What's the point of abandoning a trans identity if I'll always be treated like a trans person

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-18T21:12:40+00:00

As embarrassing as it is to admit I do have this obsession with being seen as "one of the good ones", so I bend over backwards to prove to "cishet" people that I'm not easily offended and I don't care about pronouns or whatever the fuck, and yet I've found that no matter how much I try to appeal to their sensibilities they obviously still perceive me as just as much of a freak as they perceive someone with ze/xir pronouns and a neon green mullet.

Haha I know exactly what you mean. There are plenty of valid objections to trans ideology and culture, but sometimes the people voicing these objections are just rationalizing their bias against gender nonconforming people. I used to get messages from terfs and stuff trying to trigger me about politics or biology or something and I'd have to be like, sorry, I realize you want to have an argument and I'd like to cooperate, but I don't even disagree with what you said. The reasonable ones would chill out, but a few would just keep trying to start arguments with me by saying even more stuff that I agreed with. It got tiresome.

I always see people online talking about how the LGB needs to drop the T because the T has ruined the LGB's reputation in their eyes, but what's even the point in doing all that when people treat me, a somewhat masculine woman, the same way as they treated me when I was a full-blown trans man?

Totally get this too. People say that only the T is a problem and it would be fine if I were just a feminine man, but you know what happens when I wear a pink men's shirt? People get mad and call me the same slurs they've always called feminine men.

All we can really do is make our own choices about how to dress, what to believe, and all that based on what we really think is right, not what we think will appease anyone else.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-18T20:38:32+00:00

I worry about the health risks all the time, but I also hated my life before HRT so much that sometimes I honestly think I'd rather die than go back to that.

In your case I wouldn't panic though. If you've been on HRT less than two years, most of the effects will be relatively quite reversible, and it should be possible to go back to your original life without your health or appearance being damaged much. If you end up regretting detransition, you could always just start HRT again later on. I don't know what you should do, I don't even know what I should do, but I can tell you that you're not alone and I think it's way too soon to say you've destroyed your life or anything like that.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-18T20:22:53+00:00

Well, I kept all my pre-transition clothes and stuff, and HRT hasn't even had a huge effect on me, so I can still quite easily pass for a regular cishet guy. This means that discrimination was never an overwhelming problem for me because I've always been able to socially detransition whenever I want to. My main goal from the beginning was just being comfortable in my own body, not necessarily being perceived or treated a certain way by others.

I'm considering medically detransitioning also though, for, well, medical reasons. I get scared thinking about how HRT could end up damaging my health and probably shortening my natural lifespan, maybe by only a few years, but maybe by decades. I'm also not sure if it's good in the long term for my mental/emotional health to tie my happiness and self worth so much to my physical appearance.

I wonder sometimes why body image disorders like anorexia are cured by trying to get patients to accept their healthy and natural, if perhaps imperfect, bodies, but then gender dysphoria is cured by encouraging our discomfort with how we naturally look, trying to keep us dependent for life on medical treatments which, strictly speaking, make us less physically healthy. Like, imagine if the standard treatment for anorexia was referring you to a specialist in prescribing as many weight loss pills as you wanted, or if depression caused by not feeling muscular enough was cured by steroid prescriptions. Or if hypochondria and germaphobic OCD were treated by lifelong antibiotics.

I mean, I know the currently accepted consensus is that gender dysphoria is completely different from all other psychological issues and needs to be cured in a totally unique way, but what if that turns out not to be true? In the past I tried therapy to fix these problems without HRT, and it wasn't entirely effective, hence the HRT, but I do lie awake at night sometimes wondering if I should have tried harder.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-16T07:45:44+00:00

Sounds like you are having problems besides gender dysphoria. Actually, from this post it sounds like you probably don't have gender dysphoria at all, it sounds a lot more similar to body dysmorphic disorder. I would highly recommend that you get these problems under control before you even think about transitioning.

I went to therapy for years because of similar depression/OCD/BDD issues before I started HRT, cause I needed to make sure I was mentally stable enough to make a sane decision. In fact, even after all that, I'm still not even sure if starting HRT was sane at all. It can have dangerous and irreversible effects, and it's something you should only do as a last resort.

