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Holy shit. I just talked a cis guy on the internet down from "Let kids be kids" and got him to see why gender-affirming care for teens absolutely cannot wait.

This is one of my greatest achievements. I have a legitimate urge to take a victory lap.

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (2 Monate her)
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

The thing that persuaded him, if you're curious:

teilten dies erneut

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Damn. That was frikkin' *perfect*. And I feel that description so much, *especially* about shoe sizes. I'm a 14 in women's sizing. I have *three* pairs of Pleasers, only one of which really fit me properly. Sigh. :blobcatcry: :blobcatangry:
Als Antwort auf Legally Sharon :verifiedtrans:

@shaggyzed SERIOUSLY I like pleasers for, erm, certain things, but they feel weird to wear going into work or whatever.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Oh, I get it. :ablobwink: But they do have some more, ah... reasonable offerings in their catalog. And some are cute too!
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@shaggyzed I don't think I've ever seen Pleasers shoes, but the way you've described them in that post, I'm guessing they turn the "annoying repetitive jokes" from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum.

Which is hard to resolve because there's just the one brand trying to be the Spinal Tap of shoe making.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@shaggyzed Ah - wait, are they the only brand that makes stilletos or high heels then? Or are they the ones that basically exclusively make them?
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Als Antwort auf Lux :flag_genderfluid:

@orange_lux Thank you. There was no practical way to do it without a massive reply chain, and those always turn into disasters.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I love this. Everyone can understand the idea of being forced through the wrong puberty against your will. And transphobes often talk about permanent effects of gender affirming care, but never talk about the permanent effects of not getting the care you need.

But I agree with him: Let kids be kids!

Trans kids should be the kids they are, not the kids other people think they should be until they hit 18.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Inhaltswarnung: disability, politics, finance (not mine)

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I think one of the struggles is the weird propaganda I hear and see from the US like, and I quote "the left wants to put kids on HRT to make them trans" (yes, I really heard that one) and I had to dismantle it bit by bits with relatively little success (Who is "the left"? HRT or puberty blockers? Who said that?...) because the person in question was not equipped with any answers to challenge the claim themselves
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Als Antwort auf David P

#ALT4you

Now you're sixteen...

Are you starting to get the picture here? Every single trans man lives through this if he doesn't go on puberty blockers. Every single trans woman grows thicker brow and Jaw bones, has a voice that breaks and drops forever, grows and broadens, in ways that can never be undone. A torture she has to live with for the rest of her life.

I am Size 11 in Men's shoes (EU 45). On the larger size, but not too bad. But in women's sizing, I'm a 13--there are only 5 manufacturers in the entire United States who make women's shoes in my size, and one of them is Pleaser. Yes, the Pleaser who makes stripper shoes. There are entire types of women’s shoe that I literally cannot get, and if I want a pair of sneaker--plain old fashioned sneakers--I have to order them online and hope they're comfortable, because no store in my entire city stocks Size 13's.

Puberty blockers would've kept me from having to live this for the rest of my life. And that's why it's an out-and-out cruelty to force trans teens to live through the wrong puberty.

2/2

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I'm a cis man so feel free to ignore this question. OTOH, I'm asking this question from the point of view of a parent that might need to face this in the future if their kids start feeling that way.

Would be an endgoal a society were we're not longer man and woman, but just people? Would also help if people would not care how other people dress?

Context: I'm trying to raise my kids so they don't think in terms of 'this is an activity for men, this other one for women'.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@mdione gender abolition, which is what you're describing, is not a real goal. It's what feminists fought for in the 90s and early 00s, but has been largely abandoned for a simple reason:

Gender abolition *in practice* becomes the abolition of womanhood in less time than it takes to cook an egg. As such, attempts to do so end up reinforcing patriarchal systems of oppression, not tearing them down.

There's a lot of reasons for this, but one of the big ones is the deep-rooted treatment of the--

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@mdione
--feminine as the marked or aberrant gender, while masculinity is natural. This comes from patriarchy itself, which treats being a man as a default state of humanity, when it isn't.

And all that ignores the fact that a lot of us--myself included--love our genders, and would never willingly give them up (th other main reason degendering immediately becomes the extermination of the feminine--men like being men).

