Angels Never Die

5 minutes ago, Redondo said:

How about all these at restaurants?

It's called a lie.

Freedom for capital owners to decide who gets to eke out a living and who doesn't, and freedom for laborers to be at the mercy of owners. Hey, I guess if society doesn't like you, that's just the free market at work baby. Maybe try not to be gay next time, enjoy your freedom to live on the street and be harassed by cops.

33 minutes ago, Jason said:

I think anyone should be allowed to discriminate however they want on their personal property 

How noble of you.

I approve

I think disbanding the police is a good long term goal for a society, whether we're ready to make it happen, we'll see. Regardless, I want to see massive reform, of which there are many good ideas. We need to change the perception that police are as needed as we've been propagandized into believing. They have too much power, and that needs to be abolished. They have been thugs for the owner class and state oppressors for a long fucking time. 

3 hours ago, Jason said:

Yikes

Holy fucking shit

4 hours ago, Vegas Halo Fan said:

I commend you for your courage. Many people in your situation, perhaps most, wouldn't take the personal risk of putting themselves out there. I appreciate you not only disclosing this, but also offering to educate. I went to a Ryan White Conference about a year ago, and it was an eye opener. I believed that I was pretty well educated on sexual and gender orientation, but I still had a lot to learn. It has become a major issue in dealing with the prison population.

Thank you. I like helping people learn if they're open to it. I'm by no means an expert on this stuff really though, I've just met many different people on the spectrum. 

1 minute ago, Blarg said:

Acting?

Yes, I will turn into Jodie Foster.

6 hours ago, wopphil said:

Another question: how old are you?

I'm 34.

4 hours ago, Blarg said:

That's my final evolutionary stage.

Hey all, just wanted to say thanks for asking good questions. This turned out to be kinda therapeutic for me, hopefully it was helpful for you too.

I flirt with socialism, which is still not very popular in this country, perhaps contrary to what many right wingers believe.

MT, I know we probably have a ton of disagreements, but I find it somewhat validating to notice even conservatives seeing the writing on the wall. This country is on its way down faster than I thought, it's third act time. I believe things will break down completely in my lifetime and that there will be a different government here before I die, but I have no idea what it will look like. I'm seriously considering Canada.

8 hours ago, Don said:

Legit question: What were your teen years like? I have a niece (born with a penis, chooses to identify as female) that came out as trans at roughly 15. Everybody in our family chose to respect it and use the preferred pronouns out of respect for her. But she seems to be fairly fluid in the way she identifies in terms of clothing and all else. Like she will wear typically male clothing sometimes, but decided (at 17) to wear female clothing/makeup to my father’s funeral. I bring that up because she had been out here for a couple days ahead wearing typically male dress, but decided funeral day was the day to express female. It made me wonder if it was teen shock the system stuff, which I know is a shitty thought, but still. It was just more of a “I didn’t know that gender identity in terms of dress was a day to day choice”. I ask this because it legit confuses me. I’m completely supportive of her, as is her father (my brother), but I feel like there are questions I can’t really ask without risking offense. 

My teen years were very dark, my mental state got considerably worse after I had begun puberty. I don't want to go into detail.

So the difference between gender and sex can be confusing, I want to validate that it's hard to fully understand, and it doesn't help that a lot of trans people are uncomfortable talking about this individually because we're so on guard from people using some variation we have as ammunition to invalidate us. I'll start off using myself as an example: I expressed very feminine early on in my exploration, which is very common for trans women. I was trying to be recognized as the gender I identified with despite not having as much time to physically transition yet, and people were more likely to recognize what I was going for when I was hyper-feminine. Trans women (or men) can vary in their gender expression just as much as cis people do, and if you take me for example, I still dress casually feminine a lot of the time, but as I've grown more comfortable with my body, I've started to dress a little more "dykey," and I would dress that way more if it didn't lead to me being misgendered sometimes. When I think about my situation, I identify as a woman, and will want to embody that socially and aesthetically to varying degrees (just like cis people do), it feels more comfortable to me than any other alternative, but if you ask me what's more important to me than anything, it's my body. It's my bone structure, my muscles, my shape, my facial/body hair, my voice, my genitals, my size, it's what I see when I look in the mirror and how I sound.

