LGBTAI+ #59: Will You Take This Woman To Be Your Galpal?

[137beth]

Interesting. I've never gotten into Shadowrun so most of that was new information for me.

[LaZodiac]

I'm kinda INTO Shadowrun and I didn't know about this stuff. I have to imagine this is either severely downplayed or just excised in more modern versions of the system.

It does raise a pretty sad point though.

[BladeofObliviom]

So, uh. Got my HRT prescription today. Like, from the doctor, not in my hand. Coming in 3-5 business days by mail. Still exciting!

[Dire Moose]

Congratulations BladeofOblivion! Hope you enjoy your Elixir of Femininity/Masculinity

[BisectedBrioche]

Interesting. I've never gotten into Shadowrun so most of that was new information for me.

I'm kinda INTO Shadowrun and I didn't know about this stuff. I have to imagine this is either severely downplayed or just excised in more modern versions of the system.

It does raise a pretty sad point though.

As I said in the essay, it is getting better (to be fair, it's not that much worse than any other franchise that started in the 80's/90's). Best emphasised on how Plan 9 (the character, not the movie)'s habit of changing genders has gone from a joke, to something more like gender fluidity.

So, uh. Got my HRT prescription today. Like, from the doctor, not in my hand. Coming in 3-5 business days by mail. Still exciting!

Heck yeah! I started mine 2 1/2 years ago, and it's still the best day of my life!

[Dire Moose]

Heck yeah! I started mine 2 1/2 years ago, and it's still the best day of my life!

I started mine 2.5 years ago too! What does that make us, hormone sisters?

[BladeofObliviom]

Yeah! I'm really glad, I kind of imagined there'd be a lot more hoops than there ended up being the way I hear people talk about it, so I was surprised when the endo just wrote me a prescription without much fuss. Certainly a welcome surprise, though!

[BisectedBrioche]

I started mine 2.5 years ago too! What does that make us, hormone sisters?

Titsters? Blood-Test Sisters?

[Wizard_Lizard]

I may be gettin' gender therapy soon!

[Dire Moose]

Titsters? Blood-Test Sisters?

Hehe, “titsters.” Well, 2.5 years on hormones have definitely filled things out up there; I’m actually up to a C-cup now.

[BisectedBrioche]

Hehe, “titsters.” Well, 2.5 years on hormones have definitely filled things out up there; I’m actually up to a C-cup now.

Lucky! I'm only just up to a B.

[Talakeal]

I have two questions about terminology regarding trans-people, thought this might be a good place to ask.


1: I have known several women who self identified as lesbians who were not normally interested in men, but dated people who had the bodies of bio-sex females but who identified as trans-men. Is lesbian still the appropriate term for them (meaning the women who date trans-men, not the trans-men themselves). If not, what is?


2: I do not personally identify as a woman, but I want very much to be a woman. Is there a term for this?


Thank you, and apologies if I offended anyone, that was not my intent.

[Unavenger]

I have two questions about terminology regarding trans-people, thought this might be a good place to ask.

Trans people don't require a hyphen in the first instance.

1: I have known several women who self identified as lesbians who were not normally interested in men, but dated people who had the bodies of bio-sex females but who identified as trans-men. Is lesbian still the appropriate term for them (meaning the women who date trans-men, not the trans-men themselves). If not, what is?

Arguably, that makes them either lesbian with exceptions or oddly specific bisexual, but, like, really. They're lesbians - I don't know that many trans people would be offended at the idea that while they're presenting as the gender equivalent to their assigned-at-birth sex, people who are attracted to people of that gender may be attracted to them.

I would probably advise these people though that their relationship is likely to have problems once the man in question starts HRT and has top surgery, assuming he intends to do that.

2: I do not personally identify as a woman, but I want very much to be a woman. Is there a term for this?

No, but I would recommend some serious introspection to determine whether or not the correct term for your condition is "Trans woman in denial". Wanting to be a woman is, not to put too fine a point on it, fairly high up on the list of signs.

Thank you, and apologies if I offended anyone, that was not my intent.

Honestly? I think any question born of at least some lack of knowledge will offend someone. I on the other hand would rather people ask insensitive questions with good intentions than not do that.

[BisectedBrioche]

I have two questions about terminology regarding trans-people, thought this might be a good place to ask.


