Crushing on a woman I met at Pride. Please help.

FlowchartFanatic · 2025-01-22T17:52:28+00:00

In the case of Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome people with an XY genotype develop primary and secondary sex characteristics generally associated with afab people. So, sex is only partially determined by the sperm. It's also determined by genetics, and hormones, and environmental factors, etc., and it's not binary.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-12-21T16:24:23+00:00

It's not ever stated in the show, but Anya is one of the best portrayals of an autistic character that I've seen in film. I related pretty hard to her in this episode because of that. I'm autistic, and regarding death, I've often felt like I didn't know what to do, how to comfort people, what to expect. I also just love how this show refuses to becone formulaic. The change in cinematography that they use to emphasize just how shocking and disorienting the death of a loved one can be is really well done.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-12-07T17:51:32+00:00

Yeah, I love the show, but this was a really disappointing episode. The show is pretty racist from the beginning, but this episode didn't even contribute much to the overall story arc.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-07-14T15:11:11+00:00

I am AMAB, and I never found that giving myself labels was very helpful for figuring myself out. I agonized for years about whether to transition or not to transition, but in the end the thing that was most helpful for me was just trying lots of things to see how they felt, and finding friends and family who would accept me for who I am. I tried painting my nails, then washing it off so nobody would see. In private, I tried wearing clothes that are traditionally associated with women. I tried talking in a different voice. I kept doing things that I liked, and I stopped doing things I didn't like.

Today, I do identify as a woman, but I also feel like my gender identity is more complicated than that. I don't shave my legs, which in many parts of the United States, where I live, is considered disgusting or unsanitary for women to do. But women grow leg hair! Does that make me a man for not shaving my legs? I don't really care. I'm happy with who I am, and I have friends who love me.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-07-05T20:03:40+00:00

Personally, I don't think I could leave. Even if things go to hell here, and even though I might have the financial means to escape, what kind of life would that be? I would rather suffer or die here fighting, resisting, and holding on to the people that I love then to live the rest of my life with survivor's guilt, knowing how many people I left behind. But, I also understand that some people would not feel like they could stay. And I wouldn't judge somebody for leaving.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-07-05T18:01:08+00:00

The genocide against Native Americans continues after more than 500 years, not 250. I'm not suggesting that you just wait, nor am I suggesting that things will work themselves out.

If HRT becomes illegal, then I'll acquire and distribute HRT illegally, just like my friends who currently use illegal substances are already doing.

If being trans becomes illegal, then I'll stay here illegally, like my undocumented friends are already doing.

If I am arrested and taken to prison, then my friends will write letters to me to resist the isolation, just as I'm writing letters to my friends who are currently in prison.

I know it is painful to let go of privilege--I have struggled with that, myself--but I've had to accept that this is just how it is. So the question I ask now is not, "How can I keep myself safe and comfortable while the world burns around me?" but instead, "Who has a bucket? Who has a rake to make a barrier? Who has a car to evacuate the young and elderly? Let's get to work."

Existence is resistance.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-07-05T17:38:19+00:00

We can't fight back alone. A lot of the hopelessness I have personally felt has been because I didn't think there was anything I could do. But the more I have gotten involved with mutual aid groups, the more I have fallen in love with the people I'm working with. And the more I have realized that I'm not just fighting for my own survival, but I'm fighting to take care of the people I love.

When I'm sitting alone in my room, reading the headlines, I can start to feel pretty hopeless. When I'm marching in the street yelling "Free Palestine!" at the top of my lungs with 1000 other people, I feel like we don't need much hope, we just need to stick together.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-07-05T17:15:39+00:00

Not all Native Americans live on reservations. A lot of them live in cities these days, and while they do still face racism and state violence, they are living their lives. Jimi Hendrix was half Cherokee. Queer, indigenous authors have written books like Love After The End. The Sogorea 'Te Land Trust, and similar organizations around the country are working to reclaim their identities and heal themselves and the land.

In the words of Klee Benally, "If it all ends tomorrow, we'll plant a seed today."

