It's been a while since we've had a general discussions thread, and with the holiday season ramping up, I imagine a lot of us are feeling very stressed and worn out.
Spending time with family members is always a time, to say the least. Getting my family to respect my partner's they/them pronouns has been frustrating and exhausting. It enfuriates me that they can understand and respect my pronouns, but only because I'm binary gendered. Getting very sick of deconstructing the "them is multiple people" argument, as well as the "I'm still a lesbian even though my partner is transmasc non-binary" conversation. ๐
But aside from that, I'm actually excited about the holidays this year. And I hope everyone has something to look forward to, time with friends and family who love and accept us. We all deserve love, compassion, and acceptance, and to be able to enjoy a time of year that should be representative of all those things.
This space is 100% open and welcoming of venting, frustration, whatever you want to post here. And if you see cishet people disrupting you, disrupting the community, invalidating your feelings or opinions please report them and we will deal with them accordingly. I'm not handing out bans to every cis person who has an opinion on anything here, but this is not a space for cisgender people. If you're reading this and you're cisgender, you are welcome to post and contribute here. By all means, do so. But keep in mind that this space is not for you. You are a visitor in this community. How we feel, how we struggle, the experiences we as transfeminine people have come first every single time. I won't change that. And if you're going to participate here, you need to abide by that.
I just wanted to get that out of the way because occasionally we get an influx of people from other parts of the fediverse here and they are welcome but I continue to see cisgender experiences being used to invalidate transgender ones. And that's going to be a focus of mine going forward.
What are your thoughts on this time of year? What's been your experiences so far with family, the good and the bad? Let's all support each other through this. And what are your thoughts on how this community has been over the last few months? I'd love to hear it if anyone had any suggestions or thoughts on how our community has been operating.
I was looking forward to the holidays, but then my orchi got delayed well into the new year and that's kind of cascaded everything else. I have a condition that makes things very painful down there and was looking forward to being pain free when I planned to come out to my extended family, and work before the holidays.
With my pain not going to be resolved I don't really feel like I have the strength to deal with going through with the stress of coming out, though my dysphoria is going bonkers living in the closet. My parents, though "accepting", are extremely bad about deadnaming and misgendering me and at this point it's making me consider not visiting at all if that's how it'll go.
Sorry for the downer post lol just how it is. I'm sure I'll be right as rain when I can finally get the stupid operation done
Also I really like how you've been running the community LadyAutumn and I appreciate your check-in posts as well :)
I'm so sorry to hear that your procedure got delayed. Most awful feeling in the world when you're getting so close and have to wait even longer. I hope that you have some support through that and that you're holding up okay. :(
I think it's completely understandable to delay coming out if you'd have to do it through a lot of pain and stress. This is all about you and what you feel up to doing, and it's okay to wait until you truly feel ready to tell them. I also think your decision to visit them or not is totally fair and reasonable. With my family over the years, I've come down very hard on people who refuse to respect me. I correct misgendering or deadnaming no matter how awkward it is or what the circumstances are, and i have cut out some family for refusing to respect me, my partner, and my friends. All that to say that when it comes to your family respecting you, your feelings are always what should come first. I hope that they come around for you and make real efforts to respect your name and your gender. You deserve that support from them.
Let us know when you get confirmation of your appointment, and we can hype you up :) Don't worry about not having a lot of positive feelings to share right now. The holiday season is so hard for a lot of trans folks, and having this space for transfeminine people to vent their feelings is a big priority of mine. We deserve that, and I love that we can have this space separate and distinct from any social media company and run and managed by a bunch of volunteer queer people.
What a wonderful reply, thank you @LadyAutumn
One thing you helped me realize is how many people have had to deal with the same things I am right now. I've always had trouble feeling valid, but that realization has been one of the most validating so far.
Would you mind if I DM'd you?
Sure! :)