Quitter's Guidebook (aka How I Did It, But YMMV)

Quitting smoking is said to be one of the toughest addictions to break.  Many try quitting only to quit quitting.  I attempted to give up the habit myself many times before being successful.  As of this writing I've been smoke-free for two years.  I'm going to try to convey "how I did it" in an attempt to help those who might be thinking of quitting.  Maybe one of the things I write here can be the final "Eureka!" that someone needs to give them the edge in their own personal battle with nicotine.  Mind you, this is all from my own perspective.  Others might not have the same success, or be able to do it "my way" for various reasons, which is why I titled this "Your Mileage May Vary."

A lot of people say there are two sides to the addiction to nicotine; the psychological and the physical addiction.  I disagree.  I feel the addiction is three-fold.  I will list them individually then try to describe them as I see them.

1.) The addiction to the nicotine.

2.)The psychological "I NEED to smoke" conditioning.

3.) The physical habit of smoking itself.

#1- Nicotine is the tobacco plants natural protection from being eaten by insects.  By chance this natural insecticide, once inside the brain permits it direct and indirect control over the flow of more than 200 neuro-chemicals, most importantly dopamine.  Dopamine is the brain's primary motivational neurotransmitter.  When you are hungry or thirsty, that craving or desire is caused by the dopamine pathways in your brain telling you to go eat.  Once you have eaten, the need is fulfilled and the cravings fade.  Nicotine causes the same reaction.  When nicotine levels in the brain drop below what it has grown accustomed to as "normal" levels, the dopamine pathways open up, flooding you with cravings, or "need."  Smoking satisfies this "need" and the cravings fade.  This leads to number 2.

#2- "I NEED to smoke".  We condition ourselves through the use of nicotine, to believe that to "feel normal" we NEED to smoke.  I've heard plenty of people say things like "work is too stressful, I NEED to smoke", or "driving is too stressful, I NEED to smoke."  I'm not sure how, but stress triggers cravings, as do many other things.  Even locations can be triggers.  I'm going to be honest.  Nobody NEEDS to smoke.  It is not a necessary thing, like eating breathing drinking or sleeping.  You don't NEED to smoke any more than a person NEEDS to shoot heroine or smoke crack.  It's conditioning.  Smoking calms the dopamine pathways giving us that good satisfied feeling, and stress triggers the craving or "need" to feel good again.

#3- The physical habit of smoking.  Whether you know it or not, just the act of picking up the pack and putting a cigarette in your mouth is part of the addiction.  I noticed this the first time I tried to quit.  I felt constantly like there was something I was forgetting to do.  I always felt like my hands needed to be doing something.  That's because I wasn't smoking.  Holding the cigarette, ashing, twirling it; all the little fidgety things you do while smoking are part of the physical habit, and when you try to quit you aren't doing those things any more, and that can be just as big a part of people quitting quitting as #1 and #2.

Being Done

The most important thing about quitting smoking is simply the above.  You need to really WANT to quit.  You need to be so disgusted with smoking and what it's doing to you that you KNOW it's TIME.  If you aren't at that stage, then I'm sorry, you will not succeed.  "Doing it for the kids" or whatever just won't cut it.  You need to do it because you are DONE with the whole affair.  For me, it was the smell most of all.  It was disgusting.  Chain-smokers were the worst.  They would walk by and I'd feel like I couldn't even breathe.  Opening the car door on a hot summer day and getting hit in the face with that ashtray smell.  Pulling my winter coat out of the closet and smelling how it reeked from last winter.  I was just so disgusted by the smell, the mess, and the cost of smoking; not just in dollars mind you, but in how it was affecting me physically.  I had a permanent dry cough.  I always needed to clear my throat.  Too much exertion made my chest feel like it was being squeezed tighter and tighter.  I caught every cold that was going around and just generally felt crappy all the time.  After 22 or so years of smoking I was finally done with it.

Making a Plan

Before you snuff out that last cigarette you need a plan.  You need to prepare.  I used the patch, putting one on each morning after my shower, although some cannot use them due to allergies to certain adhesives.  But the plan goes beyond that.  Mentally preparing is great, but there's more to do than that.

