Skip Navigation

What is something you wish cis people knew?

What is something you learned or experienced from being trans that you wish you knew pre-transition, or that you wish cis people knew?

I'll go first: the temperature differences when going from testosterone-dominance to estrogen-dominance is not just real but significant, my body just puts out less heat and I feel colder much easier now even when otherwise maintaining a high metabolism, eating in excess, etc.

It may have just been my trans denial before, but I really wanted to believe that the difference was not that great and I was wrong.

What's something you wish people knew?

57 comments
  • How many trans people completely give up not just sports, but many types of exercise altogether. Swimming is particularly fraught, but so are plenty of other activities. There’s this narrative that trans people are beating down the doors to all sports, but for plenty of trans people just being active and healthy is out of reach.

    Edit: oop, sorry, didn’t realize this was posted in the transfem community 😅

  • Gender is a social construct and you don't have to 'live up' to any predefined ideas about what you 'need' to be, what you 'need' to look like, or what you 'need' to do.

    • ah, freedom from gender norms! I think everyone, cis and trans, has different tolerances for the extent to which they feel comfortable adhering to or violating gender norms. Ironically, transitioning has been so great for me because it allows me to finally be "normal" by being conformist.

      As a man I was always wrong because my natural inclinations made me gender non-conforming (making me seem like a gay man). It was very stigmatizing living that way, but once I transitioned it's like everything lined up and now for the first time every I "fit" society, and I just live as a relatively normal woman without stigma.

      However, my sexuality still makes me non-conforming, but in women that seems to be more ignored or overlooked compared to men (esp. when you are feminine / conforming in your gender expression). It's only when it's made explicit that people seem uncomfortable, and even then the average person seem more accepting than of gay men, at least in my experience.

      That said, it makes sense that being trans would lend itself to seeing the possibilities in gender and the freedom from gender norms that can be accomplished.

      The popularity of beyond-the-binary ideas of Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg and the increased adoption of non-binary as a political identity show a thirst for tearing down gender norms and replacing them with gender freedom (particularly focused on individualist ideas of gender expression and non-conformity).

      Though I am ultimately skeptical that this is how gender works, and it reminds me of the failed political lesbianism of second wave feminism, the problem then was that sexuality was not wholly cultural or political as mistakenly assumed, and you cannot will yourself to be a lesbian and build a new utopian society on that basis. Straight women exist, and they will continue to be attracted to men even if it's they're told it's wrong. Still, it's exciting to see movements like this push to create space for gender non-conformity, that's a win regardless in my book.

      • Our point isn't that people can't behave in ways they like more that they don't have to adhere so strictly to gender roles, expression etc. They can still, of course, act in more 'conventional' ways but the point is that they should be able to choose that and if necessary choose to break that or merely change over time, nobody should be forced to behave or look a particular way nor feel they can only be those things and that is all forever.

        So it's not always exactly gender non-conformity more that behaviour and expressions shouldn't be tied to gender, and roles shouldn't exist at all. Just be you, even if most of the time that matches what society currently sees as matching what they expect, but you don't always have to.

  • Yeah, the temperature thing is real. It's not like I doubted my wife before, but even a little AC is enough to give me the shivers now. Sorry!

    I think the thing that surprised me most (although I started to figure this out a while before cracking) is that women and men are far more similar than they are different. We're all just people, with very similar desires and experiences.

    Oh, and I had no idea how obsessed women are with boobs.

    Although I guess none of these are trans-specific things.

    • Genuinely look forward to the temperature thing, I've been boiling alive my entire life :/

    • That's the funny thing, I never doubted women's accounts about temperature - and yet, I somehow had discounted or downplayed the severity of it (it makes me cringe to say this, I hate fitting the profile of a sexist stereotypical man that way).

      Transitioning has really opened my eyes to how much of my mentality and expectations I have for the world and others is rooted in my own narrow experience in the world. It makes me feel alarmed about my lack of understanding of other minority / oppressed lived experiences. Despite all the effort I have put into reading and understanding disability, race, etc. I still really don't understand it in the most fundamental and important ways I need to.

      Re men and women being similar, I have had this thought too - while all the differences are being highlighted and are on display as well for me, I'm shocked at how much of a woman I can be biologically, having been born with a male body.

