Requirements to be trans

The only definition of being transgender is whether you identify with a gender identity that wasn't the you were assigned to at birth, if you do, your trans; no more complicated then that.

 

I know this is controversial....but in a way, I think that people do choose to be transgender-IN A WAY. Just listen to me on this one, I think that anyone chooses to be anything, things like "transgender" and "gay" are just labels-names that anyone can call themselves. For example, I might have dysphoria, crossdress, and even eventually transition, but I may call myself male or female without saying "transgender". Because gender and sexuality are so subjective, their labels mean different things to different people. But it's what the names mean to individual people that is important.

 

Choosing to call yourself something is different from choosing to BE something. Sure, the meaning of the word might be interpreted differently by some people, but it's still a word with a definition. I could refuse to call myself transgender, but still have dysphoria and transition. Most people would still consider that transgender. Really you could choose to label/not label yourself as anything, that doesn't mean it's always an accurate fit for what you actually are. Just my opinion.

 

I like your opinion because you are absolutely right, LABELING and BEING are two different things.

 

I think where a lot of the diversity in opinions comes from is, people have different needs, and they're worried their own needs won't be respected if they're lumped together. Really we all deserve to live with some dignity, we shouldn't be made to feel as though things that aren't bad or wrong should be kept secret, and we're stronger as an alliance.

 

Just a correction, people choose to identify as transgender not be transgender. Scientifically speaking everything points to gender dysphoria being caused by a very real innate neurological problem that originates in the prenatal period of a baby's life and causes an incompatibility between a person's body and mind with regards to gender. As it stands, like many neurological problems it can't be diagnosed without looking at symptoms. Transitioning is pretty much the only way to consistently treat gender dysphoria which is why doctors recommend for transgender patients to go through such a dangerous, painful and often traumatic journey.

 

Okay, I want to add to what I said earlier.

I think dysphoria (at some point) is required, in order to be trans.

I think more trans people will get the help they need, if trans is considered a medical condition.

Someone can say they are trans, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are trans. Maybe some people need to experiment with their gender identity, in order to find themselves, and that's one reason why I support some degree of regulation. I understand some trans people doubt themselves, and that doesn't make them any less trans. When I encountered the term "transgender" I went into denial for nearly two years.

Someone doesn't necessarily need to be trans, in order to challenge gender roles and gender stereotypes. I think society would benefit from a good shake up. For example, it pains me when I see guys (cis and trans) beat themselves up over "man points" instead of doing what they really want.

 

Why is it bad that you need "proof"? I mean, if you're not really trans medically transitioning can be really harmful to your mental health. Like, if you're not evaluated for any other medical condition they won't treat it. Also dysphoria isn't self hatred.

 

We went in opposite directions, in regards to that belief. I used to believe that someone only needed to say they were trans, in order to be trans.

Transitioning is a big decision. Someone is much more likely to end up unhappy with the body/social effects (and to be honest, I didn't think of mental effects, until baconpox said that), if we don't have regulations in place. If someone is happy with their sex assigned at birth, what would they get out of being considered transgender? I guess I just see some people experimenting with their gender identity and/or thinking they need to be trans, in order to challenge gender roles/stereotypes.

Yeah, it's pretty complicated. End of the day, I can't get inside someone's head (unless I get a job as a brain surgeon), so I will try to respect their gender identity. Unless it's akin to "volcanogender."

 

In my opinion, I think that the only "requirement" is that you don't feel 100% completely comfortable with your gender assigned at birth. Being a non-binary person, it's still hard for me to say that I'm trans because I don't feel "trans enough". It's odd.

 

This is where I was going with different needs.

I had medical needs. Taking estrogen, and destroying my body's ability to produce testosterone, by itself was life changing. I still experience dysphoria, but the volume is turned way down. I see gender as being as important or a part of me as anyone else does now. It has enabled me to focus on my dreams. I will never have to spend a single day feeling the way I used to when I was closeted and going to work and hearing my old name (not to mention my abusive stepfather's last name).

And yes, my medicine would make someone else feel every day the way I did before I started my medicine. That's why they start us on hormone therapy. So that those it is not right for will know that further steps are not right for them, before they take steps they can't take back.

