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LGBTQI - We're here, we're...you know the rest of it


karaddin

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This thread is a dedicated safe space for everyone under the very broad banner of LGBTQI to discuss their experiences, their identities and their feelings. It is not a space to declare homosexuality a sin or to question the validity of transgender identity, the former is a religious opinion and the latter is a settled matter with one viable treatment path.



Outsiders are welcome in this thread, to discuss things and to learn, but please keep the above in mind. Please also remember that while a question may seem novel to you, some of us are interrogated about our basic identity frequently, along with being told it's invalid, so patience is worn - we may choose to answer questions, but there is no obligation to do so, there is a lot of information in past iterations of this thread and on the internet at large. Doing some prior research goes a long way to showing good faith in your interest.



Also bear in mind that just because you may be one part of the very broad umbrella, that doesn't give you specific insight into others. As a lesbian transsexual, I don't have great insight into the challenges of being a gay man. A cisgender bisexual man has no greater idea of trans identity than a cisgender heterosexual man. A binary identified transsexual (once again such as myself) may have no greater understanding of a non-binary identity than a cisgender person does of transgender identity. We are only experts on our own lives and identities, please don't act like being part of one group grants leave to attack or undermine another group, but feel free to explore any issues, or for that matter joys, you have in your own life as a result of your sexuality, gender identity or sexual development.



Continuing from the last thread, I've found a number of events from the last month particularly challenging - from the swarm of publicity following Caitlyn Jenner's announcement and the way insulting topics sprouted on this forum in it's wake, to the attempted parallels between transgender identities and so called "transracial" or "transethnic" ones - which I covered my feelings in the last thread. From my ongoing struggle with recovery and spending time with such a diverse and beautiful group of trans women on my return to Thailand and seeing the way all of them are damaged by society, to the assault of a trans woman 5minutes away from my apartment in the previously safe lesbian neighbourhood at a bar she was performing at, with no assistance from the staff/security. Most recently from OITNB



finding the depiction of transphobic violence against Laverne Cox's character sudden and out of nowhere in comparison to prior seasons, and highly problematic with still a couple of episodes to go - I don't care if it's realistic, I have issues with the depiction and it was upsetting to me in a show I wasn't expecting to have it in



So thank you to everyone who reached out in thread or out of it to say I'd made a difference.





Not pathetic at all Karaddin- we're only human after all. To open one's self to compassion is to make one's self vulnerable to the world.



And only the strong can let themselves be vulnerable.




Thanks Sci, it's an opinion I happen to share and I guess the issue is that I'm not feeling strong at the moment, but I don't know how to stop showing my vulnerability now I've started.






First off, I want to say how much I love, respect and admire you! You are one of the strongest, kindest, most caring people I know.



Second, you have made a huge difference to me! I know I screwed up with my son, but with your vlog and some of your posts I am hoping I can at least have an open and honest conversation with him, to let him know I was wrong to dismiss his feelings before and that he can come to me now.




I can only vaguely remember speaking to you about this, which I'm hoping means it was in the last 5 months and the reason for my memory was the copious amounts of medications I've been on, rather than simple forgetfulness. Thanks all the same, whether reaching young trans people themselves or parents of them, both feel particularly important to me as influencing a parent really is impacting the life of the young trans person as well.



On the good news front I have been making some amazing friends from twitter, only one of whom has turned into face to face friendship, but are making plans to do so with a couple more and I think one of them at least has the potential to be another really close friendship. Twitter took some time to get value out of, and there are certainly elements of it that are full of toxic anger, but I seem to have found a little corner of Australian twitter that is mostly just supportive and is making a difference to me.


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i'm just as bad at like actually interacting people on twitter as I am in meatspace

but

turns out THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE WHO THINK LIKE I DO and going from feeling totally alone to seeing the daily thoughts of a whole bunch of weird queers like me is just

the world looks different from here

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Most recently from

finding the depiction of transphobic violence against Laverne Cox's character sudden and out of nowhere in comparison to prior seasons, and highly problematic with still a couple of episodes to go - I don't care if it's realistic, I have issues with the depiction and it was upsetting to me in a show I wasn't expecting to have it in

For the first time I can recall, I appreciate a spoiler. I've only watched a couple of episodes, this season and wouldn't have expected that. Thanks. Now I can prepare.

