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

[emberling]

it's very hard to watch but

i thought they did a great job at highlighting the violence of misgendering

like, here's this jerk phobe mom, going on and on about her "son" <deadname> to whoever will listen

and everyone around her is just: no. not even going to dignify it with a response.

there are literally evil doctors trying to cut up a trans woman's brain for nefarious purposes who are using the mother's next of kin status as legal justification

they fake diagnose her with a condition that makes her hallucinate

and yet they still show absolutely no sign of disrespecting her gender, other than not kicking mom to the curb

(and they need mom)

'course, the next of kin thing is also a very true worry for lgbt+ peeps.

[karaddin]

I just read an autostraddle piece on it, which didn't think the show had earned the emotions it makes you feel through that, but I think I'm more with you. I feel like that interaction with the mother is much more effective at challenging attitudes than the season 3 OITNB arc for Sophia for example, and I think it's precisely because of what you say. Everyone else is treating her as a woman, she clearly is a woman, yet her Mum is there irrationally calling her by male pronouns and deadnaming her, and you see her flinching every time it happens and feel what it's doing to her.

And yeah, the next of kin thing is terrifying when it comes to medical decisions being made by families that don't respect identity.

[Lily Valley]

I am so glad you like it!!! Tell me when you finish. There are a couple scenes that made me just cry.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Sorry to double post, but wanted to bring up something positive now. I've been watching sense8 the last few days, and after seeing the other thread open at the moment about bodies are beautiful it made me realise something. I'm finding the Nomi and Amanita ridiculously hot, and not just because they are really beautiful women. There is something intoxicating about seeing a positive sexual relationship on the screen that approximates my own - a trans woman with a cis woman. They are much more involved in the LGBTQI community than Brook and I, and they don't look anything like us, but that core similarity is there. The show very much treats it as hot as well, and Nomi as a body worthy of desire without being at all male gazey or objectifying or anything about her genitals - at least at the point I'm at I've got no idea if she's had surgery or not and it feels very empowering in fact. I knew that seeing lesbian relationships on screen had a big impact on me, yet I'm still surprised at how much extra punch it packs when there is a trans woman being shown like this. Laverne Cox in OITNB is great, but since the first season she's been very limited in what she's had to do and it's almost all been about being trans. With Nomi that's still part of the story but it's not all of her story, and getting to see her in a positive loving sexual relationship is a big difference.

Just really loving it and amazed by how much these scenes are doing for me.

I agree. They are a wonderful couple. I have to admit that seeing them is both delightful and painful, because it makes me regret never having been young (if you understand what I mean).

it's very hard to watch but

i thought they did a great job at highlighting the violence of misgendering

like, here's this jerk phobe mom, going on and on about her "son" <deadname> to whoever will listen

and everyone around her is just: no. not even going to dignify it with a response.

there are literally evil doctors trying to cut up a trans woman's brain for nefarious purposes who are using the mother's next of kin status as legal justification

they fake diagnose her with a condition that makes her hallucinate

and yet they still show absolutely no sign of disrespecting her gender, other than not kicking mom to the curb

(and they need mom)

'course, the next of kin thing is also a very true worry for lgbt+ peeps.

At least the evil doctors are doing what they are doing for reasons other than her being trans, though the pain inflicted upon her by her mother, is rather hard to watch.

That the show has created a character that is awesome, whether trans or not, is the right way to go.

[Galactus]

I'm curious RE: Next of kin, can't you appoint someone to make medical decisions for you in case you're made incapable of doing so? While next-of-kin is usually the default, it's not strictly speaking required, no?

[Galactus]

EDIT: Also, WTF is up with the board, it keeps stalling whenever I try to post, yet the post seem to actually happen.

[Robin Of House Hill]

This is a summary of a phone conversation I had with a long time friend, a week ago. Our conversations are unique because we don't filter what we say, and they sometimes yield surprising results.

Me: In the seventies, when I transitioned, the process was simple...social and medical transition and then blend into society without revealing we were trans. Because of all the gate keeping, which included assessment that our appearance was such that we had a reasonable chance to not be recognized as trans, that it was almost an implied promise.

