One of the things I really enjoyed on the other place was sharing my perspective as a trans person in a place where people seemed genuinely interested in learning my perspective as someone who has experienced the highs and lows of being transgender. It’s far too rare to see genuine discussion on what it is like to be trans outside of queer spaces that most people never venture into. I would like to continue sharing that.
I’ve recently started writing down some of the experiences I’ve had over the years and this seems like a good place to share some of that once I’m happy with the product. I’d rather have a separate thread for things like that instead of slotting it in with the general sexual and gender identity thread since that thread contains some pretty unhappy stuff about how we’re treated as people expressing transness or gender non-conformance and I’d prefer to keep this focused specifically on sharing what it’s like to be trans. I’ve categorized this under ‘joy’ because honestly, being trans is pretty awesome if you ignore the way parts of society treat us.
I also think having a place cis folks can ask questions about trans folks and their experiences is a good thing, so feel free to ask me anything with the understanding that I might not answer if it’s something I’m not comfortable sharing.
With that out of the way, allow me to introduce myself.
I’m Anna, and my pronouns are fae/faer, though I do accept she/her if neopronouns are too hard to wrap your head around. I’m a transfeminine non-binary lesbian in faer mid 40s. I’ve been fully out and on hormone replacement therapy since 2021, and I’ve known I was trans since my age only had one digit, though it wasn’t until later I knew what trans even was. I’ve spent most of my life in the closet, trying to fit into cishet society and outwardly succeeding while inwardly failing miserably.
I’m Charlotte or Char. I’m a transfeminine greysexual lesbian in my early 40’s and started my transition a few years ago. I also lived most of my life closeted despite figuring out I was trans as a teenager. I’m happy to answer any questions I feel comfortable answering.
Hello, all. I am a straight, cis, white guy, so will likely be pretty quiet here. I am also a pediatrician with a lot of trans patients, a trans child and a lot of struggles and confusion in dealing with all of that. I learned a ton “over there” listening to all of y’all, and anticipate more of same here. Thank you for doing this!
While here I go by Bonivus (which is what my main charecter on World of Warcraft was named when I was involved in that time sink) I obviously go by something else in real life. ‘Bon’ or ‘Tigger’ will work fine here. Pronouns are they/them/any
While I’ve been on this planet for a little over four and a half decades, it’s only been within the last eight years or so that I’ve figured out who I really am, and I started HRT and the ‘formal’ transitioning process back in April. (I Gave myself the best birthday gift- My Real Self)
Genderfluid, trans, and aromatic- it makes for some entertaining conversations for certain.
One of my best friends, sometime in the 90s, changed from Tony to Toni and was, wonderfully, the first Trans Makeover on BBC breakfast television. They did not do her justice, in my opinion. She has since moved to Australia, and we have not been in touch for more than twenty years.
Yes, we all want to hear your stories.
You’ll find no judgement, but perhaps you’ll find love, and hope, and, who knows, friendship.
I’m Danielle. Or Dani. I use she/her pronouns. I am a trans woman who came out about 16 years ago, and completed transition 8 years ago. I’m in my mid 50s. I’m probably also nonbinary, but I haven’t really explored that much, and I still prefer she/her pronouns. I moved to New Jersey 5 years ago to go to law school. I have now graduated and am moving back to Missouri, because I really don’t like New Jersey much, even though New Jersey is one of the most trans friendly states in the US and Missouri is one of the least. Hopefully I won’t regret the decision to move back.
I’ve said this elsewhere but it bears repeating: thank you all for your willingness to share your experiences and perspective. You’ve already given me priceless insight that has allowed me to be a better parent and a better trusted adult for my kid’s friends.
Fair warning, I may come off as responding in kind, but I’ll try to be polite about it. /smirk
Seeing as I don’t know what most of the other happy mutants™ here look like in person, and since written language is both the Great Equalizer in obscuring one’s gender, race, and emotional state, but also a horrific problem maker with getting across emotional states and if one if being serious, sarcastic, hyperbolic, or ass-holiness, pronouns can at least be used to address people in a respectful manner. (This is why emojis came into existance for the most part. )
This includes neopronouns, of what fae/fer and others are.