But the thing is, I have had a very good friend, who I've known since I was a teenager, who cross dresses. When she - and while this friend is fine with he in public, she definitely needs to be she sometimes - is presenting as a woman, even to herself, a lot of the way she describes the experience is very familiar to me. It's like being able to breath again.

That's what being trans is, to me. Feeling that need to breath.

There are other people that feel that need to breath, that would not respond positively to my medicine the way I did. It's very easy to point at a nice, scientific, falsifiable thing like response to hormones, and exclude everyone else. But a lot of people that would respond positively to hormones, can't take them. Some have heart and thyroid conditions. Some are just in terrible places financially like I was when I started my transition.

And - I am about to go full soapbox here so if you disagree with me I will hear you out - as inconvenient as it is to point out in an era where we're trying to achieve social justice by erasing our differences instead of celebrating them, there are some things that feel feminine and masculine, that some of us need to do socially, to breath. Some people out there need to be underneath a car with bulging arms covered in engine grease, and to him, even though he's in a female body, he deserves to feel "manly" without feeling bad about it. He isn't attacking gender equality. He isn't saying that women aren't allowed to work on cars. He's just saying, that when he does this, he can breath.

This is why I have empathy toward other communities like the fetish and furry communities. It's very easy - and often correct - to write a lot of those people off as a threat, as people that are being us "for fun", trivializing our struggles, making it harder for us to get the help we need, convincing other people this is all in our heads in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and ignoring very basic facts about biology and the way hormones affect the human body and brain. You know what I'm talking about. The "tumblerinas". I have complained about them, here and elsewhere, and still do sometimes. It's our version of "gay for attention".

But really put yourself in their shoes for a second. You are AMAB, in a relationship with a woman you love who loves you back. She knows about this side of you. You're in your 40s. You have a thyroid condition. You know you will never be able to walk out the door and have people take you seriously as a woman. But you experience dysphoria. You solve your problems with cross dressing. Some of your friends are definitely men, they don't have dysphoria, who simply love to cross dress. You get together with them, and you get one night to be you a month, at a bar downtown, and it's amazing. Your friends get into it. They start to enjoy being women for the evening. The differences between you melt away, it's beautiful. You go home, and you and your wife have a few other kinks too. You have a couple accounts on the internet with a girl's name.

You have struck a balance that works for you. You have satisfied your needs. You did it in a different way than I did. But it works.

You're that person, and you come home, and you read a lot of stuff people like me say. You sheepishly close your tumblr account. You look at the fursuit and the costume you wore to comic con last year and feel ashamed. It is an act. You're not a real woman, you tell yourself, and you'll never be one.

Those people are real. They're reading everything we say. They don't want to hurt us, or make people not take us seriously, or trivialize our needs. They aren't suggesting that we can solve our problems the way they solved theirs. Some of them do, sure. You run into the rare gay person who doesn't wonder why we can't be happy being twinks, what's so bad about being them?

That's what I'm saying. We all end up at each other's throats, because we're scared. We need different things. We have different ways of solving our problems. And we're worried, because these other groups of people aren't as accepted, and have different problems, that we'll be less accepted, or worse, that other people will view their solutions as things we should have to try before we're allowed to solve our problem the way we know works.

That's why I agree with Kasey and Brad. You don't have to pass a test to know you can't breath. You be whoever the heck you are, and as long as you aren't hurting anyone else, you will have my full support. And I know if I approach you with that kind of attitude, with love, that you will give me the same back. And if I need medicine to live the life free from dysphoria, if it's a medical condition to me, you won't try to make me just like you instead, because I'm not trying to make you just like me.

We all have different needs, we're all scared, and if we can get past that fear, we're all stronger together.

 

^ That is fantastically well put.

Also: *breathe

But yeah, beautifully written. :eusa_clap

 

Very nicely written but what does "AMAB" mean? And "twink"? and "furry"?

 

I agree with you actually on most things, but psychological evaluation before medically transitioning is not a test to be trans, it's just making sure you aren't confusing your feelings and that transition is something you want to and need to do because it's life changing and not letting there be any restrictions will lead a rise in detransitioners and hurt those who don't actually need it.

