I get it, thanks. At first I didn’t want to watch it because I guess I was afraid it might reawaken something in me. But I guess that part of me wasn’t entirely asleep, because something pulled me to watch it.
And honestly, there’s a lot in her autobiographical section in the second half that I identified with. A lot of stuff from my childhood and adolescence, and stuff from my hatching/transitioning journey (even though mine was in my late twenties) and the self-doubt I felt at that time (I’ve always felt self-doubt, but I mean the sharpened self doubt of that particular time and the struggle of back-and-forth).
I mean, my first few months on HRT I felt more whole than at any other time in my life. Arguably the only other times I ever felt whole were the times when I was in relationships, but in retrospect I may have been using my girlfriends in a way as surrogates for my repressed femininity, living vicariously through them as they opened their inner worlds to me. I remember distinctly being obsessed with cuddles, being absolutely glued to my partners and still feeling like I wasn’t close enough. Looking back it felt more like I wanted to be absorbed into their bodies and become them. So I don’t know if I can really call that “wholeness,” even if I felt whole at the time. It was a codependency.
But when I started HRT, almost immediately I felt this internal shift. Like what I once depended on extrinsic factors for, I now had intrinsically. I didn’t feel this compulsive need to find a girlfriend anymore, because I didn’t need a surrogate to live vicariously through. I could be my own woman. And for the first time in long, grueling years of despair, I felt hope that I could live a better life. I felt complete in a way I never had before.
But unfortunately, life isn’t really so simple. I still lived in a conservative area where I was constantly invalidated (at best; I won’t go into the worst). I had no real queer friends so I relied on reddit forums mostly for camaraderie, but there was a lot of vocabulary I wasn’t familiar with so I wasn’t exactly accepted by everyone. But overall, I was able to connect with people, online strangers at least, in a way that I never had before, because I finally felt genuine. I was no longer pretending to be something I wasn’t.
But I couldn’t tune out my surroundings, and the imposter syndrome set in. A lot of constant micro-aggressions put me on the defensive, which made me look like the asshole to the people around me, and I started to feel like it too. I started doubting myself again. And I had been in a really rough time in my life leading up to the transition, which didn’t immediately go away at once, but obviously everyone had amnesia and acted like all my problems started when I started transitioning.
Also, I was getting my HRT from the government, which was fine before 47 got back in office. But a few times I was in residential therapy that were not designed for trans people at all, and honestly I think they swapped out my hormones with a placebo because my feelings of inner wholeness went away and my physical features began remasculinizing. I think they outright stopped giving me the andro-blockers, too.
So I backslid, and combined with the self-doubt and the gaslighting and the invalidation and the microaggressions and legal hurdles and lack of social support, eventually I started forgetting what it was like to finally wake up and realize the potential life I could live. I didn’t quite remember that again until watching the video in your link, except for maybe small quiet glimpses here and there that I quickly repressed, so thank you.
In the time that elapsed though, I became comfortable with just pretending to be a guy again (albeit a gender non-conforming guy and often perceived as a failure of a man), and even felt embarrassed about my “trans phase attempt.” So I don’t think I’ll go right back to transitioning. But maybe someday, if I finally get away from this poor provincial life, to a place that values self-determination and GNC, perhaps I might try again… perhaps…
Edit: scrolling up to Padme’s face after hitting “comment” or “save” or whatever made me giggle. How did we end up talking about this again? 🤣😭
Thank you so much for sharing this! I appreciate (is that the right word?) all the hardships that you had to go through in pursuit of happiness. I have been a trans and non-binary ally my whole adult life, so I knew in theory of the persecution, alienation, demonization and plain bullying that we have to endure, but to read what a person goes through inside, mentally and emotionally, it’s eye-opening, to say to least.
The video that I linked to, I watched for the first time sometime around last December. As you said it youself, it’s rather the latter part of the video that stuck with me too. I don’t know why, but watching this video was the first thing that every made me question: what if there is nothing wrong with me? What if all the evil that I had to accept through the years from what I thought were male peers was just that: evil. There is nothing wrong with me - or you, for that matter. It’s the cisnormative world and society that is wrong.