1. Get rid of ashtrays and lighters and other smoking paraphenilia.  Keeping that stuff around for "when company comes over" is a thinly disguised excuse to make it easier to give up and say "at least I tried."   Do or do not, there is no try.  Don't give yourself an easy out.

2. Clean your car.  Take the ashtray out of the dash and wash it thoroughly.  Mine serves as a coin tray.  I was lucky that the car I own now was never smoked in.  Vaccuum the entire interior, wipe down the dashboard, wash the windows inside and out.  Take it to be professionally cleaned if you want to.  The main thing is to get the cigarette smell out of it as thoroughly as possible because that smell can be a strong trigger.  The same goes for your home.  Clothing, bedding, curtains, carpets, even the walls could use a wipe-down if you smoked in your home.  Eliminate the smell as much as possible.

3. Avoid triggers.  This can be tough, because there are lots of places or times or events that trigger the need to smoke that simply can't be easily avoided, if at all.  Do your best to avoid the triggers.  If you normally went outside after lunch at work to smoke, don't do it any more.  Just being in that area can trigger cravings.  Stay inside and talk to a co-worker, go for a walk, read a book. Do something that has no connection to smoking for you at all.

4. Stop thinking about smoking.  This is probably the worst part, though it seems like a no-brainer.  Stop thinking about it.  One of the problems I had while quitting was constantly thinking about the fact that I wasn't smoking, or concentrating on it when a craving struck.  That panic and fear of "OMG I can't do this, I can't feel like this forever" is what drove me back to smoking.  The real fact is, the craving disappears on it's own within minutes, sometimes even seconds ... if you don't DWELL on it.  Thinking about it and panicking leads to added stress which strengthens the craving, making it more and more unbearable.  Constantly thinking about smoking causes cravings to hit more often.  Stop thinking about it.

5. Distract yourself.  I found this worked very well when cravings hit.  It takes time to "retrain" yourself, but it can be done.  When a craving hits, do something to distract yourself.  Put your mind on something completely unrelated.  Within minutes, the craving fades and you can relax.  The most important thing to realize is that those feelings of stress and panic and unbearable need don't go on and on forever.  It does pass, if you let it.  Chewing gum, sucking on your favorite candy, or holding some small object in your hand to keep it busy can help too.  Find new things to do at the times when you'd normally light up.  Remove yourself from the things that normally trigger cravings.

Succeeding

Success is achieved once you realize that you can get through the day without the crutch of nicotine, and are doing it consistently without even thinking about it.  There is no real formula or guaranteed plan for succeeding at quitting smoking.  You just need to be DONE with it, and determined to beat it.  How you go about it is up to you.  Myself, I did all of the above.  I picked a day to quit, which was a Monday because I figured that trying to quit over a weekend, when I have more idle time, would be a bad idea.  Keeping busy so that you don't dwell on smoking is a huge part of succeeding.  Make a plan, then execute that plan.  Distract yourself from smoking by avoiding situations where you would normally light up.  Find new things to do instead.  There will come a day when you will suddenly realize... "I haven't even thought about it in a week!"  Will you still get occasional cravings?  Most likely.  I still do, but they aren't very strong, and pass quickly.

The thing that will keep you from succeeding the most is the word 'can't.'  "I can't do this."  Yes you can.  You just need to want to.

Trans Terms And Other Realities

There are a lot of different terms out there to describe people, types of people, or lifestyles etc. Many of them get misconstrued or misunderstood by the general public due to plain ignorance of the truth, mininformation by news and other media, stereotypes, religious belief, upbringing, and so on. It's not that the information isn't OUT THERE and readily available, but it does require that a person actively seek the information on their own in most cases. Many people, however, don't want to educate themselves because they are afraid that understanding equals acceptance, and they refuse to accept certain things for various reasons. Usually there is a good amount of fear and prejudice in the way of true understanding and enlightenment. And what would the neighbors thnk?! I kid, but not really.

I've done a ton of research and reading and thinking on these subjects because I truly want to know and understand this world and the people that inhabit it. The following list of terms and their meanings are by no means to be seen as the absolute truth about any of it, but at least I think it can be a means to helping others who might not be aware to at least begin to understand. A lot of people use words and terms without really knowing their meaning, and that is unfortunate because many of those people just don't care what the difference is. People like ME care what the difference is, because those words and phrases are often misused when referring to people like me and can negatively impact our lives in ways big or small.