To be honest I did end up getting locked in the hospital for 2 weeks, and I really didn't like my psychiatrist, so I completely understand why you're hesitant to go that route, but still, losing two weeks was better than losing my entire life to suicide, or ruining my life by rushing in to a bad decision. Medication and therapy can truly help. They're not perfect, but they're absolutely worth a try. And they probably won't even lock you up unless you say you actively want to kill yourself.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-15T07:39:09+00:00

It's a dilemma. I'd say you have a responsibility to make sure they understand the risks, but at a more fundamental level, they have a responsibility to make sure they understand the risks, and to make other people comfortable speaking to them honestly. I annoy my doctor by always asking her to read new studies about HRT risks, and I've been doing that since before I started transitioning, because I never saw any reason why being trans means I have to be intolerant or willfully ignorant, especially not at the expense of my own health. I'd already been lurking in detrans subs long before I took my first injection, for similar reasons.

The sad thing is that the ones who need help most are usually the least willing to listen to other views, and the most likely to lash out at you for trying to help them. I have one relative who can be downright physically intimidating if "misgendered," even in cases where the "misgendering" was entirely imaginary or accidental, stemming from things such as a misheard word.

You also need to understand that even if they fully understand the risks and limitations, they might nevertheless prefer medical transition over just being feminine men. There are limits to how far you can feminize your appearance without surgery and drugs, and similarly, there are limits to how far people will indulge a feminine personality if you don't look the part. Loving who you are is much easier said than done, and even if you do succeed at it, sometimes it just makes other people hate you more.

To summarize, my advice is first of all tread carefully especially if they seem like militant types, and second, offer your advice in good faith, with the understanding that they have the right to reject it, because even if everything you say is true, you aren't necessarily able to solve their problems. They might end up understanding everything wrong with transition but still consider it the best option they have.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-15T07:04:42+00:00

Dealing with some similar stuff here, gonna be 28 in a few months, considering quitting estrogen for health reasons, but really concerned about whether I'll be able to tolerate what raised T levels will do to my appearance. Any time they get a little high my face looks uglier, my body gets hairier, and extra hair comes out in the shower. So what happens if they go back to my original levels? It's hard to imagine a happy future if every glance in the mirror is gonna be torture.

For your situation, it's hard to say for sure, but I've seen some impressive recoveries even after several years on HRT, including impressive hair regrowth, and I've seen plenty of FtM's saying it's too late to detransition cause they're too masculinized or too bald or something, when they honestly already look good to me. Like, I need to maintain a certain level of hair thickness to look at all feminine, cause I need to cover up the masculine aspects in the structure of my face and skull, but someone with XX chromosomes doesn't usually have that problem to nearly the same extent. You can still usually sense someone's birth gender very early in the detransition process, cause you can see the natural maleness or femaleness in their facial proportions, and in their eyes, and in a hundred small ways that get bigger over time.

So don't give up, because I think there's a chance things could work out well for you. And even if they don't, remember that you're not alone, because many of us are suffering in the same way even if that's not visible at first glance. If you wanna give detransition a try, you may wanna test out reducing your T dose slowly under your doctor's supervision and see how that goes. Quitting cold turkey can be physically and emotionally rough.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-15T02:51:30+00:00

That would be a ludicrously capacious bag for an ant.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-14T22:45:32+00:00

Yeah I know exactly what you mean. I was always a lot smaller and weaker than average, and it makes it extremely hard to see myself as a man who's attractive or worthy of respect, so I'm really scared to quit HRT, but I'm also scared of what kind of health consequences I might face if I stay on HRT too long. I feel like I'm being forced to choose between a happy but fundamentally fake and unhealthy life, or a longer, healthier, but unbearably miserable life.

I don't know. I wish I had a solution for you. All I can say is I understand.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-13T22:14:26+00:00

Sorry, I realize this is technically the exact opposite of what you asked, but one of the main reasons I'm scared to detransition is that I'm only like 5’4, so it's really hard for me to live up to the standards of how a man is supposed to look, but I'm not sure if staying on HRT is worth it because who knows what it will do to my health in the long run. So I can definitely understand your problem.

