Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.
Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.
The questions I’ve been asked IRL:
- why / how did you pick your name?
- how long have you known?
- how long before you are done transitioning?
- how long do you have to be on HRT?
- is transgender like being transracial?
- what do the surgeries involve?
For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.
If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.
The instance stance is that we don’t allow people to undermine other folks identities. Transmeds think they’re doing the “right thing” for trans folk because they think that they’re protecting the “real” trans folk. People who want to undermine non binary identities, people who want to undermine therian identities etc, people who want to undermine neopronoun users, will always have a reason for it, often based around acceptability in the eyes of broader cishet society.
Just because you think there is a good reason to undermine those specific identities doesn’t make it ok. You and I, and anyone else is not the arbiter of anyones identities except their own, and the moment you feel that you do get to have an opinion on the validity of someone elses identity, is the moment you have put yourself above them.
There are absolutely trolls who will misuse this kind of acceptance. But even that doesn’t make it ok for you or I to install ourselves as arbitrators of other folks identity. The answer to the trolls doesn’t change just because they’re trolling by bad faith use of identity. The answer still remains that you remove them when they’re trolling becomes apparent. But on this instance, that removal is done in a way that doesn’t empower folk looking for excuses to invalidate others.