Transgender- Many might disagree with me because this term has a lot of different meanings attached to it, but from what I have learned and what I personally believe, this is what transgender(ed) means. The word is an "umbrella" term that encompasses anyone who lives outside(either full time or part time) the socially constructed and generally accepted gender norms based on physical sex at birth. This includes, but is not limited to, cross-dressers, drag king/queens, gays lesbians and bisexuals, pansexuals, transvestites, androgynes, intersex, and transsexuals. With so many different terms encompassed by the same umbrella term it's easy to see how some could get confused about which is what. Some will argue "I'm transgender, not transsexual" and that is acceptable, although I personally think it's not completely accurate. Some might simply like to use "softer" sounding words that don't bring disturbing thoughts or images to mind either for themselves or the person they might share that information with. Others might simply be confused or unaware of the actual or accepted definition of a term.

Cross-dresser- From what I've learned, statistically a cross-dresser is generally a heterosexual male who enjoys occasionally or frequently stepping out of their rigid male gender role and into the rold of female. Many are even family men with well-paying jobs. They may simply enjoy being catered to for a night. Have someone buy THEM a drink for once, compliment them, treat them like a lady. There are, of course, cross-dressing females as well. These people generally don't believe themselves to BE the opposite gender, they just like playing the role. Some do it in private and never share it with anyone, others go out to a cross-dresser friendly club or bar once a week, etc. The main thing is however, they don't LIVE every day as the gender opposite the one they were assigned at birth. Sometimes cross-dressing is a stepping stone to other things, but I don't want to confuse the issue with cross-definitions.

 Drag King/Queen- This one should be more straight-forward. A drag performer is just that; a performer. Drag performers, whether King or Queen, are playing a role, usually in an outrageous and stereotypical fashion. There are plenty of people who down drag performers or say they don't belong under the umbrella of Transgender, or say they give the Transgender community a bad name, etc. I disagree. They are performers, it's like a job to them that they enjoy, and they quite often are decent people. They don't try to fool or trick anyone into believing they ARE the gender they are presenting, and they understand that they are performers playing a role. This too can be a stepping stone to other things.

Transvestite- This word can be very confusing and misleading to people because it is often the first thing people think of when they hear most of the other words/terms listed herein. It is also one of the terms mostly attributed to the  stereotyping of other people. Here's the short and quick definition: A transvestite is a person, usually a man, who adopts the dress, demeanor and role of the opposite sex usually for emotional or sexual gratification. There are different degrees or types of Transvestite, some being very fetishistic, including bondage and discipline, sadomasochism etc. In short these people don't generally believe themselves to actually be the opposite gender, it's a role they play for emotional/sexual gratification.

Transsexual- This term can also be confusing and misleading to people because it is often mistaken for the above entry. A transsexual is NOT a transvestite. They are NOT a drag performer, or a cross-dresser. A lot of transsexuals refuse to use this word to describe themselves because they say "my gender has nothing to do with my sexuality", which is true, but that is not what the word transsexual means. The word sexual in the term does not refer to who a person is attracted to. The way I think of it is this: My gender has always been female. As long as I can remember I have felt this, so I am not changing my gender; I am however changing my physical sex so it more or less aligns with my gender. So I am TRANScending my SEX, not my GENDER. For an MtF Transsexual, like me, I was born with the physical reproductive system of a male, while my gender (the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with one sex) was and is female.

When a person cannot fit the socially-constructed and gender-normalized role they are assigned according to their physical sex at birth, there comes a time when they must find some happy medium that they can live with. They might find happiness as a cross-dresser, a drag king or queen, a transvestite, an androgyne, or a transsexual. A person does not decide to become a transsexual, but they DO decide whether or not to do something about it. Some transition, and some unfortunately end up taking their own lives. Some try to bury it and ignore it. Some find a happy medium where they can explore the "other side" without having to fully transition. I'm not saying that all cross-dressers, drag performers etc. are actually transsexuals, but I'm sure many are. They might simply have decided it wasn't worth the potential losses to transition fully and found a way to be content with themselves.

The main reason I wrote this was to (hopefully) give some clarification of some of the terms that are often confused with others. When someone says the word Transsexual, many people will conjure up all sorts of stereotypes that generally comprise a mixture of the different terms I have tried to define above. So does understanding equal acceptance? Maybe... but would that really be such a terrible thing?

