6 ms·
> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 w
by sassyonsunday 4y ago
> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years.
They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015.
I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating men openly and as awful as it is to say, because I looked and acted the part people got over it pretty fast and begrudgingly accepted that I - at least - wasn't a man. My parents even got upset with me a long while ago when I insinuated that I was a part of the gay community because they said it was disrespectful to my then boyfriend who is now my husband (he had only dated cis girls before me and is straight to anyone who hasn't run a DNA test on me ha).
These days I can feel a change even from people who were kind to me before. All the coverage on conservative media outlets, the JK Rowling "trans women are a threat to women" and the Matt Walsh "trans women are mentally ill perverts" talking points have eroded goodwill so much that more religious and conservative members of my own family avoid me now as where they didn't before and I feel that I'm only able to have a good life because I'm in the fortunate position of being "passable" and attracted to men.
In 2012 when I came out to someone they'd usually just be curious about my experiences. Even conservative Christians and Republicans. In 2022 almost nobody is curious except about which surgeries you've had because they've already made their mind up about how they feel about you. For about 50% of the population that means you're a piece of scum who deserves ridicule and punishment (if it looks like you could still pass as male physically) or excommunication (if it looks like you're so feminine and far gone that you couldn't fit in as a man), for about 40% of the population that means indifference akin to what you'd get back in the good old days and for about 10% it means an outpouring of support and love in an attempt to make up for the 50% who are openly hostile.
I think more and more trans people are taking the Wendy Carlos approach these days because of this. Much of the community wants to avoid attention and get along with their lives. There's a growing trend of people "boy moding" or "man moding" which is where they take hormone replacement therapies but dress in drag to try to fit in as their gender assigned at birth in public the same way that Wendy did. As an amusing sidenote, many of these people begin "male failing" which is where the hormone replacement therapies make it impossible for them to pass as their gender assigned at birth and so they are read as being trans still but coming from the other direction.... It's so sad that it has to be this way.
- lezojeda 4y agoBeing trans myself, I start to feel that the tolereance upward trend I noticed while growing up has stopped and even coming down in some cases/niches. I started transitioning in 2020, live in a relatively tolerant country like Argentina but feel that it's not like 5-10 years ago. IMO it has to do with the global economic downturn and political polarization, I think there is a correlation between tolerance and wealthiness
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoI am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.
- jrochkind1 4y agoEvery single person on the planet will have regrets in 20 years. A significant portion will have large regrets about things they cannot undo. This is human. It is not your job to make trans people miserable today because of your worry some of them might hypothetically have regrets in the future.
- sassyonsunday 4y ago> I am happy if gender therapy helped you It did thanks. > I think it is fine for society to be critical Of course. Critical in the sense of skeptical. However a lot of "critics" of trans people act much more like schoolyard bullies or people worried that rock 'n roll music will make the children worship satan than people with fair concerns about the wellbeing of others. > I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets There isn't any decision that people can make that will leave 100% of people satisfied. Gender therapy has existed in its modern form for about 100 years now and in that time study after study shows that people who go through with it are happy with the results 90%-98% of the time. This is higher than most treatments of any kind. You'll find that almost every commentator who talks about detransitioners or trots some out for a political show has the end objective of ending all gender affirming care for all people and replacing it with conversion therapy due to their ideology. In the case of someone like Janice Raymond that reason is radical feminism. For someone like Matt Walsh it is traditional Catholicism. In both cases they are misleading the public by insinuating that gender therapy is some sort of factory process where hapless victims are swept onto a conveyor belt and mutilated haphazardly. People who transition and then regret it will always exist. Just like people will regret getting any sort of elective surgery. Just like people will come out as gay and then later regret it and then later regret that they regretted it and so on.... It's a story as old as time. This study tracked people over a 50 year period and found a regret rate of 2%. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analys... > The FM:MF sex ratio fluctuated but was 1:1.66 for the whole study period. There were 15 (5 MF and 10 MF) regret applications corresponding to a 2.2 % regret rate for both sexes. There was a significant decline of regrets over the time period. The worrying thing is not that 2% regretted their decision, the worrying thing is that the people who are against trans people would be LESS happy if the figure were to be 0%. They want 100% of trans people to regret transition and repress because that would make reality conform better to their ideological leanings where "men are men" and "women are women" because God made them that way.