Special Edition: Sissies, Fetishists, and Kinksters

How often in media stories about MTF trans people using public accommodations for women do we see the same basic narrative: trans people have always felt these feelings for a long time, their feelings are not sexual or fetishistic, this isn’t a way to let sick or twisted men into women’s spaces.  Indeed, for most trans people, this is undoubtedly the case, but the problem lies in saying that there are no trans-identified people intent on using women’s spaces for fetishistic purposes.

You can see the result of this thinking in media coverage the current Planet Fitness case. The “trans woman” at the center of the Planet Fitness situation, “Carlotta Sklodowska,” is a male-identified fetishist who adopted a creepy, racist pseudo-Eastern European woman accent on his Facebook and liked posting objectifying, ultra-sexualized comments on fitness photos of women. Women are portrayed as crazy harpies for daring to warn other women about someone who is a serious creep.  Even though several actual transgender people, including Zoey Tur, specifically said that this person was a fetishistic crossdresser and not trans (and therefore shouldn’t have been protected by transgender protection policies or laws), those trans people have been told to shut up by prominent activists and have had their roles as media spokespeople called into question.

But is the distinction between a trans-identifying person and a fetishist always so clear?  When women are being told worldwide that we must accept XY-chromosomed, fully fertile people with penises in our changing rooms, we need to know whether the narrative of “this isn’t sexual, I just need to pee” is really all there is to it.

We here at Transgender Reality decided to investigate.

In this post, one transgender-identified male asks how he can stop having erections every time he dresses like a woman in public.  The overwhelming response by the community?

Dress as a woman more, and it’ll probably get better.  So this is one thing women can expect to be dealing with in the months and years to come: men dressing as women and entering women’s spaces deliberately to “desensitize” themselves to their sexual feelings.  Is this a service women should be required to provide to men–validation of their “woman-ness” even as they stand there with their erections simply from wearing “female clothes”?  Is the accommodation of these men through their desensitization process something all women and girls should be subjected to?

For that matter, how long is the average desensitization period?  Women need to know these things, since we are now supposed to accept the “trans woman” experience as female.  If this is so normal, talk more about it, trans activists.  How many weeks, months, years will you be getting erections when you put on a bra or enter a changing room?

In case you wonder whether this is common, here are a few links to sort you out.  In each link, the comments talk about just how common this is.  No one says “this is vile, you’re not a real trans person, get out.”  So in case you had any illusions about the trans community policing its own, and making sure that only people who just feel very sad about not having the opposite sex’s body get to use opposite sex facilities, rather than allowing fetishists as well, think again.

Whether you’re too turned on by women’s pajamas to even fall asleep:

Or believe that all women’s vaginas are for is to be “fucked hard” on a “regular basis”:

Or obsessively look at women’s pelvic areas to see if you can determine what kind of underwear they’re wearing, all while feeling jealousy and resentment (bonus: this man’s wife was 3 months pregnant with their first child at the time when he wrote this!):

Or you wake up in the middle of the night to pee, see your reflection and get hard:

Note how this person acknowledges that he has a fetish, and feels like he’s being “a girl” for the wrong reasons. What  advice does he receive? That his happiness is the only thing that matters, even when he admits getting “so turned on he’s scared”:

Being constantly turned on by “wearing pretty girl clothes” is great! And apparently the purpose of pronouns is sexual gratification:

Keep doing what you’re doing, but keep your penis!

Or how about  this guy, who wonders if watching “sissy porn” made him think he was transgender:

Or how about this person, who wants to be “pinned down and raped”, “forced to suck cock”, and “get caged and turned into a sexy little fuck-cow”, and who states that his fetishes are all “directly related to me becoming a girl”.

No worries though, the commenters assure him, most women have these fantasies, it’s totally common!

These are the people women are supposed to be okay with sharing bathrooms and dressing rooms with, and if someone complains they must be a horrible transphobe. Disclaimer: nobody is saying that all, or even most, trans people are this way. But some definitely are, by their own admission. And we’re apparently not allowed to point this out, without being called TERFs, transphobic, or bigots. And women are apparently not allowed to be skeptical about sharing private spaces with people who get so turned on they’re “scared” by any kind of “female” items or settings, even by female pronouns.

Learning how to be a woman: take less space, smile, and put on an innocent face

Poster “alwaysaprincess” needs help: “what are the most important body languages, poses, walking, etc that will make you as girly as possible?”

Here is some of the advice given by commenters.

Men strut, women walk like they are flinging water balloons ahead of their toes.