I have just begun my journey towards trying to get help from my government, but thus far, I have only every been rejected and passed around. Now, I need a little breather to muster the strength to try again.
Thanks again for sharing! We are valid, no matter who or how or what we are.
The meme was about male patterns of violence and I brought up how that’s socially enforced, and how docile men get punished for non-conformity. Then someone called me an incel, so you brought up the incel-to-trans pipeline.
appreciate (is that the right word?)
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it is a correct, although less common, use of the term.
but to read what a person goes through inside, mentally and emotionally, it’s eye-opening, to say to least.
I wouldn’t say I’m representative of the norm (if there even is a norm). Yeah, I know trans people aren’t a monolith, but I spent so much time in isolation growing up that I don’t think I’m representative of any norms.
I’ve had my own journey, and I guess everyone’s journey is unique, even when they share some elements and parallels in common. But I don’t really fit in anywhere. Even when I’ve tried mingling in queer spaces, people think I’m too straight-coded because my default “mask-on” behavior is basically comphet. I’m physically unable to remove that mask unless I feel comfortable enough, and I just don’t warm up to people that fast. Especially when they seem to reject me from the get go.
So basically, I’m too queer to hang out with the straight people, yet I’m too straight to hang out with the queer people. Yeah, I have no friends.
what if there is nothing wrong with me?
There’s nothing wrong with you. Society always tries to blame the individual, even when there’s a large and easily identifiable pattern. “Pay no attention to the societal conditioning behind the curtain!”
Society is ill, and anyone who can’t or won’t conform to that illness gets labeled as deviant and ill.
I have just begun my journey towards trying to get help from my government, but thus far, I have only every been rejected and passed around. Now, I need a little breather to muster the strength to try again.
I hope you find a path forward to the life you envision for yourself and the treatment you need to achieve it. Just remember that you are who you are, even if others can’t see it by looking at you, even if you don’t even see it when you look in the mirror. The flesh is just a meat suit for the soul (or consciousness, rather, in more agnostic terms). And deep down, you are who you are, no matter how the vessel you inhabit happens to look.
Take that breather; take all the time you need. Live in authenticity whenever you can, and don’t feel ashamed whenever you need to wear a mask to survive in this cruel world. They don’t deserve to know the real you.
Replying from my phone, so this’ll be a shorter response until I get to my keyboard again.
I haven’t checked - and don’t intend to check - the parent threads, so I must’ve missed somebody calling you an incel, unless you meant to say, in a humoristic way, that I did that indirectly by linking to that video. I meant to share the video without even the slightest intent of sarcasm or ridicule or the likes. I’m 99.99% sure you know that, but I just wanted to have that said. Just in case.
Live in authenticity whenever you can, and don’t feel ashamed whenever you need to wear a mask to survive in this cruel world. They don’t deserve to know the real you.
These words are so powerful. Thank you! May I put this on my profile with your handle next to it? Check out my current profile page for reference, as I have already done so with one other quote, if you don’t know what format I’m referring to.
Nah, someone definitely called me an incel, and even doubled down when I called them out on it.
I know that wasn’t your intention, you were just sharing the video because it helped you come to your own awakening. Thanks for the clarification though :)
Feel free to use the quote, but it’s up to you whether you include the attribution or just make it anonymous.
reasons why:
I tend to butt heads with a lot of people, even people that I mostly agree with (mostly when they can’t tolerate slight semantic or logical critiques or nuanced arguments that don’t conform 100% to their predefined scripts).
Oddly enough, I’ve even been banned from a number of blahaj comms (all in one go, by one mod, for a discussion on lemmy.world…) because they thought I was being a transphobic troll for saying that sex assigned at birth is relevant information in medical contexts. Like, even while I was on HRT I understood that my doctor needed to know that information…
So if you don’t want the stigma permanently tied to my username to rub off on you, it’s totally fine if you just make the quote anonymous. If it helps you, or anyone who visits your profile and reads it, then that’s enough. I don’t need credit.
