A Glimpse into What It’s Like Being Trans

Cerberus at Sadly, No! has an incredible piece up that righteously deconstructs a transphobic shitheel. The whole thing is epic, but this part – this made me cry.

Dude. I will trade you my dysphoria in a heart beat. If you really think it’s a “bad feeling” and nothing more and it’s the sweet ticket to free stuff, then by george, I will hand over this experience to you and you can get that sweet lucrative surgery access you think we’re scamming off you.

Cause buddy, it ain’t no “bad feeling”. It’s not being able to look at yourself in the mirror for most of your life. It’s being crippled with depression to the point where others need to hide the sharp objects because someone touched you wrong or a period started or a hard-on crept up on you. It’s being left in a panic state constantly, unendingly because people keep calling you the wrong pronoun (and for those that say whatever, think about being called the different gender and treated as the wrong gender, all day, every day, always and now think about how you have friends who’ll flip the table if they are ever teasingly called a girl or a boy once). It’s not being able to be intimate with the ones you love because your naked body is wrong. It’s dealing with all manner of discrimination and violence and rape and hatred and people actively trying to take away what little rights you have, because all that is better and less painful than what dysphoria brings. It’s trying over and over again to pretend you’re something you are not, failing and failing to get it right, because you aren’t. And you’re never going to be and the longer you keep pretending to be the gender that makes “everyone else happy”, the one the doctors guessed you would be at birth, the more definite it is that you’re just going to check out from this world once and for all.

And worst of all, it’s not even realizing how fucked up you have really gotten with dysphoria because everyone told you that was natural to feel, because some fucking doctor took a look at your junk and guessed wrong. When you only ever realize what that happiness feeling, that ease of mind feeling everyone else gets when you finally are recognized for who you are and are allowed to fully participate.

But hey, I’m sure you’ll deal great with all that.

After all, we’re a bunch of whiners and it’s just a “bad feeling”.

This is the kind of thing that needs to play on endless loop until these transphobic fuckwads who want to deny trans people their humanity, not to mention the medical care they need, get it. It needs to be piped into the ears of every parent of a trans kid who refuses to cope with reality. It needs to be tattooed on the eyelids of politicians and preachers and everyone else who’s made it their mission in life to make life shitty for trans folk.

Someday, we will have a world where trans people are treated with compassion and respect, but above all, treated like human beings.

Anybody need a hug now? Let’s have some hugs.

Image is a kitty hugging a puppy, who is licking the kitty's face. Caption says, "Nothin can beat lolcat hug"

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A Glimpse into What It’s Like Being Trans
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One thought on “A Glimpse into What It’s Like Being Trans

  1. AMM
    1

    The thing is, you don’t have to understand what it is to be trans to find transphobia repugnant. You don’t have to even believe that some people were “born in the wrong body” (a phrase that only some trans people feel applies to them, anyway) to be not-a-transphobe.

    You just have to not be a dick. (Forgot who pushed the “don’t be a dick” meme.)

    Not being a dick includes:
    * Not harrassing people who are living in a way you don’t understand but aren’t hurting anyone.
    * Calling people by the names they prefer (within reason — I’d balk at “your divine and holy eminence”, for instance :-) )
    * Making an effort to use the pronouns people prefer (especially if they’re pronouns you already know how to use.)
    * Not referring to people by names you know are frequently used as slurs.

    I’d add “not beating people up for being different” and “not refusing to serve people who are behaving themselves,” although that’s also covered under “obey the laws.”

    If, for example, someone who you used to know as female is now making it clear that they would like to be seen as male, the non-dick move is to say, “okay,” and make a good-faith effort to treat them as they seem to want to be treated. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, you can just shrug and say, “different strokes for different folks.” If they’re your server in a restaurant, you politely let them serve you, you give them your usual tip, and you try to remember not to call them your “waitress.”

    I mean, it’s nice to be understood, but that’s what your friends are for (and, if you’re real lucky, family.) From most people, all you really need is for people to treat you with decency.

    Giving people your unsolicited advice or opinions about how they are or should be living their lives (assuming they aren’t hurting anyone else) is always a dick move.

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