You can still watch the FtBCon trans panel: Myths and Facts About Trans People

If you missed our trans panel of transness at FtBCon, don’t despair! The entire event has been recorded and saved to YouTube so you can watch it whenever you want. We discovered that just one hour wasn’t enough to contain all the awesomeness, so we eventually ended up with two hours of brilliance and sass from some of the smartest, coolest trans ladies I’ve ever met! We covered topics including the “trapped in a man’s body” trope, the excessive focus on trans women’s style and attire, the realities of transition surgeries, the relation between transitioning and sexual orientation, our histories with gender prior to transitioning, how gendered socialization affects us, issues with public bathrooms and other gendered facilities, and “autogynephilia”, followed by a variety of questions from viewers. Enjoy!

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You can still watch the FtBCon trans panel: Myths and Facts About Trans People
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7 thoughts on “You can still watch the FtBCon trans panel: Myths and Facts About Trans People

  1. 1

    I’m gonna have to watch it that way, since it just happened to be timed EXACTLY when I was fussing with BBQ burbon ribs and home-made baked beans. A girl’s gotta have priorities, y’know.

  2. 3

    That was excellent, thank you so very, very much. The fluidity of gender and how we as a society tend to *freak out* at any deviations/challenges from the “acceptable” and what that says about what we fear is something that’s been heavily on my mind.

    Also, autogynephilia. Jesus. I can not believe there are people who have time to make up shit like that. What a crock. Just like this whole “deception” thing – why must it be that we feel validated in making assumptions based on how people look and then cry “foul” when our shallow assumptions prove to be false? It’s ridiculous.

    Anyway, thanks again for bringing these wonderful women together (and to our attention!) and leading such a great discussion.

  3. 7

    Hi, Zinnia,

    I have to say I am extremely jealous of all of you, being young and trans in today’s world. When I was your age, well, the world was not *quite* what it is today, and there was no internet to help us to exchange our thoughts and feelings or to even recognize that others like us even existed. I had to do extensive library research as a child to uncover random articles about Christine Jorgensen even to learn the world “transsexual,” and believe me: there was not a lot of information out there.

    When you all pooh pooh the notion of being “trapped in a man’s body,” it merely tells me how far the world has come, for in my world that was *precisely* the reality. You see the “myth” once WAS truth: in all of the decades before you could simply start transitioning whenever you wanted and do so for years–as you stated was your case–before you ever did anything to your body, any variation in the cisgender style and role-appropriate behavior that was *absolutely expected* resulted in lots of unwanted scrutiny and bullying. When Autumn said “I want my body to stop lying about me,” I think that is really just another was of saying the same thing: we are NOT what our bodies say we are. But you younger people now have the chance to do something about it; we in my generation really believed we had no choice. We *were* trapped. I thought transition was only for the very rare case, the Renee Richards of the world.

    Ultimately I transitioned when I was forty and it caused lots of difficulties. I was the first teacher in the United States to transition in place in school. Lots of news coverage, etc. You see, even as recently as 1998, such things were unheard of. At this point, I’ve been teaching at that school as a woman as long as I’d been there as a “man.”

    BTW: I WISH “sex change” surgery had changed me from head to toe. God, I wish it. 🙂

    You mentioned “taking refuge in hypermasculinity.” Well I certainly never did that, but I know that it was an extremely popular way of handling GD in that former era. The Navy SEAL who just came out? I’ve met another in the past. I’ve met Marines and other volunteer soldiers too: people who tried to throw themselves into the most masculine things they could think of so that they could fight back the deep feelings in their minds. For me, well, I had the situation that Autumn spoke of regarding socialization: I had no clue how to me “male” and had to *teach* myself in order to stop being bullied when I got to high school.

    Anyway, I thought that this panel discussion was excellent, and I thank you all for it. For me, it was very interesting to hear the thoughts of a group of young T’s on issues that affect us all.

    Karen

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