Women take up less space, point their toes inward and curl into little balls when sitting in chairs.

“Smile more, keep your legs together”, and “just think to yourself innocence”. Whatever that means.

“Smile more”. Because apparently you aren’t truly a woman if you have bitchy resting face.

This is just one post, and it’s full of stereotypes about how men and women act. This is a recurring theme in these communities, and one that we will be revisiting again and again in this blog. Many people seem to think that trans people are all about breaking down gender stereotypes, and “smashing the binary”, while in reality many of them are extremely preoccupied with conforming to strict gender roles.

As a side note, it’s curious that there are so many of these questions in online trans communities, when the narrative that has become standard in the last few years is that trans people are, and have always been the sex they identify as. If these people are women, why do they need to “practice walking and posing like women?”

Another teen goes from “I’m happy in my male body” to “I am truly a girl” in a few days.

“Could I be MtF?” asks a 14 year old male in the middle of puberty:

He’s not unhappy with his male body, in fact he explicitly says he’s happy with it. He reports having thoughts about becoming female as a kid, and of pretending to have boobs. He also notes that he feels like he can communicate better with girls.

User Chel_of_the_sea advices him to look into it, and advises that the childhood memories can be “evidence” that there is something to it.

A few days later, the same kid posts again, stating that “Lately I’ve been feeling dysphoria with varying levels of intensity”, and suggests three possibilities for what this might mean:

1. I’m truly female, and I’m feeling increasingly disconnected with my male self.

2. I’m truly androgynous, and I’m being torn between being male and being female.

3. I’m truly male, and I am taking this harmless questioning too far.

He then presents what he feels is “evidence” for each of these options:

Note that he simultaneously states that he truly is female and that he wants to be female. No explanation of what being female means to him. Note also the gender stereotypes: he apparently thinks that knitting is an activity that can only be enjoyed by females. Most noteworthy however, is the statement that he has gone from being “totally comfortable” in his body, to experiencing feelings of no longer “feeling secure as a male”.

He continues with presenting evidence for the second possibility: being “truly androgynous”:

“Varying in my masculinity and femininity”, or “having a personality that isn’t a cardboard stereotype” as we could also call it. Again the gender stereotypes crop up.

Finally he lays out what he considers evidence of the third possibility, him actually being male and just confusing himself:

Note how he says that he can no longer imagine living the rest of his life as male after being exposed to these ideas, and how he has begun to be “weirded out” by seeing himself in a mirror. And again, a bunch of gender stereotypes, illustrating his immature view of what men and women are like (which for a 14 year old isn’t surprising).

Of the replies he gets, not one calls him out on his blatant gender stereotypes. No one asks him what he means by “feeling female”.  What he gets instead  is this:

Someone who vaguely says “you sound just like me”.

Another instance of the phenomenon covered in this post, the idea that the very act of being unsure of your gender identity makes you trans.

“You sound trans to me”

“You are probably not cis if you think all of those things”

It wouldn’t be a “am I trans” post if someone didn’t mention hormones!

Not long after, he is 99% sure he is trans and wants to tell his parents.

From being comfortable as a male to being “truly female” and asking about body mods.

Then asking how to convince his parents it’s totally not a phase, and being in a hurry to start hormone blockers:

Then, his coming-out letter to his parents:

Please listen to me when I say that this is not a choice, and it’s not something I can change. It is not a phase; it will not go away; it will only get worst if ignored; it will eventually kill me if I keep it in.

I may be biologically a boy, but I am truly a girl.

(…)

In terms of wanting to be female, not just acting like one, I can remember events such as dreams and daytime fantasies from as early as three or four, upwards to about 10 years old. They got pretty intense at times, and I can share them with you later if you like (they don’t translate very well to paper). The reason they stopped at about 10 was basically because gender conditioning that dictated that I must act as if I were masculine got in the way of my real identity. What’s more it made no sense that I would want to be feminine, since I wasn’t gay and I certainly wasn’t biologically female – so I tried to stop. For the most part, it worked, but hiding my true identity was not an act that would last forever. It wasn’t until recently that I realised all this consciously though, so I basically went through my pre-teen years and into the start of my teenage ones believing that there was something wrong with me for wanting to be a girl, repressing the feelings, pretending they were never there in the first place, putting on a phony masculine front, hating myself for it, pretending that everything was okay, and repeating the cycle. I know this may be a bit of a shock to you as I rarely seem truly upset, and when I am it’s usually about something trivial and goes away within a couple of hours at most. This was a different kind of sadness though; one which I was able to hide reasonably well, especially from myself, and pile other feelings on top of to keep it out of sight. But it was always there.