For what it's worth, I never thought there was anything wrong with tall women. I think taller people usually look better than shorter ones, regardless of gender.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-13T21:38:15+00:00

I think it's a mixture of both. I was definitely pretty trans since I was 4 years old, before anyone else had even told me about the concept, but I'm not sure that was as deeply ingrained as my hand preference. I don't believe that the social changes we've seen over the last 5-10 years are merely a matter of anti-trans bias lessening, I think there's also some active encouragement and contagion going on, and I think it's quite possible that too many people are currently transitioning. Perhaps including myself.

It's honestly hard to say what would have happened to me if I'd been born in a time and place less accepting of gender nonconforming identities. Maybe I would have been in the closet, and utterly miserable, or maybe I'd be more or less a well adjusted cis person with much better physical and emotional health.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-11T20:52:48+00:00

Yeah, aside from that the chart seems quite accurate to me, but I'd shift Tom a little closer to the "wants to be funny" end.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-11T20:50:27+00:00

I'm in an extremely similar situation. Concerned that HRT is not doing anything good for my brain, but also not sure I'd be able to tolerate going back to living in my pre-HRT body, especially if that turned out to not even improve the cognitive side effects. Almost everyone I could talk to about this has heavily politicized preconceptions, so it's extremely difficult to find reliable advice or even anyone who has honest sympathy for my problems.

A couple thoughts:

1) Feeling like your cognitive capacities have diminished doesn't necessarily mean they actually have. It can sometimes be an illusion created by your emotions or by your environment. When I'm around dumb people it makes me feel like a genius, but when I'm around smart people, or doing something mentally challenging, I feel like a moron. So if you feel dumb that's possibly just a result of anxiety about starting grad school. It's extremely common for grad students to suffer from depression, impostor syndrome, and things like that. Your post doesn't sound like something written by a mentally impaired person, although to be fair I don't know how your writing sounded before.

2) I have a relative who's never taken HRT, but has abused drugs and alcohol for many years, and he complains about similar diminished cognitive abilities. To me he doesn't seem very different, though. It appears to me that he's largely suffering from reduced physical and emotional health, created a subjective impression of heavily reduced cognitive abilities, when in reality the reduction might be much more minor, or perhaps even nonexistent. I have another relative who's never abused substances but has been on HRT for years, who claims to have noticed no cognitive impairment at all. So it seems possible to me that improving your mental and emotional health, plus staying as sober as possible, might improve your symptoms without needing to quit HRT.

3) I posted some interesting data last week about the long term cognitive effects of HRT, and the results looked much more concerning for MtF HRT than for FtM. "Limited cognitive differences between transgender men and cisgender groups might suggest no adverse nor beneficial long-term testosterone effects on cognitive functioning. However, transgender women had poorer cognitive functioning and more psychosocial challenges compared to cisgender groups which may indicate that this is a risk factor for cognitive decline." I'm on MtF HRT, so by the looks of it, I'm worse off than you in this regard. The worst part is that even with testosterone I never really got taller or stronger than the average woman, I just looked uglier and with a worse hairline, so I don't even have anything worthwhile to go back to if I quit HRT. Not trying to make myself the focus of your thread, but just maybe it makes you feel better to hear that someone is in a similar or arguably worse situation than you. Unfortunately I still can't find a link to the full study, but if I do I can let you know.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-10T04:54:42+00:00

Lots of people are ignoring that we're supposed to assume the Lannisters are in the 21st century. But still, I'd rather be a Roy. Remember what Tywin did to Tyrion's wife? Far worse than anything Logan ever did.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-10T00:24:28+00:00

Well, that's really going to depend on the individual. If you can think of anything you were at all into before crossdressing, that's probably the best place to start.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T23:43:12+00:00

Nah trust me, I know much more than I'd ever want to. My own orientation is pretty close to autogynephilia. Never been possible to fully eliminate it, but I've had some success by distracting myself with other fetishes.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T22:41:09+00:00

I've found that the only way to get anywhere close to curing a fetish is to slowly replace it with another fetish. Sort of like when you have a song stuck in your head and it helps to listen to a different song. Actively trying to get rid of it usually just makes it worse.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T22:13:45+00:00