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Figure this will get linked eventually so might as well beat it to the punch and link it myself. Laverne Cox says men who date trans women are more stigmatised than trans women which I consider to be some grade A bullshit and extremely disappointing to see her saying it. Yes there is stigma there, and yes removing it will help us, but the claim is just laughable if it weren't so offensive. The fragile masculinity of these men is where a huge part of the real physical danger to trans women comes from, and yes this stems from stigma as well, but they aren't the ones fucking dying for it. They aren't the ones who have their psyche torn apart by it. They can hide it, and treat us like their filthy secret, or just choose to ignore the attraction in the first place. It's not remotely comparable.


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Figure this will get linked eventually so might as well beat it to the punch and link it myself. Laverne Cox says men who date trans women are more stigmatised than trans women which I consider to be some grade A bullshit and extremely disappointing to see her saying it. Yes there is stigma there, and yes removing it will help us, but the claim is just laughable if it weren't so offensive. The fragile masculinity of these men is where a huge part of the real physical danger to trans women comes from, and yes this stems from stigma as well, but they aren't the ones fucking dying for it. They aren't the ones who have their psyche torn apart by it. They can hide it, and treat us like their filthy secret, or just choose to ignore the attraction in the first place. It's not remotely comparable.

Aren't the men who have "fragile masculinity" different from the ones Ms. Cox is talking about?

As I understand it the danger to transwomen in men who "date" them comes when a man first finds out the person he's dating is a transwoman. At that point men who have "fragile masculinity" would be likely to turn violent.

But Ms. Cox seems to be talking about men who have known for some time that their partner is a transwoman and have kept up an ongoing relationship with her. I would think most of those men in our modern culture would be LESS likely to have "fragile masculinity" than the average cisgendered man.

Are there any statistics that show that transwomen in ongoing relationships with cisgendered men who know their status from the start are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than cisgendered women in heterosexual relationships are?

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Figure this will get linked eventually so might as well beat it to the punch and link it myself. Laverne Cox says men who date trans women are more stigmatised than trans women which I consider to be some grade A bullshit and extremely disappointing to see her saying it. Yes there is stigma there, and yes removing it will help us, but the claim is just laughable if it weren't so offensive. The fragile masculinity of these men is where a huge part of the real physical danger to trans women comes from, and yes this stems from stigma as well, but they aren't the ones fucking dying for it. They aren't the ones who have their psyche torn apart by it. They can hide it, and treat us like their filthy secret, or just choose to ignore the attraction in the first place. It's not remotely comparable.

I'm afraid I must take exception to the wording of the paragraph, below. It emphasizes the concept that trans women women are different than other women. That used to be what we struggled against.

It also opens up the issue of men who are attracted specifically to trans women. This further emphasizes that difference, not to mention at what point does such attraction become fetishistic.

“Most men who are attracted to and date transgender women are probably stigmatized more than trans women are,” she observed in an interview with me onSiriusXM Progress. “I think a man who is dating trans women, who is a celebrity, or famous or is an athlete or something, needs to come forward –- or a musician –- and needs to say, ‘I love transgender women and [they] deserve to be loved and I’m going to declare that publicly.’ I think those men need some sort of inspiration and hope, so they can live more authentically.”

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I'm afraid I must take exception to the wording of the paragraph, below. It emphasizes the concept that trans women women are different than other women. That used to be what we struggled against.

It also opens up the issue of men who are attracted specifically to trans women. This further emphasizes that difference, not to mention at what point does such attraction become fetishistic.

I agree that the way Ms. Cox phrased it could cover "fetishistic" attraction because she used the plural -- if she had said men who are "dating a transwoman" and who say "I love a transgender woman" it wouldn't necessarily have that connotation.

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I agree that the way Ms. Cox phrased it could cover "fetishistic" attraction because she used the plural -- if she had said men who are "dating a transwoman" and who say "I love a transgender woman" it wouldn't necessarily have that connotation.

I know a couple where the guy was attracted to a trans woman, in part, because she was trans, yet they have such a wonderful relationship, that I don't see the attraction as fetishistic. It's a complex issue.

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I know a couple where the guy was attracted to a trans woman, in part, because she was trans, yet they have such a wonderful relationship, that I don't see the attraction as fetishistic. It's a complex issue.

I agree this is a complex issue. "Fetishism" of any kind is not an either/or thing but exists on a continuum. Everyone has preferences about the sort of people they are sexually and/or romantically attracted to.