Perhaps puberty helped me come to the realization of my true gender identity, or perhaps it was just that my understanding of my life grew large enough for me to be able to see this pattern, question it, and come to the conclusion that I am transgender. And of course having access to resources about transgenderism, mainly websites by older and more experienced people who have been through it themselves, as well as doctors and medical professionals, only helped accelerate this process.

So what do you do about a transgender child? Just as you cannot “cure” your child if they are gay, you cannot “cure” a transgender and make them happy living as their biological gender. Doing so will not end well, for you or for them. Nearly half of all adolescent transgenders have attempted suicide, and are supposedly eight times more likely to do so if they are rejected by their families, or forced to live as their birth gender as opposed to their true one.

So the real solution, however difficult it may be, is to let them express themselves as their true gender, for life (let me stress that this does not go away). This entails a lot of things, some of which are purely social while others are physical. The checklist varies depending on the person but usually will include for Male-to-Female (MtF) transgenders:

* Therapy

* Voice training

* Buying new clothes and changing their appearance

* Choosing a new name

* Taking T-blockers to limit testosterone levels (this is a must)

* Taking supplementary estrogen (usually only when 16+, depends on the specific case)

* Various corrective surgeries, these are usually only done after 10+ years of living is a female, if they are done at all

Notice first how he twice talks about suicide, which reminds us of this post. Suicide is seen as the inevitable outcome of not transitioning. This in a boy who only days before was happy with his body, who has not even talked to a therapist yet. The only people he has talked to about his feelings are people on the internet, many of them much older than him. And all of them are people who define themselves as transgender. No doubt there exist people who have had these kinds of feelings, but who have realized that they are happy as their birth sex. But such people don’t hang out in transgender websites, and thus this kid isn’t reading about their experiences at all.

He also talks about his childhood experiences with “acting as a female” (remember that this is a kid with extremely immature and stereotypical views of what men and women typically do). Suddenly these memories have become a lot more detailed and he sees them as a much more significant than he did the first time he posted.

His letter also contains a list of things necessary  to “express one’s true gender”, including taking hormone blockers and estrogen, and surgery.

We’ve seen the same type of story before on this blog. Young person who does not fit into stereotypical gender roles starts reading certain trans communities, and within a very short period of time they no longer like their bodies and are planning extensive body modifications and threatening suicide.

“I’ve given plenty of trans girls shots from my supply”: creepy behavior in the trans community

As adults, we know that people on the internet aren’t always who they claim to be, and that they don’t always have our best interests in mind. For young people, like teenagers, who can be both naive and impulsive, this is not always immediately obvious. Predatory males exist all over the internet, also in the transgender communities. We have already seen that there are plenty of young teens posting to these communities, and after being exposed to them for a while, many of them start wanting to take hormones. How convenient that there are older people (males) available to offer their assistance!

The person in the first two screenshots is an adult male, and a moderator of several trans and LGBT subreddits.

The same 42 year old male offering a 13 year old to come to his apartment in exchange for prescription medication.

Another example of creepy behavior: an 18 year old posts their picture in r/transpassing. An adult male makes this comment:

The poster also get this reply:

This is the advice given to a suicidal 15 year old desperate for hormones. This commenter is an adult:

Other posters try to get the 15 year old to disclose personal information like location: (this commenter is also an adult)

Here we see a male in his early 20s offering hormones to a 16 year old:

This is just some of the behavior that goes on in the open. We can only imagine what goes on via private messages.

“I wanted to know what it feels like to be a woman, or an apple”: Twelve-year-old talks about his reasons for being transgender

This post will only have screenshots and quotes, no links, due to the age of the poster featured here.

A boy who claims to be twelve years old posts to a transgender sub-reddit:

A year ago he was definitely not trans, then after researching the topic online, he is unsure but thinks he might be. He posts a long laundry list of things that makes him think he’s trans:

From not feeling like “a girl trapped in a boy’s body” to “realiz[ing] this might be the case”. Envious of girls, “from their body parts, to their nature and characteristics”. Suicidal.

Fascinated with “change”, whether is’t transforming into a dragon, a woman, or “an apple”.

He’s fine with being male, but, no doubt because he’s been reading a lot of trans stuff online, he feels sure that the desire to become female will get worse. Notice also the naive beliefs in gender roles: thinking that not wishing to become a strong body builder makes him less male. Thinking that wanting to learn to knit and sew and liking animals is in some way significant to his “gender identity”. Thinking that playing video games as a girl is a “major pointer” of being transgender.