Him: It was a false promise. That's why I want you to publish your book, to show you were misled.

Me: I don't think it was. What happened in the years since, with the increase of trans visibility, created conditions no one could have foreseen, back then. It wasn't a change forced upon us by cis people. We did this to ourselves.

Him: I used to think that visibility was good, though now, I'm not so sure. When I walk down the street, I don't want anyone thinking that I'm different.

Me: Well, the more they see trans people on the news, in TV shows and movies, the more likely they are to read us as trans, unless we are very cisnormative.

Him: What about those who can't pass, or are non-binary?

Me: I don't have an answer for that. What helps them without harming those who can? Visibility and the public awareness it generates, probably will get them more understanding.

Him: Public awareness will make it more difficult for us.

Me: True, but there is one thing to consider. Those who are more open about being trans, do seem to be having more fun than us.

Him: You're not going to change, though.

Me: Not likely.

[brook]

Oh that's really interesting was it an immediate thing? Where you were self aware?

I'll answer this for you but it's going to take a keyboard or a lot of time and I don't have either at the moment so I'll get back to you when I do xxx

[karaddin]

Robin - the simple protocols you describe inherently prevent anyone that doesn't have a chance of "passing" from getting to transition and I don't care if I'm hurt by them getting to, I can't sanction any situation which throws them under the bus for my own safety. I have at least one friend that almost certainly would have been denied by that gate keeping and she is quite possibly even more of a woman than me, and that's saying something.

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?

I don't have a link sorry, however I'll try answer the bold now I've remembered I forgot to answer. I don't know if I'd speculate that "most" people start out with the capacity to be bisexual, but I suspect it's close to that. Research is scarce at the moment, but I think the best chance we have of measuring this is looking at the numbers of gay+bi/pan/queer trans people, and I think that is >50%, but as I said...numbers aren't very solid. My reasoning being that with trans people, most who have the capacity for same sex attraction will end up exploring it, due to two effects. The first being those that transition later have the opposite impact from socialisation, as I said earlier, and also when you've attempted to live as both genders, getting hung up on the gender/homophobic blocking of attraction makes a whole lot less sense. It still happens, but a lot less, so you'll get closer to the true rates. I think it tends to break down at 40% straight, 40% bi/pan/queer, 20% gay or thereabouts. So whether its a majority, or just very close, having the capacity for attraction to both I think its a hell of a lot more than we currently see in the general population and I think it's a pretty standard way to be.

And yes, I absolutely think the culture we are in impacts the growth of the brain and the formation of our sexuality. I think in a completely accepting society, the numbers will end up close to that of trans people although I think the numbers of exclusively same sex attracted (both trans and cis) would actually be lower than what we see in trans people now, as the socialisation compulsion that works the opposite way in late transitioning trans people wouldnt be present. The exclusively heterosexual might also be a little lower, so I wouldn't be surprised if you end up with a majority bi/pan/queer.

With your last bolded question, I'm not sure what you mean? Does it bother me that my sexuality was shaped by culture? Not really, I don't see any way for it to be avoided. I think I'm happier and safer being exclusively attracted to women in the current state of affairs than I would be if I was trying to date men as well. Frankly speaking I'm terrified of men in the general sense and I don't want to go near them romantically. There are some sexual urges that are much stronger now I've had surgery and I'd like to explore certain activities, and ruling out cis men basically means my only avenue for that is a trans woman who hasn't had surgery, still has functionality with her bits and is on board with using them. I'm certainly attracted to women like that, but there aren't that many of them and I'm very much concerned about the possibility of them feeling that I'm fetishising them, and I absolutely do not want to do that. So I guess in that sense I'm losing out from the influence culture has had on me, but in a way I'm OK with.

[Weeping Sore]

I think bi people should resist the temptation to extrapolate from their experience and posit that everyone is really bi on some level.

