Both: When did you first learn about the existence of transgender people?

submitted by worried19 from self.GCdebatesQT

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]divingrightintowork 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I never really "didn't" know about them which is to say there was never a moment where it was like "Wait people can do that?" It just intuitvely made sense - this is also true of

Polyamory / Relationship Anarchy / non-monogamy Asexuality Homosexuality / bisexuality Kink Atheism (sort of, like I believed in Santa and this belief just sort of faded - likewise for religion - I never "fell" out of faith was just raised believing in God, just like I was raised believing in Santa)

And probably a bunch of other stuff - like I've read lots of stories of people realizing they didn't "have" to be straight, or monogamous, or vanilla, giving their selves permission, etc. and all of these things always intuitively made sense - That you could be a gynomorph who had c asual sex with multiple people and intimate relationships with multiple people who also had a fursona, or w/e. No aha moments, no "Do people really do that?" moments, no "What do you mean you are married and have a boyfriend" moments, etc. Just like a lot of "Yeah you do you."

But I can comfortably say I was familiar or aware or some such of most all of those things when I was a teenager - and I was a teenager in the 90s, and socially isolated, so yeah - it was fairly intuitive. I was indifferent to transsexuality - there was nothing exceptional or weird about it / no reason anyone couldn't do it if that is what they wanted to do.

[–]worried19[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's interesting. I'm younger than you are, but maybe I was more sheltered. A lot of the things you listed would never in a million years have occurred to me. They're just totally outside my frame of reference and experience.

[–]divingrightintowork 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

But it wasn't about being sheltered, it was understanding that there were no literal or material rules or laws that were stopping anyone from doing any of these things, by and large.. And I always understood that.

like sure at one point I was told you had to wait until marriage before having sex, and I kind of knew what marriage was, I didn't really know what sex was, like in any way I really thought about, anymore that I knew what living in Africa was like (I didn't know it living in Africa was like).

And then some point when I was a teenager, I had a better understanding of what sex was, and saw no real reason as to why you couldn't wait until marriage to have it, but also why you couldn't have it with anyone you wanted, because what did being in a relationship with one person have anything to do with what you did with other people?

Like that was intuitive. Similarly, why couldn't a person go to great lengths to resemble another sex than their own? Why couldn't you be in a romantic relationship with more than one person?

Basically the answer to all of these things is social pressure, but that doesn't literally stop anyone, therefore anyone could do that if that's what they really want to do.

Does that make sense?

(For context I grew up in a conservative Catholic family, in a very homogenous suburban area, but a metropolitan suburban area But still very homogenous).