I see. But my message was a sincere attempt at spreading love, nothing more, nothing less. 😊 Fuck society’s definitions.
I get it, thanks. At first I didn’t want to watch it because I guess I was afraid it might reawaken something in me. But I guess that part of me wasn’t entirely asleep, because something pulled me to watch it.
And honestly, there’s a lot in her autobiographical section in the second half that I identified with. A lot of stuff from my childhood and adolescence, and stuff from my hatching/transitioning journey (even though mine was in my late twenties) and the self-doubt I felt at that time (I’ve always felt self-doubt, but I mean the sharpened self doubt of that particular time and the struggle of back-and-forth).
I mean, my first few months on HRT I felt more whole than at any other time in my life. Arguably the only other times I ever felt whole were the times when I was in relationships, but in retrospect I may have been using my girlfriends in a way as surrogates for my repressed femininity, living vicariously through them as they opened their inner worlds to me. I remember distinctly being obsessed with cuddles, being absolutely glued to my partners and still feeling like I wasn’t close enough. Looking back it felt more like I wanted to be absorbed into their bodies and become them. So I don’t know if I can really call that “wholeness,” even if I felt whole at the time. It was a codependency.
But when I started HRT, almost immediately I felt this internal shift. Like what I once depended on extrinsic factors for, I now had intrinsically. I didn’t feel this compulsive need to find a girlfriend anymore, because I didn’t need a surrogate to live vicariously through. I could be my own woman. And for the first time in long, grueling years of despair, I felt hope that I could live a better life. I felt complete in a way I never had before.
But unfortunately, life isn’t really so simple. I still lived in a conservative area where I was constantly invalidated (at best; I won’t go into the worst). I had no real queer friends so I relied on reddit forums mostly for camaraderie, but there was a lot of vocabulary I wasn’t familiar with so I wasn’t exactly accepted by everyone. But overall, I was able to connect with people, online strangers at least, in a way that I never had before, because I finally felt genuine. I was no longer pretending to be something I wasn’t.
But I couldn’t tune out my surroundings, and the imposter syndrome set in. A lot of constant micro-aggressions put me on the defensive, which made me look like the asshole to the people around me, and I started to feel like it too. I started doubting myself again. And I had been in a really rough time in my life leading up to the transition, which didn’t immediately go away at once, but obviously everyone had amnesia and acted like all my problems started when I started transitioning.
Also, I was getting my HRT from the government, which was fine before 47 got back in office. But a few times I was in residential therapy that were not designed for trans people at all, and honestly I think they swapped out my hormones with a placebo because my feelings of inner wholeness went away and my physical features began remasculinizing. I think they outright stopped giving me the andro-blockers, too.
So I backslid, and combined with the self-doubt and the gaslighting and the invalidation and the microaggressions and legal hurdles and lack of social support, eventually I started forgetting what it was like to finally wake up and realize the potential life I could live. I didn’t quite remember that again until watching the video in your link, except for maybe small quiet glimpses here and there that I quickly repressed, so thank you.
In the time that elapsed though, I became comfortable with just pretending to be a guy again (albeit a gender non-conforming guy and often perceived as a failure of a man), and even felt embarrassed about my “trans
phaseattempt.” So I don’t think I’ll go right back to transitioning. But maybe someday, if I finally get away from this poor provincial life, to a place that values self-determination and GNC, perhaps I might try again… perhaps…Edit: scrolling up to Padme’s face after hitting “comment” or “save” or whatever made me giggle. How did we end up talking about this again? 🤣😭
Thank you so much for sharing this! I appreciate (is that the right word?) all the hardships that you had to go through in pursuit of happiness. I have been a trans and non-binary ally my whole adult life, so I knew in theory of the persecution, alienation, demonization and plain bullying that we have to endure, but to read what a person goes through inside, mentally and emotionally, it’s eye-opening, to say to least.
