[ SECRET POST #4759 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4759 ⌋

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

01.
[The Mandalorian]



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02. https://i.imgur.com/jciwSVo.png
[linked for nudity at OP's request]


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03.


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04.


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05.


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06. [minor spoilers for The Witcher]


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #681.
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.

Comments

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Not a troll. This all really happened to me, and frankly took me years to even fully realize what was going on in my head. (I am now in my thirties.)

You can ask questions and I'll answer as long as you're not an asshole about it. ;)

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Why do you think that your personal experience with gender and dysphoria, and the approach to gender that worked for you, are broadly generalizable and right for people other than you?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

There are some statistics to back it up. 65% of minors growing out of gender dysphoria is the lowest percentage a study has found (to my knowledge). My experience is not applicable to everyone. But I do think there is a surplus of, "Go trans! It'll be great!" when that's necessary or true for everyone - yet that's what it's treated as. Even questioning someone feeling as if they are trans is considered bigoted and hateful. If you have everyone telling you ONE THING, especially when young and trying to find yourself, that pressure has an effect.

And fandom? Is 95% saying that.

And significant number of people who experience gender dysphoria eventually cease to. Why can't we discuss that?

I also find the current message somewhat inconsistent. "Love your body! Unless your trans. Then you're totally right to want to change it/want it to be different."

Doing something radical to your body should always be a last option, imo. Not the first.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

It. Fucking is. The last option.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

+1 OP doesn't know shit.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Given then that we're prepared to accept that trans people exist, it seems to follow that we should try to affirm and be welcoming to them. That should be our guiding light. So questioning someone's ability to decide if they are trans, I really don't see how something like that is compatible with affirmation, for instance. I'm not totally sure what you mean by talking about questioning someone feeling they're trans but I don't see a lot of reasonable interpretations of it.

Of course it's a reality that desistance does happen, and we should be upfront about the variety of ways to relate to gender, and it's my personal experience that fandom and Internet people are good at that although I'm quite sure that there are corners of the internet where this isn't true. But if we're focusing on finding corners of the internet to criticize we could go on forever with doing that. And I think, in general, the world is a great long way away from being too welcoming and affirming to trans people to the point where we need to push back on trans acceptance to even the scales.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Let me try to put it another way.

So, take goth kids. Are they goth because that's somehow seen as cool by the world at large? No. Do they independently all realize they just LOVE black? Not generally speaking. By being goth they enter a community that will accept them, or at least most of them, and take on the traits of that community. (Disclaimer: sister was a goth. She did it as a matter of acceptance with peers and rebellion against adults.)

In other words, I'm not talking about the world at large, necessarily. I'm talking about fandom, which is a strange and generally isolated world.

I think it can be very tempting to people to fit themselves into roles to be a part of the community. If the community completely affirms trans, by which I mean, if you have gender dysphoria you MUST be trans. So affirmation, from what I have seen, means not acknowledging the potential use of waiting, or dealing with concurrent mental illness, which about 50% of people who suffer from gender dysphoria have, or trying to get at other issues that may be causing those feelings.

In my case, I'm in INTJ (a personality type). A whopping 5% of INTJ's are female. So, I 'think like a man'. Finding this out? BIG LIGHT BULB. I wish I'd known about it far earlier.

But suggesting this to someone who has gender dysphoria is considered transphobic and bigoted. IN FANDOM, where I spent most of my teenage years. That's where I'm coming from.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I've been in treatment for gender dysphoria for three years. I've gotten no pressure to medically, socially, or legally transition. In fact, my care team has been extremely supportive of my extremely slow and careful process of disclosing my gender identity to supportive friends.

My real-world trans community supports the full range of identity and expression, including non-transitioning trans people and destransitioned people who ID as gender-nonconforming. It's not, "Go trans! It'll be great!" It's "OMG, this kid at school felt me up through my binder because he wanted to see what it felt like," and "My mother dumped a fuckton of transphobic text messages just before the holidays, how do I deal with this?"

In my city, there are two providers who advertise prescription services for trans clients. One woman goes to her VA caseworker, who lives an hour away in the next state. None of the people who have had confirmation surgeries have done so in-state, (there might be a provider upstate, I don't know). HRT and blockers require a referral to get the prescription, a referral to get insurance, and a commitment to maintenance checkups.

If you think young people are fast-tracked from liking yaoi to trying to look like Janet Mock, you really don't have a clue as to how this really works.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I know of someone who went through less than six months of counseling and had a double masectomy and hormones.

Normal insurance. Maybe some state laws apply about what's covered, I don't know.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

You know nothing, do you?

Do you have any idea?

I live in the UK. If you're trans here, you'll need...
- About two to four years on a waiting list, in which time you'll almost certainly have nothing.
-Several appointments with different people with at least three months between each before a diagnosis.
-Months of trying and altering dosages to just hope you can find the right one for you.
-At least two years of HRT before even being considered for any surgeries.
- God knows how long on another waiting list, depending on the surgery you need.