      It really turns out the body is a lot more flexible about sex than I realized, and estrogen dominance can really change the body and brain in ways I never expected. For example, the idea that trans women can experience PMS seemed very unlikely to me before I transitioned, and yet it is a real thing! (For clarity, some trans women experience something like a menstrual cycle, but they obviously don't bleed or menstruate - the PMS symptoms might be caused by estrogen sensitivity and changes in the hormone levels, just like in cis women.)

      The idea that the hormones regulate practically everything: temperature, drug tolerance, fat composition, and brain composition is fascinating.

      What I am left wondering is what fundamental differences are left between me and a cis woman, biologically?

      What relevance is having XY chromosomes to my physiology and biology, when injecting estrogen and having removed testes?

      When you focus on functionality and practical differences, the bio-essentialist mindset starts to weaken. The main medical differences between me and the average cis woman are that I don't need a pap smear, I can't get pregnant, and I might eventually need prostate exams. That's about the extent of it - otherwise, I'm medically / biologically like any other woman, and that blows my mind.

      OK, but I have to ask - what do you mean about women being boob-obsessed?

      And no worries, it doesn't have to be trans-specific, just something you wish cis people knew based on your experiences as a trans person (could be anything, for example when I first transitioned and was a visible trans woman, I was shocked at how women were so tolerant and polite, and how it was primarily men who stared at me aggressively - there were shitty, transphobic women, but mostly they were not confrontational; I didn't expect women to be so tolerant and accepting).

      • OK, but I have to ask - what do you mean about women being boob-obsessed?

        This is probably a cultural thing, or maybe I just hang out with a bunch of perverts, but whenever I'm out with girl friends the conversation always seems to touch on boobs: how big or small each others' are, bras vs padded camis, how they wish they were closer together or further apart etc etc. I'm not introducing the topic, I promise!

        Plus on the occasions I get (re-)introduced to people, which in the past necessitated a bit of "here's our friend, you might know her by another name, but she's a girl, OK?" the usual response is "hey, you have boobs! Can I feel? You can touch mine if you like!"

        Given I'm a westerner living in Japan there's a good chance I'll outgrow most of my cis friends, which will probably get me even more attention...

    • The only time I experienced a sensitivity to the cold was during a short period where I think I was a little anemic. Estrogen has definitely made me more sensitive, but I such a ridiculous starting point that I still have cold tolerance. Funnily, a cis person brought up how me (and two others who were in shorts+Tshirt) were warm because of T (I hadn't come out to her yet).

  • Biology, such as how much the body responds to hormones and how that destroys the idea of binary sex.

  • That gender dysphoria exists

  • That being this way is not at all for attention or anything like that. :')

  • They should know I'm gonna die in the street. They should watch.

    • Real, they won't be able to put me in their camps

    • unfortunately they might, at least in the US there is a learned callousness to suffering and "not my problem" individualism, which is ironic given the significance of taking care of the poor, unhoused, and travelers in both Christianity and ancient Greece and Rome, the supposed cultural foundations of the West.

      edit: oh, I've been meaning to ask if you have a gofundme or way to send you funds, you are on my mind a lot

  • That speech does in fact creates reality. Using the masculine form of a word to refer to a group of people does mean, that you actively exclude all the people who are not male. People may not realise and say "dont be so shiny about it", but for trans people it does mean quite a lot how people refer to us.

    Also that cis mans literally have to shut the fuck up if people would like, that others could stop using male words as default. Of course you dont feel excluded/discriminates, but I do since I Am definitely not a man and I do not want to be referred as one.

    • Well said, social reality is just as real as any other kind of reality - the language we use is part of how we reify our concepts and regulate others within them.

      • It definitely is. The Problem here is, that it is quite hard to communicate this to people who aren't really aware of the situation. Before I had the realisation that I Am trans I also didnt really belief, that speech forms a reality and that using a male ford as a general word for all genders does hurt other people, especially trans people. The problem here is, that for understanding, why this is the case people kind of have to understand what gender dysphoria is and how it feels.

  • I wish more cis folks knew that to me, simply being me, is as normal as being themselves is to them. I'm not a walk on the wild side, nor a walking queer chyron. I'm not your token, your conversational curio. I'm not your unicorn!

    • Such a great point, being trans is made into an exotic fetish, but it's rather mundane really. This is a lot like how women are treated under patriarchy, to be honest. They are made into mysterious, sexual creatures rather than just people like anyone else. They are extended into the "Other" and alienated from common humanity.

57 comments