1: I have known several women who self identified as lesbians who were not normally interested in men, but dated people who had the bodies of bio-sex females but who identified as trans-men. Is lesbian still the appropriate term for them (meaning the women who date trans-men, not the trans-men themselves). If not, what is?


2: I do not personally identify as a woman, but I want very much to be a woman. Is there a term for this?


Thank you, and apologies if I offended anyone, that was not my intent.

1. If they say they're lesbians, they're lesbians...but it does carry the unfortunate implication that they didn't consider the transgender men in question men (it's perfectly possibly to find someone of a gender you're not attractive to attractive because they look like a member of it, mind you), but that would depend on the exact situation.

Just FYI, describing a trans person's AGAB (Assigned Gender At Birth) as a "bio" or "biological" sex isn't the done thing. It's used as a dogwhistle to misgender trans people in a "lol, not touching you!" sort of way, and isn't strictly accurate (and even if it was "biological sex" would be redundant). Most trans people I know (myself included) would object to being described that way. Not that I'm taking offence now, or anything; just a heads up.

2. That would depend what you mean by "identify as". A person's gender identity is a fixed value (notwithstanding gender fluid people, but they still move between fixed values); the term "identify as" is considered a dismissive and inaccurate by a lot of trans people, since while they might be described as "identifying" as a their gender, it goes a lot more deeply than that. A trans person who doesn't openly "identify" with their gender is still a trans person of that gender ("wanting to be a girl is a symptom of being a girl", as the expression goes), so...perhaps that answers your question? As the above poster mentioned, some introspection might be in order.

And don't sweat it, gotta ask to learn!

[137beth]

As I understand it, the term "identify as X" means "tell people you are X." If you say "I am a man," you are identifying as a man. Someone else might describe you as identifying as a man.

If you say "I identify as a man," then you are actually saying "I am someone who tells people I am a man," which seems (IMO) like an awkward and round-about way of telling people you are a man.

[Unavenger]

As I understand it, the term "identify as X" means "tell people you are X." If you say "I am a man," you are identifying as a man. Someone else might describe you as identifying as a man.

If you say "I identify as a man," then you are actually saying "I am someone who tells people I am a man," which seems (IMO) like an awkward and round-about way of telling people you are a man.

Personal identity and what you tell people you are are not the same thing. Personal identity is an internal thing - if I tell someone I'm a man or a woman because I fear that they might be violent towards me if I say I'm nonbinary, that doesn't mean I really identify as a man or a woman.

[BisectedBrioche]

As I understand it, the term "identify as X" means "tell people you are X." If you say "I am a man," you are identifying as a man. Someone else might describe you as identifying as a man.

If you say "I identify as a man," then you are actually saying "I am someone who tells people I am a man," which seems (IMO) like an awkward and round-about way of telling people you are a man.

It's effectively a hedge word; trans people use it because they feel uncomfortable asserting their gender identity. Cis people use it because they feel uncomfortable accepting trans people.

To clarify: a person's gender identity is their innate sense of their gender (not to be confused with the broader concept of gender). It's like sexuality and accents, in that someone who has no cause to question theirs might assume they don't have one, but everyone does.

[Talakeal]

Thanks for the responses!

Trans people don't require a hyphen in the first instance.

That's what I though, but my spellcheck disagreed.

Arguably, that makes them either lesbian with exceptions or oddly specific bisexual, but, like, really. They're lesbians - I don't know that many trans people would be offended at the idea that while they're presenting as the gender equivalent to their assigned-at-birth sex, people who are attracted to people of that gender may be attracted to them.

I would probably advise these people though that their relationship is likely to have problems once the man in question starts HRT and has top surgery, assuming he intends to do that.

That's what I thought as well, but I hear so much talk about "bisexual erasure" and "transwomen are real women" that it might be an outdated and offensive why of thinking. I have also heard of a bunch of new terms like gynosexual and sapphic to denote different attractions that used to just be lumped under lesbians and thought maybe one of them might be more appropriate.

No, but I would recommend some serious introspection to determine whether or not the correct term for your condition is "Trans woman in denial". Wanting to be a woman is, not to put too fine a point on it, fairly high up on the list of signs.

That's one way to look at it. Personally, I feel that it would be kind of insulting to transpeople who are out there being discriminated against for me, someone who can pass as totally cis unless I decide to tell someone otherwise, to claim that banner when I haven't lived that life.