Real Women Don't...

It seems that there are people out there -- trans or otherwise -- who seem to have made it their life's mission to constantly compare trans women to genetic women and tell us what we're doing wrong. They seem to believe that they alone hold some magical key to the blueprint of what a woman really is or should be, and that it is their duty to share this deep knowledge with us. Whether in blogs, status updates, chat conversations, comment sections of photos, or what-have-you, you can always find at least one person who goes out of their way to inform everyone that "real women don't..." There are even people that you can count on to go out of their way to do this. They put us under their personal microscope and analyze everything we say, do, wear, or believe, and compare it to some arbitrary personal ideal of womanhood as they themselves see it. Even if you give the most basic description of what (you believe) a woman is, there are many that will still not fit into that description for various reasons. What a woman "is" is too layered and complex to be easily defined.

There are plenty of women who wear makeup, skirts and heels every day to the office. These same women are also capable of donning jeans, a sweatshirt and a cap to watch their children play baseball on the weekend. There are plenty of women who can spend an evening at a bar with friends drinking beer and socializing, and then on the very next night could get done up for a fancy wine tasting. There are plenty of women who drive sports cars, trucks, and SUV's, and these same women could also drive a Lexus or Benz to the office. There are plenty of women who use words like dear, sweetie, hun, and darlin', just as there are plenty of women who say dude or buddy. These women do all these things and more, and above all that they don't generally have to worry about being criticized at every turn about "real women don't..." because, in fact, yes they do. REAL women do it all.

Perhaps instead of focusing your personal microscope on everyone else, these people should turn that microscope inward and try to see if they can figure out what is really bothering them so much that they have to criticize and nit-pick everyone around them for every little thing. Maybe these people should stop worrying so much about what everyone else is doing and just live their own damn lives. I don't stick my nose in what everyone else is doing because when it comes down to it, it's really none of my damn business. 

So before you write that next line about "real women don't..." just remember one thing. I'm not trying to be other women. I'm just being me.

Of Gods and Unicorns

Because being transsexual is often so hurtful, so filled with sadness and longing, with shame and loss and difficulty, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the whole thing is utterly a curse, perhaps inflicted by arcane and evil ancient gods.

Oh, probably.

But there is an upside too.
Most human lives are utterly mundane, devoid of any real uniqueness, the average person somnambulates through an existence devoted to filling the roles expected of them.

But to be a transsexual is a magical, wondrous thing.

Consider. We are given many gifts in compensation for the terrible loss of our childhood as ourselves, and for the pain we endure. We are by some as yet unknown mechanism statistically far more intelligent, as a class, than perhaps any other kind of people. We are almost universally more creative, and we often possess incredible levels of courage and self determination, demonstrated by our very survival, and ultimate attainment of our goal. We are rare as miracles, and in our own way, as magical, or so has been the belief of all ancient cultures on the earth.

We are given awareness that others would never experience, understanding of gender, of the human condition, of society and the roles and hidden rules unquestioned within it. We are given a window into the lives of both sexes, and cannot help but be, to some degree, beyond either. From this we have a rare opportunity: to choose our own life, outside predetermined and unquestioned definition or role. We can do new things, original things, only because our experience is so unique.

We get to be true shapeshifters, and experience the sheer wonder of melty-wax flesh and a real rebirth into the world. Our brains and bodies gain benefit from having been bathed in and altered by the hormones of both sexes. We appear to retain our visible youthfulness where others wrinkle, and for years longer. We possess neural advantages from both sexes, such as the language advantages of the feminized brain, and the spatial abilities of the masculinized brain both. We are shocked into waking up, if we allow it, to a life we create for ourselves...we are not automatically doomed to sleepwalk through life.

After our transformations, after the full-moon lycanthropic miracle that the modern age affords us, we can live lives of success and love, and genuine specialness, if we choose. If we can get past our upbringing, past the programming, the bigotry, the messages of disgust from the culture around us, if we can stand as ourselves in freedom, then our special gifts grant us a heritage of wondrous power.

We have a proud and marvelous history. In ancient days we were magic incarnate. We were Nadle, Winkte, Two-Souls, Shamans and healers and magical beings to our communities. We possessed the ability to give the blessings of the gods and spirits, and were prized as companions, lovers, and teachers.