What trans folks want is a de-charging of the power dynamics attached to--

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@mdione
--genders, to stand down the policing of gender boundaries, and to throw the doors wide to *more* gendered categories, not fewer.

To draw an analogy, we want gender to have the same level of stigma and import as choosing what kind of cuisine to have when you go out for dinner. Right now, we're in 1950s America. You can have steak, or you can have seafood. We want 2020s America, with not just Mexican and Italian too, but Etheopian and someone's weird fusion ideas and so much more.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

Damn character limit.

I have a girl and a boy, and the boy sometimes uses 'girly' clothes handed down from her sister. He uses and likes pink, and luckily my daughter has gone through the pink phase. Yes, not that it would be bad if she just kept on it, I hope you understand what I mean. The only thing we're not so sure about is to allow the boy to use dresses outside the house, mostly because we haven't seen others, and we're immigrants in a country we don't know that well.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@mdione That last part is a social and national question I can't answer for you. It has little to do with gender and much more to do with social safety, which is a problem of patriarchy, not gender.
Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

Als Antwort auf Jaddy

@jaddy
> "No men and women" no.
> Maybe think of it as „gender-styles“.

I would just leave it as "styles". I think that all the current clasifications (LGBTQ+ and, yes, C[is]) are still clasifications that not necesarily reflect every body.

I have a she friend. She had a boy friend. Then she dated some women and men, so she was bi. Then two guys, so bigamous. Now back to one guy, and now a kid. What is she? What was she?

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@jaddy Damn character limit.

To me, just a person, my friend.

I understand that this sounds like "all lives matter", but again, I'm talking about the utopia I want.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@mdione @jaddy no, it doesn't.

It sounds like a white person saying "I don't see color."

These facets of ourselves are central to who we are and our experience in the world. Many, probably the significant majority of us, find a LOT of joy and vibrancy in our identities. I *like* being a lesbian, beyond just liking women, and neither you nor anyone else gets to take that away from me.

Especially as a member of the dominant group, it's not okay for someone--you--to try to collapse those things.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@Doc Impossible

👆 this!

@Marcos Dione : The point is, it's not about you, it's about them. If you reduce your friend to "just a person", you probably ignore the facets that define (to them) who they are as an individual.

What I meant above is the opposite of that ignorance. It's positive acknowledgement and respect for diversity and individuality.

So, if you want to know "what" your friend "is", ask which facets are important to them and respect them.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@jaddy that's exactly what I'm trying to understand. I hope nothing I say here is taken as an attempt to negate what you want to do with yourself, maybe it's because I've been 'formatted' in a culture that does not have other words for this.

On one side it looks like you want to have a label for yourself. Ok, yes, naming things make them exist... maybe I should go and read... philosophy? epistemology?

I'm not sure anymore. It would be an interesting chat over some beverage.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@jaddy Two things to note, if it makes any difference: I'm not from US, and I don't live there. Black people to me are just people with a culture at first sight quite different to mine.

Again, I understand currently some positions have to be taken strongly just to defend a space for them to exist. I just wish you didn't had to.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

Marcos Dione hat dies geteilt.

Als Antwort auf Jaddy

@jaddy
> You'd like to free all beings from the (internal/external) burden/pressure to find/have/build an identity (and labels) by making the differences disappear, right?

Au contraire, you can have any identity you want. I think what I would like is no judgment. I have a conflict with labels and I think that is the cause of all this thread, which I find awesome.

1/2

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@jaddy 2/2

Nobody is interchangeable, none of my friends are. If they change, I change with them. I was just remembering I do have a trans friend¹. We never met in person after they transitioned.... "they". I used that because I don't know their preference.

I also have an internal conflict with names/deadnames. I live in a country where people can't properly pronounce my name, much less my daughter's. [oh, crap, again]

¹ Yes, I know, "I have black friends".

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

She thinks she has a Spanish name and a French name.

At the same time, that first friend I mentioned, she changed her name. She had an unusual name and created a conflict. She has a new name (and an Italian name, and a French one), but I still call her by a nickname based on her old name. And I still have the reflex of calling my trans friend by their deadname... I said I change with them, but change is hard 🙁

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Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

Als Antwort auf Jaddy

@jaddy not sure irritating. SOmetimes it's awkward when I talk about them with a 3rd party that might know them from before, but might not know of the change.