---------- Post added 9th Oct 2015 at 05:21 AM ----------

I mean, that's the "proof". Psychologists analyzing you. The transitioning w/o prescription is good because a lot of psychologists are really bad and base if you need hormones off of gender roles, or if someone has really bad dysphoria they could transition faster. A lot of people do, like detransitioners who detransition because they realize they want to be their birth sex (not for health complications). Like, if you could just get it w/o a perscription then a lot of people might not understand their emotions, go on HRT, and be stuck with masculine/feminine features that they don't want. Therapy's not that big of a deal, imo I don't get why people are so resistant to it.

 

The whole "you have to have dysphoria to transition" thing is really starting to piss me off, and I do apologize for the language but its his I best express my annoyance at it.

Since I have joined this site I have said several times that I have very little, if any, dysphoria. But I still plan to transition. I have been told that dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria, so if one is intense joy then the other must be intense unhappiness. The kind of unhappiness that drags you to the bottom and makes life pointless, and certainly this is how many many trans people feel and describe it. Because of this I have struggled with wondering if I was trans enough to transition because you need "dysphoria to transition " and I had almost none. All I have are my desires. My desire for male muscles and fat distribution, for the facial hair and chest hair, a desire to be in a loving relationship with another man as man. My desire to be brother, son, father. But these desires do no make me hate that I am currently seen as daughter and sister, though it can be annoying when those I am out to refer to me as such. For the most part I am indifferent to the fact that I am female, which I know many people asso hate with being cis-gender. Yes, I currently am female to the majority of the world, and this body is currently female. But I do not believe it was meant to stay that way. I wake up feeling that one day I will go through a male puberty and grow dick as well, and I would be happy if that could ever happen . if to see my dreams and desires come true mean to medically transition then I shall, but I do not call myself dysphoric because of how I view the word. I understand that everyone approached being trans differently, and I respect that.
But to say that dysphoria is a requirement to transitioning makes me, and people like me, feel like we are fakers. While I am not happy being female I do not hate it and do not see transitioning as escaping a body that is not me but instead allowing the current me to grow into the person I was meant to be.

And, yeah, I know someone will say "but you might eegert transitioning in the future"
True, I might but ever trans persons runs that risk, especially those of us who claim a non-binary gender.

 

I don't see having to see a phycologist to transition as a gateway. I see it more as a way for transgender people to be able to cope with the changes that hormones bring.

There are some out there that think that once you are on hormones, all of the struggles are done. This is not the case. There are a lot of changes that you have to learn to cope with while on hormones. You also have to go through the process of resocialization once you are seen as your gender. This is an exhausting process, and it is important that the person is ready for it. It is also important that the person has the support that they need while they go through this process.

So, in short, I see the psychoanalysis as much more than that. People will often just get their letter and never go back. In the long run, they are doing a disservice to themselves.

 

Hmm... in my eyes and from everything I read about it, gender dysphoria is not really deep sadness, whoever used the term dysphoria to describe what we go through had no idea what it is really like, and from what I read, you do seem to suffer from fairly severe gender dysphoria. In general, identifying as agender or asexual when you are trans indicates that you most likely do suffer from a certain level of disconnect (Caused by gender dysphoria) which can lead to a feeling of disconnect from sexuality and feeling genderless. The deep sadness that some here suffer from is simply depression caused by the endless dysphoric shocks that eventually lead us to feel learned helplessness and consequently depression and anxiety. Anyway, that's just how I view it and I have lived for 20 years feeling disconnected from my body, feeling shocks whenever gender is mentioned around me, feeling like a lumbering monster around others because of my body and a large amount of other examples that are manifestations of gender dysphoria. Surprisingly enough I never felt a deep sadness because the disconnect numbed my emotions and made me feel lost and distant from everything that happened around me...

The euphoria that we feel is also not happiness but feeling alive and whole for just one moment in time that makes us feel that life is worth living and gives us hope that someday things will be different and we will stop feeling the endless emptiness that lies at the heart of gender dysphoria... :icon_sad: