Do you mind clarifying? Does that mean you become more (or less?) sensitive to sweetness, or bitterness, or … ? Or do you mean that your preferences change entirely i.e. someone who used to luuurve pizza now thinks it’s disgusting or vice-versa?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeez. That’s about eighteen kinds of wrong. And hurtful.
As I get older - and, theoreticall, wiser - I’m realizing that human sexuality is like cats. Both are Teh Weird. And those who love 'em wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m not able to comment on all posts since I keep running short on time, but I’m trying to get the ones that I see. If I miss a question or miss thanking someone, it was not on purpose.
Thank you very much for the compliments!
I am going to be taking singing lessons this year, part of my new attitude of “living a life of positive energy.” Thank you for telling me about how my little thread here made you feel; it hopefully means I’m communicating well.
I used to LOVE spicy hot food. I used to always try to order the hottest thing on the menu, and at home I would liberally use the Habanero Tabasco instead of the “wimpy” red stuff. Within 3 months on the hormones, a lifetime tolerance to hot food decreased greatly, and now even the red Tabasco is really hot for me, and dust is gathering on the Habanero bottle.
I liked chocolate before. I LOVE it now. I have to be careful or I will end up overeating.
I used to love really sour things (sour candy, raw lemons, etc.) I can’t do that any more - things need to be sweeter.
Without realizing it, I noticed that I rarely order steak, I now tend to order chicken.
I used to not like seafood - shrimp, lobster, scallops, clams, etc. This was a lifetime dislike - and yet now I will happily eat scallops, lobster bisque, clam chowder, etc.
I eat more cheese and dairy products than ever before.
I used to like every type of beer imaginable, regardless of how dark, how hoppy, etc. as long as it wasn’t actually skunky. Guinness used to be wonderful. Now…I can’t stand the taste of almost ANY beer, even my beloved Guinness. I also used to drink gin straight, whiskey neat, etc. When I do drink now, it’s only red wine, sweet white wine, or something so thick and sweet (Baileys, Port) or fruity (Pina Colada, Sidecar, After Five, Baltic Breeze, etc.) that you don’t taste the alcohol.
None of these changes were by choice or part of a conscious diet decision. They happened, and they surprised me.
I posted earlier about it - my sexuality changed. I went from “afraid of all men to the point where I would shake in fear, only want to be a lesbian” to “comfortable being with and even flirting with men, and still only want to be with another woman, except the parts no longer matter at all.” Vagina, penis, none of the above, all of the above…meh, it’s just part of someone to give them pleasure as part of a mutual lovemaking. I love the female shape and form, the way we smell, how soft we are, our curves and hidden places. But a few times recently, something I had not had happen since I was in my early teens, I’ve found a man attractive.
Interesting. Reading through your food likes/dislikes/changes, I couldn’t help but notice that what you used to like is stereotypically masculine (beer, steak, spicy food) and what you like now is more stereotypically feminine (sweets esp. chocolate, chicken, “girly” drinks like pina coladas) and while that’s painting with a gigantically broad brush, I think it’s fascinating just how influential hormones can be.
Two questions about the broader issue of gender identity.
We’ve been discussing people whose bodies don’t match their gender identity. These people want to switch to the gender they identify as and be clearly identified as that gender. Transmen want to avoid signs of femininity and transwomen want to avoid signs of masculinity - their goal is to have a clear and indisputable gender identity.
So are there people who feel the opposite way? Men or women who have a clear public gender identity but who identify themselves as androgynous and who want other people to perceive them that way? I’m not talking about people like David Bowie or Annie Lennox who adopt an androgynous look. I’m talking about people who feel their real identity is not male or female but somewhere between the two and don’t like that other people perceive them as having a clear gender.
My other question is over some terms I hadn’t known until this week: cisgender and cissexual. My understanding is that these are the people whose gender identity is unambiguous - men who perceive themselves as men and are perceived as men by other people and women who perceive themselves as women and are perceived as women by other people. But I’m a little confused about the difference between the two terms. Are the two terms essentially interchangeable or can a person be cisgender and not cissexual or vice versa? If so, what’s the distinction? And does being cissexual imply heterosexuality or would a gay man or woman commonly refer to themselves as being cissexual?
My apologies if I’ve caused any offense by my misunderstanding of these issues.
