Y!A deleted this question the first time for some unknown reason.
Yeah, I'm FTM trans, and I get so much bs for it.
%26quot;You're a girl, act more like one.%26quot;
%26quot;You're not a boy.%26quot;
%26quot;You have a vagina and boobs, you're not a boy, you're a girl.%26quot;(as if telling me a lie would make me believe it)
%26quot;God gave you this body, he wants you to enjoy it. Stop trying to change what god gave you.%26quot;(which I think is ironic because the first person who said it to me had relaxer and hair dye in her hair, glasses, her ears were pierced, and I'm pretty sure that all of those count as slightly changing your body. Hey, %26quot;god%26quot; gave it to you, don't change it, right? /sarcasm)
%26quot;I don't want you to be miserable, stay a girl, because you ARE one.%26quot; apparently trying to be something i'm not is going to make me not miserable when i die? heck, i'm miserable right now, and this is the only life i get and i'd LOVE to enjoy it without my sex getting in the way. it's like saying all gay people are going to be happy pretending to be straight. lgbt doesn't work that way.
is there a way to explain to these people that i'm far from female?
How to explain to people that genitals =/= gender?
Ask them point blank:
%26quot;Without pointing to your body or showing me your birth certificate, how do you know what your gender is?%26quot;
If they're honest they'll say %26quot;I just know%26quot;. To which you reply: %26quot;It's the same for me.%26quot;
Other than that I don't know a good way to explain it in a quick exchange.
How to explain to people that genitals =/= gender?
Get a new group of friends and be yourself. What others think of you means nothing. Although I like you.
until I turn you over and check I won't comment on gender
Haha. Funny thing, I always have the other problem. From kindergarten on, people have stopped me in the girl's bathroom and asked, %26quot;are you a boy?%26quot; Likewise, people who hear my voice on the phone ask to make sure it's really me (cos phones make my voice sound really high-pitched). Even friends would always make jokes about me being %26quot;such a boy%26quot; or %26quot;like their boyfriends%26quot;. All this was before I realized that wanting to be a boy was called--word of the day--transsexualism.
Try explaining it with your actions instead of your words. If you've ever seen internet wars, you'll notice that no one ever wins, despite long and detailed retorts. The same is true in real life. So just live as you want to and take all comments in stride. How you live your life should be answer enough for you and those around you.
What for ?
The people who give you crap are probably not interested in learning. Some people, however, are just confused and need to be set straight(:P). For people who are genuinely interested in your wellbeing and want to learn, the first thing you have to do is impress on them that gender is so much more complex than most people take for granted.
The explanation I use works best if you have a couple minutes and some paper, but it's the fastest and most thorough explanation I've found so far.
Anthropologically speaking, gender, which we generally think of as one thing, is actually a combination of 3 basic parts: 1)Biological sex, 2)internal/mental sex, and 3)gender role.
for each of these things there is a sliding scale. Most people fall towards one end or another, but there are some (intersexed people, for example) who fall somewhere in between on one or several.
For most people, all three more or less match up, but some have 1 that is out of sync with the rest. If 3 doesn't match up with 1 and 2, it's pretty easy to deal with and generally presents few problems to the person. Some butch women, for example, might have a female body and identify as female but take on a societal role that is male.
In a transsexual, however, 1 and 2 don't match. This is a problem because the two work very closely together, and when they are out of sync it creates gender dysphoria, which will (as you know) persistently make you miserable until one of them conforms to the other. We don't have a way of changing 2, so it has to be 1. 3 can fall anywhere along the scale.
Erm, sorry about the essay, it works better drawn out, I promise.
well first off genitals dont equal gender .
genetals you have between your legs while gender is between your ears
Genitalia and sexual characteristics determine gender. However, your sociological gender can still be male. You can do/act however you want but you are biologically female all the way down to the chromosomes.
As for the people that say you shouldn't change what God gave you, they are just hypocrites and everyone does it one way or another.