Any elaboration or advice on the nature of said introspection or exactly what it means to be a "trans woman in denial" would be greatly appreciated.

Honestly? I think any question born of at least some lack of knowledge will offend someone. I on the other hand would rather people ask insensitive questions with good intentions than not do that.

True, but it is a very sensitive subject and I would feel bad if I insulted someone, even unintentionally. Also, lot's of people "just ask questions" as a rhetorical device to try and trap someone or create a strawman, and though that isn't what I am trying to do here, I could easily see someone reading it that way given the specific nature of my questions.

[SerTabris]

That's one way to look at it. Personally, I feel that it would be kind of insulting to transpeople who are out there being discriminated against for me, someone who can pass as totally cis unless I decide to tell someone otherwise, to claim that banner when I haven't lived that life.

Any elaboration or advice on the nature of said introspection or exactly what it means to be a "trans woman in denial" would be greatly appreciated.

Being trans doesn't really require doing any social or medical transition in itself; the order is generally that you figure out you're trans and then may decide based on that information to take hormones, change your presentation, or various other things. But it's not that those things cause you to 'become' trans, I'd say it's something more like 'if you are trans, then those are things you may wish to do'. That is, the person is trans the entire time and may gradually discover that and take steps with their body and presentation because of that. I spent a long time trying to figure out what exactly a 'man' was in order to show why I wasn't one, but ultimately it's just that I didn't want to be and it wasn't how I felt about myself, so I wasn't one. Depending on your situation, it may be helpful to see a psychologist or counselor with the right specialties (as long as there is a good trans-affirming one in your area, and other considerations allow).

[BladeofObliviom]

That's what I thought as well, but I hear so much talk about "bisexual erasure" and "transwomen are real women" that it might be an outdated and offensive why of thinking. I have also heard of a bunch of new terms like gynosexual and sapphic to denote different attractions that used to just be lumped under lesbians and thought maybe one of them might be more appropriate.

This has been kind of a hot button thing in Twitter and other places and it's still a bit flame-war-y in certain circles, fair warning. I don't believe there's a real consensus even among queer communities yet, and the answers on this subject may vary from group to group. Just giving fair warning, it's a messy thing sometimes.

That's one way to look at it. Personally, I feel that it would be kind of insulting to transpeople who are out there being discriminated against for me, someone who can pass as totally cis unless I decide to tell someone otherwise, to claim that banner when I haven't lived that life.

Any elaboration or advice on the nature of said introspection or exactly what it means to be a "trans woman in denial" would be greatly appreciated.

So, stuff like this is a little different for everyone. Gender is complicated and in large part cultural; we're living in broadly cisnormative societies with a strong gender binary, but this is, while common historically, not necessarily the norm. That said, I'll take a crack at answering this, but take it with a grain of salt and the understanding that this is rooted in my experience, which may not apply perfectly to your situation or anyone else's.


I'm a trans woman. I'm pretty darn sure at this point. I finally admitted to myself that I wasn't comfortable with masculinity and that there was maybe merit to examining this possibility for myself in mid-February, so this is a fairly recent development. I've been on this very forum for close to ten years at this point, and have met a lot of people and made friends presenting as a cis male.

While February was when I admitted it to myself, it wasn't like a switch flipped. I'm not even sure what triggered the realization, exactly, but as I looked back and examined the evidence it started to paint a clearer picture of what I'd been denying and suppressing. This wasn't the first time I'd questioned this, even; this was just the time that stuck (in November, I had a short bout of questioning in which I compared my feelings to the described feelings of a close friend of mine who is trans, and decided her description of dysphoria didn't match up well so I must be cis. It doesn't really work like that, I gatekept myself, whoops).

You express a worry about claiming a banner when you haven't lived that kind of life yet, but...well, honestly, I haven't either. I'm only "out" online, though some of that online includes close friends I know IRL and trust, and just don't see in person because of COVID. I've been pretty lucky so far. Everyone I've come out to directly has been openly supportive, and in the larger communities I've come out to everyone has been either openly supportive or been too afraid of rocking the boat to say anything and just quiet about it. So I haven't really "lived that life" yet either.

