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2022-08-08, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
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Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
It also just isn't always obvious, even in first person. It didn't 'click' for me until around my 25th birthday but in retrospect, like. In second grade I once asked if I could be on the girls team instead for some stupid playground boys vs girls thing (and the girls were like "sure why not welcome aboard").
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2022-08-08, 02:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Location
- Denver.
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2022-08-08, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I wanted to be a girl until I wassomewhere between 8 and 10, never had an issue with wearing women's clothes or looking feminine, got occasional very mild dysphoria, and some other things. Realised I wasn't exactly cis in my early twenties but it took until I was about 25 to realise I don't fit on either end of the spectrum except when I do. Even then it took me a while to work out what I actually am (which I'd describe as agender fluid*). And I still occasionally misgender myself through sheer force habit. Meanwhile I've known people go from genderqueer to trans and from trans to genderqueer.
I think the sheer cisnormativity of society can lead to us dismissing our identities. It took somebody making a joke related to Ru Paul's Drag Race for me to work it out, to the surprise of pretty much none of my friends (as to family most don't give a rat's arse either way, one of my siblings probably worked it out ten years before I did and another is alsoGQ).
* I'm GF, but I spend most of my time as neither mae or female.
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2022-08-09, 03:11 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Some rainly old island
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Hi, I'm back, I guess. ^_^I cosplay and stream LPs of single player games on Twitch! Mon, Wed & Fri; currently playing: Fallout: New Vegas (Mon/Wed) and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Thurs or Fri)
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2022-08-09, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2019
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Speaking of trans rights, I have never been trans but I remember getting so much terrible back lash as a little boy wanting to be a girl. I don't understand why people can't move on past other people's differences.
I have never been a hyper masculine, donkey balled party freak who gets all the girls (or guys), why can't people just respect one another?I am ArlEammon. I've been here since 2004, but I've lost access to my other account.
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2022-08-09, 05:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Earth?
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
My working hypothesis is that it's related to the 'born this way' conception of sexuality, in that its function as a rebuttal to the common "you're just confused/it's just a phase" denials and dismissals might play a bit of a roll in it.
Admittedly my perspective might be a little unusual on this, since I didn't know it was even possible to be what I am until my mid-twenties and so just chalked-up my (fairly severe) dysphoria as 'atypical depression symptoms' for years. With hindsight, yes it's pretty obvious my brain knew something was off about my assigned gender but I don't think I can honestly say I 'always knew I was non-binary' without adopting a rather creative definiton of 'knew'.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I found it surprisingly affecting, especially considering I don't have any real experience with Guilty Gear stuff. Not quite as big an effect as seeing Testament when they got added, but then Testament is essentially 'what my teenage self wanted to see every time they looked in a mirror but was too repressed/closeted to articulate' made manifest and put in an anime fighting game
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2022-08-09, 07:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- Eastern US
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I agree with this.
Growing up, I knew theoretically that gay people existed. There were gay characters in books I read and I would occasionally read something about it in the news. But being gay in the tiny town where I grew up "just didn't happen."* After I came out as a lesbian (age 20), I could look back and see the signs, but was completely oblivious at the time. Even after I came out as a lesbian, and I knew trans people existed, it never occurred to me that I may be one. I was happy being a butch lesbian, right..? Like, really butch... And everyone is amused when they are misgendered, right? It just means I'm comfortable in my butchness, right? It took until I met and got to know a transwoman (when I was 30) that I came face to face with what I had really been feeling all those years.
* I've learned in the past few years about 2 other people I went to high school with who have come out. Three may not seem like a lot, but it is a major thing.Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
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2022-08-09, 10:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Gender
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2022-08-10, 04:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- Eastern US
- Gender
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2022-08-10, 04:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
No idea about people from my secondary school, but from my uni friend group one other person has come out as NB, I think one other person might be NB, we're not sure about another person because of various factors stopping their transition, and I think everybody is pan.
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2022-08-10, 01:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Oh I see! That's...gonna be a bigger number then lol. I can think of a dozen lgbt people from my high school without breaking a sweat. Some of them were even openly so at the time. I'm beginning to wonder if my school is an outlier or if I just had a large social circle though.
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2022-08-10, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- Eastern US
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Depends on a lot of factors.
I’m in my mid-40s. LGBT issues were not as mainstream when I was growing up as they are now. (I came out before Ellen…) I talked to a lesbian in her mid-20s not long ago who told me she never had to come out because she always knew she is gay. The whole concept of gay issues being so prevalent that someone can be aware and know so young blows my mind.
