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i work at an lgbtq therapy clinic and we do actually have folks coming in for help with de-transitioning because they thought in order to be trans, they really did have to take hormones/get surgery and as the nb folks they've all been, they didnt want to actually or at least the full effect that they went for. we absolutely need to fight for the access to medical transition care for trans folks of all kinds, but we need to fight for full body autonomy and freedom. folks should not have to fucking pass to be valid, and they shouldn't have to go through any aspect of transition that they dont want to in order for our own fucking community to accept them. we're fighting for folks to be themselves and thats gonna involve women who don't take estrogen and women who not only dont shave religiously, but who grow out facial hair because they like it and want to.

you cant make other folks look a way to make you feel comfortable with yourself, that is internal growth that needs to happen, no matter who that is coming from or why


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in reply to @meaters's post:

im curious how this tends to manifest as far as common social experiences etc

like, what are the main things that tend to convince people they have to do things they dont want to in order to be accepted/etc? is it their social circles saying certain kinds of things? is this mainly something in circles that have lots of transmeds or lots of really-passing-fixated people, or is it broader than that? is it more offline or onlien? is it simply inaccurate mainstream ideas about what being trans is? is it other forms of them inferring "oh this is what other trans people expect of me"? is it just not seeing enough people like them in their circles and so feeling like they have to be more like others? just trying to feel out the common components of the social experiences that are pushing people the most

social settings/the messages theyre getting from other trans folks. this happens online and off, tho folks really dont live separate like that anymore, especially younger folks of which they tend to be. younger tho is like 45~ where as the older folks learned this stuff from society, their drs, and again from other trans folks. this is a holdover from the old medical standard that was set decades ago where ones transness was rated to see if they really should qualify for medical transition or if this was some sorta like, perversion or confusion. that stuff still lingers thru the process as well, the assessment we have still has questions about when you started masturbation in it (i dont ask).
i have had a client who was pushed out of her tiny rural local trans scene because she wasn't femme enough for them. she was a stoner and dressed like a stoner which for her was tshirts and hoodies. they didnt think she was trans enough.
some folks seem to be concerned about chasers in all of the wrong ways.

Ahh I see. I was mainly asking because I've heard a lot that offline stuff tends to be less toxic than online and void of a lot of bullshit, a lot more just people being nice and not like tunnelvisioned. But thats from a relatively limited sample, and very focused on urban/urban-ish areas, so I wasn't sure how widespread that pattern was and if it expected to trans expectations.

I didnt really mean "living separate" like being closeted offline compared to online, just meant how people behave differently online vs offline especially in group settings.

The doctor stuff 100% makes sense though, im not surprised about that angle and know about how it pushes people and is so warped and its lineage.

"some folks seem to be concerned about chasers in all of the wrong ways." 100%, people optimize themselves out of the ability to be kind to others and themselves

eet t's complex, I myself think very binary, as in I don't feel female to myself with facial hair, among several other things. I have my own self expectations I personally need to me to feel "comfortable". That does mean I have a bias, a mental expectation of Fem vs masc, but like anything with a bias, it doesn't mean you shove that on others. I don't expect my non binary friends to follow that mental bias. I expect them to be themselves. If I'm uncomfortable with their presentation that's solely on me too either get over, or I need to respectfully leave them be and not be in their life so they can continue being their selves.

This is one of those things that I perhaps counter-intuitively blame on medical gatekeeping: because they're trying to prevent "regret" (or, if we're real, any harm to cis people at the expense of any amount of harm to trans people) everyone, potentially regretters or otherwise, shows up at the clinic knowing exactly what they're supposed to say and do to get healthcare, including continued healthcare and the ability to access surgery. It amounts to a series of hurdles you have to take a running leap to get past and some folks find they've leaped further than they wanted. I know people who've gotten surgeries they've later regretted because they were worried that if they told the NHS to give them more time they might not be allowed to access them at all.

But of course that's not all of it. There's social gatekeeping both from cis people and from other trans people to get past as well. I think trans people have gotten way better in the last 15 years that I've been kicking around at accepting nonbinary people and more overt messing with gender but that'll vary by location, demographic and so on. Trans people gatekeeping trans people do a great deal of harm.

That said, cis civilians, much like cis gatekeepers, have a lot of blame here. One of the reasons that trans community is so important is that for most of us coming out means losing the support, or at least substantive rather than superficial support, of the cis people around us. A lot of what we need each other for is help navigating hostile medical systems, hostile families, soon-to-be-former friends, hostile workplaces. It's like a bucket of cold water to the face to find the wind that was at your back propelling you in the direction of a normative life is now going the other direction and the only shelters from that particular storm are the support of other trans people and, long term and far more riskily, getting the cis people to think you're cis.

Not sure where I'm going with this other than to say there's a lot of work to be done to make sure that our communities do not internalise all of that pressure and instead recognise it for what it is.

This absolutely matches my experience. When I started exploring gender I went to a therapist and instead of honestly weighing my feelings and experiences I instead said what I'd been coached to say, did the same with the clinic, and later with the surgeons, only after all of that did I find that my gender wasn't what I had thought it was at first blush, but by the I found myself stuck on the other side of a divide

Had I gone into that first therapy session and actually tried exploring things instead of just jumping over hurdles, if I had felt like I had the agency to do that, then yeah my body would probably be a lot different now than it is haha

trans folks did not set the standards but there are a lot of folks who are holding up those standards as the base of how things should be still, and that is the impact we're seeing with folks. younger folks are looking at older trans folks online before they're going to their dr. trans medicaliszation is a common view point within the community still unfortunately. yes there are external sources, but i am not talking about them and i will not look at them right now because that is not whom i am addressing.

I'm not arguing with you, just musing that we do have to address that external pressure (and the choices we sometimes have to make for safety) while making it damn clear that it's bullshit that mustn't be internalised