Now Ye're Talking - To a Transgender Woman

ScienceNerd wrote: »

First, thank you for for doing the AMA, really looking forward to what insights you can give us.

Thank you - I'm looking forward to seeing the kinds of questions I get asked!

You've obviously put yourself somewhat in the public eye to stand up for your rights, and transgender rights in general (and I say fair play to you). Did you worry this could make you a target for abuse?

Yes.

The good news from my point of view is that I "pass" quite well (i.e. my natural features, plus estrogen, make me look quite feminine). And the other good news is that I had previous experience which taught me that having your picture in the papers or your face on the TV doesn't mean that you suddenly get stopped in the street.

I was on Vincent Browne People's debate last year, where I got to say a few words about marriage equality. Out of that, only one person who didn't know me said anything to me about it (a clerk in the post office!).

But I guess I've decided that transition has given me a new lease on life. If it ends up costing me my life (the extreme worst-case scenario) through standing up for myself, then I still had a few years that I would not have had if I didn't stand up for myself.

Have you seen anyone do a complete u-turn as to their opinion on transgender folk? i.e. go from hating/denying it's real to acceptance?

I've read stories on reddit and the like. But in my personal life I can't say I have.

With the exception of the transphobic minority, I think people in general *want to* accept me and treat me like everyone else. But they don't "get it" - they don't understand why I'd do something so radical like transition - and that's scary for them.

Did you transition privately or through the HSE?

A mixture.

Medical transition (and there are more than one "type" of transition - there is also e.g. legal transition, and the big one is social transition) is a life-long thing. I will be taking estrogen tablets for the rest of my life. I may yet be getting breast augmentation (I'm on the fence about it).

What are attitudes like in with hospital staff towards transgender people?

Varied, but I think it's gotten a lot better since I started transition. The first GP I went to didn't even know what "transgender" meant. Having said that, the HSE's trans-specific healthcare is dreadful in terms of how they treat us (though it's good in the sense that you can get everything except for free (though you have to pay for hormones like any other medicine) if you try hard enough and shout hard enough and have the patience of a galaxy of saints).

What do you think of the media's portrayal of transgender people?

The best portrayals are usually at least a bit disrespectful on some level. The average portrayal is dreadful, horrific, disgusting, despicable, and causes untold suffering and death in the transgender community.

It's one of the reasons why I'm glad I've discovered a talent for doing media stuff.

In my case, media portrayals of transgender people is undoubtedly one of the reasons why I ended up suffering gender dysphoria for as long as I did. Whenever the idea came into my mind that I might be transgender, I said to myself "but I'm not like those transgender people you see in the media!". :mad:

Sorry, load of questions just came at once

Thank you for them!

Have you ever read wandering son?

megaten wrote: »

Have you ever read wandering son?

Nope.

But there is an interesting phenomenon in the transgender community. A ridiculous number of transgender women work in I.T. (like myself), and a ridiculous number of us are nerds - and comic books are one of the big nerdiness we seem to have. So good respectful proper transgender portrayals are creeping into the comic world.

Greenmachine wrote: »

Where does your sexuality come in all of this. I have met various transgender people, and cross-dressers from working on 2nd hand clothing stores, for example, an individual may be born male, but identify as a lesbian woman.

Well, I was born a transgender girl. As for my sexuality - when I mistakenly believed I was male, I saw myself as straight. However, when I discovered that I am actually transgender female, I suddenly "understood" gender (it had been a mystery to me up to then), and I found that, in fact, I have a sexual attraction to men. I now understand that I'm bisexual, and I've slept with both men and women since starting transition.

But sexuality and gender identity are two completely separate independent things. Gender identity is who you are, and sexuality is who you sleep with.

Do you think the physical transformation is fully necessary, for people to recognize, your gender identity, particularly when it come to intimate personal relationships.

Transition is about one intimate relationship and one intimate relationship only - namely my relationship with me.

In my case, I started transition because I believed that the answer to your first question (other people recognising my gender identity) was "yes". But I quickly found that there was another reason for me to transition. I find that I feel so much better - particularly in terms of how my head/brain feels - on estrogen than on testosterone. I believe there is a physical and physiological component to me being transgender - I have a body which, in spite of (probably) having the Y chromosome, still needs estrogen to function properly.

That's my experience. Others have different experiences.

Your second question was about the need for transition in terms of intimate relationships with other people. It's hard for anyone to have an intimate relationship with other people when your relationship with yourself is broken, and that is why transition is about the relationship you have with yourself. Other people come later.

Have you suffered any personal abuse, was this worse than your own struggle with your identity before you spend time in the lgbt community.

I most certainly have suffered personal abuse.

Last year, I had a bottle thrown at me in broad daylight by some kids who were hiding behind a bush. I've been shouted at in shops.

But it's rare, and my struggle with my identity was most definitely worse. That struggle was well on the way towards killing me.

Do you play Wordament? I think I've seen your name in the leaderboards a few times.

Hi there

I'm not entirely sure how to word this question, so I'll probably have to bumble into it and hope. One of the sticking points with transgender acceptance seems to be a hostility towards the idea of "I was born in the wrong body, I'm supposed to be a different gender". It's obviously impossible for someone who isn't transgender to understand how it feels to grow up, go through puberty and go through all those experiences. Equally, it seems obvious that the experiences of a trans person will be fundamentally different to the experiences of someone who was born into one gender and never experiences any desire/need/requirement to change.

As part of your transition, have you felt "I'm becoming a woman", or "I'm sorting out being a trans woman"? Do you feel there's a significant difference?