What do the commenters say?

“You are probably trans”

“If puberty doesn’t sound appealing to you, you should take hormone blockers”. As if puberty sounds so appealing to young kids. The commenters also give specifics on what to say to healthcare providers to achieve this:

More planting of the idea of puberty blockers:

The next commenter brings upidea that “the more masculine you get the more you get dysphoria”. This commenter, who is only 13 years old themselves, are eager to have more people like themselves to relate to.

And finally, a 30 year old male chimes in:

The next day, the twelve year old makes four new posts, asking among other things if he will look feminine with hormone therapy and whether he will “pass well”, He also say now that he’s “80-100% sure” that he is transgender”.

He gets told again how important it is to take blockers, and that only blockers will let him “make it out unscathed”. The second commenter is an adult male who transitioned late in life, who emphasizes how important it is to transition early.

“The younger you start the better”:

More talk of how vital it is to start early:

“As long as you get puberty blockers, grow out your hair, and start HRT when it’s possible, it’s all good”:

It took one day to go from being ok with being male, to being 80-100% sure he is trans. The majority of the replies he is getting focuses on how important starting early is, and some of them feature exact quotes he’s supposed to parrot to healthcare providers with the explicit goal to get prescribed hormone blockers and then hormones. Both serious medications that, if taken without going through his natural puberty, will sterilize him. No one asks him why he wants to be female or why he envies girls. No one talks about how it’s normal to wish we were someone else.

One day later, he posts this:

He can’t wait 5 years or he will go insane or kill himself. It’s hard to believe this kid would have gotten ideas like these on his own accord. The “helpful” commenters each push a tiny bit, each provide a single drip of “male puberty will ruin you”, “get on blockers”, “the younger you start the better”. And not only in the comments directed at this boy, comments of the same type are all over reddit and other websites, and young people questioning their identity can read them all. It reinforces their beliefs again and again.

To parents whose children tell you they are transgender: GET THEM OFF THE INTERNET! Websites like reddit is full of people reinforcing belief systems like the one we see in this blog. Some are well-meaning, some are creeps. But few of them seem interested in helping kids figure out why they feel the way they do, and none seem to consider that there might be other things going on in the life of kids that make them feel inadequate in their bodies.

“The trans test”: self-medicating in the trans community

We have seen in previous posts that there is a push to “diagnose” people who question their gender as transgender, and there is a pervasive narrative that the only way to treat this condition is through transitioning. In the majority of cases, this means taking hormones: For females, testosterone; for males, some type of testosterone blocker plus estrogen. This is often referred to as “HRT”, “hormone replacement therapy”. For young people who have not finished puberty, it can also mean to take drugs that block their body’s natural hormones, so-called “blockers”.

In many online trans communities, starting to take hormones is seen as a way to decide whether you are transgender or not. The idea is that if you are really transgender, taking hormones should make you feel better. If you are not, it should presumably make you feel worse, or the same as before.

In this post, a 17 year old asks for advice regarding taking hormones, mentioning this idea of the “trial period”.

Im 17 pre-everything possible mtf.I have heard that for a lot of people hormones were the factor that made them sure of their gender identity and was wondering if a short-term small dose trial period of hrt for confused and questioning people was at all common practice. Im a minor so i still need parental approval but would a doctor even give me a referral?

The very first commenter shares their experiences, saying “I did HRT as a kind of confirmation”. Notice how the commenter admits to lying to their health care provider in order to get a prescription.

There is discussion about which effects of HRT are permanent and which are reversible. The original poster, who is 17 years old and not even sure he is transgender, shrugs away the possibility of permanent infertility.

He gets encouraged to “do it” by another commenter, who also gives specific advice on which medication to take.

More discussion of the “trans test” in this post, where a commenter admits that sometimes the commitment to do something about a condition can trigger a placebo effect. However, in the same post they claim that the effects from estrogen couldn’t have been placebo because they “surprise[d] me every single time i injected”.

This commenter attributes a sudden liking of taking care of their hair and skin and being able to “feel colors” to hormones:

More praise for hormones:

We see the idea rehashed again and again that taking HRT is a way of confirming your trans-ness, together with the constant praise of how great hormones can make you feel. In fact, the people in these communities are often quite quick to suggest hormones to young questioners.

This poster asks: “am I trans?”