We were the prize gift of ancient tribes, entertainers, designers and dreamers. Sometimes we were the -somewhat reluctant- rulers of empires, and the consorts of emperors. We were champions and warriors too, who were feared for our unique gifts turned to inevitable victory.

Know that it is only in recent centuries, with the rise of the single minded, monolithic and monotheistic desert religions, filled with harsh single gods and twisted, narrow morals, that our kind have become reviled, the objects of scorn. Once, we were the kin of the gods.

To be transsexual is not easy, and it is not a birth that could be envied, but neither is it a damnation. It was once considered a rare wonder, if a mixed one; a faery gift that cuts as it blesses.

And in the modern age, of hormones and surgery, we are the first generations of our kind to finally know the joy of complete transformation, of truly gaining our rightful bodies. No other transsexuals in history have been so fortunate.

I say that we are unicorns, rare and wondrous, with still a touch of ancient magic and the kinship of the gods. Though it is agony, beyond the fire we have the opportunity to become alchemic gold.

We have much to add to the world, and to give to ourselves and those who love us.

We have always been, we are still the prize of the tribe, for only the world around us has changed, the desert harshness branding us vile. We are still the same.

Our compensations are real, and our lives are special; we have but to grasp the gifts born of our sufferings.

When I look around me at the mundane lives, there are times I think that maybe I am glad I was born transsexual, for I would never have been what I have become without that curse. I cannot help but be grateful for my uniqueness.

I found this writing at a trans support site and wanted to post it here. I do not know who the author is, or I would give them proper credit!

~April~

My Personal Journey

     Being trans for me is and has been a journey of self; self love, self awareness, self acceptance, self expression. Learning to shed all the years of learned behaviours in order to let the real inner self come through takes time. Feeling myself grow and blossom over the last six months has been incredible. The inner peace I feel is so beautiful I could weep. Never before in my life have I been able to say I liked myself, or being me, much less being able to say I LOVE myself. I can honestly say I am well on my way to liking myself very much. I see things in a new light. I am happier and more sociable. I feel free.

     The girl in me was shamed into hiding at a young age. I remember being in kindergarten and finding myself drawn toward what was typically girl play. I jumped rope, played hopscotch, played with dolls, etc. My friends consisted of girls rather than boys. I simply did what I identified with instinctively. It wasn't a choice. A 6-year-old has no understanding of the difference between girls and boys. I just did what I liked. Teachers, peers, and ultimately my parents admonished, punished, and ridiculed me to the point that I felt ashamed to express myself for fear of drawing attention. I got called everything you could think of from fag, queer, sissy, homo, retard.... the list goes on.

     This caused me to internalize my true nature, hiding who I really was and replacing her with the closest approximation to a male I could come up with. Not actually being male; at least not mentally or emotionally, it was a rather poor attempt as I simply did not know how to be a male. I still got ridiculed and shamed by those around me for being more girlie than manly. I learned quickly to just sit quietly in the corner and read or draw so as not to attract undue attention.

     There came a time when I mostly forgot all of this and began to think instead that there was just something terribly wrong with me. I began to feel self loathing and didn't know why. I simply couldn't stand being me. It didn't feel right, and I couldn't put my finger on it. In my twenties I began cross-dressing in secret. This wasn't a sexual thing, it was actually more a comfort like a security blanket. I just felt good when dressed. I began to imagine my body a different shape, my hair thicker and longer, my face more feminine. The longing I felt was bittersweet. It was a good feeling mixed with pain at the knowledge that I would never achieve it.

     Every so often I would purge, and completely change my manner of dress, hairstyle and color, and try to find some happiness as a male. However, just as with the secret dressing, the satisfaction was short-lived and I was left feeling empty raw and dead inside. My self hatred grew, and I felt a boiling rage filling me, snuffing out any kind of real love or acceptance of self and replacing it with hate. Even then I wasn't aware of anything other than I wished I was born female and there must be something terribly wrong with me for feeling that way. I often referred to myself as a troll or creature, rather than a human or a man. I eventually began wanting to die. Wishing to simply die in my sleep so as not to be forced to continue to live the life I had grown to hate.

