Before I got testosterone prescribed by an endocrinologist, I had to sign informed consent. The problem is, that it seems to be quite impossible to fully understand what you’re consenting to. And no one was able to explain me all of it.
I fully understood the physical consequences that I could expect, that were known. I knew about the facial hair, body hair, balding patterns, libido, oily skin, muscle mass, probably becoming infertile, fat distribution, acne, clitoral growth, change of body odor, etc. I had researched it all, for years. I also understood that the hormones wouldn’t exactly change my personality, but that they could change the way I felt things and how I’d react. I understood it could become harder for me to cry, that I might get angry easier and that emotions and events could affect me less or more intensely.
What I didn’t realize, is that one day, I might actually meet women
that are just like me (in real life!), but don’t change their bodies.
And what I definitely didn’t understand was that these women and
lesbians would not recognize me, but see me as a cisgender man instead.
And treat me as such. No one could have explained me what this feels like.
I did not understand at that time, that when I consented to being assigned to use male bathrooms forever, it didn’t just mean that I would never get angry and disgusted stares from women anymore. No one told me that in many cases, the stall is closed/non-existent/too exposed, or so dirty that I can’t sit. No one told me that if you very often don’t sit or try to pee as little and as quickly as possible, you can get some trouble with your pelvic muscles. I have problems with relaxing in any kind of situation now.
No one told me that taking testosterone could make me feel even more alienated from both men and women.
No one told me that straight women being attracted to me feels very different from lesbian women being attracted to me.
What I didn’t understand was that I could one day change my mind, and stop taking any kind of hormones. I also didn’t realize that I’d become sincerely afraid of the tissue of my reproductive organs being changed in some kind of way by the high levels of testosterone. In a way that’s dangerous to my health.
No one could tell me that I hadn’t met the right people yet, before I could make a proper informed decision. No one reminded me that until that point, nobody had really loved me romantically exactly for the way I am. I had only been loved despite my butchness, or despite my body. And nobody told me that it is actually possible to be loved and desired the way I was, in a way that I could believe.
Nobody ever told me that it wasn’t necessary to take testosterone if I wanted to get a double mastectomy.
I couldn’t know that I consented to somethingI could actually regret. I didn’t know I consented to something that would at some point make me feel like I betrayed myself, and the girls like me.
I didn’t understand what I consented to and I don’t think that that endocrinologist will ever be able to understand this.
I am not against informed consent. But there has to be some kind of way to improve the information and the deeper understanding of the consequences.
“STONEWALL MEANS REVOLTING QUEENS…AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT,” Gay & Lesbian Pride Parade, Boston, Massachusetts, June 1984. Photo c/o Men of All Colors Together collection, via @northeastern. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #StonewallMeansFightBack (at Boston, Massachusetts)
this comic by Matt Lubchansky pretty much summarizes my feelings about companies that try to sell products using oppressed groups’ mass deaths as a marketing technique
this white feminist idea that “no man will ever understand what its like to walk down the street in constant fear” okay but gay men, black and brown men, trans men ……
like, being visible as lgbt is rarely even a good or nice thing let alone a privilege. at best it’s uncomfortable and at worst it’s actively dangerous, bc, u know, homophobia and transphobia!
and yeah sometimes visibility can be a good thing!! like if i was going to a gay club and i wanted other women to know that i’m a lesbian then being read as such would be handy, but i don’t have that level of control over my visibility – if i want to be read as a lesbian to women in a gay club i can’t choose not to be read as a lesbian by the men there, the people outside, my taxi driver, etc. etc. my visibility can be very dangerous! it’s a constant mental maths of who is and isn’t safe to let know and even then they might read me as a lesbian anyway! and that’s only talking about personal aesthetic types of visibility let alone the visibility of lesbians as a whole in culture and media which i have no control over and often sucks!!!
this issue is v important for trans women especially bc being closeted and passing as a cis man or being out and passing as a cis woman can be so important for their safety and survival, be that in emotional, physical, or mental health.
so basically if you’re asexual or similar and you’re complaining about lgbt people being privileged or oppressing you bc they have more visibility actually think for a second about what you’re saying and the violence you’re idealising.