You also previously mentioned people from the fringes of normal. I have two celiac friends. Once I invited one of them to a barbeque. It took me 5 knifes to remember not to cut meat with the same knife I cut bread. After that we only bought celiac bread for such occasions.

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@jaddy
Finally, I think I can get even closer. I have recently separated/divorced. Right now I'm "alergic" to my ex, so the less I see her the better. Maybe it's similar to what you feel about your pre-transition self. Maybe once we'll get over it and be at peace.
Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@mdione @jaddy in general, any attempt to collapse complexity of identity is just a veiled attempt to force minorities to conform to the dominant way of being, sometimes with small accommodations but often not even that.

Identities like trans or lesbian--these words with distinctions--are how we come to understand *our own experiences*. I didn't realize I was trans until I was 35 *because I thought people like me couldn't be trans*. It was only through expanding and exploring that identity--

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@mdione @jaddy
--that I could recognize and embrace one of the most important parts of who I am.

So, yeah, when a cis, het guy talks about making that all go away? What I hear is a world where I would've been trapped in manhood forever, with no way out, because there weren't words for me to describe who I am. And saying "oh, we can just do/be whatever" is an absolute fairy tale in a world where prescribed gender is *everywhere*.

And even if it weren't, that's not a resonant experience for me.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@mdione @jaddy Gender--womanhood--is vital and wonderful to me. It's a horror, and nothing less, to hear people wanting to collapse it, especially men.

Y'all don't get to do that. You don't get to take that away from me and my sistren.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@jaddy

> saying "oh, we can just do/be whatever" is an absolute fairy tale in a world where prescribed gender is *everywhere*.

Right, this is the crux of the thing with me. I try to live in the world I want, and I almost lost job opportunities because of that¹. Maybe I should try to hand down a watered down version of that.

¹ Just wearing sweatpants to an interview because they're warm and comfy in cold weather.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@jaddy so an ideal world would be the freedom to try new experiences, and adopt (or not) things from them, without being judged?

It's interesting because I used to label myself as a geek and hacker, but now I feel like I outgrew those labels. True, cis mostly white but poor male¹, I had many advantages that you probably didn't.

¹ Part of the reason I want to outgrow labels comes from my origins. I was born in South America, but I have mostly European 1/2

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@jaddy 2/2

... European blood, apparently with a touch of Black blood. I came to Europe as an immigrant and had to share our/their precarity until I obtained my Italian citizenship (via those European ancestors). Now I'm administratively treated differently and I kinda hate it, I'm the same person.

Also, while filling up form for US/UK border, what am I? Latino? White? I can't say Black, but c'mon!

Als Antwort auf Marcos Dione

@mdione @jaddy yes, and growing out of labels is a normal thing--as is growing into them.

Labels and identities, self-made, are ways of describing ways of being. To destroy the way of describing how you are a thing is to destroy your ability to be it at all. We cannot live a life we cannot imagine, and we cannot imagine a life we cannot describe.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I consider myself a cis ally, but there's still so much I don't understand about what it means to be trans. This really helps put things in perapective. Thank you for sharing!
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

Yes as a nonbinary person, this rings true.

I would have described what it was like to suddenly have a body that apparently belonged to anyone who looked at you, e even total strangers, and what it was like getting periods, both the physical pain and the embarrassment.

That was back in the 80s and decades before I heard of body dysphoria, so I didn't even know what I was experiencing.

Als Antwort auf Zumbador

@Zumbador I tried to focus on the breasts because cis guys just have absolutely no frame of reverence to understand periods. I think that's why they're so damn weird about them, you know?

But they can understand breasts. They can understand a physical part of your body, and how other guys sexualize it, feel entitled to it, ostracize you over it.

So anyway, that's why I took that approach. It's only one part, but it's one part they can visualize, that they can comprehend.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

This is awesome and thank you for sharing.

I remember I had a convo with a cis gay former therapist of mine who wasn't on board with puberty blockers, but was with trans healthcare overall, only to find out he had been grossly misinformed about how puberty blockers work hence his concern.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I was kind of neutral. Never really had strong opinions either way, presuming that parental and medical responsibility would lead to the right decision. Didn't see any harm in either position, perhaps - if I'm honest - leaning toward "what does a child know"? But your succinct and very clearly illustrative explanation settles that one. Thank you for sharing it. I would have been none the wiser had you not.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

you deserve one! That's a more rare achievement than winning gold in an Olympic event.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

that's a really good perspective to share. As a cis straight middle aged white guy, I'm now equipped to explain how I feel about supporting trans youth. Honestly, it's hard to tell you how much that means to me, because I've known people like that, but haven't had the words to explain. I know in my heart, but now I can explain it as well.