I recently started HRT though, and while nothing physical has really happened yet (aside from my skin softening up a little, which is nice), I cannot overstate the good this has done for my mental health. It's...tranquil, in a way I haven't felt in a very long time. Stress doesn't hit me as hard as it used to. I feel like I was always wound up tight like a spring, never realizing how bad it was because it was normal, and now that tension is just gone. I'm free, in a lot of ways. I didn't realize or understand just how much I was suffering before the pieces came together and I suddenly understood the steps I could take to piece by piece make it stop.

Not everyone's situation is like mine. In retrospect, I definitely experienced dysphoria for a long time without the slightest understanding of what it was, and my dysphoria was different from my friend's in a lot of ways - she knew from a pretty young age that there were some very specific parts of her she hated, and knew what she wanted instead. Mine was more like...a sort of dark cloud. I couldn't point to the source, but everything felt underwater, my emotions, my reactions to the world. And it got a little darker every day, until I began to wonder if light were even real.

And if your situation is like mine...well, that is living that life. It's not discrimination, it's not virulent hatred from reactionaries, it's just a quiet, persistent suffering, a listlessness. There were happy times, or at least times that seemed happy in comparison to the rest, but at least for me it was a shallow half-life wracked by imposter syndrome, persistent depressive episodes, and constant self-sabotage.

[Wilko92]

(A friend who has frequented the forum has suggested I post here so, here I am)

I think I might be trans. But I think I'm also deep in denial about the possibility of being trans (I keep invalidating my feelings, coming up for excuses about how I feel, blaming my weight/autism/cPTSD). I've looked into gender fluid and non binary but those don't feel right. I'm pretty sure I've internalised negative perceptions and stereotypes of trans. I don't know what to do, how to challenge that thinking.

Please help?

[deltamire]

(A friend who has frequented the forum has suggested I post here so, here I am)

I think I might be trans. But I think I'm also deep in denial about the possibility of being trans (I keep invalidating my feelings, coming up for excuses about how I feel, blaming my weight/autism/cPTSD). I've looked into gender fluid and non binary but those don't feel right. I'm pretty sure I've internalised negative perceptions and stereotypes of trans. I don't know what to do, how to challenge that thinking.

Please help?

While I can't give definite advice, because every person's experience with being trans (or not) is different, my first instincts for having internalised negative perceptions and stereotypes that affect your view on a group would be to find ways to replace and lessen those stereotypes with positive, or even just neutral ones. You're definitely not alone in feeling like you've somehow poisoned your opinions about a community, I had it with my own sexuality specifically, but, most importantly, it's a fixable problem. The best way to go about removing said negative perceptions is to first go around them, because a majority of them aren't going to be logicked away, because they're probably not based on logic at all. You can't try and face them head on right away, because by internalising them you're going to be automatically believing them. Once you've got new ammunition, as it were, in the form of other opinions, you can work out what exact type of internalised negativity you've got going on.

I had a lot of success in challenging my own perceptions of being trans with consuming content and media that presented the trans community in a positive light, and also by finding mentors and people I could look up to, both online and in real life. There's been a huge outpour of trans ownvoices (aka media depicting trans people written by trans people) in the last three or four years, much of it genuinely good fiction on its own, and that's not to mention all the back catalogue of the internet as well. If you look up trans ownvoices on google, you'll get a lot of 'em. Even just seeking out trans people online who create content or talk about their experiences, about being trans or not, can help normalise it.

Regarding the making of excuses to convince yourself you're not trans, I feel you. The terror of lying awake and thinking, 'oh s**t, have I been making it all up and am I just faking it?' is definitely a problem. My best advice for that would be to first ask yourself why you think you could be pretending? What benefits do you get for somehow pretending (as if being trans is not something deeply personal, but rather a membership you have to have the right requirements for) to be trans? The answer is probably going to be very little, because 'pretending' to be trans isn't, like, a thing people do. It just isn't. I've met a lot of trans people in my life, and almost all of them experienced the exact same feeling of thinking they had somehow convinced themself they were trans. I haven't ever met a person I knew who somehow was faking it unconsciously. Why would you, who seems to genuinely be worried and seems to have done the leg work to try and learn, who has come to ask questions, be any different?

And, finally, regarding the terminology; if they don't feel right, then don't use 'em! The best thing about being trans is that it's not a one size fits all experience. In your first sentence, you referred to yourself as simply 'trans', and it's perfectly fine to just use that word. If you don't like that either, you don't even have to use any word at all. Maybe further down the line you'll find a word that fits like a glove. Maybe you won't, and that's okay. All that matters is that you feel more comfortable than when you started, and that you're working to be happy in your skin.