I think I’m kinda like this. I’m a heterosexual female, but all my life I’ve never really felt comfortable in the “girl suit.” I don’t like girly things at all, and always felt more comfortable hanging out with nerdy guys. But I don’t want to be a male. I’m okay with being female–I just hate being treated like a female, or expected to fill traditionally female roles just because I have the plumbing (for example, I don’t like that if I ever wanted to take up dancing, it’s always the male partner who leads in dances where there’s a leader). That’s not to say that sometimes I won’t (or will even be happy to) fill the female role. I just want the choice to be mine, not society’s.
I just want people to treat me as a neutral sort of person to whom gender isn’t really an important component (because as far as I’m concerned, the only time it really is is during romantic or sexual relationships–for the rest of life’s activities, I just don’t think it should matter very much). I’ve heard that there’s a spectrum for gender identity, with one end being fully masculine and the other end being fully feminine. I’m right in the middle, and I like it there. I tend to gravitate toward other people are similar, or at least who don’t exhibit strong traits at either end of the spectrum. I’m uncomfortable around most very feminine women or stereotypically masculine men, because I’m never sure how to act around them.
There are. The term for these people is “agender.” It’s not a phenomenon that I’m personally all that familiar with, although my understanding is that it’s different from what Infovore just described. The way Una described feeling when she was identified as a male - someone who was agender would feel that way about being described as male or female.
Actually, it means “someone who’s gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth.” A lot of trans people are not recognizable as trans - people perceive them to be the same gender they identify as. The way you defined cis would include those people.
Then that would be an example of the kind of unintentional offense I apologized for in advance. It’s not that I’m trying to impose my definitions on other people. It’s just that I’m somewhat confused about the terminology.
I noticed that in your articles, there was no name attached to it. I have to admit I’ve been curious ever since you mentioned your name change (and didn’t change it to Gilgamesh) on the first page. Being a public speaker, I gather, is different from being famous on the internet. Is it to prevent abuse and trolls that you’ve elected to remain private online?
Una, let me add my voice to those thanking you for this thread. Your willingness to share experiences so deeply personal and painful in order to educate speaks volumes about you as a person.
If you could have waved a magic wand and changed your thoughts and feelings instead of your body, would you have? Or would that idea have been even more unthinkable than continuing in your misery? In other words, if science came up with a way to truly “re-wire” the brain (real science, not brainwashing or wishful thinking), so that people could truly choose their internal gender, would that be a good thing? Or is the very question offensive, in a “our brains do NOT need to be fixed, thank you very much.” sort of way? If so, I apologize; I truly don’t want to offend. I’m just curious if the feeling is always, or almost always, “this is who I am, now make my body match” or sometimes leans toward “I don’t care how it’s resolved, just take away this conflict.”
Honestly, I think that one of the things that astonishes me most about your story is that, unless I’m misremembering or misreading (if so, please correct me) you seem to have been met with almost universal support (or at the worst, indifference) following your transition, at least on a personal and professional level. Not that it shouldn’t be that way, but let’s face it - a lot of people are jerks. But maybe that’s a positive sign: that our culture has changed enough that even the people who might want to do so don’t feel free to indulge their jerkish tendencies in public.
Lastly (personally and/or in your role as an advocate), what do you find are your biggest frustrations? And on the positive side, what do you find gives you the most reason for hope?
I’m not a South Park fan so I have no idea.
Girly cartoons: usually have female characters waiting around for others to save them, can’t wait to get married, talk about how cute boys are, spend a lot of time focusing on clothes, hair, make up, and looks.
Have over the top emotional drama and lots of pink and glitter.
My Little Pony has some female characters I thought were male, the stories are mostly action oriented. There’s an episode where the guy who played Q on Star Trek played a character very similar to Q.
It’s definitely got a charm to it but I wouldn’t watch kids cartoons if I didn’t have children. Some people just really like cartoons.
Yes, and I even as a scientist was bothered by it and asked myself “are you doing this to be/act stereotypically feminine?” I was pretty sure I wasn’t, I tried to focus and think “what do I really want to eat - the fillet, or the chicken? Seriously?” I used to NEVER order chicken at a steakhouse - in fact, I don’t think I ever did before I’d been on the hormones about a month. Then all of a sudden, it just sounded really like what I wanted.
There are some, and I know a few. I think there has always been some difficulty doing a survey of them because many times someone who feels genderless or androgynous doesn’t think much about gender, and they check the box for their social/legal gender and don’t worry. The last high school I lectured at had a large number of kids who identified as “agender”, and I was quite shocked to see they made up about 1/3 of the Gay Student Alliance.
