How much pressure do you feel to transition?
Just curious: How many of you gender non-conforming girls/women feel pressure (from peers, media, whatever) to “transition” to male? Is it worse in some geographic areas or countries? There’s quite a bit of pressure in more urban or “blue” states here in the US. What’s your experience, girls on the front line?
(FtM perspective (sort of. I don’t know if that fits anymore. I stopped giving a shit a while ago))
I feel like one of the most dangerous aspects of the pressure to transition is that, often, it does not feel like you are being pressured. There are not many people saying ‘oh, you don’t make a good woman—transition!’ (though I have seen more and more of this over the last year or two), but rather there is a great deal of gentle coaxing and ‘innocent’ mistakes and assumptions (the preferred pronouns thing comes to mind here, or the stories I’ve heard from butch lesbians about being asked WHEN they plan to transition).
Obviously, there is and always has been a pressure for GNC women to become more gender conforming. Ten, twenty years ago, that pressure was for such people to act more like what society expects from a woman. But now, there is another option, and it is a disturbingly tantalizing one. Transition is an instantaneously appealing option, especially for those of us who deal with sex dysphoria and are promised (falsely) that it is a solution.
When you see the idea of transition or IDing as something other than woman, you are presented with so many new ideas about who you can be—FtM, NB, GQ, demi, or whatever other language is going ‘round the circles these days. And the moment you mention your desire to explore outside of what is traditionally associated with womanhood, you get so much support. Whenever you mention that you switched pronouns or came out to your parents or your best friend or that you talked to your doctor about T, you get patted on the back and told what a great job you’re doing and how people are proud of you. I can’t imagine how appealing this level of support is for a teenager.
(and don’t get me wrong, most people who offer support are not doing it with malicious intent. They are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, and some of the most loving, generous, kind people I have met in my life are transmen. It’s a wider social problem that extends far beyond these individuals or even the trans community as a whole)
And worse, no one ever questions it. No one questions it! That is the scariest thing about this surge in trans politics. No one questions your self diagnosis. It’s outright taboo. During my transition, I saw a therapist. I had two doctors prescribing my testosterone. I had a third doctor aware of my transition, but treating a separate medical issue. I came out to my friends, my family, my employers. The only time that the motivation for my decision to transition was questioned was by my father. When I came out to him, he asked me if this was about liking women.
(It wasn’t—I like men—but it’s a perfectly valid question given the current state of trans politics)
I don’t know exactly where I was going with this, but I almost feel like ‘pressure’ is too simple a word for the phenomena of this massive spike in transition or female disidentification that we’ve seen over the last few years. It’s almost more akin to a mass psychogenic illness.
genderdeceit, thanks for this, so well put. Yes. It’s not like other kinds of “peer pressure” I have known. It’s…more insidious somehow. And tricky because it seems like a positive thing, as the “opposite” of being forced into stereotypical femininity. But it’s not the opposite. Not really. The idea that it is, is endlessly seductive. You really got it.
I also appreciated your saying that the transmen who do this don’t have malicious intent. I get really upset sometimes thinking about how I evangelized and looking at the domino effects—how many other young dykes I knew followed my lead down this path. I never intended harm. I know that. But intent isn’t magic. I do feel differently about the “allies” who “support” and encourage this, though.
Not being questioned—or even the idea that you should not be, the promise of it, the ethos that posits anyone who questions you is a bigot—was so seductive for me as well. That felt like power. A lot of people questioned me, but it made me feel righteous and unfairly persecuted, and even stronger in my resolve to defy them.
Ha, now who’s rambling. Anyway, what you said is awesome and thanks for speaking your piece. Hope to hear more from you.
I think pressure is a big part of it, and people definitely see transition as a way out of problems that shouldn’t even be problems. I know a rather extreme MtF example.
I recently found an old friend of mine on tumblr that I hadn’t spoken to since high school ended — he is a trans activist dating a transwoman and now considers himself trans as well. He’s super active on social media and talks openly about his transition. I’ve known him since he was 12, and he was always a typical horndog straight boy who had no interest in girly things.When he came out as trans, his justification was literally nothing more than because he thought he wasn’t manly enough and would make a better girl. That is the ONLY reason. There was no sex dysmorphia (he’s doing HRT so he can be prettier but keeping his ladypenis, of course), he’s still ostensibly straight (his trans partner is post-op and passes fairly well), nor are there other psychological reasons (aside from his apparent insecurity). He even admitted on his blog that transitioning seemed to be easier than going through life as an unusual male.
The worst part is now that he’s started living as a woman he’s been posting pornographic selfies all over the place (he never did this as a guy). Having been a huge porn consumer all this time, it’s been hammered into his brain that woman = sex object, and getting men to fap to his panty shots is validation that he’s a real woman. It’s sad and ridiculous. Nothing about it is healthy.
I’m sure that dating someone who was trans really helped to solidify the “if they could do it, I can too!” mentality. People think it’s so easy to switch bodies like it’ll solve everything and never stop to think about the medical realities of taking high doses of synthetic hormones. Transitioning is not a magical coping mechanism that will make your life complete, but so many people talk about it like it is.
Anyway, I can only imagine how much pressure there is on NGC women to just “get it over with” and go FtM because warping your body to fit your personality into the appropriate stereotype is the natural order of things now.
“Smashing the gender binary” my ass.
