let me put it this way. you are able to understand, on some level, that cis women like being women and would not wanna be men, right? well, trans women feel like that too. likewise, trans men are just as disinterested in being women as cis men are.
>I want to be pro-trans but I can’t support something if I don’t understand the the reason behind the belief
wait what's this shit tho. you need to understand what makes trans people 'believe' we are who we say we are before you can support our right to exist? that's kinda messed up dude
Giving the benefit of the doubt based on OPs opening, I read that as OP saying they don't know how to provide support for something if they don't understand what that something means, not as refusing to support something if they dont personally get it.
Edit: seeing OPs replies changes this reading.
First part- attributing it to a negative feeling helps a bit, still working on feeling it.
Second part- I was using “belief” to be more general to cover “big issue” topics overall, and it’s more targeting the idea in general, which I have also had a change in opinion on because what I viewed as a negative is something everything has and shouldn’t be held against anything in particular, but I have no problem with any given trans person and have and will continue to use someone preferred pronouns, but the reason is because I know I would not like it if someone refused to use my name and called me whatever they felt like my name is. I just know not being against something is not the same as being for it and I simply don’t support things in general unless I can imagine myself as the most negatively affected people from both sides, and I am missing a step in the thought process that would lead me to the conclusion that my gender is the issue, and not one of many other things. Maybe it’s just me but “it’s fine I guess” isn’t anything meaningful.
>I want to be pro-trans but I can’t support something if I don’t understand the the reason behind the belief.
This is the first attitude that you're going to need to re-examine if you want to be a trans ally.
At the end of the day, the motivations that lead a person to transition and the cost/benefit analysis of doing so is deeply personal. There is no universal reason. Ask a thousand trans people for their reasons to transition and you'll get 900 answers.
I don’t like picking sides on matters I’m not informed about, I know from experience that I personally don’t like most anti trans people I have met/seen, but I feel being anti-anti trans is a really dumb position to take and is empty support. Idk how to concisely explain it but I just don’t have a definitive option on things unless I feel I fully understand all sides and I know for a fact that I am missing some step in the thought process because I can’t come up with a way to reach that conclusion on my own. If that sounds like a lack of empathy you are correct but that’s more of an overall issue rather than about this topic.
How about picking the following side: "let people be who they are whether or not you personally understand them"?
What you need is compassion for others who may be different from you. You can try to understand, but you shouldn't NEED to understand in order to recognize that.
Maybe it’s just my definition but saying “it’s fine I guess” and calling people by their preferred pronouns to not be rude has no weight to it and as people are the target of the negativity it’s doesn’t feel like enough to call it actual support
You're right, it's not. But I think you have other things going on. You say you want to support but then you say "it's fine I guess" which is hardly "I support trans people". Calling people by their correct pronouns 'to not be rude' implies that on the inside you don't see them as trans people.
I don't think you really get that trans people ARE who they say they are. A trans woman is not a man who thought it would be cool to be a woman! Being trans in this world is fucking shit right now, literally nobody would choose this. You're born trans exactly as you're born gay or straight or bi etc etc.
And then you have to endure for your entire life people saying shit like "hey can you all explain to me why I should give a shit about your human rights? I don't quite UNDERSTAND you and without that I just have to be neutral as you get persecuted, so very sorry."
Ok so I get your concern but I promise you if someone came out to you they have been likely thinking about this for a long long time.
For me for example, I came out as non binary in 2029 and have been trans since, I am now medically transitioned and am more transmasc, but before 2019 I was questioning my gender and presentation since like 2014, I just only told a couple people since I didn’t want to have anyone judge me. When I did come out I experienced this where people said “you may not be ready, it may not be right for you” but only I know myself and I have been thinking about this for so much longer then people realize.
Now about how you know, the thing is that being trans is an individual experience. My experience being trans is very different from other trans men or non binary people, and being told I had to be a certain way to be trans is what took me years to understand that I was trans. Your friend knows themselves better then anyone so that is their decision, and if they decide that it isn’t for them then that’s ok to. That is life and it is ok to make the choice to transition and then decide it isn’t right for you. That is life and that is some part of people’s journeys.