I know it may offend some, but I tend to default to the singular ‘they’ when I don’t know the specific gender of the person I’m referring to, especially if they are the person being discussed. (example: dealing with a person’s network account at work and the name is non-gendered, or not obvious to me.)
If you don’t know, ask. the person you are asking will either gladly tell you, or their response will such that you are probably better off dealing with them in the most business-like manner for as little time as possible*.
And to lighten the mood: “I don’t use any pro-nouns on account that I’m an amateur!” - Popeye the sailor
Hope this helps!
(* Why people take offense to someone asking them if there’s a set of pronouns they are comfortable with is mind-boggling to me, but then, I was brought up to be polite up to the point of someone throwing a right hook at me.)
Me, too. I do this at work when discussing our customers with our sales team. I can’t assume someone identifies as a woman or a man. Also, many names are not gendered, so I default to they unless I absolutely know otherwise. BTW, I’m 61 and it’s been super easy to do this.
To be blunt, it doesn’t matter what’s behind that. That’s faer business. As to how to handle that properly…just use the pronouns people tell you to use. With all due respect, your discomfort with this is your problem, not ours. Get over yourself. When someone tells you their name, use it. When someone tells you their pronouns, use them. And most trans and nonbinary people will understand that you will occasionally revert back to the binary default. No one expects you to be perfect. All you have to do is not be a dick. It’s not that hard.
If I may make a suggestion, you might want to take a different approach when asking such questions. I can see you’re uncomfortable with asking this question, and are deflecting with humour and a lot of unnecessary context to help you get over that discomfort. I get it. But as a trans person, I get this all the time and it feels a lot like you’re asking me for emotional labour to help assuage your discomfort. It gets pretty old.
I suggest something like “Why are pronouns important?” or “Why do you use fae/faer?”. Direct, to the point, and doesn’t ask me to do more work to make you feel better about asking.
Why though? My pronouns are part of my identity, much like my name. They’re who I am, and like my name, you don’t know them without me telling you.
Avoid awkwardness for you, maybe. But how would you feel if someone refused to refer to you except by name? I can tell you that when someone does that to me, I disengage and get away from them since I know they’re not someone I can be safe with.
As for accidental insult, the vast majority of trans people I know realize this is not something many people deal with on a regular basis and we get it when you mess up. Just correct yourself without apology or explanation, and continue on. The viral videos and such you see of people going off about being misgendered are almost always someone intentionally misgendering them to the point they lose their cool. Then those videos are used to say “look how violent and unhinged trans women are, they’re dangerous!” It’s an intentional tactic to discredit us.
In short, identity. I am not a man. Like at all. I’m also not fully a woman. I am partially some third thing. I always knew he/him was wrong, but I accepted it since I was told I was a man by my family and the people in my life, and everything society had to say on the matter told me I was too. But I knew it wasn’t right. It was like having a pebble in my shoe. I could walk fine, but I was uncomfortable and I knew something was amiss but it wasn’t until I finally decided to transition and took that pesky pebble out that I realized how much better it felt without it.
I initially thought, since I wasn’t a man I must be a woman. And that fit a whole lot better than he/him. I felt free of the pebble and could walk with more confidence. But over time I realized there was still something wrong. Not a pebble, but like a few grains of sand. Just enough to cause minor discomfort if I walked too long.
I’d learned recently through my gender support group about nonbinary identities and started exploring that. I found a list of neopronouns and when I got to fae/faer it was like a lightbulb went off. I got someone to use them with me and suddenly it was like the most comfortable pair of shoes ever. I felt right.
With work.
I mean, I accept she/her because I know 99% of people have a hard time with fae/faer. Even most of my community does. She/her is ok, because I can deal with a little sand. I almost never get called fae, even by my wife and girlfriends. Because it goes against assumptions that are drilled into us by society from an extremely young age, it’s difficult to overcome that feeling of it being gramatically incorrect. But neopronouns are just as valid as he/she/they. Yes, they’re ‘made up’, but so is every word ever and language evolves constantly.
And when people do use fae/faer, it basically makes my month!