However, not all trans women feel the same way. For some, gender is more important than body stuff (gender being social behavior like makeup, clothes, hairstyle, getting social gender affirmation, speaking in more passive language, and mannerisms.) And, some people have just body dysphoria, and the gender stuff doesn't really matter to them all that much, but they still identify as a woman. Then there's non-binary people, people who don't identify as one of the binary genders. I'm not sure if genderfluid people typically consider themselves non-binary, but they are people who kind of bounce around in their gender expressions based on how they feel. And someone can be physically transitioning and be non-binary, because it seems gender/sex dysphoria have those two main components to it, the gender one and the sex one (I'm using that word to represent bodily sex characteristics.) And the balance of those components vary from individual to individual. The identity stuff is harder to understand, because it's not always so clear where sex identity ends and gender identity begins. Okay, I'm tired of explaining things, that's all you get for now. As far as your niece goes, all you have to do is give her some space to figure it out, it's a process, and not an easy one. It really sucks being evaluated all the time.

Disclaimer: This is my understanding of things, not all trans people agree with what I've said here, some have different views of things.

1 hour ago, notherhalo said:

maybe this is a dumb question, but Im serious

If an dude (generally athletes) can take male hormones and become more "manly" (in the sense of things like hair, muscles, etc)

and a male can take female hormones to become more womanly (and vice versa)

 

Can a woman take female hormones to become more feminine?  (more than just emotional, but physical)

I'm not an endocrinologist so please don't think of me as an authority, but I think it's like when a cis woman becomes pregnant, and her hormone levels are higher. I'm sure you've seen a pregnant woman, things change.

1 hour ago, wopphil said:

I presume you are physically attracted to women. Will that change at all with your transition?

How is your girlfriend handling your transition? I presume she was with you before you came out. Will she stay with you during/after the transition? 

Yeah, I'm into women, cis and trans. I don't think it will change. 

I met her after actually. She's absolutely fine with my transition.

1 hour ago, wopphil said:

How do you feel about transgender women who still have most of the physical characteristics of a biological male, including muscle mass, competing against biological females in sports?

How confident are you in your feelings? Are you concerned you may regret reassignment surgery?

Do you feel the transgender population comprises a larger percentage of the population than common belief? 

I've heard different things about what the body facts and performance facts are, so I don't know how unfair it is. Do I care? Meh, not really sure I do. I just don't feel like sports are very fair, if you're going to break it down to physical/athleticism like that. Look at Shaq in his athletic prime, no one could compare to him in terms of physical ability, similar to LeBron in his prime. So much about an athlete is out of their control and has nothing to do with anything other than luck of birth. I do get that it might have the potential to really mess with competitive balance, I honestly don't know and wouldn't even know where to start in order to break it down.

Pretty darn confident. I think anyone choosing the option of major surgery fear maybe regretting it when it's all said and done. Some are disappointed in their results, but that doesn't seem to be the norm by any means. 

Most likely. I think any population of people that fear prejudice from society will almost always be undercounted.

4 minutes ago, gotbeer said:

Which bathroom do you use?  Ever get weird stares using it?

Won't you miss pissing standing up and wherever you want?  

Only women's. I don't really notice any stares in the bathroom. Usually no one cares to even look at other people in the bathroom.

I might, but I gotta grow up sometime 

13 minutes ago, Stradling said:

Did you ever hook up with sneakyflute?  

Depends on who that is.

11 minutes ago, AngelsLongBall said:

Is this in some way connected to your disappointment in getting circumcised as a baby? I remember (IIRC) we had a thread about that

Holy shit, you have a good memory. The answer is not really, I've been able to personally move on from it since then, with I think the help of transition. I'm still upset it happened though, especially since I would've had more tissue for my surgery.