The video that I linked to, I watched for the first time sometime around last December. As you said it youself, it’s rather the latter part of the video that stuck with me too. I don’t know why, but watching this video was the first thing that every made me question: what if there is nothing wrong with me? What if all the evil that I had to accept through the years from what I thought were male peers was just that: evil. There is nothing wrong with me - or you, for that matter. It’s the cisnormative world and society that is wrong.
I have just begun my journey towards trying to get help from my government, but thus far, I have only every been rejected and passed around. Now, I need a little breather to muster the strength to try again.
Thanks again for sharing! We are valid, no matter who or how or what we are.
The meme was about male patterns of violence and I brought up how that’s socially enforced, and how docile men get punished for non-conformity. Then someone called me an incel, so you brought up the incel-to-trans pipeline.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it is a correct, although less common, use of the term.
I wouldn’t say I’m representative of the norm (if there even is a norm). Yeah, I know trans people aren’t a monolith, but I spent so much time in isolation growing up that I don’t think I’m representative of any norms.
I’ve had my own journey, and I guess everyone’s journey is unique, even when they share some elements and parallels in common. But I don’t really fit in anywhere. Even when I’ve tried mingling in queer spaces, people think I’m too straight-coded because my default “mask-on” behavior is basically comphet. I’m physically unable to remove that mask unless I feel comfortable enough, and I just don’t warm up to people that fast. Especially when they seem to reject me from the get go.
So basically, I’m too queer to hang out with the straight people, yet I’m too straight to hang out with the queer people. Yeah, I have no friends.
There’s nothing wrong with you. Society always tries to blame the individual, even when there’s a large and easily identifiable pattern. “Pay no attention to the societal conditioning behind the curtain!”
Society is ill, and anyone who can’t or won’t conform to that illness gets labeled as deviant and ill.
I hope you find a path forward to the life you envision for yourself and the treatment you need to achieve it. Just remember that you are who you are, even if others can’t see it by looking at you, even if you don’t even see it when you look in the mirror. The flesh is just a meat suit for the soul (or consciousness, rather, in more agnostic terms). And deep down, you are who you are, no matter how the vessel you inhabit happens to look.
Take that breather; take all the time you need. Live in authenticity whenever you can, and don’t feel ashamed whenever you need to wear a mask to survive in this cruel world. They don’t deserve to know the real you.
Replying from my phone, so this’ll be a shorter response until I get to my keyboard again.
I haven’t checked - and don’t intend to check - the parent threads, so I must’ve missed somebody calling you an incel, unless you meant to say, in a humoristic way, that I did that indirectly by linking to that video. I meant to share the video without even the slightest intent of sarcasm or ridicule or the likes. I’m 99.99% sure you know that, but I just wanted to have that said. Just in case.
These words are so powerful. Thank you! May I put this on my profile with your handle next to it? Check out my current profile page for reference, as I have already done so with one other quote, if you don’t know what format I’m referring to.
Nah, someone definitely called me an incel, and even doubled down when I called them out on it.
I know that wasn’t your intention, you were just sharing the video because it helped you come to your own awakening. Thanks for the clarification though :)
Feel free to use the quote, but it’s up to you whether you include the attribution or just make it anonymous.
reasons why:
I tend to butt heads with a lot of people, even people that I mostly agree with (mostly when they can’t tolerate slight semantic or logical critiques or nuanced arguments that don’t conform 100% to their predefined scripts).
Oddly enough, I’ve even been banned from a number of blahaj comms (all in one go, by one mod, for a discussion on lemmy.world…) because they thought I was being a transphobic troll for saying that sex assigned at birth is relevant information in medical contexts. Like, even while I was on HRT I understood that my doctor needed to know that information…
So if you don’t want the stigma permanently tied to my username to rub off on you, it’s totally fine if you just make the quote anonymous. If it helps you, or anyone who visits your profile and reads it, then that’s enough. I don’t need credit.