Asklemmy

Honestly I am not sure there is a particularly perfect way to raise genital preference, but it is good to be transparent and honest about your preferences, it might be good to raise early and in a context where you are opening the floor to understanding their needs and preferences too, esp. around any dyphoria they might experience and what their needs are.

The majority of trans folks are pre- or non-op, so it's best not to assume anything about their genitals, and if you have preferences it's even more important to communicate about.

For transmasc folks you might need to examine your preferences and the extent to which female gentials make you see men as women (just like when men really enjoy penises on trans women), and just be honest with yourself and your partner, and be careful not to invalidate someone's gender.

Tbh, this isn't that far from talking about hair and sexual preferences with cis people, it's just good to be sensitive because being misgendered can be really dehumanizing.

Because that body was so unpleasant I was considering suicide. There was a wrongness pervading every aspect of my life. And I've long liked the term "hormonal dysphoria" to describe how in some trans people such as myself the mere act of having the wrong sex hormone dominance essentially has very similar symptoms to major depression.

I tried plenty else first. I attempted to man up, I grew a beard and got somewhat strong. I tried being an effeminate man and cross dressing for a bit. I tried religion. When I transitioned there were still old trans people giving the old advice, to wait to transition until the only alternative was suicide. I hit that point at 19 and began hormones at 20, but in a more accepting world I'd've probably accepted myself at 16.

It can be really hard to understand why trans people transition - the answers are complicated and involve explanations of the neurobiology of sex and gender.

One way to help you understand is to imagine or even try out being in the wrong sex yourself - if you are male, imagine you were born a woman, they named you Sue and expect you to date boys, play with dolls, dress in frilly skirts and dresses, and so on. Why can't you just be Sue authentically? Why bother with horomones and social transition?

When it feels wrong to be in the wrong sex, it is due to how your brain developed as a fetus, and you can't help that the wrong sex hormones make you depressed and anxious, you can't help that your body feels completely wrong, you can't help that the only known solutions to the suffering is to take the right hormones, to fix the body and to live as your actual gender. Cis people don't have to go through that struggle, so it's harder for them to understand what it's like to be trans. It makes complete sense you would have difficulty understanding, even as a trans person I struggled to recognize I experienced gender dysphoria or that I needed to transition - it was not obvious at the time.

Many people go out of their way to transform their bodies, from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery. My question is why not? It's your flesh puppet; decorate it how you like.

I had to leave my home and family behind in a conservative state to seek safety in a liberal state with trans protections on the books. I'm still unpacking boxes and wondering how soon I will need to flee the country ... It's like rock climbing, everything is dangerous and you just keep laser focused on what is right in front of you. The stress keeps you in a state of momentum and can distract you and give you a sense of agency. When there are gaps when I can lose my focus, I break down. It's overwhelming, but there is no alternative - you don't choose to be trans.

This year has sucked but I've been keeping my shit together at least.

in-person non-electoral organizing keeps me sane

Spite.

I mean, the suicide rate is pretty high, relative to cisnormies.

love for my peers and allies, and spite for my enemies. i am made of iron. i will persevere. i will prevail.

Every alternative is worse.

Another consideration is how the penis is related to in terms of your gender, if a guy is into the woman because she has a penis, does he see her penis as a woman's genital, or is it still male?

One way to explore this is to ask how you would feel if the penis were not used for penetration, not even used erect - would you still be attracted to her if her penis remained flaccid and was stimulated more like a clit?

If you want her primarily to take a "masculine role" in bed, and you primarily want her penis to function like a man's penis, the appeal might be motivated from a place that on some level still thinks of her and her genitals as male.

Sometimes it's just about the novelty and taboo, which are frequent objects of sexual desire (think of how popular incest porn is, etc.). Sometimes it's about a repressed bi- or homo-sexuality, where the woman with male genitals becomes an ideal basis for fulfilling some of that forbidden desire.

Simply seeing the gentials as male is probably common, and on its own isn't the biggest crime, but if that translates to not seeing and treating her as a woman I think that can be really problematic.

The issue of objectification is separate, and I would even argue some objectification can be desirable in sex (or at least aiming to never objectify does not seem like an absolute ideal), we sometimes wish to be sexual objects (whether that's healthy or not) - but we rarely wish to be seen as men.

I basically believed this most of my life, and it was a big part of why I never transitioned. I felt it was offensive to women for me to claim to be one. Even once I transitioned, I had a really hard time using makeup because I felt like a traitor.

Ultimately, I found reading Julia Serano really helpful. I learned that my fear of embodying feminine stereotypes was more about not wanting to appear feminine (even as a woman), and that ultimately this was more about an entrenched anti-femininity perspective than anything like feminism. I learned that makeup is pragmatic and useful, a way for me to alleviate dysphoria, to help me cope, and that I am not a "traitor" for using it. Being pretty and feminine is important to me, as a woman, and it's not surprising other women want to be pretty and feminine too. They shouldn't feel bad for wanting to be that way, even if women should not feel obligated to only be one kind of hyper-feminine woman.