It would seem to me that what enables your acquaintances' relationship to be "wonderful" is the phrase "in part." He was generally attracted to trans women, but there are also particular things about this woman that make him particularly attracted to her, so she must feel she is being loved for her individual self, not just as someone who happens to have a particular characteristic.

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Are there any statistics that show that transwomen in ongoing relationships with cisgendered men who know their status from the start are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than cisgendered women in heterosexual relationships are?

Yes

ETA and that shouldn't need asking. Any time you find a group of women that society treats as if they should be lucky to have someone that 'accepts' them you find drastically higher abuse rates. The rates for trans women are among the highest.

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Which leads to an interesting question. Even back in the 70s when the protocol was "stealth", it was always recommended that one disclose being trans to anyone they were likely to become intimate with. I went along with that, because there were always the horror stories of what could happen if your partner found out. But I always felt it was self-defeating.


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In addition to what Brook said, there are an awful lot of men who will date a trans woman, but only in secret. The prospect of people finding out either that they are dating said trans woman (when it is known she is trans) or that the woman they are dating is trans (where it is not) is seen as something that undermines their masculinity, because it will make people see them as gay (because they are transphobic dickbags who don't see us as women). Hence we are their dirty secret. It frequently reduces the relationship to just sex.

Some of the most brutal murders of trans women are done by men who had been seeing/having sex with the trans woman and knew prior to murdering them, an especially nasty one from Brazil a few years ago springs to mind where the police refused to even charge despite plenty of evidence.

There are an awful lot of straight men that are very attracted to dick and very ashamed of this fact.

And yes, stats on abuse of trans women in relationships (on top of outright murders) are disturbingly high, even in lesbian relationships. One of the girls I was with in Thailand was actively undergoing this and putting up with it because she didn't believe she deserved better and excused everything he did, and that's a man who was comfortable enough to go to Thailand with her for surgery - that's already a group more likely to be accepting and still getting that.

ETA:

Robin - completely agree with your objection to that paragraph.

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Just an aside but next time someone comes in and tries to say that sex is defined by chromosomes here is a nice article (IMO) to throw at them:

http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

To be honest, what seems to come down is that there is no single universally applicable definition of "sex". It all depends on what you're looking at. All of them are valid within their contexts and completely useless outside of it. (I'm less bothered by terms like "chromosomal sex" or "genetic sex" or whatever, as long as you remember that they're only valid within these very specific contexts, eg. they don't neccessarily map to either identity or phenotype) and that they're a lot more complex than a simple binary.

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It's almost certainly not purely genetic, but contains epigenetic elements (stuff happens in the womb). Personally I think that from that point you get some people hard wired gay or straight, and an awful lot with the capacity to be bi. Socialisation then takes those with the capacity to be bi, makes most of them straight, some stay bi and some end up gay. I still don't think it ends up being a choice for these people either, the brain is plastic and can be modified in a solid physical way by social events, and I think you see this reflected in the sexuality of trans people - much higher rates of homosexuality and bisexuality amongst later transitioning trans people because our socialisation is flipped from the norm and pushes us in that direction.

I think I had the capacity to be bi, but socialisation and particularly my feelings about men have pushed me gay. I'm still awful close though, and I'm sure there are men out there I could fall for and definitely some I'd have sex with (hiddleston or Pedro pascal for eg) but it would be despite their being men, where I find women attractive in part because they are women. So I identify as queer, because while I'm functionally gay the possibility exists, but that possibility isn't high or in the right tone to consider myself bi and definitely not pan (the way I see pan).

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Right....

Well I grew up in a very structured, conservative family. Born to a religious mother, who jumped from belief to belief until I came of age I followed along. (She wasn't very loving or caring and usually considered me a burden and an inconvenience to her life etc.

Now I'm agnostic and perfectly content with it.

When I was thirteen I met my mother's half sister, half brother, and stepfather for the first time. My aunt is a lesbian, she's very comfortable with herself and set in what she believed in, and all the while publicly shunned by all of her family.

I found out I was bisexual, and around my early teen years and with time have become a bit more comfortable with myself and my interest.

My mother hasn't gotten over this, and still has a long list of obscene things to call me. Though she's a giant fuck up, so I won't get into that right now.

Though Im still increasingly curious.

Do you happen to have a link I can read?

Would you say most people start out being sexually attracted to both?

That we're formed by culture which impacted what we are in a sense?

With being queer, were you ever bothered by this?

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