Though I do think there is more malleability to sexuality than most people admit...how else to explain historical phenomena like the Spartan army's policy of compulsory homosexuality (to inspire acts of heroism in defense of one's lovers. Oddly, I think this wasn't emphasized too much in the movie 300...) Perhaps soldiers were selected from the not 100% heterosexual group, which was almost certainly larger in a society where at least homosexual behavior at some stages of life was more normative. It does lend some credence to the idea that a relatively small percentage of the poplulation are "pure" 0 and 6s on the Kinsey scale, and a change in external conditions* (i.e., societal attitudes) might lead to more expression of sexual fluidity.

ETA: I think I just said, we probably shouldn't do "A", followed by actually doing "A". Oh well.

*you can also see an increase in homosexual expression in enforced single-gender institutional conditions like boarding schools or prisons, though of course a percentage of that is involuntary (what percentage might be hard to suss out, as the conditions may also act as "cover". This is in no way apologia for rape/sexual assault, which is of course a horrific problem.)

[karaddin]

To be clear I'm not saying that most people are bi, brain plasticity is a thing and I think by the time we hit sexual maturity social influences have hard coded the sexuality for most people as straight, bi or gay. What I was saying is that at birth I think a hell of a lot more people have the capacity to be attracted to anyone, and social influences mold the brain into said hard coded state. In our current society we are a hell of a long way from the majority of people being bi, and that isn't people being in denial, they are genuinely not bi.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Robin - the simple protocols you describe inherently prevent anyone that doesn't have a chance of "passing" from getting to transition and I don't care if I'm hurt by them getting to, I can't sanction any situation which throws them under the bus for my own safety. I have at least one friend that almost certainly would have been denied by that gate keeping and she is quite possibly even more of a woman than me, and that's saying something.

Considering the era, it was more compassionate than one might believe. It was based on, how do we let a person go forward, if they stand virtually no chance of social acceptance, access to employment of housing, etc. I think they were reluctant to accept responsibility for someone being eaten alive by the society that existed at that time. But, whether their motives were those of concern or simply of imposing arbitrary rules, is conjecture. While I wish there was a way where no one got thrown under the bus, I accept the necessity that whatever is necessary to allow people to transition, must be supported.

[karaddin]

I just feel that is their choice to make. You can tell them they will be outcast, subject to violence and whatever else and it will scare many off, but those with the strongest dysphoria will push ahead anyway and they should have that choice. It's not the place of others to deny us the chance to live as ourselves, however difficult that life may be. It's hardly the only area where medicine has been paternalistic past the point of being reasonable, and it generally happens where women are concerned.

[Lily Valley]

On bisexuality and brain plasticity:

I have far less of a "type" for women than I do men. I don't know if this is because of early socialization and hard-wiring of same-sex attraction and a loooong, confusing coming out period or if it's because my relationships with women are so different than those with men or a combination of factors totally unknown. (God that is an awful run-on sentence).

I will say that my early teens were pretty painful. Things got much better once I was an adult and met some out gay and lesbian people.

My attractions also seem to have some hormonal elements as well. I sometimes feel like a pendulum swinging back and forth. This is getting easier to manage as more bisexual people self identify.

. I think it is also why I embraced "queer". Until the last 10 years everyone wanted me to pick one and stick to it. This has never ever been possible for me. It cpnfused my friends, parents and it scared my lovers. There's more acceptance now. In addition, "queer" really has "mind your own fkn business" written all over it. It totally shuts down nosy questions.

WS, OF COURSE bisexual people think you all should all be bisexual. My brother thinks all the boys should be gay.

Lastly, of all the women in the world I totally not attracted to straight women. Not face to face anyhow. I reserve the right to crush with abandon on movie stars and certain boarders I haven't yet met.

[Lily Valley]

Apologies for all typos above. On crap phone.

[Weeping Sore]

I like "queer" too, because actually explaining what I think I am right now is likely to make the normals throw up their hands in the universal sign for "whatever". That is...I'm transgender/bigender, hetero as a man and probably bi as a female if I'm honest. Now...it's possible I'm holding on to the male side as a way to avoid the consequences (family/work) of taking medical steps to transition to a woman, but the vacillation is drastic enough that both genders are still real to me. So I'm either legitimately both genders or half-closeted and cowardly. Either time will tell or push will come to shove, or the pendulum will keep alternating.