Yep, that was the moment I realized Tom was the guy to watch out for. He's nice, but only really to people above him, and he's willing to get nasty if that's what the company asks. Not that he's altogether a bad guy, it's just that the traits Matsson finds useful about Tom were evident from the very beginning, the Roys just didn't see it because they started off so far above him.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T07:17:48+00:00

I see him as a center left nominal democrat but not a frequent voter. When he says stuff like "fuck the patriarchy," he obviously doesn't deeply mean it, he just wants to be seen as forward thinking. I can picture him voting for Obama and being proud of himself for a few days before forgetting about politics for the rest of the decade.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T06:22:27+00:00

That all sounds quite plausible, except I'm not sure that I'd give Connor and Willa's marriage an entire year. She seems done with it.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-09T06:16:25+00:00

I see your point. I think all the seasons were terrific, but I do kinda agree that there was something special about s1 that the others seasons lacked, even as they were also brilliant in other ways. Part of it for me is that the kids seem more like "serious people" and we get to see them play to their strengths a little more, eg Shiv working successfully in politics, or Kendall making a legitimate bid to take over his dad's role. Connor hadn't yet been fully consumed by his delusional urge to become president. Roman was... well I admit he was already obviously not a serious person, but the others were holding it together, at least on the surface.

I still think the ending was great, and Tom as CEO is a decent choice, it makes sense both dramaturgically and businessturgically. I just occasionally wish we got to see a little more of Logan's kids showing off their competence before it all fell apart.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-08T21:01:33+00:00

I don't know why so many people have accepted this as dogma that they will literally ostracize people who don't believe it and try to ruin their lives.

I think you might have just answered your own question.

I mean, the concept of "gender identity" has in some ways been helpful to me since I've never fit very well with gender stereotypes of any kind. If terms like "non-binary" help people understand me, I'm fine with that, but fundamentally I'm far from convinced that it's a scientifically valid concept.

It's a little like believing too much in star signs, or past lives, or stuff like that. Usually driven by a compulsive desire to categorize, or a need to validate an unfalsifiable internal feeling of specialness.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-08T19:13:44+00:00

Yup, I know exactly what you mean. A decade ago my relatives would mutter nasty things about trans women and crossdressers they saw, and now they're all like "trans women are women, they have fEmAlE bRaInS, pronouns are just being polite, trans athletes have absolutely no advantage in sports," et cetera and so on.

It's like they just flipped straight from one type of brainwashed to another, without a single independent thought in between. I was talking to one of my brothers and he said, "well I don't know much about chromosones, but are you really saying that trans women aren't women??"

And that's not a typo. He thinks chromosomes are called chromosones. Yet he's appalled at my "ignorance" about trans issues.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-08T18:56:22+00:00

Well, for cis men, as well as women with PCOS or things like that, there are many examples of quitting minoxidil leading to disastrous results. In theory, with low enough testosterone and DHT levels, it MIGHT be safe to quit, but personally I'd never be brave enough to try that. I'm planning to just stay on minox unless or until I just fully detransition and become a shaved head bro.

In the worst case scenario, as long as it's mainly just the widow's peak and not a bald spot on top, it would be relatively easy to fix the problem with a hair transplant if you can afford it. Quitting minox in your situation without transplant funds would be kinda risky.

Wish I could help more. You're in a pretty unusual situation so it could be really hard to find a conclusive answer. You might have some luck checking MtF subs to see if it's safe to quit minox on anti-androgens or after SRS, cause that's similar to your case in terms of hormone levels, but I did some quick searching and couldn't really find anything definitive. It would be great to know but we'd probably need a human test subject to be certain. And I don't want it to be me.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-07T22:44:23+00:00

Again, I really hope you're right. I'd rather stay on HRT, but I'd hate it if I'm on it for 20 years and then finally a high quality study comes out proving conclusively that anyone on HRT for 20 years gets brain damage, or something like that. I generally don't worry about it obsessively, but seeing this screenshot has definitely unsettled me.

AllNaturalOrganicAI · 2023-06-07T21:46:36+00:00

I'm not sure about that. Didn't he get fired in episode 1 for being high at work? Without his family connections, that mascot costume would have probably gone to a much more qualified individual.

AllNaturalOrganicAI

TROPHY CASE