While on vacation I visited with my family this past weekend. I found a easy way to test someone to see how they would react to a trans person. When someone is nice and relaxed just watching tv, put it on a channel where Caitlyn Jenner has a show on. One 30 second commercial with her in it and your friend or family member will most likely reveal how they feel about transgender people. This happened to me on a few separate occasions this past weekend. It was not pretty. My sister knows about me and is fine with it, but this weekend has showed me that I would most likely lose what little family I do want to keep they knew about me. Every comment made was a knife to the heart. My heart now has so many holes in it that it feels like it will never hold anything in it again.
I'm back home, feeling lonely and very much heart broken.
Jessica Marie.
P.S. I wish I could look 1/10th as good in a dress as Caitlyn Jenner.
Comments
Test
You could also try this statement: "If I had a Transgender child I would prefer having a live daughter/son to a dead son/daughter." Then you can listen to the replies to that statement. I have a friend who has a 10yo Transgender daughter and they are having legal difficulties with the local school system and DCF. He was talking to me about it and I told him that and he loved that statement.
Brutal
Just remember not all of us has extra $100,000 to spend on Feminization. But we would rather see you alive, so take care of yourself you'll make someday shortly. Have you talk to anybody professionally Yet that is not a relative. That's your first step you need to do! Good Luck! Keep in touch so we know your OK!
Unexamined attitudes.
Please don't be disheartened. Casual racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is common among people whose ideas have not been challenged by personal experience. We learn by experience and with that experience often wake to the unjust behaviour we have previously exhibited. That your sister now treats you well is a very good sign even if some others of your family, when they meet the real you, do not become your greatest fans.
Rhona McCloud
I found out in a similar manner, unfortunately...
...when I was seventeen years old, there was a news story in the local paper about a couple in Benson, Arizona (about 30 miles from where I lived at the time) who were both trans. The husband was transitioning to female, the wife to male, in other words. My parents and their friends took one look at the MTF--who was tall and extremely skinny--and shrieked with laughter. All the while I'm standing there wishing the ground would open up and swallow me--at the time they had no clue I was trans as well.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Tests
Yes, it could be. But on the other hand, Jenner is a strange bird. My wife watched Diane Sawyer's interview with great interest, until Sawyer mentioned Obama... and Jenner turned up her nose, explaining that Obama was "not in my party" or something like that. It seemed ridiculous to have suffered all her life and then to snub help and recognition from the President, whatever party he may be.
Since then, my wife always shakes her head at Jenner, changes the channel, and sometimes makes a negative comment.
It's not against transgendered people. It's a personal dislike for Jenner.
It isn't political. Jenner has a strange personality that I don't like, either. I think it's great that there's a famous transgendered person so often in the news. I wish it were someone else, I guess, and maybe someone who isn't so incredibly rich.
Also, people can fail a test one year, and pass it the next. A lot of people haven't actually MET a transgendered person, and sometimes that can change everything. Especially when they hear or see how that person has suffered.
Eventually ...
If you are to survive and not be tormented, you will love those who love you, and to those who hurt you, you can say "Fuck You". It took me 11 years to get there. How stupid of me to prolong the pain at my own choice.
.
We usually do not have much choice when it comes to being attracted or not to a particular person. Love is not the same as attraction, but it is related and we often love without choice as well. Especially where family is concerned.
Learning to un-love a family member is of course possible. But it is not easy and can take some time. It may feel stupid to keep loving them, but it's mostly just the way we are built. Don't be too hard on yourself.
T
I Know It's Hard
A lot of parents see things on TV like that and turn the channel, but sometimes it works out differently when they figure out that their own child is like what they see on shows. The Jerry Springer Show hasn't done us any favors in the community either. My mother accepts me, but she will still turn the channel on shows with Trans themes and she does disagree with Same Sex marriage and that's a huge issue to me too because I have a new girlfriend I have just started a relationship with and I hope to one day get married if things work out the way I hope. Don't give up on who you are becoming. Your happiness is way more important than living your life to please others and know that family is not always defined by sharing the same DNA. I consider you one of my sisters just as much as my biological sisters and I know there are others here that feel the same way!
Sending Much Love & Hugs,
Jen
TODAY ON DR. OZ!!!
Jazz will be on the show today for those interested
quidquid sum ego, et omnia mea semper; Ego me.
alecia Snowfall
No!...
I'm assuming your family has little vested in kaitlyn/bruce. What you propose is no test at all. It seems axiomatic to me that you can rule most peoples opinion out due to their lack of involvment to any issue. The majority of people hold their opinions for social convenience and not because of conviction based upon an intimate knowledge of the facts. If it were someone closer to your family I'm sure they would put more reflection in their opinions. That isn't to say their opinions would alter but the results of such introduction would be far more valid.