fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3360 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3360 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

[Niche]

__________________________________________________

03.

[Rush Hour 1, 2, 3]

__________________________________________________

04.

["The Bride Was A Boy" manga]

__________________________________________________

05.

[J.K. Rowling]

__________________________________________________

06.

[Pretty Little Liars]

__________________________________________________

07.

[Twin Peaks]

__________________________________________________

08.

[The Walking Dead/The Flash]

__________________________________________________

09.

(GIRLS)

__________________________________________________

10.

[The Grinder]

__________________________________________________

11.

[Pokemon]

__________________________________________________

12.

[Lord of the Rings]

__________________________________________________

13.

[Babylon 5, Tolkien, Star Wars, Harry Potter]

__________________________________________________

14.

[Star Wars: The Force Awakens]

__________________________________________________

15.

[Pete Seeger]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #480.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's very common not to know from a young age. Both my girlfriend and I are trans, and neither of us knew when we were young. For me? I can explain why pretty explicitly. I grew up with as gender-neutral of a childhood as you could ask for. Yes, my mom liked to buy me cute dresses from time to time, and I even liked them sometimes (hey, I still like cute things even if I don't want to wear them, and nothing would be wrong if I did want to wear them, there are crossdressing trans men out there), but I was never told "you're a girl, and girls don't do that". I would spend long hours out in the garage with my uncle doing woodworking and playing with sawdust, shooting BB guns. I would color in coloring books. I was allowed to do literally anything and everything that caught my fancy, and no one "gendered" anything for me.

I was even okay through the beginning of puberty. Yeah, there were definitely signs as far back as puberty. I had a massive inferiority complex about not being able to "do what guys did". Being reminded that I was physically weaker than men would make my chest constrict like someone was squeezing my lungs. A bunch of other shit too (I don't want to list my whole life story here :P). But can I honestly look back and say I hated being female at that age? No. I honestly never hated being female. It just got to the point in my late teens where I realized it wasn't me. It took me until my mid-teens for there to even be a true inkling that something was up in a conceptualized way. This is not an uncommon narrative for trans men, especially with how little representation we get in the media. One of my friends didn't know trans men even existed until his mid twenties, and a lightbulb went off in his head. He's 35 now.

Many, many trans women also follow this narrative. My girlfriend didn't understand what was wrong with her until she was around 20, and she didn't hate her early childhood either.

Pushing the whole "I knew from the time I was 6" type narrative is so, so damaging to so many people. Lots of us don't put it all together until we're teens, young adults, completely grown adults. None of us are any less "legit" than the people who knew at 6, which is kind of what the dominant narrative is, that people who know when they're younger are somehow more "legitimately trans' than those of us who didn't.

It's still something that happens though, and it isn't unusual. Pushing for more variety shouldn't try to claim that it's damaging to show people who DO know, because they do exist.

This. The feeling uncomfortable/like something is off doesn't necessarily have to be related to gender presentation or gender roles either. One of my good friends is a feminine-presenting trans guy who loves makeup and dressing up. He never felt uncomfortable or unhappy about wearing women's clothes or being perceived as feminine; what bothered him was the fact that he had a female body. He was mostly able to shrug it off until he hit puberty and developed breasts and then he developed some pretty significant dysphoria as a result.

I feel like you're deliberately misreading. I said it's damaging to pretend that the only legitimate "real" trans people are the ones who have either vague or overt "something doesn't feel right" epiphanies early in childhood. A person shouldn't have had to try and cut off their penis or sew up their vagina at age 5 to be considered a legitimate trans person, but the dominant narrative pushed by cis people (and some trans people) is that it is the only way to be a legitimate trans person. If you didn't know straight from the womb you are somehow "lesser".

The fact that this is the dominant narrative that gets pushed isn't surprising though, since people are forever trying to find a way to make trans people more "palatable", and a "boohoo they've known ever since they were a fetus how can you hate someone for something they've obviously been all their entire lives it's like hating gay people for being gay" sob story is easier to swallow for bigots than someone who only started wrestling with gender issues as a young adult, or even making it through adulthood for a little while.

Wow, talk about misreading. Nobody is saying that people knowing their whole lives is the only legitimate way to be trans. Literally nobody has said that in this entire thread and yet you're insisting that it's what people are getting out of it.

I'm agender. I used to be female. I understand how gender identity can change through life. And if anybody were to take my story as anything but what it is then I'd be insulted.

And this idea of making trans people palatable for bigots...what? Seriously? I mean come on, where do you get that from?

[ SECRET POST #3360 ]

OP

Re: OP

Re: OP

Re: OP

Re: OP