Also, I grew up in a really rural area. (My graduating class was 102 people.) My first exposure to anything gay-related was when I read a book with lesbian secondary characters when I was 13. Someone who grew up in a more urban or suburban area is more likely to encounter a gay person than I was. (That same mid-20s lesbian grew up in a large city in the western US.)Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
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2022-08-10, 02:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
That also makes sense. I'm in my later 20s and my graduating class was five times that size, so...fair.
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2022-08-10, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2022
- Location
- Misery (h/t XTC)
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Everyone learns at different times. I knew I liked women from the time when I was old enough to process being attracted to anyone, and because my mom came out around that same time, I always identified that way from a young age... even though it always seemed to me that if there was a man who was attracted to me, well, I'd be flattered, I'm not opposed to the idea, but that's normal, right? It wasn't until my early 30s that I realized I was actually bisexual, even if I still lean toward women and lesbian relationships most of the time. We all are growing and learning at our own pace, and the idea that you need to figure it out from early life for it to be valid is just nonsensical.
"But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-08-11, 08:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2012
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I really appreciate seeing everyone's stories about realization. I realized I wasn't straight and cis when I was a child... but only after reading about people with similar experiences and feelings. Like others here, I certainly didn't "always know."
Echoing everyone else. That really sucks, and it really sucks that their friend is getting support from another. I feel for you and for his sister.
Yeah, that might be right. But it only really works for a portion of trans people, so I think we're in agreement that it's a shoddy defense.
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2022-08-13, 03:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2019
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
How do other gay guys in the playground deal with not ever having a boyfriend ever?
I am ArlEammon. I've been here since 2004, but I've lost access to my other account.
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2022-08-13, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2009
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
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2022-08-13, 08:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2022
- Location
- Misery (h/t XTC)
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Seconding this, and it's sadly not unique to cis people (although it is far, far more common there). A good friend of mine got dumped by her girlfriend because said girlfriend hadn't transitioned enough, and her girlfriend claimed she couldn't go through the pain of the early stages of transition again... despite the fact that she herself was trans and was no stranger to being seen as insufficiently feminine. Not someone I'm fond of.
Trans women are women, and if you can't accept them at the start of their transition, you're not going to suddenly accept them later on either."But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-08-15, 04:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- Arizona
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Long post, but I was feeling like finally bringing some closure to this.
It was June of 2015. A friend of mine participated in a bizarre sort of contest in which (among other things) he was forced to dress up as a girl, put on makeup and shave his legs. Like everyone else, I thought it was hilarious. But I alone couldn’t help but be disappointed, wishing that could have been me instead. On kind of a whim afterward, I tried shaving off all my body hair. The soft and smooth feeling was amazing, like taking off a layer of clothing I never knew I had been wearing. But I found myself wishing I could take it farther. In my mind, it was much better, but still not as good as having a female body would be.
As a result of that, memories from my teen years started resurfacing, and I found my mind wandering to old, forgotten fantasies. Over the next few months, I thought back to my passion for gender transformation stories and wishing I could transform myself as well. Because of my prior experience in LGBT circles, I had met people who had transitioned genders before, and so I was aware that it was possible to do so without magic or mad science. So I made a post on an online community asking whether it might be a good idea to try crossdressing at some point.
After that, I started low-key working on the idea of making myself look more androgynous and maybe secretly getting a few female clothes to test the idea out. This led me to start pondering the question of, “So wait, what gender am I, really?” I posted up more about the turmoil I was going through, and eventually asked myself a sort of armor-piercing question on October 20, 2015: If I could have any kind of body I wanted, apart from any social or cultural pressure, what would I want?
Admitting I would rather be a woman than a man was a shock to my system. I struggled with whether this was true, what to do with the revelation, what my friends and family would think, and how it would affect my life. I wrestled with my identity for quite a while, seeking help from this forum, an online trans community, a therapist they recommended and two different IRL support groups, but none of them were able to help me figure things out.
So I made another post in early 2016 letting everyone know I would be stepping back from the issue for the sake of my own sanity. I spent the next year or two putting my gender confusion out of my mind, and managed to calm down. I was afraid of doing anything about it at that point, as I was afraid that if I did I would inevitably end up losing myself and becoming a woman forever. I simply didn’t know how I could live like that. But I couldn’t bury those feelings forever.
In October 2017, about nine months after I married my spouse, Mariah (who is also trans), I found myself growing curious again about being female. I had finally started to accept that it was possible to not have to be one gender or the other permanently, and that I wouldn’t be doing any harm by trying out a new gender. With a lot of support from Mariah, I started presenting myself as a woman in public to see how it felt. And it felt good. I had intended to simply switch presentations to suit how I felt at the time, and for the moment, it seemed to be working.