     Discovering I was trans was a real turning point. I had finally broken down and given in to my desire to be more feminine and bought breast forms, pocket bras, gaffs, wigs and clothing. I began toying with the idea of being a drag performer thinking it would ease the dysphoria and allow me to continue living with some sense of peace. Simply dressing however, only satisfied the dysphoria for a short time. I found that having to take the "girl" off just made me feel even worse. I really hated that it felt more like a costume or disguise than anything else and I knew that it wasn't just about looking the part. I really wanted to BE woman, not just emulate one. A friend told me to look into the terms transgender and transsexual.

     As I researched and learned I saw so many startling parallels between myself and other trans women that it was almost as if they were telling MY story. My past and childhood memories came back to me and things started to fit together. The confusing jig-saw puzzle of my life fell together and for the first time in my life everything made sense. I continued to research, learn, and talk to others for the next year or so as I began to plan my own transition. I "came out" to my closest friends and began dressing more often, going out in public and spending more time en femme.

     A little more than six months ago it all came to a head when I began to seriously worry and stress over whether or not I would ever be able to afford insurance, a doctor, or a therapist; let alone the expenses of hair removal, FFS, and GCS. I decided to take matters into my own hands rather than wait any longer. I found an online pharmacy that was able to ship to the us and began taking low doses of Estrofem and Spirotone. After a month I increased the doses, and after another month I increased them again. Around the third month I added Finasteride to aid in hair regrowth, and to help the Spiro to fight the masculinizing effects of T. At my age, I need the extra assistance for feminizing.

     It's too late now to go and write a month-by-month summary of the changes I have seen, but I will give a short overview here. There are other trans women out there that have kept very detailed logs of their progress.

     The first real difference I noticed was around the second week when I began to feel a definite sense of calm and well-being setting in. All the negative emotions and self-hate quickly began to dissipate and was replaced by an overall warmth and peace. Around the third week I began to notice a definite softening of my skin, and nodules had begun to form under my nipples. They also became incredibly sore, and it took just the lightest bump to cause severe sharp pain. My appetite didn't change, but I did slowly begin to gain weight. My jeans began to get tighter around my ass and thighs while tops began to fit better and not feel so tight. I had been epilating leg and body hair since before HRT and I noticed a huge difference there too. I had been epilating approximately twice a week. Now, I can go two to three weeks in between, and most of the body hair is either completely gone now or so fine and light in color as to be nearly invisible.
     As time went on I began to notice a difference in the smell of my skin and urine. My sex-drive dropped like a stone, and I no longer got spontaneous erections. I feel I can think more clearly now without a high sex-drive getting in the way and clouding things. I am more sociable and friendly and open. My breasts continued to slowly grow in small spurts, the pain in the nipples subsiding in between. My chest measurement went down from 36 to 34 and my hips went from 35 to 36. My legs and thighs have continued to fill out as well, while my arms and upper torso have slowly lost muscle mass. Body hair is still continuing to diminish. My skin has gotten progressively softer, as has the hair on my head. My sense of smell seems to have been heightened, and certain men suddenly smell GOOD. I also found that I pee more often, and sweat much less. Even when I do sweat, I don't have that "guy" smell anymore. I feel more tired now and seem to have less energy than before. My breasts are getting close to being a full A cup and I definitely fill out my clothing much better than before. My emotions, while evening out and being much more calm and easygoing, have changed in another way too. I'm much more likely now to confront someone when I feel they have wronged me. My temper will flare and soon after will dissipate instead of leaving me feeling angry for days or weeks. I'm much happier and more prone to singing and giggling for no apparent reason.
     My dysphoria, while not completely gone, is definitely on it's way out. It still flares now and then, especially when I see the younger, prettier trans women and wish I had started this journey long ago. Mostly, however, I am happy with life. I'm happy with myself. I finally understand myself and who I am and I am slowly learning to let her shine.

     My birthday was yesterday. I turned 42. It was also within a few days of my 6th month on HRT and also marks the day when I finally got health insurance coverage. I am now in touch with a gender therapist, and have chosen a PCP that has specific expertise in the health of trans women.
     I feel so much better about life and about myself than I ever have. I'm happy and at peace. I understand myself. I like myself. I look to the future now, and it is bright and full of promise.

