Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.

Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.

The questions I’ve been asked IRL:

  • why / how did you pick your name?
  • how long have you known?
  • how long before you are done transitioning?
  • how long do you have to be on HRT?
  • is transgender like being transracial?
  • what do the surgeries involve?

For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.

If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.

  • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
    131·
    1 day ago

    I see that you mentioned there are studies that point to Trans likely being a mismatch between the brain and body at development. But, do you think there is also a link that involves childhood trauma? Or is the science very clear?

    Gender identity does not seem to be influenced by trauma, and we have decent evidence it’s genetic, though it’s a complex trait and there isn’t a single “trans gene”. Trauma might be more common in trans populations, but that is true for gay folks as well, it’s not that the trauma makes them gay, but being gay does make them more likely to be victimized and experience trauma. I myself thought that trauma caused my gender dysphoria (or the experiences I had, which I now realize are gender dysphoria), and it took a long time for me to learn there is good evidence trauma isn’t causing my dysphoria (part of this is that I recovered from PTSD, and this alleviated my PTSD symptoms, but did not alleviate my gender dysphoria).

    Here are some follow-up articles and citations I have read, and which you may find helpful:

    • Joshua Safer’s “Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity” (DOI)
    • Joshua Safer’s “Etiology of Gender Identity” (DOI)
    • the collective research of Daphna Joel and Dick Swaab for the current scientific theories of “brain-sex” (which likely plays a role in gender identity and gender dysphoria):
      • Joel & Swaab, 2019, “The Complex Relationships between Sex and the Brain”, (DOI)
      • Joel, 2015, “Sex beyond the genetalia: The human brain mosaic”, (DOI)
      • Swaab, 2008, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity”, (DOI)
      • Swaab, 2000, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus”, (DOI)
      • Swaab, 1995, “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality”, (DOI)

    In a video format, some of this is broadly summarized in these videos:

    On biological sex more generally I recommend these videos:

    I also highly recommend reading this literature review to better understand why trans healthcare is so important, but also why it’s not considered controversial in an otherwise conservative medical establishment:

    What We Know Project, Cornell University, “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Effect of Gender Transition on Transgender Well-Being?”, 2018.

    …

    often find myself uncomfortable with Trans people in person, but I often wonder if half of that is simply that I don’t know how to treat someone. The ones that I met that had relatively normal behavior I found pretty easy to talk to and I felt for them. But ones that were more complicated, say neurodivergent beyond dysphoria, or they had a lot of emotional trauma, made me very uncomfortable. Do you think most of this issue is that as children we are taught how to treat people that are squarely female or male, rather than learning how to treat people as a whole?

    I don’t know all the reasons you have for discomfort around trans people. I can experience that discomfort too, and especially as you mention when there are other issues like neurodivergence (which is a common comorbidity with gender dysphoria). Beyond the behavioral issues, I have identified in my feelings that gender clashing or inconsistency can bother me - a combination of a masculine signal like a beard and a feminine body like breasts can look wrong to me, and I suspect this is mostly a social norm - I have been raised in a society where being gender non-conforming is taboo. This is not unlike ableist perspectives - the ways that we might feel uncomfortable around people with amputations or birth defects that make their bodies not “normal”.

    One of the ways to help with this is exposure therapy - being around or exposing yourself to positive experiences with people who are “not normal” can help acclimate you to those differences. It’s a long, hard process to undo that cultural programming, though - I have internalized a lot of transphobia, and that has made my transition much more difficult, as my body becomes “not normal” (the experience is akin to feeling like a monster, like being less than human).

    So you would have to examine what about trans people is unsettling to you, there is a lot there to figure out - but probably it’s just your internalized transphobia (which is fairly typical, you shouldn’t feel especially bad for this - it’s not like you chose to be raised that way).

    I often wish the world wasn’t so hostile, but I also find that some things that were set in motion in my childhood are the hardest to change. It’s easy to change what I act on, but harder to change how I feel.

    That’s my experience too, and it’s a shame because a lot of things set in motion when I was a child are not adaptive or good for me or others now. 😅

    Thanks for your questions and thoughtfulness, I hope I have been helpful. ☺️