Asklemmy

50242 readers

338 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

133

what questions do you have but don't feel you can ask trans people? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 week ago by dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

171 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.

Mostly I'm interested in what people are holding back.

The questions I've been asked IRL:

why / how did you pick your name?
how long have you known?
how long before you are done transitioning?
how long do you have to be on HRT?
is transgender like being transracial?
what do the surgeries involve?

For the most part, though, I get silence - people don't want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.

If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] felsiq@piefed.zip 4 points 1 week ago

Idk if this fully explains the weird taboo you described, but I’m personally reluctant to ask people questions I know they must get all the time. It can get annoying/draining fielding the same questions from every second person even if they’re mostly well-meaning, so especially in cases where people can’t just not reveal the attribute/hobby/whatever I’m curious about I just try to remember the question to look up later.

Not sure how common that is, but if that’s the cause then what you’ve done with this post is the ideal way to bypass this hesitation imo; just being clear (even just from the context) that you’re choosing to talk about this and not just feeling pressured to explain would make the difference at least for me personally.

Anyway idk if this is relevant at all for you, but if it is I hope it helps :)