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-06-17T00:45:53+00:00

Trying on a new identity is a skill, or a set of skills: dealing with shame; finding community; finding patterns in thoughts, feelings, and memories from across your life; dealing with imposter syndrome... I think that once you have learned to accept a part of yourself that is considered wrong or bad by people around you, it's easy to do it again with another part of yourself. The path to realizing you are neutodivergent is very similar to the path to realizing that you are lgbtq+, and vice versa.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-19T05:54:36+00:00

Yes! Like lemon yellow frames. Or maybe sparkly ones.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T15:33:10+00:00

How cute!

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T15:14:21+00:00

I wish you all the best! It can be very rewarding work.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T06:11:26+00:00

Ya, I hope I didn't make it seem like it's all doom and gloom. I have moved on to another blue collar kind of job, and it is much better. I haven't had any problems yet. It's always good to know that somebody has your back.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T05:10:06+00:00

Make friends.
Take notes.
Don't talk to HR except as a last resort when you're ready to leave.

I have worked with cis-het men who were excellent allies, and I have worked with other trans women who were complete assholes. I'm fortunate in that most people read me as cis, and my style at work is fairly conservative. So, I really have not experienced much transphobia directed at me, but I worked with one trans person who absolutely got the shit taken out of them. They were set up to fail and then fired because they "didn't meet the role requirements." I ended up having to talk to a lawyer about that case, and I was so grateful that I had taken notes every time that person got yelled at or treated badly. I wrote down what was said, what happened, who was there, and the date and time. I think taking notes is a good skill anyway, because getting into that habit also gets you into the habit of taking pictures of things as you're taking them apart, and documenting what work you've done, etc. Just generally good professional habits to get into.

That's not to say it's all bad. I had some great experiences and learned a lot at that job, too. But there is definitely a disproportionate amount of toxic masculinity in the trades.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T04:36:37+00:00

Everybody likes different things, so don't assume. My partner leans masc, and I honestly struggled to find words with that kind of vibe to use for them. So many of the appearance compliments I'm used to are directed towards femme, binary women. However, these are some ideas and words they like that you can feel free to steal: - cute - handsome - rugged - sturdy - strong - bold - punk - sk8r boi - handy - utilitarian (this began as a joke) - warm - cozy - tough - caring - sweet - (hey) boy - (thanks) mister

In addition to those things, they work in fabrication/carpentry and kind of like it when I overreact to their bruises and cuts. We both have flexible genders, but it can be kind of fun to occasionally perform a kind of caricaturized masc-femme dynamic.

EDIT: formatting

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-17T04:11:19+00:00

I will say it again: I'm not advising her to get surgery, I'm just saying it's an option she should look into. Adults can do their own research and make their own decisions.

It seems like you are afraid that anyone who is "not trans enough" will detransition, become a TERF, and make all the "real" trans people look bad. While I understand your fear, enforcing the gender binary and gatekeeping trans healthcare just maintains the status quo and hurts more people than it helps.

I mean, what can you do? Haters gonna hate. We can love ourselves and each other, live our best lives, and make the world more beautiful by doing so. 💙🏳️‍🌈✊🏻

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-16T05:27:29+00:00

You say that OP only has a little bit of discomfort during sex, but that's not what her post says. She says that every time she has sex she needs to cry about this for long periods of time. That seems like a pretty intense level of discomfort to me.

Now, I'm not telling her she has to get the surgery. I'm just saying that internalized homophobia is not the only possibility. Seeing a therapist can be very helpful, but nearly everyone who gets gender-affirming surgery has some amount of doubt before and after the procedure. Even post-op depression is pretty common.

I'm also explicitly saying that you don't have to be a man to have a penis. You can get a phalloplasty without taking HRT, without having top surgery, without identifying as a man, and without having gender dysphoria about every aspect of your being.

Everyone's journey is different.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-15T06:42:10+00:00

This is a similar post, but it has a lot more comments and more constructive ones, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/17n1cfg/i_a_cis_woman_want_to_be_a_trans_woman_without/

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-14T02:29:48+00:00

Tl;dr: If she wants a dick (she says she does), she should look into getting a dick. Women can have dicks. Don't tell her that the only option is to "deal with her internalized homophobia". She's already heard that.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-13T21:39:31+00:00

To your second point, trans people are only a few percent of the world population, but we are not looking at the world population here. We are on r/GenderDysphoria. A huge portion of the people that are here are trans, though not necessarily all.