Regarding being an effeminate man: I have had conservatives tell me this, that I need to just live as a really effeminate man. I just don't know what to tell you, being a man is not right. When I first transitioned, I didn't care as much about the social elements. It turned out testosterone was ruining my mental health - I had severe depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation - all of which cleared up quickly after blocking the production of testosterone and getting on estrogen. Estrogen consistently makes me feel high, it's better than opiates. Not every trans person is this way, but a lot of us are. It's called "biochemical dysphoria". In a way, I would have been willing to settle for having an orchi and living as a eunuch with estrogen supplementation - it would be a lie to say I was a man, and I would know that, but if I could have estrogen and live without testosterone in my body, that is most important to me. Living as a woman has always been important to me, but I never thought I could - that was a dream too far, in a sense. It felt like how I should have been born, but since I wasn't, I resigned myself to living as a man. That estrogen will make me look like a woman and i am able to live and be a woman now is like going to heaven, it's a dream I never thought I would live.

So, tl;dr I have to take hormones because I was born with a condition where my brain can't handle testosterone, and I would have probably killed myself, and generally I lived a very low quality of life before HRT. I was a burden to those around me, and I transitioned for my health and to be a functioning person in society.

I think we all live within the language of gender, and trans women who have lived as men and are insecure in their womanhood often lean heavily into feminine roles as a compensation. I did this even before I transitioned, but it didn't feel like I was contributing to a stereotype of women as a man - I was "gender non-conforming" then. But as a woman the very same behaviors become stereotypical. I like to cook, sew, bake, etc. and those were comforts to me before I transitioned, but are also important to me now. If anything, once I transitioned I felt more freedom to stop clinging to more stereotypical roles, and the more I can validate my womanhood, the more freedom I feel within my womanhood. Either way, I tend to make an exception for myself when it comes to being stereotypical - I figured being trans is rough enough, I can't solve patriarchy all by myself, and it's not up to me as an individual to overcome such huge social and structural problems. I like being feminine, and I am lucky enough to enjoy it now, so I will. If anything, I've learned to stop judging other women for when they are feminine, as a whole I have become more embracing of women as a result of transition.

Don't you think transitioning reaffirms gender roles and stereotypes?

No, because transitioning at all requires massive amounts of gender transgression that trans people are often severely punished, or even killed for.

I also don’t think it’s correct to blame societal problems (like sexist gender roles and stereotypes) on individuals. If it’s the individual’s responsibility to dismantle gender roles and stereotypes every single day in the way they dress and interact with society, are you doing it? If not, why do trans people carry a higher burden than you?

This also presupposes that trans people all become gender conforming upon transition, when in fact many trans people are also queer and/or gender nonconforming on top of being trans.

I'm probably missing something, but why isn't being a really effeminate man enough, that there's the need to take hormones and change your pronouns?

I’m a trans man and not a trans woman, but let’s pretend that says butch woman instead of effeminate man. So why couldn’t I be a butch woman? Because I wasn’t one. Seriously, people did not know what sexuality box to put me in before I transitioned. I clearly wasn’t a straight woman (no makeup, a mix of teen boy clothes and some feminine tops) and I was too feminine to be a butch lesbian, but not feminine enough to be a lipstick lesbian. And I don’t say this to mean ‘nobody accepted me in the lesbian community and I had to transition to fix it,’ because I never got any shit from other queer people over it. (And I’m not attracted to women regardless.)

So, socially not transitioning wouldn’t have made me any less gender-confusing to other people. And on the personal level, I needed HRT because periods made me suicidal, all the effects of T make me happy, and it’s my body and I get to do what I want with it. Male pronouns also feel more natural to me than female, so I see no reason to not use them.

Since middle school and throughout high school and college I got progressively more and more depressed due to repressed gender dysphoria, and starting HRT has almost immediately started reversing that. I had always been outspoken about how gender roles were stupid and never cared about using "women's" things (like I shared my mom's hair products and stuff), but none of that changed the fact that I was extremely uncomfortable in my body, and being perceived as a man was something to avoid as much as possible. If people made jokes like "that's how you know you aren't a woman haha" I would always fight back against that, but being compared to women felt like more of a compliment.

Plus imo anything a trans person does that could "reaffirm stereotypes" wouldn't do that more than any cis person doing it. I've heard similar things from some cis feminists, where they felt that if they did something stereotypically "girly" it would be hypocritical of them, until realizing that the entire point was that you should be able to do those things if it makes you happy. Avoiding stereotypes can reinforce them just as much as doing them, since then it makes the people claiming the stereotypes as universally true seem like they have a view worth changing yourself for.

Yes, without gender norms or social expectations, I would still transition, at least medically.

Testosterone made me depressed, anxious, suicidal, anhedonic, and gave me night terrors. That was true for me even when I socially transitioned and lived as a woman full-time in every part of my life. Estrogen's impact on my mood is hard to overstate, and those benefits happened well before there were changes to my body. This has been called "biochemical dysphoria", and not every trans person experiences it, though it is common.

