Hello Anne,

Thank you for the kind words and sincerely hope you join in.

Where we can all be better — I am always speaking to myself on this — is to not talk past one another. But I do get annoyed. Sometime I feel like I am being talked off a ledge or that I just fell off the back of a potato truck. I get annoyed at the disingenuous questions like “How do you know what a woman is?” They don’t really want your answer. They just want an opportunity to get you to put your guard down just a little so they sucker-punch you.

I am spend time on some boards where people are discussing detransitioning FTMTF. I am learning a lot. The discussions tend to be civil. On one such boards some disruptors who thought they had ready allies in attacking trans women were booted off. I am pretty positive I am not going to detransition, but thinking about what it would take for me to do that helps me think about, “What is it to transition FTM and what would I have to do physically and mentally?” I have learned a lot. They know I transition MTF, I am open about that, but I try to keep a low and respectful profile for they have much to teach in their conversations.

I see a parallel with what is going on with marriage equality. What does it matter to me what my neighbors are doing or who they love?

The crazy contradiction is for all that society in general demanded I transition. In two other posts I quote runway model and actress Hari Nef in her TED talk and I will quote it here for the third time about how divided the cis world is about trans transition,

I starved myself and abused laxatives so I could fit the clothes I wanted to wear. I did all this because I wanted a body that allowed me to do the things I wanted to do in the way I wanted to do them, things men in this country aren’t really allowed to do. I tried to do them in the body I was born with, but people told me, “No. You can’t. You’ve got to soften up your face, get rid of all your body hair, get breasts, shrink your waist, get a vagina.”

Of course I looked them right in the eye and I said, “f**k you!” turned around and did pretty much all of what they told me to do … It hurt … and it worked.

It worked!!!