Posts by DawnBrightmoon

22

A happy life for a gay ex-JW

by Steve_C in

i'm not sure if this is the correct place to put this, but here goes.. i've posted a few times before about different subjects.

in some of those posts ive mentioned that im gay, and in others ive referred to my wife and kids.

i thought id share a bit more information to any who were curious about this.

DawnBrightmoon

That's honestly one of the best stories I have read all day, an amazing one at that! I'm glad that things turned out the way they did for you. :)

49

Are we completely sure Trans people don't just have a mental disorder?

by Lore in

jw
friends

so i thought i was a pretty accepting person.

sure i grew up in a bigoted cult who hates gay people.. now i'm an atheist who has no reason to care about anyones sexual prefferences.. .

but i've watched inverviews of trans people.

DawnBrightmoon

Thank you for the welcome, those of you who wished it to me! :)

Sure, one could make the argument that mental illness plays a role. But those who go the "craziest" are usually the ones who face the greatest amount of opposition. Their friends do their damnedest to enforce their biological sex upon them by limiting their choices to the detriment of their mental and emotional well-being. The people who they thought were their friends and loved them begin to make it clear that they'll be treated like "faggots" with all the bile and hatred that word conveys. They struggle against both their human need to be accepted by their peers and the thoughts and feelings within their own minds that they simply cannot escape. They are kicked, battered, and beaten day in and day out both physically and verbally by the people they ought to be able to trust, and if there is zero support at all (and sometimes even when they have some support because the other stuff just overwhelms it)... Well, it leads to a lot of unnecessary suicides, especially when one does not have to look far to see that the ones who HAVE received love and support, the ones who HAVE made the transition as they feel necessary to themselves, and the ones who HAVE made it through the bullying alive and eventually found acceptance from enough people and a means to live the way they feel compelled to do, and they go on to live overall happy, productive lives.

49

Are we completely sure Trans people don't just have a mental disorder?

by Lore in

jw
friends

so i thought i was a pretty accepting person.

sure i grew up in a bigoted cult who hates gay people.. now i'm an atheist who has no reason to care about anyones sexual prefferences.. .

but i've watched inverviews of trans people.

DawnBrightmoon

I was initially going to stay out of the topic, but I ultimately have decided to speak up so that you can hear directly from someone who exists on the genderqueer spectrum. A lot of things have already been addressed by others, and I may end up covering some of the ground that they have.

I am not considering transitioning my body by means of hormones or surgery, but I have no problem whatsoever with those who do those things. There are multiple reasons I have no plans for it, but the most important one is that (for me) it would be a step that would be in complete denial of who I am. I was born biologically male, and while I more often lean toward the female end of the gender spectrum (if you can say that it has ends)... there is a definite male portion as well. Biology determined my sex, but for me to make the decision to transition my body toward female would be me making an outright choice to cut away the physical manifestation of the male half of my mentality. It's choosing sides where I don't feel I should need to do so.

However, people don't tend to bat an eye about a biological female choosing to have breast implants to make the ones she has larger. People don't really make that big of a deal over various forms of plastic surgery anymore. In probably the majority of these cases, these are not necessary "life-saving" procedures but simply the person trying to alter the body to fit the way they would like to look and to erase the outward manifestation of things they dislike about their biological makeup. Ultimately, it's mostly done for the sake of the mental health of the person, to make him (or her) happier with the way the body looks. Yes, I know there are cases like breast reductions being done in order to take the strain of the excess weight off a woman's back in order to prevent problems related to it, but that hardly represents the entirety of cosmetic surgeries.

My question, then, is why does the attitude (for a lot of people) change when it's surgery for transgender individuals to allow them to look and live in the way that will make them most happy, especially when there are FAR more mental health and other checks in place in advance of them receiving their surgery to make certain that they know the full implications of what they are choosing to do? The fact that the condition, prior to surgery, is primarily in their heads is somewhat irrelevant. Nearly everything about a people's feelings and beings that truly matter are primarily in their heads. Religion, sexuality, kinks, all the little things that make us feel like we are "weird" (when pretty much everyone has such things), and... yes, gender identity. Just because it exists in your head doesn't mean it isn't real. The brain is a complex thing that we do not fully understand, and it is what we use to perceive and process EVERYTHING.