When I transitioned, it was mostly for my health and well-being. I had little hope of ever passing because I transitioned so late in life, so my goals were fairly minimal - basically I just realized I was a burden to the people in my life who cared about me (like getting those phone calls that I was in the ER again), and I realized being a repressed trans person might be causing problems for me and making me this way. I felt an obligation to do what was right by me, so I could be a better person for those around me. I underestimated the effect hormones had on mood and well-being. If I knew what I know now, I would have transitioned much earlier. I have no idea how I survived so long (looking back, I really almost didn't).

So yes, I transitioned without the social aspects ever being the main goal, because I never was motivated by that primarily. I felt dismissive of gender (I even hated gender) and whatever gendered desires came up were a low priority to me. I would never be so selfish as to prioritize those needs over practicalities like holding down a job, or not being a hate crime statistic. It turned out my closeted cross-dressing wasn't just about a silly desire to wear dresses and skirts, I didn't know that.

dysmorphia

Dysphoria

At what age do you think it’s appropriate for someone with gender dysmorphia to make a decision to go through the medically assisted chemically induced transition process?

This is another one of those questions that exist as a wedge tactic designed to make trans people sound dangerous.

The reality is, the only medical option offered to young trans kids is the option to pause their puberty until they're old enough to be responsible for their own decisions, at which time they can choose which puberty they want to experience.

And what time is the right age for that? Whenever they need to do it, because going through the wrong puberty is a traumatic experience.

As soon as puberty starts, they should at least have the option to delay their choice with puberty blockers, and probably soon after to start HRT, if it's clear it's a permanent thing.

Ada already covered this.

"chemically induced transition process" is not the right language - you would do for a trans person the same thing you would do for a cis person undergoing problems with puberty, something that children have been safely doing for decades, and which cis children with precocious puberty continue to do even as trans children are banned from having access to the same care.

The answer to your question is determined through a discussion with a doctor, mostly with the aim of reducing the harm for a trans child of going through the wrong puberty, and that's just whenever puberty starts in their body.

This pausing of puberty is the only care minors usually receive, it does not "induce [a] transition process", it pauses a transition process until they are of legal age and can decide to undergo the puberty of their choice.

Here is a decent article written by a bioethicist covering how trans affirming care for minors came about, and why it is endorsed by every major medical association: https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/care-not-controversy

Sure, I can talk extensively about that - what are you most curious about?

I should also say, it's different for men vs women, because testosterone will thicken vocal chords and make the voice more masculine naturally, so trans men on HRT have an advantage this way, though trans men still often have to voice train, learning to pitch lower and trying to open the vocal tract more to have a larger, deeper voice both have to be learned.

(This all assumes puberty blockers were not provided and the transition is happening as an adult, which with the healthcare bans for minors in the U.S. is an unfortunately common reality.)

On the flip side, trans women don't see any improvement from estrogen to their voice - the vocal chords remain thickened, and their vocal tracts remain larger.

When I socially transitioned I tried to teach myself and voice train by myself, but after months of little progress, I decided to go to a local speech language pathologist (SLP). I continued to teach myself and train on my own, but the speech language pathologist was able to help direct me, and crucially, to demonstrate principles to help me learn.

I learned some of the basics of vocal training in general - how to sustain pitches and strengthen the voice, practicing SOVTEs, and other exercises singers or actors might do.

Voice training is grueling, one of the worst parts of transition. Vocal dysphoria is a nightmare, and in my experience even once my voice passed all the time (i.e. on the phone people hear a woman and I get "miss" and "ma'am", as well as in person), the voice still sounds wrong to me, and I can't hear it as a woman's voice. In that way it's similar to other kinds of dysphoria - I am much more sensitive, so even once I look like a woman to other people, I still see a man or boy in the mirror.

But with vocal dysphoria, you are constantly exposing yourself to your voice. With other forms of dysphoria, you can get breaks by not looking in the mirror, not having sex, and generally checking out of life - escapism and dissociation can be really effective, but vocal training demands regularly paying attention to your voice, and persistently altering it. It's psychological torture, and a lot of us struggle to make progress because of it. Some even use it as a form of self-harm.

It took 8 months of weekly visits to a SLP and daily, full-time training (i.e. every day I had exercises and I was intentional with my voice, and basically was voice training 24/7, always paying attention and changing my voice) before I saw a shift. The progress for me felt like a major shift all at once, a lot more of the work was cognitive than I expected, more about the ability for my mind to recognize what I'm supposed to be doing. In a way it felt like I suddenly just realized I always knew how to sound like a woman and it just clicked. The time it takes varies, generally voice training is a life-long effort and it never ends. My vocal dysphoria is some of the worst dysphoria I suffer on a daily basis, and some day it would be nice for me to train with the goal of helping alleviate my dysphoria, but up to now I have been more pragmatic and focused on having a voice that other people hear as natural and female. Here is a voice clip I uploaded 4 months ago - to me this voice reminds me of a gay man's voice, I can't hear a woman. :-/

Anyway, let me know what further details you might be interested in 😊