because they do not have respect for themselves, and disrespecting you gives them a surge of fake energy and for one second they feel powerful until the insult fades and they see you are not effected. They will laugh and they will howl at you thinking treating you this way is somehow right and they are children of God or some bull->-bleeped-<-, suddenly they become all holy and saints. With my mom I have explained this to her and she has realized that hate is wrong in any shape or form. She has told me it is fine if I correct her when she calls me "he", but when I do it is very awkward and stirs up a lot emotions. I have tried to ignore it and think it does not matter but it really makes me feel sad. I feel odd dressed up like a girl and living my life as a woman and then people call me "he". NOt everyone in society treats me bad, but enough do that it makes my life miserable so I have been complaining about it because I am trying to find a way out of it or find some comfort that I am not some kind of beast doomed to burn in hell. Nothing is farther from the truth. Nobody is going to hell for wearing a womens shirt or all of us are going to hell. Nobody is going to hell for falling in love, and nobody is going to hell for having sex or people wouldn't exist, and who I have sex with and what I do with my personal time is none of these other nosy peoples business. Am I concerned if they have a sex life or not? I don't even have one right now but everyone assumes I am a slutty ->-bleeped-<-got who just wants to AIDS anyway- like I said its a nightmare.
My mom has really lightened up about the "she" and "he" pronouns but it has been a war that is still not won only little battles everyday. She has taken my side and been completely supportive of my choice to transition, this is going strong on 5+ years I have begun my transition PLUS both my parents knew about this years before I came out! They always suppressed my urges and delayed my inevitable coming out thinking my attraction to men was horribly evil and disgusting. I was always confused that people feel this way because what is wrong with feeling attracted to me? Women are selfish and want to keep them all to themselves or something? Well it can't be that because there is not a straight guy alive who would not think its cool for 2 hot chicks to make out so I'm sure it is not a matter of having same sex attraction. I just don't know the reason.
Even though my mom has listened to me tell her these things and been there for me when not so long ago she wasn't she refuses to call me she. Even right now she is talking to me and she is calling me "he" and refers to me as my siblings "brother" or nieces "uncle" and I hate it absolutely a deep anger inside feels like violence manifesting(maybe it is the hormones). I am not very masculine looking I am passable when I get dressed up and I am pretty too, but I have those features I mentioned males are born with that are obvious like 5 o'clock shadow, short hair, and deep voice, plus very small breasts. Sometimes I think when I get out of here I will never return to see my family because I hate to be called he so much.This would actually make my family really sad by now because they have become fond of me for my personality, but they wont call me "she". I have to bite the bullet sometimes and accept it they have no idea it feels the way it does to me or they don't care. I have repeatedly told them and they don't get it makes us feel the way it makes us feel as tgirls. I understand it that my mom does not think I am evil anymore but she wont call me "she" because all my life she has called me "he". I understand that, and i understand that I am a little awkward looking at times, and I understand people don't know how to feel about me when they see me so they make comments or they laugh. But I am a living person dammit. No one deserves this kind of treatment and it makes me so angry we have to put up with it because years and years and years ago some jerk off wrote in the Bible same sex marriage is unholy and now all of Western civilization crucifies us and they are walking, talking, breathing, eating hypocrites. They don't obey the Bible! And we are the absolute greatest example of their prejudice and we suffer for accepting who we are and embracing our emotions. They hate us, all of them who cannot accept themselves who is the majority.
I feel like being called "he" is not the worst part of my transition the worst part is actually having the characteristics for people to call me that and that IS why everyone keeps saying that. I feel like one day my hair will be long and my face will have laser surgery performed, my chest will grow, and I will train my voice. All of this terrible experience will be long behind me and for the first time I feel like I am changing and the dreams I have wont be dreams anymore but reality. Lots of people will try and bring you down along the way and that is what breaks so many of us because we start out passive to begin with being born as a boy and making the switch to a less aggressive gender! I was almost in tears visiting my mom today and I told her how much it hurts to be called "he" and she listened to everything I said and it was a lot and I did cry but I tried really hard to stop it. She was really sweet and told me it had nothing to do with thinking I was a bad person or a boy just that she couldn't feel I was any different. So in a way it is nice to feel that relationship with my mom but it does not make me feel any less uncomfortable when they say "he". My mom was telling me about a lesbian who was borderline f2m but said this person was obviously a women just had all the other characteristics as a man(such as clothes and hair style) but my mom referred to this person as a "he". I am so baffled at it. Why is it my mom referred to this person as a "lesbian" and a "he"- it is an uneducated lifestyle.
Recently I found out I am going to be making some good money at a job I just got. I will finally be able to pay for all the things I need to work on for myself and soon the choice to be away from my family will be available. I think often I will never come back or maybe not for years. But likely that will not be the case. I feel like I will be able to afford nicer clothes and facial hair removal and have the other changes take place in the near future and it will not be as hard as it is for me now and in the past. My family really does love me they just do not know that it the way it feels when they call me "he" it is like ignoring all the sadness I have gone through and all the pain is pointless just to be a "boy" still. They are clueless in my opinion. Even though I have a short time to go living this way it is not any easier dealing with it. Everyday it is like breaking through a brick wall and I wish I could just give up somehow but there is no option of that no matter what. If people only knew how strong ->-bleeped-<-s where they would be awarding us metals, not throwing us away.
