Hi there,
I hope this is allowed. I need some help gaining an understanding of trans life and some of the issues that are faced, what defines it and a couple other things. It won't hurt my feelings if this gets deleted. If so, I won't bother you again.
To help explain why I'm so clueless, I'm a white 50yo married guy with one young adult hetero child. I have absolutely no real life context to apply and I'm not what you would consider culture-savvy(I don't follow news/media, have no circle of people, basically, I hang out in the woods by myself). I understand very little of the relative explosion of references that I see on the web.
First, the only thing I think I understand is that gender is considered a social construct, leading to the popularity of choosing your own pronouns( I know there's much more, I'm using the pronouns as something I often see). Understanding as little as I do, I try to frame discussion in a way that I don't ever use pronouns to try to keep from offending. I'll say something like "I think the OP meant this" instead of using a pronoun.
That's sadly it. I don't understand anything else but I do have some specific questions that are intended to inform me, not to offend. Please forgive me if I've framed these inappropriately. It's due to ignorance that I'm trying to rectify, not from a place of ridicule.
First, from wikipedia: A transgender person (often shortened to trans person) is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Question 1 - I think I understand the part where a person disagrees with the gender assigned to them at birth but when I see a transgender person, they seem to be striving to dress and look like the opposite gender. What I mean by this is I rarely see a picture of a person choosing she/her but dressing and having hairstyles more associated with their assigned birth gender. Does this mean that although they were born with certain reproductive organs at birth normally associated with a particular gender, they feel that some part inside them(soul, mind, etc) feels they should have been born with the opposite socially constructed gender?
My second question and this is where I swear I am not aiming to offend. I will try to explain what led me to this thought - When a person chooses to take hormones that their body doesn't make on it's own or chooses to have surgery to rebuild sexual organs that they weren't born with or to add/remove breasts, Is this element of trans life considered a mental illness? The only reason I ask this is I remember watching a documentary where people lived a life in which they felt, for example, that one of their arms didn't belong to them and they pursued surgery to have a working limb removed. During the documentary, some of the people during therapy and medication were able to change their mindset to the point that they could live with the offending limb but there were some people that were traveling to other countries to have it removed (the doc was based in the US and they couldn't find a doctor to perform the surgery). The only reason I ask is because of that, My mind goes to body parts that the person doesn't feel belongs but that they were born with and not something socially attached to them.
There's much more that I don't understand but I really feel like this wall of text is enough to unpack, if you choose to do so. Thank you in advance for your time and patience. I appreciate any insight you choose to provide.
Scientists are doing research into why we feel this way and are actually discovering connections from birth, but I don't know that much about it yet so I'll leave those explanations to others who have read the study. For now, here's my experience with it.
For me, I've hated my body and how I've looked since I was in high school. I grew up being brainwashed by old movies and tv shows that separated sexes and that made it seem like I had to try to be feminine and to look pretty at all times and try to fit the gender norms. I hated everything about being female and I've tried everything to love myself as AFAB, but none of it worked. I'm 32 and the years since I entered high school have been rough and have put me through so much depression, suicidal tendencies, and panic attacks. I only decided last year that I'm finally taking that step that I hinted at in high school. I like things made for guys and I prefer to hang with guys and I've always leaned in that direction and have been called a tomboy many times. I've never fit in with women or felt any real connection to being female. I feel so much better already just with the hair and the changes in my thinking and I haven't gotten my surgeries yet. It was crazy the difference just switching to seeing myself as male has made on my mental well being. I actually smile when I see myself in the mirror now.
If you don't mind me asking, do you feel the surgeries are necessary to feel as at peace with yourself as you can or do you feel that the steps you've taken to this point might suffice in giving you a chance at a happy life? If you feel the surgeries are a necessary step, can you put into words why? Unlike society forcing things on you, it seems at the point of surgery, it has less to do with that and more with changing you for you. I struggle to understand what causes a person to feel that way.
I'm definitely not asking you to justify your desires and I understand if you'd rather not speak about it to me, I'm just wondering if you can help me understand the necessity of something that seems like such a drastic measure to me. The reason behind it must be very powerful.
Yes I do feel it's necessary, but I'm someone who's coming from being "well-endowed". I live with the literal weight of my birth gender. That plus having people say she/her because I sound like a girl when I'm a gamer and streamer is a constant reminder of it. It weighs on me and I can't help feeling like I need to push for that change. It's a need, not a want for me. For me, the surgeries would make a major difference in how I feel mentally and physically. Imagine being a cis-man with a feminine voice and excessively large man boobs. Would you want to have that corrected or would you put up with it? That's what it's like.
(If it didn't come through, part of this is light hearted)