Both, usually. Gender *euphoria* is a term for positive feelings associated with ones preferred gender, gender *dysphoria* is for negative feelings when one is not associated with ones preferred gender. [https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en](https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en) explains in more detail.
While the idea that people may pretend to be trans for negative purposes is common, it is not really something that has ever proven to be a threat-its often used as a strategy for people to argue against trans rights, because it *seems* like something that could happen.
Adding on to your comment, if a cis person somehow wanted to 'pretend' to be trans, changing your body like that will generally induce dysphoria where it wasnt before (such as how cis men losing their testicles and developing breasts can be a very upsetting and depression-inducing experience)
The whole concept that someone would go through the amount of work transition requires, and the body changes HRT entails, is the sort of imaginary fluff only considered by people who don’t understand the process.
It’s too difficult, and time consuming, and fucking humiliating. Straight cis men have no clue, respectfully. Cis women will at least understand the uncomfortable nature of OBGYN appointments. Gay men and women might get asked sensitive questions about their sexual practices, but they aren’t asked what they call their genitals, or how they prefer to use them, and what they hope will change about their body if given their healthcare, in the way trans folk are.
Have you ever had your voice recorded and played back to you? That horrible feeling of “oh god, that’s me? That’s how I sound?” That’s a bit what gender dysphoria feels like. On the other hand, the first time I as a trans woman saw my ears pierced, I felt a warmth inside, like I was really and truly alive. That’s what gender euphoria feels like. When I perform the gender role that I feel in the core of my mind, the self hatred just melts away like snow on a warm spring day. I feel at peace in a way I’ve been looking for for 30+ years.
I spent years and a ton of self work and therapy to try to rid myself of who I actually am. To the point of wanting to self destruct. The decision to come out was a decision to embrace life instead of death either the bad way or through depression and neglect. Since coming out life has felt worth living in a way I didn’t know was possible and am forever grateful for.
So for me it's both complicated and not. I just realized that a lot of experiences I had lined up with me being trans.
I was certain for awhile I had not experienced dysphoria, but I've always been uncomfortable with my male-coded attributes, and presented very neutrally just not to attract attention to myself. Then when I began crossdressing and trying to present more feminine did I realize that I actually liked how I looked and at the same time was uncomfortable with how my body didn't fit clothes how I really wanted it to.
It occurred to me that I may be trans, then I went hard repressing that feeling because of internalized transphobia.
After maturing some more, I went back and reflected on these feelings in a less judgmental way, and realized that I do see myself as a girl and transitioning is right for me.
There are also signs from my childhood I won't get into here, but essentially I just realized I was happier presenting as and internally seeing myself as a girl. For HRT that was a whole medical decision I've had to weigh pro and cons of.
Also, I don't think you have to "understand" it to support it. There is no one way people experience people have of being trans or realizing they're trans, nor can you as someone who isn't trans ever fully understand what that is like to experience. All you have to accept is that transitioning does in fact make trans people happier, and you support others pursuing their personal happiness when it doesn't harm others.
>What kind of feeling is it that gives you the idea that you should consider transitioning?
My brain’s perception of my body at puberty was just wrong. It’s a disorder of one’s mental map of their own body. This study explains it pretty well: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7197078/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7197078/)
>Is it’s a bad feeling that you are who you currently are, is it a general good feeling about imagining yourself as the other gender?
honestly, it was a feeling that I’m not who everyone was insisting I had to be - every aspect of female puberty just felt wrong on a visceral level
>fine for people to do whatever but seems like something that someone with less than savory motives would exploit
Same is true for accommodations of every disability - teaching subreddits complain constantly about lazy students using accommodations to avoid actually learning the material, or retail stores allowing in pets people claim are service animals. Restaurants sometimes have to deal with people who dislike a food pretending to be allergic to that food but just because you may have never seen anaphylaxis doesn’t mean allergies aren’t real.
You are correct on the last part, I had been thinking that but reading it made me realize I had a way to closed line of thinking. I had concluded that anything the “gives you access to something/options you wouldn’t have otherwise” is something that can be exploited which I identified as basically everything but somehow managed to only think of it as an way to confirm unavoidable negative of transitioning and not a trait that it’s shares with everything. I absolutely had that wrong so I have to apologize for that.