I’m a 17 year old gay human of the male variety. That is, I’ve got a schlong. And that’s where my maleness stops. My behaviour as a child could be seen as a gender identity issue, or just plain old gayness. I used to play with my sister’s toys and dress up in her clothes. I’ve never identified with guys, I hate most male related activities. (Sports, cars, etc.) Through my preteen years I constantly dressed up, always assuming female roles in play. As a teenager, I have dressed in female clothes a few times, and it felt much more natural to me. I’m fairly “straight acting” in that I don’t flap about much when I talk and I’m not too sassy, I’m not like the gay stereotype. Around close friends however I am extremely flamboyant. Anyway, back to the question, am I trans? Reasons why I think I am: •I feel more comfortable in female clothes. •When I visualise my future, I see myself as a female. •I feel like I identify more with females.

Reasons why I don’t think I’m trans: •I don’t have the stereotypical hatred for my male body, sure I have had issues withwith self confidence etc but I’ve never felt like my junk was alien. •These feelings don’t overwhelm my brain. They’re subtle, niggling at the back of my mind.

This is a gay male who is extremely preoccupied with stereotypical gender roles. What do people suggest to him?

Try hormones!

Try hormones!

The problem with using any kind of medication as a diagnostic tool is that there is no way of knowing how much of the effect is due to placebo. And especially problematic is the tendency for online trans communities to advice people to start taking hormones completely on their own, without medical supervision. Since you usually can’t “just try” prescription medications, they give each other advice on how to circumvent the medical practitioners and obtain the medications on their own.

Watch as they tell a suicidal 15 year old how to obtain hormones without his parents knowledge and without medical supervision:

They tell him to omit mentioning his suicidal thoughts to counselors:

When a 14 year old posts wanting advice on becoming more feminine, this is the advice they get:

(note to readers: we are not linking directly to this post to protect the poster’s privacy).

“If you really want them there are ways of getting them”:

They get told they’ll pass once they start “DIY” (do it yourself) hormones:

In another post, the same kid gets told to “DIY secretly”, by befriending an adult transgender person in their area. 

A fourteen year old kid befriending adults for favors. What could  possibly go wrong? Taking prescription medication without medical supervision, what could possibly happen?

HRT is seen as not only necessary treatment for transgender feelings, but it is also a diagnostic tool, and one that people are encouraged to try out on their own. What happens when HRT does not make someone feel better though?  Does that mean the person wasn’t really trans?

This poster reports feeling worse since they started taking hormones:

Before I started I felt dysphoria but now it’s in overdrive. 

Apparently this is normal according to the replies they get. “The further you get in your transition the more dysphoria you feel”.

It gets harder before it gets easier:

Another poster who feels worse after starting HRT

Feeling like total shit after starting HRT 

I feel almost as bad as ever:

I’m a couple of months into HRT, and I’m feeling almost worse than I did before I started. I look terrible, I hate everything about myself. People keep telling me that I look good, or that they love my eyes, or my hair, or whatever the fuck else, and I don’t believe them, and not believing them makes me feel worse than if they said nothing.

It gets better, right? I’ll stop crying and snapping at my friends? I’ll feel good about myself maybe at some point?

At no point does anyone suggest to any of these posters that maybe they are actually not trans and that maybe HRT is the wrong choice for them. It’s always “wait”, “try more”, “change your dose”, “hang in there”.

This is the huge problem with using a medication as a diagnostic tool without medical supervision, and it’s a recipe for disaster. First you create a narrative where any sort of questioning of your feelings about gender roles or your body means that you are trans. Then you plant the idea that being trans is something that needs a specific type of medical treatment, and you actively encourage people to experiment with this medical treatment to “see if it’s right for them”. If you’re truly trans it will make you feel awesome! Then when people feel worse instead of better, suddenly that’s not proof of not being trans at all, it’s just proof that they need to take HRT longer or adjust their dose.

“Being a girl is like playing on easy mode”: jealousy of women

In previous posts in this blog we have seen how gender stereotypes play a big role in the narrative of many transitioners. Liking stereotypically feminine things or wanting long hair is seen as significant markers of internal “gender” rather than aspects of personality. There are other types of narratives that lead to someone deciding they are trans. One we will call the  sexual narrative, the other one we will call the jealousy narrative. The sexual narrative will be described in more detail in later posts.

Being jealous of women and girls is something that comes up often in the narratives of transitioners. Sometimes the jealousy focuses on physical aspects of being female, such as breasts, genitals or being “allowed” to act and dress in specific ways.

This poster even gets angry with women for being women:

Another poster assures OP that it’s common to feel this way!

Another jealous poster. (note the abundance of stereotypes in this post)

Jealousy about pregnancy:

Another poster asks, “does the jealousy ever go away“?