[brook]

Ok so some sort of answer to Cora....

I was later than average to really develop much in the way of sexual attraction to anybody. In hindsight I can tell you that my obsession with a certain tv character was... well at least romantic if not sexual in nature (and has had a scarily large inpact on my 'type' in the sense that I find a pretty big range of women attractive but give a woman brunette curls and a few freckles on her nose and I'm almost certain to at least take notice). I had similar somewhat confused feelings for one of the girls who used to babysit for us.

So anyway I was I think 13 the first time I was aware of any actual sexual feelings for someone real and that was in the middle of a slumber party in with a bunch of my friends cuddled up with my best friend and wanting rather desperately to kiss her.

At this point I can thank every 90's teen magazine ever that ran lots of articles assuring girls that it was totally normal to get crushes on female friends and that it didn't mean they were gay but somehow forgot to mention that yes they might be (and Bi was never even considered as an option). So I convinced myself if was nothing and spent the next couple of years half suspecting I was a lesbian, half not really thinking about it at all and at the same time trying desperately to somehow make myself crush on the same male celebs my friends were because I was already 'weird' enough and I really didn't want to have another reason to not fit in.

Fast forward to 15 and I start to realise that real life boys can be interesting as well so I just kind of assume that the magazines were right and if was just a phase and I was definitely straight.

I have no idea how I reconciled that with the fact that my first kiss with a boy was followed quickly by my first with a girl (a different friend of mine and I mean I don't even remember that boy's name but I can tell you every detail of what happened the night that we made out and my world just exploded) or that once I started sleeping with people I quickly discovered I liked sleeping with women as well. All I knew about bi people was stereotypes and I knew that wasn't me so I somehow convinced myself that it was all just fun. I was head over heels in love with my best friend but had absolutely no awareness of that fact.

It was my late teens that I really started to stuggle with things and by my very early 20's I actually self-identified as a lesbian even though I was in a long term relationship with a guy who I was deeply in love with. My attraction to guys has always been much more about emotions or personality traits leading me to appreciate the physical while my attraction to women is much more a mix of that and just pure 'wow she's hot' and so I dunno to me at that stage I just decided I could fall in love with guys despite being bi.

It was a few years more before I was able to actually completely come to terms with things and identify myself as bi... and that came with a considerable amount of self-loathing (that'd be the stereotypes again) which in turn was one factor which led me to a relationship with the completely wrong man who 'accepted' that part of me (he didn't for the record, or he did as long as I never spoke about it or did anything that indicated I was ever attracted to women) which is all why I'm so fucking happy when higher profile celebrities come out as Bi because I really wish I'd had an actual range of role models out there who could have shown me that there were real options to be a bi adult and 'normal'.

Lastly, of all the women in the world I totally not attracted to straight women. Not face to face anyhow. I reserve the right to crush with abandon on movie stars and certain boarders I haven't yet met.

Sigh so jealous I hate you (I love you though)

[Lily Valley]

Brook,

I love you too. And don't get me wrong, I think they're lovely, I never turn down a bit of bachelorette bucket list kissing, but it's just silly. Certainly not worth taking pants off or at all memorable.

I learned a big lesson about why that greasy red lipstick from the 80's was a TERRIBLE idea my first kiss with a girl.

I was also 15, we had to sneak to her bathroom to get rid of terrifuing clown mouth. We were both overpowdered goths, too. Hilarity ensued. I will never ever forget that afternoon or how beautiful she looked.

[brook]

L - whatever your gender or sexuality you are anything but cowardly. Just confronting this stuff is hard and I've only had to do the easier side of it.

Lily - Lol thankfully we had no makeup to worry about just her mother in the next room :p

[Tellus Explorer]

Hey I can't reply now, since I have work in a bit. But I just want to say I've read every post in here thus far and I truly appreciate every one of you!!

:grouphug: you're awesome