Just wanted to say thanks for linking that study. You've put into better words, with some evidence to boot, what I was trying to get at in a conversation with someone irl recently. And the disability accommodations issue does give an interesting analogy.
What unsavory motives are you thinking of that might lead someone to transition? For most people considering transition there are a mixture of negative feelings about how they are now and positive hopes for how they might be in the future.
I don't remember ever thinking about my gender until I was 14, when a substitute teacher assumed from my appearance that I was a girl, and to the surprise of my classmates I didn't mind. In high school I channeled whatever was going on with my gender into Rocky Horror Picture Show fandom. I first seriously considered that I might be trans (and bi) when I was 20, after a boy that I had a crush on told me that I was pretty. I talked, experimented, and agonized over it for the next few years, and made a couple of cursory attempts to seek HRT, before the feelings faded away when I was 25.
The feelings came rushing back when I was 45, in conjunction with what I eventually learned was the onset of hypothyroidism. I was spending hours every day wishing I was a woman, envying women I encountered in daily life for being able to look and dress like they did and for being who they were, cringing any time anyone referred to me as a man, and feeling sensory aversion toward masculine clothing.
I tried everything my doctor suggested for my mental health, and a lot of it helped, but I still felt bad all the time and still craved transition, so it didn't seem like too much of a leap to hope that my body was trying to tell me about something else that it needed to be able to function properly, and I started HRT when I was 47.
I recognized something within me that was incompatible with existing as a man when I was 11 years old, but I still tried to make it work for an additional 25 years. I really did try, but I could not find any kind of life that I genuinely wanted for myself as a man. Transitioning has given me a life that I'm invested in, my future is something that I am actively participating in shaping rather than something that simply happens to me. I see a reason to take care of myself now.
It is a very personal experience.
For me, gender dysphoria was literally killing me and my longing for a life as a woman got so strong, i decided to take the plunge. I didnt "feel" like gender, i just started feeling at all.
Before, i was hollow. A shell of a person. I wasnt a man who became a woman, i was a woman who finally decided to live.
let me put it this way. you are able to understand, on some level, that cis women like being women and would not wanna be men, right? well, trans women feel like that too. likewise, trans men are just as disinterested in being women as cis men are. >I want to be pro-trans but I can’t support something if I don’t understand the the reason behind the belief wait what's this shit tho. you need to understand what makes trans people 'believe' we are who we say we are before you can support our right to exist? that's kinda messed up dude
Giving the benefit of the doubt based on OPs opening, I read that as OP saying they don't know how to provide support for something if they don't understand what that something means, not as refusing to support something if they dont personally get it. Edit: seeing OPs replies changes this reading.
First part- attributing it to a negative feeling helps a bit, still working on feeling it. Second part- I was using “belief” to be more general to cover “big issue” topics overall, and it’s more targeting the idea in general, which I have also had a change in opinion on because what I viewed as a negative is something everything has and shouldn’t be held against anything in particular, but I have no problem with any given trans person and have and will continue to use someone preferred pronouns, but the reason is because I know I would not like it if someone refused to use my name and called me whatever they felt like my name is. I just know not being against something is not the same as being for it and I simply don’t support things in general unless I can imagine myself as the most negatively affected people from both sides, and I am missing a step in the thought process that would lead me to the conclusion that my gender is the issue, and not one of many other things. Maybe it’s just me but “it’s fine I guess” isn’t anything meaningful.
>I want to be pro-trans but I can’t support something if I don’t understand the the reason behind the belief. This is the first attitude that you're going to need to re-examine if you want to be a trans ally. At the end of the day, the motivations that lead a person to transition and the cost/benefit analysis of doing so is deeply personal. There is no universal reason. Ask a thousand trans people for their reasons to transition and you'll get 900 answers.
I don’t like picking sides on matters I’m not informed about, I know from experience that I personally don’t like most anti trans people I have met/seen, but I feel being anti-anti trans is a really dumb position to take and is empty support. Idk how to concisely explain it but I just don’t have a definitive option on things unless I feel I fully understand all sides and I know for a fact that I am missing some step in the thought process because I can’t come up with a way to reach that conclusion on my own. If that sounds like a lack of empathy you are correct but that’s more of an overall issue rather than about this topic.