There is a lot of anger directed at women:

Another common cause of jealousy is that women are perceived to have it “better” or “easier”. This attitude, which is prevalent among people who call themselves “men’s rights activists”, is also not uncommon among transgender people online.

Women have it better:

Being a “pretty girl” is like playing on “easy mode”:

Male privilege is nothing, when you’re a girl people open doors for you!

Males are the ones who are oppressed, females have tons of advantages!

There are many people spending a lot of time in online trans communities who do not have an emotionally healthy or mature perspective on what it means to be female. Regardless of whether one agrees with a lot of the transgender politics, most people would agree that someone who is unable to leave the house because seeing women makes them too angry are not in a healthy place, whether they decide to transition or not.

The little mermaid, barbies, and butterfly wings: how gender sterotypes influence young transitioners

A 20 year old male who is questioning his gender identity posts to r/asktransgender:

I remember when I was in elementary school, I never understod the concept of cooties. “What’s so disguting about girls?” I would ask myself. “I’d rather hang out around girls than guys.” As a young child, I felt like some of the things I did were “wrong” for a boy. Most of them are silly things: my favorite colors have always been bright colors; purple and pink, traditionally “girl colors” are in my top 4 favorite colors, and I remember in first grade feeling that it was wrong for me to like these colors. As a child, and growing into adulthood, I always liked having girl friends better than guy friends. Sure, being socialized as a guy in this world, it was easier to have guy friends, so I had more, but I always liked having girl friends too, even when all the other little kids thought it was “gross” for some reason.

Boy likes “girly” things (as many boys do!), and prefers the company of girls. Hardly unusual, but unfortunately stigmatized in our society, as he noticed from a young age.

I didn’t fit in super well with other guys. I never got into sports, and I was never one for army games or any of these other “manly” things. I liked tech things, and that was about the extent my love for things typically “masculine”. My best friend during the first 10 or so years of my life was a girl. I loved playing with my friend, and I would play whatever game she wanted to play. It’s hard to remember, but I’m sure that sometimes we played stereotypically “feminine” games. I know that, on more than one occasion, her barbies were the center of attention. I remember this one time when I was over at her house, and she left the room for a second. She had butteryfly wings and I just wanted to try them on. It felt “wrong” to me sort of; it felt like I was doing a bad thing, or something I wasn’t supposed to do, but I didn’t think it was fair that girl got to dress up as fairies with butterfly wings, but I couldn’t, because I was a guy. But I felt stupid and ridiculous for doing it. It felt like some sort of guilty pleasure. And if I recall correctly, the moment I could hear her walking back towards the room, I took them off in a hurry so she wouldn’t notice, but there was something I liked about those butterfly wings.

So he has tastes and personality traits that don’t match the rigid stereotype of how boys are supposed to be, and he feels self-conscious about this.

From a young age I did some things that would probably be considered weird, or at least would have, back then. If I remember correctly, I used to use my “blankey” sometimes and pretend it was a dress and just wrap it around my body like it was one. Once my blankey had been forcibly removed from the picture by my parents, I began to accumulate a series of stuffed animals. I gendered every single one of them as a girl. I always wanted a sister, and I never got one. I think I wanted a companion to be female around and do typically feminine things with. I wanted someone who I could relate to. I always felt that I could relate to a sister better than the crappy brother I have.

More of the same. He is perceptive enough to have picked up that he does not fit the male gender role, and he wants to hang out with girls. He also hints at enforcing of rigid gender roles by his parents, something that shows up a lot in these trans kids narratives.

As a young child, with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the female anatomy, I would often, in the shower, manipulate my penis in such a way that made it seem more like what I thought down there might look like from a girl. I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like to be a girl. I think a curiosity of the female anatomy stemmed from this, because female anatomy was something I could never experience, but always wanted to, and I was fascinated by learning about what it was like and being able to put that picture together myself.

Curiosity about bodies.

My favorite movie around this time was The Little Mermaid. I loved that movie so, but it felt wrong to me, because I was a guy, and The Little Mermaid is a disney princess movie, and guys aren’t supposed to like those kinds of movies. But I did, and for the longest time I was ashamed of it. When I would watch kids tv shows, I would love when the commercials for girls toys came on. I was tired of seeing all the commercials marketed towards “male” toys, and although I had no intent on buying them, there was always something appealing to me about the way that the “girl” toys were presented in the commercials, almost in a way I could relate to more than with the boy commercials.