In a distant future, do you envision a world with genders which recognise male/female/trans, or one where the genders are still male/female, and trans folk are in a position to (or are forced to) remain behind the gender they've identified with "invisibly"?

Hope that makes sense.

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

I'm not entirely sure how to word this question, so I'll probably have to bumble into it and hope. One of the sticking points with transgender acceptance seems to be a hostility towards the idea of "I was born in the wrong body, I'm supposed to be a different gender". It's obviously impossible for someone who isn't transgender to understand how it feels to grow up, go through puberty and go through all those experiences. Equally, it seems obvious that the experiences of a trans person will be fundamentally different to the experiences of someone who was born into one gender and never experiences any desire/need/requirement to change.

As part of your transition, have you felt "I'm becoming a woman", or "I'm sorting out being a trans woman"? Do you feel there's a significant difference?

Definitely "I'm sorting out the consequences of the recently-discovered fact that I was born a transgender female". And there is a significant difference.

I hate the expression "I was born into the wrong body". I understand where that expression came from - it was used by transgender people to try and describe an experience that's ridiculously difficult to describe.

Here's what I believe, and there is a degree of scientific evidence to back this up. Babies are constantly being born with something "wrong" with them. Yet we, as a society, seem to have this notion that mother nature always gets the gender of babies perfectly correct each and every time. She doesn't! I believe that I was born with a body which produced a massive excess of testosterone over estrogen, yet my organs need estrogen much more than testosterone. In particular, my brain needs estrogen (and I can tell you from first hand experience that being on testosterone is a very different experience than being on estrogen - and the latter most decidedly feels much better for me - and female-to-male trans people will tell you that testosterone feels much better for them).

I don't take estrogen because I want breasts - I take estrogen because I've discovered that I need it in order to function!!! There is something about my body (likely my brain) that most definitely needs estrogen.

So I don't see myself as "becoming a woman" at all. I've always been a woman in some sense or other, in that I've always had a body which properly runs on estrogen.

In a distant future, do you envision a world with genders which recognise male/female/trans, or one where the genders are still male/female, and trans folk are in a position to (or are forced to) remain behind the gender they've identified with "invisibly"?

There isn't one way to be transgender. In my case, I'm female, I've happily changed my documentation to say so, and I'll (eventually!) be changing my birth cert. Socially I tell people I'm female, though I don't nervously hide that I'm also transgender.

But there are transgender friends of mine for whom neither "male" nor "female" fits. In Australia and a few other places, they can get gender "X" on their documentation, and I know a few people who would like to see gender "X" introduced into our gender recognition legislation (currently being discussed in the Oireachtas - though it's unlikely to happen).

I hope that answers your question.

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Well first off I'd like to tell ya how brave you are for doing this, you're an inspiration to us all, not just LGBTQI people.

Thanks. I'd encourage everyone to give themselves the freedom to express their inner selves.

I have a question which is a bit silly (to me) but I'll ask it anyway.

The only silly question is the one that was asking to be asked, but wasn't.

What do you think of Facebook having multiple gender titles to choose from, I believe there's just short of 60, everything from cis, genderqueer to fill in the blank.

A very positive move. Personally my facebook page is going to remain "female", but this move raises awareness, and there are lots of my friends who are delighted to be able to tell their facebook contacts about their true experience of gender.

What about national IDs would you prefer to have Male/Female/Other only on it or go the Facebook route and have multiple possible choices.

I think the question can be asked - why do we need gender on our national IDs at all? What purpose does it serve? It seems to me that the only purpose it can serve is to enable gender discrimination or discrimination on the basis of sexuality.

In Thailand, when someone speaks to you, apparently you never ever call anyone "sir", "ma'am" until they themself calls themselves "sir" or "ma'am" in their speech with you. In other words - gender is a personal experience which each individual has and each individual should be permitted to express in whatever way is appropriate to them and which should be respected by everyone else. There really is no need for it to be a legal thing too.

MrWalsh wrote: »

You've just given me the epiphany that our words for sexuality are wrong! They are based on a comparison with our gender.

So a straight man likes women.
A lesbian woman likes women.

But surely we should just have one word for someone who likes women regardless of gender?

Gynephilic

Way ahead of ya!

And liking of men is called - you guessed it - androphilic.

deirdre_dub wrote: »

Reviewing my answer, I might not have answered your question.

There are some key concepts you need to get, and then the answer will become self-evident.

The first key concept is that what's between your legs doesn't determine your gender identity. For the vast majority of people, their gender identity (who they are in the deepest recesses of their sense of self) is the gender suggested by what's between their legs. But that's not the case for transgender people. So when it comes to transgender people, you have to completely forget about what's between our legs - it's irrelevant to gender identity.

The second key concept is that there are many ways in which people have gender, but that on a personal level, the most important of those by far is gender identity. In my case, I have a male chromosomal gender, a mixed biological gender, a female genital gender, a male birth cert (still waiting for gender recognition!), a female legal gender, female gender expression, and a female gender identity. Of all those ways I have gender, the one that's most important is that my gender identity is female.

And the third key concept is that it appears your gender identity is something you are born with. There have been various attempts to mess with the gender identity of young babies as they grow up, which have failed. So when I was born, I was born with a male chromosomal gender, a male biological gender, a male genital gender, a male birth cert, a male legal gender, male gender expression (imposed on me), and a female gender identity.

When you add the second and third key concepts, what happens is that I was not born male - I was born female, albeit transgender female.

And when you add the first and second key concepts, what happens is that when I am in a relationship with a woman, it's a lesbian relationship, regardless of what's between my legs, as I'm a female in a relationship with another female.

I am correct in understanding that this is where the concept of sis gender derives?