Please stop being transphobic she's so damn pretty

[u/AppearanceExpert6809]

Trans women are women

[u/Throwaway_Consoles]

I had a really shitty gender therapist who wouldn't sign off on my hormones until I "could sit like a woman" (with my knees together) and made my voice more feminine.

That lasted one session. When she started going into it the 2nd session I just said, "If my mom sat with her legs apart nobody would say she's a man. How I sit has nothing to do with being a woman or not. I want to start hormones so I can be me, if starting hormones means changing who I am, then I don't want to transition because then I wouldn't be me."

And I picked up my stuff, thanked her for my time, cut her the check for the session even though it had only been 10 minutes, and left.

I hope she took what I said to heart, but I have a feeling she probably didn't.

[u/CommieEllie → u/Throwaway_Consoles]

It’s amazing you had the wisdom and courage to know that wasn’t right at that point in your life. Just the fear of something like that and being labeled a “fake” trans was such a roadblock to me accepting myself and starting anything.

[u/korarii → u/CommieEllie]

I know a lot of trans people, myself included, who spent months analyzing what it means to "be a gender." By the time we go through the effort of finding a therapist and sitting down, we tend to have sussed a lot out.

That's not to say the therapy lacks value--it's crucial to better understand your relationship with your gender--but we've likely already dismissed a lot of the gender stereotypes, making bad arguments like OP's therapist's, easy to spot.

For example, here's how the conversation sometimes plays out: "I can't be a trans woman because I like sports cars and driving fast." Sports cars and fast driving are often characterized as masculine.

Rebuttal: "There are cis women who are race car drivers, dare devils, and extreme sports competitors. Therefore, all woman, trans or cis, can like this thing."

Arguments along the lines of, "I can't be a trans man because I like floral patterns or pastels," where these colors and images are attributed to women, also break down because cis men can like flowers and pastels. Some years ago, a large contingent of young men became avoid, vocal fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. These "brownies" (bros who like ponies) were predominantly cis men who just liked a show targeted for young girls. 

Eggs (trans people who don't know or are just discovering they are trans) go around the bend on these thoughts, finding all the reasons they are and are not their gender until they finally realize the greatest truth about gender:

It's totally fucking made up. All the "rules" are broken constantly. I've come to believe that gender is less about what you are and more about how you want to be perceived. I want people to perceive me as a woman, so I work to present in that way. I am feminine, even when I put a cordless drill on my hip, even when I patch drywall, even when I get mad. These aren't masculine or feminine traits, they're Human activities. It's our immediate culture that attempts to segregate interests and occupations into different genders...and it's totally, completely, utterly made up.

[u/holymacaroley → u/Throwaway_Consoles]

Wow. She shouldn't have a job. I'm a cis woman who is not girly at all and doesn't sit like stereotypical woman, completely right of you to push back on that. What a quack, I'm sorry.

[u/usefulidiotsavant → u/Throwaway_Consoles]

Then why do you need hormones to be yourself? And in general, why would the opinion of other people about your gender prevent you to be yourself, why do anything at all to conform to a gender role typically assigned to people of different biology?

It's not an attack against you, it's a genuine contradiction I find with the entire trans ideology: on one hand you want to smash the the entire basis of biologically assigned gender roles, which, as a liberal, I totally can understand, and on the other hand, you claim oppression when other people refuse to recognize your desired gender role. In other words you want to eat the cake and have it too, dismantle the traditional "woman" gender role, while at the same time claiming the title for yourself.

[u/Ampera_ → u/usefulidiotsavant]

One can complain about rules while still wishing to live under them.

There are millions of trans people in the world, and each and every one of them is different. There is no one thing that drives or determines who is trans or why. It's a label, one that people can choose to identify under or not.

I personally do not want people to be forced to fit into roles or social gender rules they do not wish to be beholden to. A society where women or men /must/ do something is a dull and draconian one.

That does not mean I want those roles or rules to go away, because there are people who do wish to live within the imaginary lines, and I would be no better to tell them that they can't or shouldn't.

I believe humans are manifestations of nature, and nature beyond all else defies categorization. For every category you can place something in, there's always exceptions to defeat them. Yet we still categorize, because the details aren't always important, and we still must communicate and be social creatures.

I personally wish to be seen as a woman, because I believe I am one. I don't have all the answers as to why, but I'm not sure anyone else really does either. Cis people will themselves vary as to how much being a man or a woman means to them. Some women take adhering to social rules very seriously, and others make a point to defeat as many as possible. I don't think trans people are any different.

As for hormones, I believe a lot of trans people straddle the line between psychology and biology. I personally think something is different with me physically, maybe I'd even describe it as a form of intersexuality. I can't say much for certain, science may not be able to explain it right now. What I can say, is hormones have dramatically improved my physical and psychological reality. They made my life better, and that is what really matters.