throwaway602ee
Similarly, the brains of trans people tend to have the wrong "drivers" for their body, which causes dysphoria.
Since we don't have fine-grained control over brains, we cannot "reinstall" the right driver, and it's a lot easier to fix the hardware. E.g. just as putting in the proper nVidia card to match the driver will fix the problem in a computer; adding estrogen/testosterone and maybe some surgeries allows the brain-drivers to communicate with the body correctly.
Differences in "transition completeness" make perfect sense in this way. If most of your drivers map to "female" equipment, but the "penis driver" is working properly, you have dysphoria about everything but that.
(Evidence from brain studies agree that there are variations in brain structure in trans people.)
Nuance is really important. I mean, I even agree with some of the concerns from social conservatives about transitioning and self-identification and "social contagions" and such. We should try to understand as well as we can, and not push anything on people they may not have felt themselves. It's important to not tell someone they're trans, pushing an identity onto them. There are discussions to be had.
... At the same time, though, that's not the whole story, as some social conservatives would have one believe, and those are not a reason to dismiss trans people. I remember having "gender dysphoria" feelings from a young age. It wasn't about dresses, or barbies, or whatever. I was uncomfortable taking my shirt off to go swimming, assuming my chest was more like my mother's or sister's than my father's or brother's. My genitals just seemed foreign to me. It got worse through puberty as these "male" features became more real.
If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria.
How do we make life comfortable for people who share in my experience? How do we make puberty less traumatic and do as much as we can to help them feel "normal"? These are questions that social conservatives dismiss as not real problems, but they were real problems for me.
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> What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager?
When I was a teenager, there was no talk of trans people, anywhere. It was an unheard of topic. I still had the feelings I did.
When I first heard of them when I was a little older (~20), it was amazing to finally know I wasn't alone in the feelings I shared. I booked an appointment with a licensed mental health therapist the next month to talk about it. On the rise of awareness of trans people, I thought, "Good! They won't have to go through quite what I went through." Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown like it was for me.
What ended up making me feel notably better was estrogen. It was strange how well it worked, although I still had distress over my physical features until I was fully transitioned. Now that I am... my gender dysphoria is cured. I still enjoy the same hobbies, listen to the same music, read the same books, play the same video games, and even dress in a similar style. I just don't have distress over my physical features anymore. Like getting treated for any other medical issue, the treatment made the issues I experienced go away. Now the only time I feel distress is when I hear people calling for the death of trans people or blaming societal ills on us.
I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to stop here.
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> so all I can do is try to be empathic.
I really appreciate it. All of us do. It means a lot.
> I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
Thanks!
It's so exhausting hearing constant anti-trans rhetoric from all sorts of places that any support at all is nice to see. I am so tired of being a scapegoat and it's becoming terrifying because it doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant. I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned regularly.
(You may say: avoid social media, but... it's really everywhere. I don't use social media except for Hacker News.)