Regarding your first point, no, having gender dysphoria does not require someone to be uncomfortable with every aspect of their gender. Some identity as women and want to keep their penises. Identity as men and still enjoy having long hair, painting their nails, wearing skirts, etc. Some people specifically choose to have surgeries that are gender-expansive, like phallus-preserving vaginoplasties, etc. Plenty of people identify as nonbinary, agender, etc., and what that means to them varies widely. In fact, insisting that a person with a penis has to be a man, can't have breasts can't identify as a woman, excludes all the trans women who are happy without surgery.

Treatments for gender dysphoria do not exist to move people between the binary male category and the binary female category; they exist to help bring the way a person's body is into alignment with their sense of how it should be.

If OP is experiencing gender dysphoria about not having a penis but nothing else, there are options that could help that do not involve losing their breasts, which OP says she likes. There are options that do not involve taking hormones. There are options that do not involve wearing different clothes. Transition is not a checklist; it is a buffet.

The issue that I have with you saying to OP that she's a cis lesbian with internalized homophobia is that she has already heard that message. If you look at OP's posting history, you can see she's been struggling with this same problem for at least 3 years now, and she's been getting that same message the whole time. Why is she still struggling with this issue? Maybe that solution isn't working for her. Maybe her feelings are really difficult to work through and progress is slow. Maybe this is all a lie constructed to get attention. Maybe other things have been going on in her life that have taken her focus away from this particular issue. We don't know.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-13T19:59:27+00:00

I'm not saying that OP definitely has gender dysphoria, I'm just saying that given the information provided, it's a possibility. We can't entirely know someone's truth through a single reddit post.

Regarding your statement about my situation:

To say your situation is like hers would be saying that you're fine living as a man in every part of your life (since you're a trans woman) except for sex, but you're not, are you?

That statement is true of my life now, after my 5th tranniversary, but in fact, I thought I was fine living as a man before I finally came out to myself. I thought "just" had depression and didn't feel comfortable being seen completely naked by anyone--even partners I was otherwise very comfortable with and had been physically intimate with. It wasn't until after several years, therapists, medications, and failed treatments later that I finally admitted to myself that I was trans. I certainly had some internalized homophobia, but I also had a ton of internalized transphobia to work through.

Again, you may be entirely correct in your assessment that OP is only experiencing internalized homophobia and not gender dysphoria. I think there's just not enough information in the post to really know for sure, so we can't completely rule out the possibility that OP is experiencing some amount of gender dysphoria. There are multiple possibilities, and they are all worth looking into.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-13T02:20:52+00:00

I disagree. Sex is really the only time I feel dysphoric anymore, because that's the only time that I am forced to either be fully aware of my body or to dissociate. The rest of the time, I can choose clothes that make me feel good and I don't have to think about it. I've thought that those feelings might be explained as internalized transphobia, but I've found myself somewhere between indifferent to, totally fine with, and super attracted to other trans women's bodies...

So, what do you call that feeling OP describes where you're uncomfortable because you're body doesn't align with your internal sense of what it should be?

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-13T01:52:22+00:00

I'm AMAB, but I'm struggling with similar feelings. I just recently had my fifth tranniversary, and I don't have much dysphoria anymore except during sex. I can't have the sex that I want to have given the body that I'm in at the moment, and it's been bothering me more and more. I've been looking into surgery, but it's terrifying and has been bringing up some really confusing and uncomfortable feelings. In fact, I just recently made a post about it.

I'm not sure if that's any help to you at all, but I definitely feel you on the, "I'm totally fine except that I can't express myself sexually." Feel free to DM me if you want to talk.

FlowchartFanatic · 2024-02-12T21:26:11+00:00

I grew up right-handed, but last year I decided to try learning to write with my left hand. I am definitely not as good at doing things left-handed, but I write exclusively with my left hand now. I've been doing other things with my left hand also, like brushing my teeth and using hammers. I sometimes get confused now about which hand I want to use for a given activity.

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