Things are feeling bleak for the trans community, and you've probably heard some variation of "We've survived this before." And maybe you think "a lot of us DIDN'T!" That's very true...
But it also helps to know what you're up against, and what worked before.
So let's talk about HOW we've survived
But it also helps to know what you're up against, and what worked before.
So let's talk about HOW we've survived
Comments
I'm TERRIFIED for them.
Before the "Transgender Tipping Point" in 2014, though, it was a whole different world.
And you know, being a goth was a nice way to poke at playing around with gender presentation.
She helpfully informed me that wanting to be a girl was a fetish - a dangerous one at that - and that the solution was to never ever let anyone know under any circumstances.
The second you walked through that door it became clear that the majority of those present were queer and/or gender non-conforming themselves.
She also wasn't accepting new patients, because her roster and her wait list were over full.
I dunno how I made it. There's a lot of survivor's guilt. Realistically I shouldn't still be here, when almost all the folks I transitioned alongside just *vanished*. Some died. Most of them just fell off the face of the earth.
http://www.ifge.org/books/transsexuals_candid.htm
Looking it up again now and finding of *course* it has a forward by Dr John Money. Oof.
My first attempt to transition in 1991 (after discovering a BBS that had such exotic people like cross-dressers, drag queens, and "gasp" so-called "transsexuals" and realizing my feelings weren't unusual), was with a therapist who was very much in that model.
Detransitioned.
And spent 31 years in mourning, telling myself what lies I would need in order to survive another day.
It's such a different universe now. I felt alone, knew basically nobody who wasn't on the internet. Even other transwomen I knew were 'stealth' simply because of safety. I had to do RLE. Only one endo in my city. It wasn't time I'd like to go back to.