That isn't special. That's the typical experience. Even in places with less severe waiting lists, it's constantly about jumping through the damn hoops and having to fight to convince someone that you ARE valid and DO need HRT, if that's what you feel you need.

HRT and surgery is NOT some first option that they hand out like sweets. It's not a "discussion" when it comes to people who desist. It's transphobes and their useful idiots abusing statistics to spin a narrative. Kids who appear to have gender dysphoria growing out of it just means they didn't really have it, or that it was brought on by something else, unlike the rest of us who just have to suffer with it.

The only way this "discussion" ever ends up going is "...And that's why you gross trans people should have to deal with your dysphoria some way we don't have to see or think about." Or the other favourite, "We just need to "fix" their brains, right? Fundamentally altering a person's brain and killing who they are is fine if they're a gross trans person, am I right?""

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

"Kids who appear to have gender dysphoria growing out of it just means they didn't really have it"

sorry but as someone who has worked with kids and teenagers, i'm gonna have to disagree with that. it's entirely possible and not even that unusual for kids to have gender dysphoria and grow out of it, especially if they're gender non-conforming and/or queer. puberty can really do a number on a kid mentally, doubly so if it happens quickly or if they're one of the first kids in their grade to hit puberty.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

...You are, at best, badly misreading the message being given to young trans people. No one is saying they should go out and take hormones and get surgery, in part because we know how hard that actually is in the real world. We're saying it's okay to feel like your body is wrong and want to change it, that this doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. This is something some people go through, here's what it can mean, here are resources and people you can talk to while you figure it out.

And here's the thing - those 65% of minors who wind up growing out of gender dysphoria? They aren't the ones who grow up to be adult trans people who go through the transition process. They experiment with gender expression for a few years and find something that works for them, and get to do so while being supported by their peers. The detransition rate for trans people who actually begin the process of transitioning is between 1% and 8%, and most sources give numbers towards the lower end of the scale.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

So... You really thought "in the good old days trans people had the decency to not infect others with their deviant ideas" was appropriate for this community?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

That is not what I'm saying.

I feel the trans discussion is so onesided that as a young person, I would have been hugely influenced by it ... and for ME, that would have been bad. And i think for others it can be negative as well. Not everyone, but certainly some. People de-transition, grow out of dysphoria, and so on. But that's not allowed to be discussed, is it?

And that's the problem.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

If you think that, then sorry, but you're stupid. Or you're looking exclusively at trans people's hangouts or something. There's plenty of "discussion" about that. Just that fandom tends to be a more accepting place where we don't really let stupid shit "Just bottle up the things that make you want to kill yourself, it'll go away." Fly.

And for your TERFy last point, that shit is talked about CONSTANTLY, especially by TERFs, concern trolls and right wing bastards. Read virtually any mainstream take on it and it'll probably be one of those, because people who don't know enough about trans people and our issues to comment on it love to get their fillings in.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT:

What anti-trans trolls think trans support does: "Trans is great! Here's a month's supply of T, and your top and bottom surgeries are scheduled for next week!"

What we really say: "Hey, there's no one way to be trans, and there's no timeline for transition. This is a safe space, but take your time in coming out to family and co-workers. This is what HRT does for me, but you really need to talk to a specialist and everyone responds differently. And we all have different ideas about surgery."

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

De-transition rate is like. 1% at best, dude. Most people also don't grow out of dysphoria, they decide to pretend it doesn't exist because of conservaturds.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

+1 Bloody hell, that shouldn't have to be pointed out.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

So what on earth is your reason for making such a baity post, if you say you're legit? All you're doing is giving the transphobes an excuse to do more trans bashing, as if there wasn't enough.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

She doth protest too much, methinks.

In other words, OP, you legitimately sound brainwashed and like you know nothing other than trans icky. (and where do you get those stats? Your Conservaturd websites?)

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

OP, I would actually be genuinely interested in a link to those stats you've mentioned. I'm not accusing you of lying. I'm actually interested in the data.

Re: OP

[sabotabby]

+1.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't save the links to the studies in question (I read them quite a while ago). Did some quick googling instead:

http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

Sorry for the late reply. I went to bed and then had a busy few days.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

What are your sources for those statistics? I'd like to know the range of ages surveyed, for instance. Growing out of something between 5 and 10 is different from growing out of something between 17 and 19, for instance. Also, by what extent is "gender nonconforming" measured in these studies? Does every tomboy count? Every boy who plays with dolls? Did the people studied transition societally or medically or just experiment? There are so many variables to take into account that putting out a generalization seems a bit ridiculous.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

After reading this whole thing I think you, OP, are talking exclusively about fandom spaces that sometimes act as experts about something, while everyone else is actually speaking about trans-communities.

And after making that distinction, I get your point. In fandom spaces there are always some loud, influential people that reinforce a very small set of ideas as the one and only truth.

See also: fandom communities that insist people should't take their medications because ~you're great as you are~.
Acceptance is great; irresponsible discourses not so much.