I know several transsexuals and… I don’t care. I hang out with them pretty much the same as anyone else. Actually, come to think of it, the only people that have told me anything were people who were in the process of transitioning, and wrestling with it. Pretty much anyone I know who has already transitioned never said anything to me at all. I just knew from appearance, voice, and context.
OK, now just one little thing that I do care about, in spite of myself. And maybe this makes me a bad person, but… Whenever I am acquainted with a M to F transsexual, I constantly have the urge to give fashion and makeup advice. I bite my tongue but… seriously, if you’re going to the considerable effort to change your gender, can you please, for the love of god, go get a make up consultation with someone who can keep you from looking like a hooker? Thanks.
Am actually going thru this now with a friend from college - someone I dated a bit, actually. While I am thankful that she trusted me enough to tell me, it’s still kind of weird at times - it’s very hard to shake nearly 20 years of thinking of this person as a “he”.
We’re friends in Facebook (where’s she’s not “out” yet) and on Twitter, where she’s more open - some of her tweets are a bit TMI (IMHO) at times, but that’s my issue, not hers.
My first boyfriend from 20 years ago contacted me a year or so ago through Facebook, to let me know he was transitioning to be female. I haven’t seen him in 20 years (we both lived overseas at the time, and still live in different countries) - but we emailed back and forwards a little. It didn’t affect me at all - I’m glad he’s doing something that makes him happy (I use ‘him’, only in that that’s the identity I am familiar with), but it doesn’t mean anything to me, other than be glad he feels comfortable enough telling me.
The only thing I recall as possible precusor was that kissing him etc felt ‘wrong’ to me - at the time I remember having tearful conversations with my Mum about it, but we chalked it up to me being young (14) - which could well have been the case - although I never had the same issue with other boyfriends.
I don’t know if it would make a difference if we’d had contact in the 20 years in between - it may have made the transition easier to predict, as I know many people slowly transition, step by step.
I’d be fine with it if they were a friend or random person or such. I might as a few random questions or such if they popped into my head, but again, not really a big deal.
Find your happiness.
No, that doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a kind, thoughtful person with an admirable impulse to help someone present themselves at their best in a role where they lack, perhaps, practice, or the experience of those who’ve been born and raised to it.
At least that’s what I tell myself when I feel the same urge.
A friend from high school recently went M2F. My story is pretty much like everyone else’s - at first our group of high school friends was a little shocked, but then we were sort of perturbed that he didn’t tell us, but then we thought “hell, we haven’t really been close with him in 10 years so why should he have told us?”
She finally got on Facebook and once she was all but done with her transition (meaning she had come pretty far emotionally as well), we all friended her and it’s been no big deal ever since.
Personally, I am very happy for her because I remember her being a bit awkward and unhappy as a teen so if it was because she felt awkward and unhappy as a man, so be it. I’m also glad she has surrounded herself with a great network of trans friends she met online because there’s no way any of us would have been able to deal with it properly.
It’s still kind of hard to talk about “Missy” in a group setting because no one has memories of “Mike” as “Missy.” So we all pretty much still call her “Mike” when reminiscing. But that’s our problem, not hers.
I’ve only ever known one transsexual, and it wasn’t an issue. I didn’t know him well enough to ask him where he was in the transitioning process, but he did tell me a little bit about being trans. (He’d been the subject of a human interest story about transexuality in the local paper and was pretty open about it.) It was interesting.
The father of a friend of mine is transsexual. My friend is supportive (he’s gay, so it’s not like he’s a poster child for heteronormativity either), but it’s caused some ripples in their family life. My friend is happy to use the feminine pronoun, but still calls her his dad. She got mad at him on Mother’s Day because my friend only got a card for…his mother. My friend was annoyed - she may be a woman now, but she’s still gotta wait for Father’s Day, dammit.
I feel like if one of my parents transitioned, I would find it deeply confusing. My friend is handling the situation far better than I ever would. But just a friend or coworker? Meh, no big deal.
On one hand, I see no reason why I’d “care” in the sense of responding negatively. on the other, I’ve never known someone during the time when they came out as trans and it is a major life change. Initially, I suspect I’d be somewhat confused how to treat them if i’d primarily dealt with them in a gendered context, but otherwise I’d likely be fine from the get go.
Doesn’t bother me. I’ve had two male-to-female trans girlfriends in the past(one pre-op and one post-op) and one female-to-male boyfriend in the past, and I currently have many friends of every trans type you can think of.
I know someone still in the process of M2F. I don’t really care. She’s not my favorite person, but that has to do with a whiny personality, not having only one X chromosome.
I think it would take me a while to get used to it.
I went through some gender questioning of my own, which was resolved in a) I still have some body image issues like a lot of women but not related to gender identity per se, b) I enjoy crossdressing. So I have no excuse for not being open. It’s just difficult to change your view of someone in that way, especially if it’s someone you’ve known for a very long time.
Interesting, yeah. When she told me, she said that had been feeling that way since about the time we dated. So I think it may have been more me picking up on his vibes of discomfort, rather than sensing something off my own bat. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that - but at the time, I thought it was something wrong with me.
If it was anything except being a transsexual, whether they be gay, straight, enjoy crossdressing, or have a disregard for gender roles altogether, I’d have no problem with it. But transsexuals just seem to combine a whole lot of issues that I don’t respect.
There are things about which I’d be curious, but wouldn’t ask unless questions were invited; for example, if pre-change, whether (s)he intended to have surgery and had been approved for it already and/or how is it managed where (s)he lives if it’s not Spain.
It wouldn’t bother me, which seems to be the meaning of “care” people use when asking these kind of questions, unless it happened to be someone I was romantically involved with or it came from an extremely unexpected corner. For example, it’s hard to imagine my youngest brother calling to say “oh by the way, I’ve discovered I’m actually a woman; I’m starting hormone treatment next week; could you please help make sure Mom doesn’t freak out completely?” - well, the “help us keep Mom from doing something worse than usual” is normal, the first sentence though would be unexpected enough that I’d need time to digest it.
I only care if you spell it wrong. It’s transsexual with two esses. One -s for the prefix trans- and the other s for the initial letter in -sexual. Otherwise it looks like being sexually attracted to Vietnamese persons named Tran. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
The substantive noun is transsexualism. Perhaps because the ending -sexuality is already taken to mean a form of sexual attraction, which this isn’t.
