RE: Transgender: Ask Me Anything - What questions might Steemit users have but been afraid to ask?
I didn't even know you were transgender. It really doesn't matter although I can understand these days people don't want to offend anyone.
It is brave of you to reveal it and discuss it openly because I have seen some pretty horrible attitudes on Twitter particularly when there was that fuss in the USA over bathroom usage or something like that.
I love this quote from what you say it is so true:
Imagine yourself meeting a person for the first time and the ask you 'what genitalia do you have?' Pretty uncomfortable question coming from someone you just met, right?
I would like to meet the person that uses that as their first "ice breaker" question lol - or actually maybe I wouldn't.
The only thing I am curious about and this is quite personal so you really don't have to answer. You mentioned that trans people often consider the old name to be their "dead" name. It makes sense.
The question is how do you tell people who knew you as the old you about your transition? I can imagine that must be very difficult and I'm sure there's no right or wrong way to do it.
Thanks for sharing and being brave enough to open yourself up to our questions. I hope they are not too ignorant.
Yea, I don't really talk about being trans that much since I focus on my intellectual passions. Truly once you connect with a person, it goes deeper than the physical body itself. Look at all of the friendships made on here, world of warcraft, etc. All of which are real, and gender is assumed, but in reality the two physical people never actually are around each other.
It's only a big thing because people make it a big thing, like with the HB2 bill in North Carolina that undid and preventing any further anti-discrimination laws in the state. This was done in response to the city of Charlotte passing a law that would protect the human and civil rights of the LGBT community. It's really strange hearing that an anti-anti-discrimination bill is passed, but it happened. This unfortunately has just been the latest and most covered scenario, but similar occurred in Indiana (driven by now VP candidate Mike Pence), Arkansas (in response to Fayetteville passing an LGBT anti-discrimination law), and even here in the city I live in had passed similar LGBT protection laws only to have it repealed about 6 months later by a razor thin vote. I actually made a post describing what happened here in this post a few weeks back.
Luckily things here aren't like the damage HB2 has caused people, businesses and public organizations for North Carolina. But I won't travel down that rabbit hole. lol
To answer you very fair question telling people that knew be before:
It was by far the hardest to tell the first people that I felt I was transgender. At this stage I was logically ONLY telling people that had known the 'old me' since that had been the only thing I had presented to anybody at that stage. Part of the difficulty was that there was no organic way for this conversation to start (being before transgender celebrities like Laverne Cox and issues started to be included in the main stream media.) It always had to start with a "So.... There's something I wanted to tell you..." statement, that are never comfortable. Honestly at this stage, the difficulty to tell somebody stayed the same while the DRIVE to tell someone constantly increased. Basically it was going to come out sooner or later.
While I did get a lot more comfortable presenting and interacting the way I wanted to rather quickly (it helps when there is only supportive people) I did notice that I had a harder time saying anything to people I had known since childhood...it was easier for me to talk to a new friend/stranger...specifically because of the reason you mentioned.
It's hard to shift the mental model we make for others, especially after being ingrained for so many years. To some degree the same holds in pronoun usage. I can understand why my dad slips a 'he' periodically. He's not being mean, I have no doubt he's trying, it's a tough thing to be 100% on after switching.
I assume the same reasoning holds with asking to be called a new name by people that knew you by another name for so long. I had it easy on this one since I didn't change my name.
Wonderful question, sorry for the long answer :)
Thanks for such an awesome reply. I couldn't go to bed before reading it and saying thanks.
You're very welcome! Have good sleeps! :)