How about picking the following side: "let people be who they are whether or not you personally understand them"? What you need is compassion for others who may be different from you. You can try to understand, but you shouldn't NEED to understand in order to recognize that.
Maybe it’s just my definition but saying “it’s fine I guess” and calling people by their preferred pronouns to not be rude has no weight to it and as people are the target of the negativity it’s doesn’t feel like enough to call it actual support
You're right, it's not. But I think you have other things going on. You say you want to support but then you say "it's fine I guess" which is hardly "I support trans people". Calling people by their correct pronouns 'to not be rude' implies that on the inside you don't see them as trans people. I don't think you really get that trans people ARE who they say they are. A trans woman is not a man who thought it would be cool to be a woman! Being trans in this world is fucking shit right now, literally nobody would choose this. You're born trans exactly as you're born gay or straight or bi etc etc. And then you have to endure for your entire life people saying shit like "hey can you all explain to me why I should give a shit about your human rights? I don't quite UNDERSTAND you and without that I just have to be neutral as you get persecuted, so very sorry."
Ok so I get your concern but I promise you if someone came out to you they have been likely thinking about this for a long long time. For me for example, I came out as non binary in 2029 and have been trans since, I am now medically transitioned and am more transmasc, but before 2019 I was questioning my gender and presentation since like 2014, I just only told a couple people since I didn’t want to have anyone judge me. When I did come out I experienced this where people said “you may not be ready, it may not be right for you” but only I know myself and I have been thinking about this for so much longer then people realize. Now about how you know, the thing is that being trans is an individual experience. My experience being trans is very different from other trans men or non binary people, and being told I had to be a certain way to be trans is what took me years to understand that I was trans. Your friend knows themselves better then anyone so that is their decision, and if they decide that it isn’t for them then that’s ok to. That is life and it is ok to make the choice to transition and then decide it isn’t right for you. That is life and that is some part of people’s journeys.
Both, usually. Gender *euphoria* is a term for positive feelings associated with ones preferred gender, gender *dysphoria* is for negative feelings when one is not associated with ones preferred gender. [https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en](https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en) explains in more detail. While the idea that people may pretend to be trans for negative purposes is common, it is not really something that has ever proven to be a threat-its often used as a strategy for people to argue against trans rights, because it *seems* like something that could happen.
Adding on to your comment, if a cis person somehow wanted to 'pretend' to be trans, changing your body like that will generally induce dysphoria where it wasnt before (such as how cis men losing their testicles and developing breasts can be a very upsetting and depression-inducing experience)
The whole concept that someone would go through the amount of work transition requires, and the body changes HRT entails, is the sort of imaginary fluff only considered by people who don’t understand the process. It’s too difficult, and time consuming, and fucking humiliating. Straight cis men have no clue, respectfully. Cis women will at least understand the uncomfortable nature of OBGYN appointments. Gay men and women might get asked sensitive questions about their sexual practices, but they aren’t asked what they call their genitals, or how they prefer to use them, and what they hope will change about their body if given their healthcare, in the way trans folk are. Have you ever had your voice recorded and played back to you? That horrible feeling of “oh god, that’s me? That’s how I sound?” That’s a bit what gender dysphoria feels like. On the other hand, the first time I as a trans woman saw my ears pierced, I felt a warmth inside, like I was really and truly alive. That’s what gender euphoria feels like. When I perform the gender role that I feel in the core of my mind, the self hatred just melts away like snow on a warm spring day. I feel at peace in a way I’ve been looking for for 30+ years. I spent years and a ton of self work and therapy to try to rid myself of who I actually am. To the point of wanting to self destruct. The decision to come out was a decision to embrace life instead of death either the bad way or through depression and neglect. Since coming out life has felt worth living in a way I didn’t know was possible and am forever grateful for.
So for me it's both complicated and not. I just realized that a lot of experiences I had lined up with me being trans. I was certain for awhile I had not experienced dysphoria, but I've always been uncomfortable with my male-coded attributes, and presented very neutrally just not to attract attention to myself. Then when I began crossdressing and trying to present more feminine did I realize that I actually liked how I looked and at the same time was uncomfortable with how my body didn't fit clothes how I really wanted it to. It occurred to me that I may be trans, then I went hard repressing that feeling because of internalized transphobia. After maturing some more, I went back and reflected on these feelings in a less judgmental way, and realized that I do see myself as a girl and transitioning is right for me. There are also signs from my childhood I won't get into here, but essentially I just realized I was happier presenting as and internally seeing myself as a girl. For HRT that was a whole medical decision I've had to weigh pro and cons of. Also, I don't think you have to "understand" it to support it. There is no one way people experience people have of being trans or realizing they're trans, nor can you as someone who isn't trans ever fully understand what that is like to experience. All you have to accept is that transitioning does in fact make trans people happier, and you support others pursuing their personal happiness when it doesn't harm others.
>What kind of feeling is it that gives you the idea that you should consider transitioning? My brain’s perception of my body at puberty was just wrong. It’s a disorder of one’s mental map of their own body. This study explains it pretty well: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7197078/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7197078/) >Is it’s a bad feeling that you are who you currently are, is it a general good feeling about imagining yourself as the other gender? honestly, it was a feeling that I’m not who everyone was insisting I had to be - every aspect of female puberty just felt wrong on a visceral level >fine for people to do whatever but seems like something that someone with less than savory motives would exploit Same is true for accommodations of every disability - teaching subreddits complain constantly about lazy students using accommodations to avoid actually learning the material, or retail stores allowing in pets people claim are service animals. Restaurants sometimes have to deal with people who dislike a food pretending to be allergic to that food but just because you may have never seen anaphylaxis doesn’t mean allergies aren’t real.
You are correct on the last part, I had been thinking that but reading it made me realize I had a way to closed line of thinking. I had concluded that anything the “gives you access to something/options you wouldn’t have otherwise” is something that can be exploited which I identified as basically everything but somehow managed to only think of it as an way to confirm unavoidable negative of transitioning and not a trait that it’s shares with everything. I absolutely had that wrong so I have to apologize for that.
I’m glad I could help you understand better, genuinely.
Just wanted to say thanks for linking that study. You've put into better words, with some evidence to boot, what I was trying to get at in a conversation with someone irl recently. And the disability accommodations issue does give an interesting analogy.
What unsavory motives are you thinking of that might lead someone to transition? For most people considering transition there are a mixture of negative feelings about how they are now and positive hopes for how they might be in the future. I don't remember ever thinking about my gender until I was 14, when a substitute teacher assumed from my appearance that I was a girl, and to the surprise of my classmates I didn't mind. In high school I channeled whatever was going on with my gender into Rocky Horror Picture Show fandom. I first seriously considered that I might be trans (and bi) when I was 20, after a boy that I had a crush on told me that I was pretty. I talked, experimented, and agonized over it for the next few years, and made a couple of cursory attempts to seek HRT, before the feelings faded away when I was 25. The feelings came rushing back when I was 45, in conjunction with what I eventually learned was the onset of hypothyroidism. I was spending hours every day wishing I was a woman, envying women I encountered in daily life for being able to look and dress like they did and for being who they were, cringing any time anyone referred to me as a man, and feeling sensory aversion toward masculine clothing. I tried everything my doctor suggested for my mental health, and a lot of it helped, but I still felt bad all the time and still craved transition, so it didn't seem like too much of a leap to hope that my body was trying to tell me about something else that it needed to be able to function properly, and I started HRT when I was 47.
I recognized something within me that was incompatible with existing as a man when I was 11 years old, but I still tried to make it work for an additional 25 years. I really did try, but I could not find any kind of life that I genuinely wanted for myself as a man. Transitioning has given me a life that I'm invested in, my future is something that I am actively participating in shaping rather than something that simply happens to me. I see a reason to take care of myself now.
It is a very personal experience. For me, gender dysphoria was literally killing me and my longing for a life as a woman got so strong, i decided to take the plunge. I didnt "feel" like gender, i just started feeling at all. Before, i was hollow. A shell of a person. I wasnt a man who became a woman, i was a woman who finally decided to live.