Looking at this post now, sorry for the huge ol' blocks o' text. TL;DR, what you're experiencing is perfectly fine, you're not alone in these feelings, you're probably not faking, you don't need to know exactly what you are straight out the gate, and your best bet is to find other trans people, in fiction, online, or in real life, who you can relate to and work it out from there.

[BisectedBrioche]

(A friend who has frequented the forum has suggested I post here so, here I am)

I think I might be trans. But I think I'm also deep in denial about the possibility of being trans (I keep invalidating my feelings, coming up for excuses about how I feel, blaming my weight/autism/cPTSD). I've looked into gender fluid and non binary but those don't feel right. I'm pretty sure I've internalised negative perceptions and stereotypes of trans. I don't know what to do, how to challenge that thinking.

Please help?

There's an old trick in decision making; assign a choice to "heads" flip a coin. If it comes up heads and you're happy with that, good; if it comes up heads and you're disappointed, you know what you actually wanted now. Gender's kind of the same way.

One experiences their gender identity (that is to say, the innate sense of your own gender) much like sexuality, your favourite colour or the ideal length of a piece of string. Only your experience and feelings are a reliable measurement of yours, and nobody else can tell you that.

If presenting a certain way makes you happier than not (allowing for external factors, like other people being twatnuggets), then there is very little room to doubt that you're on the right track as far as your gender identity is concerned.

[Tvtyrant]

I have a question that this seems like the best place to get answered. Apologies if I word it badly, I'm not great at formulating questions on this subject.

In Bi-Erasure articles I read online they talk about how the default assumption is that everyone ends up with a man in the end. If you are a bi-woman the fear is you are going to break up with your girlfriend for a guy, while if you are a bi-man the fear is that you will break up with your girlfriend for a guy. This in part is why bi-men are less acceptable on dating sites than bi-women (see OK cupid for instance.)


In Psychology Today and a number of other sites I read that men tend to take more then they give in a relationship, both in terms of emotional and physical labor (less chores, more selfish, etc.) Men are also stereotypically worse in bed, being more selfish and less giving (also want shorter and more frequent sex.) Men are also depicted as being less attractive in general, physically and personality wise.

Now of course it will vary by individual, but at least stereotype wise this is contradictory. Why would the default assumption be that people want to do more emotional, physical and romantic labor? Why would bi or pan individuals date men given the alternative?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

In Bi-Erasure articles I read online they talk about how the default assumption is that everyone ends up with a man in the end. If you are a bi-woman the fear is you are going to break up with your girlfriend for a guy, while if you are a bi-man the fear is that you will break up with your girlfriend for a guy. This in part is why bi-men are less acceptable on dating sites than bi-women (see OK cupid for instance.)

In Psychology Today and a number of other sites I read that men tend to take more then they give in a relationship, both in terms of emotional and physical labor (less chores, more selfish, etc.) Men are also stereotypically worse in bed, being more selfish and less giving (also want shorter and more frequent sex.) Men are also depicted as being less attractive in general, physically and personality wise.

Now of course it will vary by individual, but at least stereotype wise this is contradictory. Why would the default assumption be that people want to do more emotional, physical and romantic labor? Why would bi or pan individuals date men given the alternative?

Uh...because men are sexy and awesome?

Note that all of the stereotypes you mentioned are from an exclusively female perspective. There's no mention of the equal and opposite stereotypes that gay guys or straight gals always worry about their bi boyfriends leaving them for women, that women are more picky and demanding when it comes to chore schedules and cleanliness standards, that women don't like sex and only grudgingly give it to their partners, and so on. (Which, to be clear, are just as incorrect and handwavey as the ones you mentioned, just pointing out that they exist too.)

Regarding ending up with one gender or another, in many gay male circles it's a quite common experience/fear that bi men tend to end up with women in the end due to social and family pressure to live the heteronormative lifestyle even if they personally lean more toward men while there's no expectation that bi men would leave their girlfriends or wives for men (though the "guys hooking up on the DL" thing does happen). Anecdotally, all of the 7ish bi guys I know dated mostly men to start (either exclusively guys or something like guy-gal-guy-guy-gal-guy-guy-etc.), then mostly women later, then ended up marrying women; I have no idea how that local trend compares to the global one, though.

