musing on trans doubt, that bandwagon argument Afficher plus
@ikea_femme So, a cool thing about queer dating is that going slowly / backing off into friendship if it's not feeling workable is more common. Not, like, guaranteed, but not as unusual as it is elsewhere.
Also, in case it helps to hear, you're obviously not a bandwaggoner and arguments not to do something you want to do based on prospective dating pool size are almost always not arguments one should pay attention to.
@listelian The doctors from trans clinics in that reddit AMA did a lot to put me at ease on that. Since yeah, I'm not just playing with my gender in relatively minor ways, but have serious feelings about what sex my body should resemble.
I think the big thing that screwed with me was that I saw transition as an incredible thing I kind of wanted, but in the same way you might feel about owning a private jet. It's just outside the experience I have, and related to me through superficial media. Seeing actual trans people didn't make me want to be trans. In hindsight, it made me realize I could be trans and still safely lead the rest of the life I want.
@ikea_femme Have you read His Dark Materials? And if so, do you remember Mary's recollection about marzipan and the degree to which one sees China as a place one might actually go to rather than just as a place where theoretically people are?
@ikea_femme Yeah, I mean... I went a long time thinking all this preposterous eggy shit. Even with witches.town's 666 character limit I couldn't express all the ways in which I told myself that I couldn't possibly be trans even though trans women seem phenomenally cool.
@listelian @ikea_femme *wry smile* I really did accuse myself of just wanting to be like all my friends.
@listelian No, but it sounds like a good analogy. I think the thing is so long as trans representation is so bad, it's hard to see yourself as trans until you see real trans people living life as you would.
Frankly, I think the big thing that changed me from "A guy who joked a lot about castration and was real numb" to "a trans woman" was seeing so many trans people on Twitter and Tumblr with similar hobbies. In retrospect, there were some big clues I was trans, but I never followed them beyond, "Transition sounds really hard, and if I needed to transition, I'd have known it all along."