I’m not certain cissexual is used much at all. I don’t believe I have used it, and I’ve only uncommonly come across it. Because it is confusing, I don’t think I would choose to use it. In my community world, cis and trans are almost exclusively used for gender, and for sexuality we use the traditional gay, lesbian, bi, or the more generic homo. That has been my experience at least; my community world is not the, or anyone else’s community world.
That is a perfectly normal reaction, and one which I can understand. Friends of mine who feel agendered or androgynous describe it the same way, and they are reasonably happy in their existence. Except for a few who sometimes, depressingly, describe it as “feeling lost and disconnected from the world.”
I don’t know if you’ve been to the lolmythesis thread, but in short, it links to a website where people describe their theses in one sentence. Anyway, I was reading there and found one that fit here. Apparently today’s youth are interested in exploring the issues raised here.
Society has loosened up considerably about this. When I was a child there were “boys’ books” and “girls’ books” in our school library and this distinction was enforced. I was forever getting scolded for reading the “wrong” books. Eventually, it resulted in A Call To Your Parents About This. My parents really didn’t mind. I’m pretty sure that any boy who dared to read the girls’ books would have faced stronger opposition, as there always seemed to be considerable fear that boys wouldn’t be sufficiently masculine. I mean, it was understandable by society why girls would be interested in boy stuff (which she was, apparently, to experience vicariously by appropriate mate selection), but there was simply no reason for any boy to show an interest in girl stuff.
There was considerable conflict over my tomboy tendencies. I was sent to charm school not once but twice. But I never had any question I was girl. It didn’t want to be a boy, I just wanted to do the interesting stuff that boys did (I also wanted to do quite a few girly things as well, I was pretty well rounded in interests). 40 years ago there was less tolerance for girls daring to cross “proper” gender lines, for boys it was much, much worse.
Thank you, but I did ask and this is where the message board staff said to put it.
No, I’m not too worried. In the past a handful of people on the SDMB used to make regular threats to me, a couple threatening to hunt me down and kill me, kill Fierra, etc. A couple more threatened to “out” me to my employer at the time as a transsexual woman, thus getting me fired. Now that I’m out that has somewhat limited concern, and to be blunt I can’t be angry at those people of old. Life is so wonderful and short, I don’t really have the time to hold grudges or walk around mad at online people.
I do try to keep a boundary between online and real life of some sort. I don’t try very hard, but I do.
This is a subject of intense debate and discussion within my community (sidebar: most all questions cisgender people ask us, we ask and debate amongst ourselves too).
Personally, it’s different for me. I’m genetically both sexes. Given that I felt mostly or entirely female 90% of my life, it would impact me much more to have that magic transformation to accept that I was going to keep pretending to be a male.
When transgender people talk about this…gosh it’s really difficult. The following is my opinion, not the result of any study:
Those who are mildly affected (unlikely to even become transsexual) would welcome that magic wand or scientific transformation. Some think it would be a bad idea because it would be akin to eugenics.
Those who are strongly gender dysphoric seem to be divided into 3 camps of about equal size: “Hell yes”, “Hell no”, and “personally I would, but I’m worried about the precedent.”
That is true. Part of it was due to careful, long-term planning. Part of it was due to being surrounded by smart co-workers and others who genuinely turned out to be caring, intelligent people who were willing to open the minds and hearts to let someone like me in.
My biggest frustrations are the people who have raw, irrational hatred. It doesn’t matter what facts, what logic, what analogies, the tell the Big Lie again and again, wrap it terms like “common sense” and “the Bible says,” and before you know it the ignorant people listening to them are nodding their heads like bobble-headed chihuahuas. What boils my blood the most are the people who accuse me and my sisters of being child molesters and sex criminals, who claim everything we do and everything we are is geared solely to get into women’s bathrooms to do everything from peek under their stalls to rape them. The recent debate over California AB1266 has been packed with “good Christians” claiming that transgender girls are just boys trying to molest cisgender girls.
My biggest reason for hope is every time I speak to a crowd of people, afterwards there’s always a couple of people who will come up, tell me they really had no good idea what a transsexual person really was, and that from now on they will always think of us differently, and if they meet another transperson they will do everything they can to be friendly and kind to them.
There was a poster earlier in this thread who said as a result of my posting, she hugged and welcomed her neighbor who came out to her as a transsexual. I can tell you from personal experience, approaching your next-door neighbors to tell them about you is incredibly scary, and hearing her welcome reaction to her neighbor is heartwarming.