Regarding a general preference for women over men, I googled around for some Psychology Today articles and didn't find any exact matches for what you're talking about here, but in general (A) that sounds more like a bunch of sitcom clichés than any actual research and (B) there's a whole spectrum of bi-ness and no evidence that most bi people lean toward women over men, or even whether more bi people are 50/50 or 90/10 or any other ratio.

One thing that is fairly well-supported by research (though not without controversy) is a general "women are wonderful" effect, so it's likely that the apparent stereotype contradiction you're seeing is people on dating sites and psychology sites and similar just throwing a bunch of pro-women stereotypes in a blender and regurgitating them even if the actual stereotypes themselves don't make sense together.

[Tvtyrant]

Uh...because men are sexy and awesome?

Note that all of the stereotypes you mentioned are from an exclusively female perspective. There's no mention of the equal and opposite stereotypes that gay guys or straight gals always worry about their bi boyfriends leaving them for women, that women are more picky and demanding when it comes to chore schedules and cleanliness standards, that women don't like sex and only grudgingly give it to their partners, and so on. (Which, to be clear, are just as incorrect and handwavey as the ones you mentioned, just pointing out that they exist too.)

Regarding ending up with one gender or another, in many gay male circles it's a quite common experience/fear that bi men tend to end up with women in the end due to social and family pressure to live the heteronormative lifestyle even if they personally lean more toward men while there's no expectation that bi men would leave their girlfriends or wives for men (though the "guys hooking up on the DL" thing does happen). Anecdotally, all of the 7ish bi guys I know dated mostly men to start (either exclusively guys or something like guy-gal-guy-guy-gal-guy-guy-etc.), then mostly women later, then ended up marrying women; I have no idea how that local trend compares to the global one, though.

Regarding a general preference for women over men, I googled around for some Psychology Today articles and didn't find any exact matches for what you're talking about here, but in general (A) that sounds more like a bunch of sitcom clichés than any actual research and (B) there's a whole spectrum of bi-ness and no evidence that most bi people lean toward women over men, or even whether more bi people are 50/50 or 90/10 or any other ratio.

One thing that is fairly well-supported by research (though not without controversy) is a general "women are wonderful" effect, so it's likely that the apparent stereotype contradiction you're seeing is people on dating sites and psychology sites and similar just throwing a bunch of pro-women stereotypes in a blender and regurgitating them even if the actual stereotypes themselves don't make sense together.

I had not considered the strait-passing issue (the amount I know about things can fill a cup!)

The pro-women part isn't directly related to bi or pan people, I'm referring to these kinds of articles. If the assumption is that a male partner is going to shove most of the work towards their partner it seems odd to date males.

Spoiler: Or stuff like this.

Show

Tyler Wood comment.

Edit: Here is an article talking about what I am talking about. The author boils the issue down to "why date men" and "because of social constructs rewarding heteronormative relationships" so that seems pretty cut and dry.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I had not considered the strait-passing issue (the amount I know about things can fill a cup!)

The more you know!

The pro-women part isn't directly related to bi or pan people, I'm referring to these kinds of articles. If the assumption is that a male partner is going to shove most of the work towards their partner it seems odd to date males.

Spoiler: Or stuff like this.

Show

Tyler Wood comment.

Edit: Here is an article talking about what I am talking about. The author boils the issue down to "why date men" and "because of social constructs rewarding heteronormative relationships" so that seems pretty cut and dry.

Thanks for the links. Looking at those, the thing they all have in common is that they're all talking about heterosexual couples, at least implicitly.

The first four articles are largely about the impact of gender roles. The first and fourth talk about heterosexual couples explicitly (and reference or link to other articles showing same-sex couples divide things more evenly with better communication about it); the second and third articles talk about male/female equality in relationships, views of masculinity, female spaces, and similar (which don't apply in LGBT+ relationships); and all four talk about the impact of strict gender roles and gendered chores and such (which are generally relaxed or at least more thoughtful in LGBT+ relationships).

The last article says...a lot of things to which my reaction can't really be discussed in this forum, but it does give off some very strong bitterness vibes. Its conclusion that "dating men in the context of a heterosexual relationship sucks, why would anyone want to?" seems to be coming from the same place as someone who comes out of a bad divorce saying "being married sucks, why would anyone want to?"; in both cases, it's generalizing one narrow and jaded viewpoint onto a much broader context, a viewpoint that others with different backgrounds and without those bad experiences don't necessarily share.