I always felt that there was something about girls that I could identify with better than boys. Boys always felt like these hypermasculine war/violence/aggression-loving machines, and I would much rather associate with the less agressive beings not hell bent on fake-killing each other all the time (speaking about stereotypical gender roles here).

Now, I don’t know how accurate these memories of my childhood are – the brain can change the way you remember things – but this is the most accurate I can get, and I’m pretty sure that most, if not all of these things, were real.

I was raised a cisgender male in a cisgender family with baby boomer parents. I was raised and socialized as a male. It’s what society and my parents were telling me to do. They grew up in a different time. I was born with a penis so I was raised as a boy, but I’ve always wished that I could have had the chance to decide how I feel for myself.

He likes a movie about mermaids and he doesn’t want to be aggressive. He even admits that he’s talking about stereotypical gender roles, but still presents these facts about himself like they are significant signs of something other than simply his personality. Note again the reference to his parents enforcing gender roles.

I’ve never particularly hated my body, but I didn’t particularly have a fond liking towards it either. I’m mostly indifferent to it. My body is fine, I guess, I think because I’ve lived with it my whole life, so I guess I’m used to it, but I don’t really like the male aspects of it. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I’ll think about what I would look like if I were a girl, or if I had breasts, or if I didn’t have chest hair, or facial hair, or some other manly feature. I try to look past my masculine features when I look in the mirror. They’re okay, I guess, but I think I’d rather not have them.

I find the naked male body in general to be a displeasing sight to look at. Seeing a naked male body, in movies or in the pornography I’ve seen, is not a pleasing sight to me, and I don’t feel like I really identify with the male body or male the male position in heterosexual sex scenes. Maybe it’s a reminder of my own male features that I don’t have a particularly fondness to, though I don’t know.

Notice how he says he doesn’t hate his body. This is a recurring theme in internet communities like these. Posters will start out not hating their bodies, and then a few weeks or months of obsessing, they suddenly talk about hating their bodies after all. Note also that what he does not like are his masculine features. Why is this? Our bodies have social meaning, and this is a male who has personality traits that our society likes to label “feminine”. Since he full well realizes that his personality is not like the stereotypical “manly man”, he is distressed by the masculine features of his body.

I also enjoy the idea of having long hair, and I’ve always liked something about having long hair. At one point, I grew my hair out really long, and it was just really enjoyable for me, possibly because it made me feel feminine. At one point, while my hair was growing out, I used my mom’s hair bands to try and give my hair a bit more of a feminine look (for brief moments in my own privacy), like pigtails or a braid. I think I really just wanted to (and still do want to) experience what it’s like to have hair like a girl.

More stereotypes. He wants long hair but is apparently unable to separate hair from gender.

I’ve started becoming really worried that every moment I take to figure out whether or not I am trans is another moment that I grow older and have a less likely chance of ever appearing “normal” as a women, and at the age of 20, almost 21, time feels like it’s running out really fast.

And finally, he’s obsessing over time running out. That exact phrasing shows up a lot, we saw it in this post, where a 13 year old kid was obsessing over the changes puberty was doing to his body.

Less than a month later, he starts taking antiandrogens:

I literally went into an appointment with my mom and I had almost no idea what it was about. I talked with a social worker and then a doctor came into the room and basically was like “how would you like it if I told you that you could walk out today with a perscription of spiro” and I honestly didn’t expect that to happen walking in.

Doctors are giving him antiandrogens after seeing him once. Apparently nobody has bothered to actually talk to him about the medication he is starting, becausethe day after he posts again, asking “Can anyone give a detailed listing of what Spiro actually does?”

So like, I know some of the stuff it does, but I can’t for the life of me find a comprehensive list of every way that it acts as an anti androgen. I’m just sorta wondering what I can expect it to do to my body until I’m able to start E. So… does anyone actually know?

Then two weeks after that, he asks. Spiro feels like it’s doing nothing?

Yeah, I know it’s only been two weeks, so I shouldn’t expect that much, but hair seems to be growing exactly as fast as before, and I feel 100% the same. I can still feel the testosterone coursing through my brain. The diurect effect seems to have stopped, too, or at least calmed down; I get dehydration headaches every few days, but I’m going to the bathroom like I was before. I feel 95% the same as I did before I started Spiro. Again, I know it’s not even been much time, but I feel like I should feel at least a little bit different or something. Hoping it at least means that E will start working on my body faster once I start that..

Edit: I also just feel all around terrible. My body right now feels like a baggy costume that I can’t take off and I don’t normally feel like this but I just wish I could rip it all off. It feels so uncomfortable right now and I want to get rid of it.