A month later, things weren’t looking so good. I had come out to my friends and family as genderfluid and most of them were supportive, but I wasn’t happy with how it had turned out. I felt like a fraud, like I was just a man cosplaying as a woman, because once the wig and clothes came off at the end of the day, I was left as a man. And I didn’t look feminine enough to myself even when dressed as a woman sometimes. I broke down crying about it one night, and Mariah couldn’t console me with her words. We both realized that more was needed. At the time, Mariah still had some of her injection meds left over from before she switched to pills, so I ended up taking my first dose of estrogen that night.
Things proceeded quickly from there. I saw a new therapist for the next few months, and she helped me work out a lot of what was bothering me. I was set up on estrogen officially in the spring of 2018. But as time went on, I found myself spending less and less time as male, often just presenting male at work and changing right after. That was even over by the end of 2018; I came out at work in November. By the end of the year, I stopped presenting male entirely, and in July 2019, I had my name and gender changed on my legal documents too.
All has been pretty quiet since then, and as of now I have stopped even using they/them pronouns and exclusively use she/her. I still have some element of a male side, but it’s purely mental, and not relevant to my day-to-day presentation. As it turns out, I have realized that I am actually a woman and I will remain one forever. I never lost myself in the process, but instead I found a deeper and truer self than before. Thank you all for staying with me and supporting me through this long and difficult journey, and I hope you found this helpful.Last edited by Dire Moose; 2022-08-15 at 04:52 PM.
LGBTitp
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2022-08-15, 05:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2019
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I am ArlEammon. I've been here since 2004, but I've lost access to my other account.
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2022-08-16, 04:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Some rainly old island
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I have a similar experience, in that I crossdressed as a kid, and came out as agender before working out I was a trans woman at about 25-ish (ironically, one of the reasons I worked it out was because someone on an online forum assumed I was assigned female at birth, and tried misgendering me with she/her pronouns when I asked people to use they/them).
Speaking of, I've just had my oestrogen bumped up to 8mg a day from 6mg a few days ago, and I can't describe how, but I feel amazing!Hi, I'm back, I guess. ^_^I cosplay and stream LPs of single player games on Twitch! Mon, Wed & Fri; currently playing: Fallout: New Vegas (Mon/Wed) and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Thurs or Fri)
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2022-08-16, 01:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Location
- Denver.
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
@ Dire Moose
I wish I had the courage and support that you do.
/loveLooking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2022-08-16, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2019
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
There are tons of issues getting in the way of me being who I really am in real life. This sucks ass.
I'm sorry if I'm kind of a broken record but can I talk with someone in PM?I am ArlEammon. I've been here since 2004, but I've lost access to my other account.
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2022-08-16, 09:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2009
- Location
- Arizona
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I was a terrified mess when I first realized who I was and I didn’t have the proper support in place either. As much as it may seem like I’m a brilliant success story, it was a lot darker and messier than it might seem looking back. You may be surprised by this, but I still have doubts about myself that flare up every now and then.
LGBTitp
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2022-08-17, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2022
- Location
- Misery (h/t XTC)
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
I'm late to the response and may or may not be the sort of person you need to speak with, but I'm willing to offer whatever insight I have to folks who need it.
That's wonderful! Remember, ladies, if your body isn't producing the hormones you need naturally, store-bought is fine."But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-08-20, 09:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2012
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
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2022-08-24, 01:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2013
- Location
- Where I am
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Does "I see the appeal of sexual intercourse but honestly it seems like too much work for not enough pay-off" count as a kind of ace?
I also answer to Bookmark and Shadow Claw.
Read my fanfiction here. Homebrew Material Here Rater Reads the Hobbit and Dracula
Awesome Avatar by Emperor Ing
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2022-08-24, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
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2022-08-24, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2012
- Gender
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
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2022-08-25, 12:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2017
Re: LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong
Yes. But also not really relevant. "Dating isn't worth the bother" communicates the basic idea to most people in five words. "Gray ace" in two, but for anyone who isn't in spaces that regularly discuss fine shading of sexuality-space you'll likely be asked to elaborate and that'll likely take more than three words.
I guess my question back is why you're asking. If it's for yourself, you're free to define yourself however you like. If it's for discussing people who like to talk about the fine details of gender and sexuality, the answer is generally yes but also those people like to discuss things to death so you'll likely be asked to elaborate regardless. (Unless you run into a pocket of people who are gatekeepy and one-true-way-ish, in which case remove yourself as soon as you reasonably can.) If it's for people outside those spaces, I only say no because there are likely better ways to match the idea to the audience's vocabulary.