I can address this one somewhat. My youngest is trans, and the learning curve is… different. I find for someone I have just met, if they introduce themselves with “My name is … and my pronouns are …” I can deal pretty easily, especially if they are presenting in a way that my old eyes recognize as consistent. If not, I do stumble more, but try not to make a show of, just correct and move on. With someone that I knew as one name and pronoun, who is now something completely different, it is hard. I stumble frequently, misgender, deadname, and try to quickly correct and move on. She is great about not taking it as an affront, but I still feel badly. So how do you do it? By doing it. It is not the job of the individual to make me better at it, it is my job and my responsibility to make myself a better man, to respect the autonomy of other folks who have as much right to their name and image as I do.
One other issue, a bit tangential, is the resistance to singular “they,” which for me also is a go to if I am uncertain. Go back in time to your childhood:
You: “Mom! There is someone at the door!”
Mom: “What do they want?”
Behold! Singular “they” has always been, it only became an issue when it was a way to dehumanize a vulnerable population.
Wordier than I meant to be, but, well, I am known for that.
My youngest is nonbinary and has asked to be referred to with they/them pronouns since they were 7 (10 now). I still mess up occasionally. They also accept she/her, but I know it’s because they don’t want to deal with correcting people all the time, which given they’re still a kid and schools are pretty dang gendered, I get.
Yeah, this is often an issue. No one bats an eye at they unless it’s referring to a nonbinary person.
But there is another way they is weaponized as well. My pronouns do not include they. If I tell you my pronouns, and you continue to use they, then you are misgendering me. Given I rarely tell people my actual pronouns in most spaces and ask to be referred to with she/her and present fairly high on the femme scale, it’s blatantly obvious that they are doing it intentionally. They is not a ‘get out of bigotry free’ card.
I’m nonbinary. For pronouns I’ll sometimes say “they/them” and sometimes “he/they” (mostly meaning there’s no wrong pronoun to use for me). I’m not out about it at work or in official documents, although I have complained to a couple of organizations that required selecting a gendered title or an M or F in contexts where gender should be irrelevant.
For me, the experience has been:
in young childhood I didn’t quite get why some stuff is reserved for girls and some for boys; I wanted to be a mermaid or a princess. I tended to admire certain feminine ideals more than masculine ones.
of course a little older, I internalized gender-based boundaries/shame, and the idea that anything trans/gay/etc. was weird/icky/funny etc. And yet I still had this concept of having a sort of dual aspect, but mentally I walled that off from transness. Cognitive dissonance ahoy!
in my 20s when I started playing a (very social, text-based) online RPG I made a female character, without really putting a lot of conscious thought into it. There was a lot of thought afterward though.
in my late 30s, thanks to the internet I started to encounter ideas about gender that were new to me, and that unstuck some gears in my head. It took a while but I settled on “nonbinary” as the most appropriate catch-all term, and will totally accept “trans” as a very wide/inclusive umbrella description.
I experimented briefly with trying to present myself in a more nonbinary way but I always felt self-conscious about it than comfortable. So I go with jeans/t-shirt and am sort of a Stealth Enby I guess. I’m not out at work or on official paperwork, it’s more just online and among close family and friends.
I don’t have a lot of physical dysphoria, but the body I would choose for myself if I could would be smaller and just barely on the fem side of androgynous.
Generally I don’t feel a strong association with masculinity and a lot of “guy stuff” is just alien/backwards to me. But I also don’t feel like I’m a woman. There are certain contexts where I feel more one way or the other, but mostly I feel like gender is just… irrelevant. I think that’s why I can be comfortable in a sort of vague/cryptic status. I’m attracted to feminine and somewhat androgynous-presenting people, but happily married to my (bisexual) wife.
I will second this. My brother transitioned almost 20 years ago – keeping the same short nickname, but I still catch myself throwing the wrong pronoun out there and quickly correcting myself. Likewise some other people I knew in the past as one gender who have transitioned or are using “they” now, now that I’m talking to and about them again, it’s tricky to break habits. It’s especially embarrassing being a more-or-less-they myself!
The reason I use they/them/any is because there are days where I’m running around in boy mode, other days when I’m running in girl mode, and other days when I’m doing some mashup of both styles of clothes. The joys (or curse?) of being genderfluid, I guess.
It’s only been very recently (like in the last couple months) that I’ve worked up the mental spoons to go into the office in girl mode, and the response there has been positive; I either get compliments, or at least nothing overtly hateful, which I’ll call a win.
)