Once again, THANK YOU very very much.

Much love from this ignorant privileged fool to you. ♥️♥️

Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

Doc Ranma Saotome
@rachel The local GOP where I live ran ads that teachers were cutting kids' genitals off in the cafeteria before the last election. This stuff is deranged.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

You changed someone's mind?

...on the internet...?

...

are you sure...?

Als Antwort auf nullpotential

@nullpotential He said so, and was excited to get more trans 101 materials after. 🤷‍♀️
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

I think ou've earned yourself a breakfast at Milliway's! 😃
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

he seemed mostly open minded to me in the thread just having seen some fearmongering video and not understanding what to think of it
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag

Doc Ranma Saotome
@BangClankBoom Sorry about that. =(
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

thanks for posting. I am mostly ignorant about this particular debate, but I feel for *anyone*, cis trans whatever, who has to make this kind of consequential decision this early in life. Having such a devolved sense of self that young...
Als Antwort auf Sören Meyer-Eppler

@BuschnicK I mean, a lot of people DO have a pretty developed sense of self by the time they're teens. Not mature for sure, but they know who they're attracted to and who they are, pretty fundamentally.

In fantasizing teens helps nobody.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

infantilising

The standard deviation must be huge though. And for better or worse as a society we've decided to exclude teenagers from voting, driving, smoking, drinking alcohol, working, signing contracts etc. I for one wouldn't have trusted myself getting a tattoo at that age. Let alone do more permanent body modifications to myself...

Als Antwort auf Sören Meyer-Eppler

Edit: apologies. Wow, the autocorrect on my phone fucked that up.

And I honestly don't care what you feel about yourself as a teen; it says far more about you than anyone else. I care about what the data says, and the data is *crystal clear*. Trans teens know what they're doing, make the right decisions, and are very happy with the outcomes many years down the line.

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e2021056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition?autologincheck=redirected

Dieser Beitrag wurde bearbeitet. (2 Monate her)
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

And for kids too.

These medical professionals are not quacks or butchers. I hope you got him to see that too.

Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

are there cases of early surgery before puberty? Sure, but those are rare and extreme cases.
Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

@FinalOverdrive No, there aren't. Not except for forced surgeries on intersex kids. It's an absolute transphobic myth that little kids get surgeries; over 90% of all surgeries on minors in the US (almost 95%, but not quite) are top surgeries for transmasculine people.

About twenty bottom surgeries are performed on minors each year in the US, and virtually all of them are on 17+ year Olds.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

@FinalOverdrive and for the record, trans folks and our surgeons are the ones trying to STOP surgeries on intersex kids.
Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

well yes i, im referring to very small portion in the virtual part.
Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

@FinalOverdrive And I'm saying there are *zero* trans-related gender surgeries before puberty. It simply does not happen. Ever.
Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

I thought they were performed on rare ocassions when the dysphoria is extremely bad.
Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

@FinalOverdrive Never.

The youngest ever recorded was at 13, and there were several extenuating circumstances in that case beyond sys, as I understand it.

Simply the mechanics involved--typically a year on blockers before hrt is allowed, and two years there before surgery can even be considered, plus 1-2 years of genital electrolysis before bottom surgery is even *possible*--

The logistical problems are almost insurmountable to even *do* bottom surgery on a minor.

Als Antwort auf Doc Ranma Saotome

It would have to be done by a skilled team of surgeons to even attempt that. Skill you're not likely to find anywhere outside Thailand I imagine.
Als Antwort auf FinalOverdrive

@FinalOverdrive okay, no. There are a host of extremely skilled gender-affirming surgeons in the US, including most of the generally agreed upon best in the world. Where on earth did you get Thailand from for this?

I would encourage you to do some serious self-education, friend. You managed to pick up a surprisingly high number of misconceptions about transness and how surgeries are done, including things which are borderline or outright transphobic.

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a good start.