The medication his doctor was so quick to prescribe doesn’t seem to be doing him much good.

Two days after that, he posts this, asking about surgery:

You can get FFS for facial bone structure; voice surgery for the lowered voice; tracheal shave for the adams apple; GRS for, well, you know; hair removal for body hair growth.

What about hips and shoulders, is there a way to feminize those? And are there any other secondary sex traits that I’m missing?

And so we see again, a young male, doesn’t fit into stereotypical male gender roles, likes long hair and disney movies. Goes from saying he’s fine with his body to taking anti-androgens and estrogen in the span of a month, and now seems eager to have as many surgical changes to his body as possible.

Ten year old gets transition advice: “This is your identity and your life literally depends on this”

A ten year old boy (self-proclaimed of course, we have no way of knowing if that’s his actual age) posts to r/asktransgender:

Let’s cut straight to the point. I’m a 10 year old who is biologically male who has depression and has attempted suicide before. I don’t know if this is gender dysphoria but I always feel more comfortable doing things with females and I prefer the male body much over female, but I’d like to be socially accepted as a female. I always feel an urge to do the same thing the girls are doing when it’s just weird for me to do it. I’ve been highly attracted to a girl I know but only after I got to know her over about a year. When I see a picture of a trans male I think he looks attractive but I wouldn’t go out with out him until I got to know him, so does this make me bisexual or demisexual? Is this gender dysphoria? I feel really sad with my social position as a male and I get annoyed when I’m addressed as “man” or “dude.” Please help me. My sister would accept me, and my parents make it clear they care about me and don’t want anything to happen to me, but they aren’t super supportive of gay or trans rights. I don’t know what to do and I just don’t like how my life is turning out. Thanks guys, I know reddit is normally a supportive community so I hope I can get some help.

Clarification: I understand sexual orientation and gender identity are different and I need help for both.

What advice does he get?

Dysphoria can be everything from an annoyance to feeling suicidal, and transitioning is awesome!

“Hopefully getting diagnose [sic] with gender dysphoria”

If someone doesn’t agree with your self-diagnosis, shop around for another doctor!

Do you want to be a man or a woman, and mature into a lovely grandmother type person? These two alternatives are presented as equally realistic for a male human being.

Again the references to suicide with the “your life depends on this” line.

Again, there is no way of knowing whether this is an actual ten year old child, someone role-playing for unsavory reasons, or someone trolling. But if it really is a ten year old, these answers are pretty horrible. No one is asking him what he thinks “being accepted socially as a female” means or why he wants a female body. He’s seen mainly as just another potential transitioner.

When suicide is presented as the logical alternative

“Why did you transition?”, a poster asks the subreddit r/asktransgender. The commenters answer:

The notion that suicide is inevitable unless someone transitions is something that comes up a lot in various trans communities on the internet.

This post asks how people in r/asktransgender would feel if hormone threapy and sexual reassignment surgery did not exist.

There are many more replies like the ones shown above. The general consensus seems to be that suicide is an almost inevitable outcome of not transitioning. Combined with the trend we saw highlighted in our previous post about how any questioning of one’s gender or discomfort with gender roles means you’re trans, this is a dangerous idea to internalize.

The notion of the inevitability of suicide comes up very frequently, like in this post, written as a guide to parents of transgender children.

The 41% figure comes up often, and often it is presented like it is here – as the rate at which transgender people commit suicide. That is not correct, the figure actually refers to suicide attempts over a lifetime. And even that is highly debatable; it comes from this study (pdf), where the authors admit that asking the question the way they did can “inflate the percentage of affirmative responses, since some respondents may use it to communicate self-harm behavior that is not a suicide attempt”. Other studies report much smaller numbers.

Another post asks “do you ever consider suicide?”

There are many more replies. Most of them say that they do, or that they have in the past.

Another way suicide often comes up, is as a bargaining chip. Look at this poster (aged 19)  who tells the story of how their parents do not want to finance their transition:

“Do what I want or I will kill myself”.

We have seen this before, documented here, where a 13 year old kid is being given concrete advice on how to use suicide threats to pressure his parents into giving him access to hormones:

Another young teen, this one 14 years old, gets much the same advice when they ask how to talk to their parents about being transgender:

Someone who finds their way into these online communities are met with the idea that questioning one’s gender is a sure sign that one is trans. and should transition Then the idea is planted that suicide is such a common thing among transgender people, and that if you do not get access to the treatments you want, it is the natural outcome. And finally, suicide is presented as something you can use as a bargaining chip.