🌈International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism, and Transphobia 🌈

Thanks for this post. I'm trans-masc. I like online spaces that don't make you choose a binary gender when you sign up, and which give me an opportunity to tell folks my gender and pronouns without sounding like I'm obsessed by them (e.g. a profile option).

Rayne

Hey @-Rayne-

Great to meet you. You're so right, the binary gender selections are all too common - online or offline. A profile option to elect your preferred pronoun is a great idea too.

Thanks for sharing your views 😊

hi @Former-Member, good to meet you. are you non- binary?

@Former-Member our avatars look good together.

much the same here. realising and addressing my gender has been the single best thing i’ve ever done.

To me, this is a very personal issue. I have a lot of friends in the transexual category both pre and post op and here where I am currently living it is terrifying for them. This countries President is working to systematically exclude them from the armed services even though many of them serve with absolute distinction. He is also working to create policies that will allow both government and private employers to discriminate against the trans population on the basis of a person being trans with no other reason for termination or other so-called "corrective action." I hope and pray things are better in Oceania right now.

@Former-Member I'm not young. I'm 43 now - I was 40 before I really acknowledged it to myself. In my family of origin and the culture I ended up in later on, it was very much not-ok to be anything other than cis - actually they wouldn't acknowledge that anything other than cis-gendered is healthy and okay. So as a teenager or when I hit puberty and it started mattering a lot to me, I just shoved it away to a dark corner of my head... and it didn't reappear until I was in a safer place, which was decades later.

I started taking hormones about a year ago and had an initial consult today for top surgery. I'm so excited. Almost everything else in my life is crap right now... This has become the most important thing.

@Former-Member I have trans friends in the US and they're also afraid right now. Here the discrimination is real but less open - that's my feeling anyway - a lot depends on where in the country you live. I applied for a job recently in a very liberal organisation and was advised not to disclose until I received an offer b/c of unconscious bias. The level/risk of violence though depends very much on location I think.

Rayne