this goes for non-binary people as well!! i’ve met dozens of NB people who are under the impression that somehow trans women have it easier than them because people “know what we are” or “know that we exist” and honestly it’s the opposite of the truth; that’s what makes it that much harder for us.
i know it’s exhausting to not be recognised for who you are but you need to stop and think about what would happen to you, and what IS happening to people because bigots DO know
“MY SON IS BI…I DON’T ASK WHY.” – “MY MOTHER IS STRAIGHT…BUT SHE DON’T HATE.,” Michael Szymansky and his mother, March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, Washington, D.C., April 25, 1993. Photo by Lynn Harris Ballen (@lynnharrisb), c/o @onearchives. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #CrystalPepsi (at Washington, District of Columbia)
Maine has voted to ban gay ‘cure’ therapy, as the tidal wave of states outlawing the practice continues to gain pace.
The bill, which is sponsored by gay state Representative Ryan Fecteau, prohibits licensed medical and mental health practitioners from trying to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Maine is tantalisingly close to joining Connecticut, California,…
some of u all evil fucks: lol what did i just read.. fuckin cishet apologist. stop putting this mogai shit on my dash. lost all hope in this hellsite
What REALLY happens:
Y’all: This is the queer community, we’re all queers here!!
Us: Hey, queer is still considered a slur in many places and to many people; the reclamation is very Anglo-centric, so please don’t use the word to describe a whole coalition when you don’t have the permission from everyone to do so.
me: im queer
some of u all evil fuck: you calling yourself queer is somehow about me because i say it is.
like? ok? what i just described btw has literally happened, and i have literally never pushed queer on anyone else, but i’ve had people derail posts about my struggles with it, and people attempting to invalidate me…. if people call you queer against your will, that has absolutely nothing to do with me. so i have no clue why you bring that up to me.
the original post literally just says “im queer”, i never use queer to mean what people call lgbt+ and mogai, and if you say i do you’re just putting words into my mouth to make your points…. which is incredibly lazy and does not in fact equate resemble anything that anyone could make a good point.
anyway, you can say “it’s ok to reclaim” as much as you want but if you make everyone feel unsafe in identifying as queer. anyway, my cis pal, i can’t bother with more cis women talking over me on my gender or orientation so stop bothering me.
how the fuck is the reclamation anglo-centric. LGBT isn’t even a thing around here. it’s literally all individual identities or “queer”. i live in southeast asia, never stayed in a predominantly english-speaking country in my life
oh yeah that’s a thing i didn’t even notice… like i would rather say that lgbt is an anglo-centric approach isn’t it lol … like if you look at the different community names around the world? the limitation to those four identities?? not intuitive. at all…. and literally, the acronym is based in a very simple understanding of things, and it is based in the english names of things…
like yeah, most of those words have been shoved into other languages because of anglo-centrism in itself lmao … but not all of them? there’s local identity names, and also as i said…. acronyms aren’t intuitive… in most countries… queer is though? like i know in europe people favour the local variation of queer or even 100% reclaimed the word queer as the community term, and i know that’s the case other places too…. and yeah… it’s funny being called anglo-centric i’ve only known english for 4 years, and irl have not come across “lgbt” but have come across queer and other similar labels… (also like the insistence of lgbt being the community name is the anglo-centrism, innit?)
“what REALLY happens” aka “i know more about queer experiences than you, a queer person”
Can confirm that “queer” is used, instead of LGBT+, in a lot of east asian countries that use loan words.
퀴어 = kuieo, Korean for queer
クィア = kuia, Japanese for queer
酷儿 = kùér, Chinese for queer (mostly used in Taiwan + Hong Kong. Literal meaning from the characters is “cool kid”. There are actually quite a few reclamatory words in Chinese, such as 同志/tóngzhì which literally means ‘same intent’ or ‘comrade’, as well as
怪胎
/guài tāi which means ‘freak’ or ‘abnormal’)
Just to name a few. There are also various terms used throughout all of Asia in similar reclamatory fashion.
I can’t cite sources on this bc it’s basically anecdotal and mostly comes from interview subjects with BBC Africa (a colonizer media outlet), but my impression is that queer is broadly used as a preferred umbrella term in most English-speaking countries on the African continent as well. would love verification or rebuttal of this from somebody with concrete linguistic info.
alder-knight 