chelsea

Oh, it’s her! I remember seeing her video of the incident in the cheesecake factory. I’m so happy that she’s continuing. Not only that I love that she’s using her platform to push some education about trans people, though certainly it’s not her responsibility to do so. :)

Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?

What the everloving fuck was that ad, holy shit. Seriously, that’s a political ad? Supposed to make us like the guy?

Well, no, I suppose it’s supposed to make people like me afraid. And I suppose on some level, yes, I’m very afraid for myself and for the country in general if Desantis somehow gets his way and wins the presidency.

Oh thank god my home state of MN is on that list!

Honestly, Minnesota (at least in the cities) is super queer-friendly from my experience. The latest legislative session has put some pretty positive things in the books and have enshrined the state as a trans refuge.

In the last year I’ve been in the process of transitioning and my coming out couldn’t have gone smoother. No one’s given me anything more than a passing glance as, I assume, they try to figure out my gender. But even that’s been kept to themselves and I’ve heard nothing but respect for my name and pronouns when I’ve been out and about.

Yeah, it’s both an overarching label for the LGBTQIA+ community at large and also a label that some people do identify personally with, as they may feel that no others really fit but they still are part of the community.

My wife, for example. I’m a trans girl, we married when I was still deeply buried in the closet. She’s ostensibly cishet - she’s more attracted to masculinity, she wouldn’t consider herself a lesbian or even bi, but nonetheless she’s happy married to another woman.

She’s doesn’t like saying she’s straight anymore - she says it doesn’t capture our relationship. She sees me for the woman I am, this isn’t a situation of her denying my gender, and she says it doesn’t feel like a straight relationship anymore. So if she has to pick a label she just calls herself queer and that’s good enough.

I’m not who you asked, but I am also a trans person that’s not planning on bottom surgery so thought I might chime in here.

Personally, the best solution is simply: Don’t legislate anything regarding bathroom/gender. Leave the bathrooms as they are. Let people use the bathrooms that they feel fit them best, that they’re most comfortable in. And if someone attempts to sneak in and assault/harass women in the bathroom, that’s already a crime that we have laws for.

Places that want to be more friendly or progressive will generally provide gender-neutral options. To me, the presence of a gender-neutral or all-gender bathroom is a good signifier that the place of business could be considered a potentially “safe” space – the staff there are probably going to be more accepting/less tolerant of open hate or bigotry and I can afford to let my guard down a little bit.

Okay, maybe it was closer to two decades when I think about it 😅

Felt some dysphoric feelings when I was young, didn’t realize that it could be gender related til I was at least 20 or so, didn’t actually come out and start transitioning until 38… oops

The 90’s and 00’s weren’t the best for representation of what “trans” is.

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

Yeah, that’s the closest thing I can tell. They want either “normal” or just to reserve the term “woman” or “man” for cisgender people, and refuse to even acknowledge trans identities at all.

I mean, the guy that Elon is quoting here, ostensibly “protecting” objects to the word cis because he objects to trans people’s existence in general.

Absolutely.

Discovering that I was trans was the start of a long journey for me – one that I’m not very proud of how it started, with suppressing it for the first decade or so out of fear of losing the people and things I cared most about. But I’m here now, I’m out, I’m transitioning, and I honestly had no idea that life could feel this good.

I’ll add Minnesota to that as well! We’ve always been a pretty decent LBGT stronghold and this last legislative session has been phenomenal.

Awesome, congrats! Glad to hear it went well, I’m sure you were really nervous!

Hey, just wanna say I really appreciated that video, thanks for sharing!

Oh, yeah absolutely not placing that on the Beehaw admin’s, I figured it was just a quirk of a younger system here and felt like this place was worth the extra work to get in, whether that was just a short question to answer or a couple days of troubleshooting a technical issue.

So far, so good!

Agreed. I’m doing my damnedest not to catastrophize, but it’s hard when one of the two major political parties in this country is running on a platform specifically demonizing and targeting my community and people like me in particular.

Honestly, I was more frustrated with the spinner of doom that kept me from actually submitting my registration for a few days. That meant re-writing my response to that application question until I decided to just save it in notepad until I was able to get a registration form actually submitted.

The “interview” process itself makes total sense, and I’m happy to have even something so simple that helps keep some of the low-effort riff-raff out.

Likewise! Keep the place nice, and nice people are going to want to stick around.

As someone diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, my first response is “wait, did we not already know this?”

Seriously, reliance on a lot of caffeine is such a typical way for ADHD folks to self-medicate, especially prior to being diagnosed.

I’m not sure where my folks stand, so thanks for creating this thread. :)

I’ve come out to them, and they said, ostensibly, the right things. “We love you and want you to be happy, whatever that looks like.” But then the rest of the weekend I was with them they proceeded to act like the conversation never happened and made no attempt to use the correct name and pronouns.

Fingers crossed, the next visit with them goes better. I’m prepared to do some gentle corrections this time, now that they’ve had some time to mull on it.

No worries, I was picking up what you’re saying just fine :)

Also, just because there’s a sexual aspect to these thoughts doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a chaser or it’s a fetish. A good exercise might be to ask yourself if you’d prefer to be a woman in mundane, non-sexual situations. How does it sound to be a woman doing her taxes, or a woman arguing with the phone company, or a woman commuting to work, for example.

I do want to say, just because I see some of your story in mine doesn’t necessarily mean you’re trans. It doesn’t mean anything other than I can relate to what you’ve said so far. The best thing you can do is continue to reflect, and maybe seek outside help in the form of therapy to help you work through these feelings and decide what to do next. A therapist won’t (shouldn’t, at least) tell you if you’re trans or not, but they can help you examine these thoughts and feelings and hopefully give you some clarity so you can decide what, if anything, is your next step.

As a warning, I do feel that there’s a bit of a pushiness within the trans communities, and certainly it’s not something I’m immune to. We see someone who sounds like our younger eggy selves, and we think “I can help them!” In our eagerness to help someone the way that we might not have had help, we could potentially end up pushing someone towards something that’s not right for them. It’s why I strongly recommend therapy – a therapist should be more impartial, and help you draw your own conclusions instead of coming in with their own bias. So please, take what you read here with the understanding that in the end, you’re the only person who can truly know what your identity is.