Author:
Those outside looking in who are scared to death to acknowledge anyone might wish to get rid of their water weasel will never accept transgender as a viable issue. Their whole world of who and what they are is connected to what is between their legs. For anyone to question that appendage is NOT what should be there is a personal mental problem no one seems to be addressing. Their own determination to control others lives as to what may or may not be the correct anatomy they were born with is failing us all. The blame of mental sickness is placed on those whose only desire is to be in the anatomically correct body their mind is telling them they should have been born as. Instead of calling out those who deride any who question their gender., Gender Dysphoria (mentally ill) stigma is hung on those who are struggling to cope with what went wrong in the billions of things which must go perfectly right in God's instruction plans to create a boy or a girl from a single cell and sperm. Those who can't accept a glitch happened in the first three months of cellular division and creation of a life resembling a human, are in total denial humans don't always come out perfect.
Someone hose me down as this is always a hot button issue with me. I love all the boys and girls who got caught up in the gender blender for I believe God loved them so much He gave them an extra blessing. I wish they could all believe that as much as I do. Whatever those bigots outside looking in are thinking doesn't really matter. Words have no strength unless one allows them. Freak, sick, abomination, bastard, and dozens of other hateful words are like gnats. Annoying but nothing else until one lets them in. Treat the spiteful words as a foreign language one doesn't understand.
We have waited too long.
But there is a plan under consideration that would simply let people declare their gender.
http://abundanthope.net/pages/Human_Animal_Rights_104/Waitin...
Do NOT let the deniers touch your soul. Their words can only hurt you if you allow it. Boy-Girl, or anywhere between is your life not theirs. If they aren't paying your bills, providing for your needs, why in the HELL would you give them the right to dictate to you who or what you should be?????
I wish you happiness and a life which is yours.
always
Barb
Comments
Part of the self hate I had to work through
is I was an air force brat born in Oklahoma( which presents a problem with my state birth certificate) even now I am pretty sure my Dad would have not accepted me (you soak that poison through your skin growing up, but I accepted myself and it was very liberating. My family kids accepts me, so life gets even better. Having personal,problems w/ my son(nephew actually ) ATM that are unrelated that has got me down lately but I'll get through it.
Starts at home...
The unfortunate side to this is that hate frequently starts at home. Being inundated by abuse when one is well and truly dependant on the abusers can be the catalyst for a lifetime accepting external hate towards oneself as normal. This of course tends to foster a sense of internal hatred of self that can take a significant effort to overcome... And is sometimes unsuccessful.
In a perfect world, yanno...
Hugs
Jenna
Thanks, Barb,
You got it dead straight. But it takes a lot to be willing to ignore all those "gnats". Unfortunately those that are not gender conforming are very sensitive people, they need any form of encouragement they can get. Thank you for writing this.
I have come to the same conclusion as you. Being trans is a blessing. I have learned to be proud to be trans and I can be a fierce old bitch to those, who try to put us down.
It's lovely to hear from you this way, too.
Lots of love and a special hug,
Monique.
Monique S
I'm very, very lucky, I guess
There are some places where we have it pretty good.
I live near New York City. I started by just wearing skirts — I didn't think of myself as trans, just as a guy with a 'different' fashion sense. I expected to get a lot of crap when I started going out like that and was kind of gob-smacked that I didn't. Most people just ignored me, but I got a lot of positive comments, too. I only got one clearly negative response, and that was from some guys as they drove by. (Cowards!)
I started realizing I was trans about 5 years ago (I had to get past the trope of "woman in a man's body," since I've never felt that way), and eventually I started presenting feminine and even came out at my "church" (UU, and they don't call it a church.) As I've transitioned, I've gotten nothing but positive reactions. My "church" has been amazingly supportive, and the people in town, when they've remarked on it, have said how much happier I seem.
It's not just trans people that seem to have it good around here. I know a lesbian couple who've been together for something like 30 years, and they've got some stories to tell about other places. They moved here in the hopes that they wouldn't get yelled at or things thrown at them for just holding hands, and that hope has been borne out, they say.
The only down side has been with the LGBT institutions. There's an LGBT center in NYC and another in my county, and neither are particularly trans-friendly. At best, they're trans-tolerant. But I get a lot of acceptance and support from the rest of my world, so I can just shrug my shoulders. The hardest thing for me has not been other people, it's been accepting myself as I am and accepting that I'm not what everyone always insisted how I had to be (but couldn't.) There was a really rough year or two during the early part of my transition.
In a way, I've been lucky even with the bad stuff I've endured. I grew up getting all kinds of crap for deviating from what Real Boys are supposed to be like; I wasn't even being feminine, just not macho enough or something. Surviving that has made me kind of indifferent to the haters. As long as it's confined to their preaching and I don't have to listen to them or suffer materially because of them, I really don't care. If they insist on marinating themselves in hate, it's really their problem and not mine.
But I do empathize with my less fortunate trans brothers and sisters (and others — let's not forget the enbies) who live in less accepting places and and families and other environments. It must really, really suck.
After 15 Years
I'm still very confused about the issue. The losses for a MtF transition are mostly extremely harsh. I often wonder if I would have suicided had I not done it? However, on a personal level, I am very happy with my day to day life. However, there is still lots of prejudice out there and I think that most of that comes from the churchy set.
Often I wonder if the real solution to T feelings is for our society to be less binary, Male, or Female? It is obvious that there are just lots of humans that are somewhere in between, yet are not gay or lesbian. What I see going on today is not the final solution.