Summing all that up, LGBT+ individuals can be perfectly happy about dating men even with all the stereotypes flying around because most of that simply doesn't apply to their relationships, either explicitly (because it's not a male/female relationship) or implicitly (because in a bi male/bi female relationship or polycule or whatever, gender roles tend to be openly discussed and mixed-and-matched because they're already bucking social norms so there's no need or ability to unconsciously go along with societal expectations).

[Tvtyrant]

The more you know!



Thanks for the links. Looking at those, the thing they all have in common is that they're all talking about heterosexual couples, at least implicitly.

The first four articles are largely about the impact of gender roles. The first and fourth talk about heterosexual couples explicitly (and reference or link to other articles showing same-sex couples divide things more evenly with better communication about it); the second and third articles talk about male/female equality in relationships, views of masculinity, female spaces, and similar (which don't apply in LGBT+ relationships); and all four talk about the impact of strict gender roles and gendered chores and such (which are generally relaxed or at least more thoughtful in LGBT+ relationships).

The last article says...a lot of things to which my reaction can't really be discussed in this forum, but it does give off some very strong bitterness vibes. Its conclusion that "dating men in the context of a heterosexual relationship sucks, why would anyone want to?" seems to be coming from the same place as someone who comes out of a bad divorce saying "being married sucks, why would anyone want to?"; in both cases, it's generalizing one narrow and jaded viewpoint onto a much broader context, a viewpoint that others with different backgrounds and without those bad experiences don't necessarily share.

Summing all that up, LGBT+ individuals can be perfectly happy about dating men even with all the stereotypes flying around because most of that simply doesn't apply to their relationships, either explicitly (because it's not a male/female relationship) or implicitly (because in a bi male/bi female relationship or polycule or whatever, gender roles tend to be openly discussed and mixed-and-matched because they're already bucking social norms so there's no need or ability to unconsciously go along with societal expectations).

Okay, that makes sense. I guess one of the discrepancies I was seeing was the idea that a bi-woman would end up with a straight man, which given the option seems like a solid pass. A Bi-man can't really end up with a straight man I suppose, so the counter proposition doesn't exist.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Okay, that makes sense. I guess one of the discrepancies I was seeing was the idea that a bi-woman would end up with a straight man, which given the option seems like a solid pass. A Bi-man can't really end up with a straight man I suppose, so the counter proposition doesn't exist.

I mean a bi man can end up with a straight woman, which is kinda a counter proposition?

[AdAstra]

Thanks for the responses!



That's what I though, but my spellcheck disagreed.

That's one way to look at it. Personally, I feel that it would be kind of insulting to transpeople who are out there being discriminated against for me, someone who can pass as totally cis unless I decide to tell someone otherwise, to claim that banner when I haven't lived that life.

Any elaboration or advice on the nature of said introspection or exactly what it means to be a "trans woman in denial" would be greatly appreciated.

Well, for context, I'm nonbinary, and I am generally very gender-neutral-looking without any effort on my part, I do not generally tell people about my gender identity unless asked, and I generally don't care what even my family thinks of my gender identity. On the other hand, plenty of nonbinary people do not look androgynous, and this can cause issues for them even when they tell people because some people don't believe being nonbinary is a real thing or assume all nonbinary people look androgynous. But for me, because of both the way I look, and the way I choose to present myself, my transition was, by most metrics, easy. Doesn't make me not trans, at least to my knowledge.

Basically, you would not be "disrespecting" anyone by the simple act of being trans. Not being actively discriminated against for being trans does not make your gender less real, regardless of what gender you pass as or whether you tell people or not. Your experiences might be different, but that wouldn't change the nature of your gender. Plus, everyone (or at least the vast majority of people) who has "lived that life", has had a point where they had not "lived that life". And whether you decide to live that life or not, what you feel inside still matters.

As for "trans and in denial", my personal experience has boiled down to "what would make me happier?". Or in this case, what would make you happier? What feels right to you? There are all kinds of ways that people transition, and ways they experience that. None of them are "improper". EDIT: Specifically, if your doubts about being trans stem primarily from how you think other people would feel about you or whether or not you'd be doing things "properly", those doubts are probably not evidence that you're not trans, at least looking at it with my logic.