~April Dawne~

Transphobic Words and Deeds

Transphobia (or less commonly, transprejudice and trans-misogyny, referring to transphobia directed toward transwomen, or trans-misandry, referring to transphobia directed toward transmen) refers to discrimination against transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender identity (see Phobia – terms indicating prejudice or class discrimination). Whether intentional or not, transphobia can have severe consequences for the target of the negative attitude. Many transpeople also experience homophobia from people who incorrectly associate their gender identity with homosexuality.^[1] Attacking someone on the basis of a perception of their gender identity rather the perception of their sexual orientation is known as "trans-bashing", as opposed to "gay bashing".

Transphobic Words and Deeds

http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/transphobic-words-and-deeds/

I linked to a post by Monica Helms about trans anger the other day, which was really me dodging writing a full post – however, Helen G pointed out that its focus is quite narrow and doesn’t really cover the reasons trans people have to be angry. And, I agree with her. I do not yet feel up to writing that full post yet, so I want to cover something that should help provide context:
I haven’t really done this before, but I wanted to go over what transphobia is and what transphobia is not. Quite a few cis people feel qualified to tell trans people what qualifies as transphobia, which always conveniently excludes whatever transphobic behavior they’re exhibiting at that particular time. It’s not unlike what I said to Uppity Brown Woman the other day about white people defining racism:

. . . white people shouldn’t be the ones to define when a racist act has occurred, because the answer will nearly always be “never,” . . .

What I mean by that is that without any reason for white people to check our privilege, we’re just going to do what we do and refuse to acknowledge that we’re hurting someone else. Part of privilege is that the pain we cause is either invisible to us, or we believe that the target of that pain somehow brought it upon herself or deserved it. Another part of privilege is interpreting events in our favor whenever possible, and expecting the dominant social forces to support that interpretation.
Also, read Uppity Brown Woman’s full post I linked, because it is all about privilege:

A dramatic metaphor:
Imagine you’re riding your motorcycle down the street. The car in front of you slams on their breaks to meet a stop light, and you swerve to avoid smashing into them, only to end up hitting a telephone pole. It’s your bike that’s a goner, but thankfully the other vehicles have no significant damage. You’re also the one bleeding internally from faceplanting. Only one ambulance has arrived so far. The paramedics are trying to help you in whatever way they can. The other person involved in the accident walks over and demands medical attention because they could be bleeding internally as well. They stopped really suddenly! Their airbag went off!
No doubt, they could be injured. Although it is a possibility, the biker is visibly in pain. The driver makes the point, “but sie must have known the hazards of motorcycles!” In this metaphor, the paramedics stop paying attention to the biker and start looking after the driver. The biker uses up a ton of energy just trying to say, “hey, wait a fucking minute! This is supposed to be about me!” and is only met with “when we’re done here, we’ll get to you. Just calm down and quit being so angry.”

This is what happens when conversations about issues surrounding disability, race, trans people, and other oppressed classes of people start: Privileged people walk in and demand to make the conversation about them. They ask to be educated, they demand justifications, they insist that they can’t be good allies if they don’t understand what’s going on. In the three threads I linked, one is about a girl with cerebral palsy whose family denied her life support machines that would improve her quality of life, and also arranged for a “do not resuscitate” order; one is about how white people often make use of work done by people of color without crediting them; one is about how a feminist made a pointed jab at the Transgender Day of Remembrance. In each case, able-bodied, white, or cis people came into the discussion and made it about them. In each case, this was highly inappropriate because the topic matter was itself sensitive to the people it directly affected: The perception of people with disabilities living incomplete lives that leads able-bodied people to think it’s reasonable to let them die; the fact that people of color do so much work and white people feel entitled to claim it; the fact that trans people cannot even talk about the fact that we have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, at least in America – the victims predominantly women of color. The average person has a 1 in 18,000 chance of being murdered. That we cannot talk about this fact that this is happening, and that we remember our dead once a year, and how we cannot even do this without a cis person begrudging the fact that we do remember our dead – and we cannot have this conversation without cis people blasting into the discussion and demanding that we justify our lives and our decisions and the medical procedures we’ve undergone before they’ll consent to both mourn and express sympathy that our mourning is begrudged.
And that’s privilege, or rather what privilege does to those who do not have it.
Nothing listed past this point is meant to be definitive, the sum total, the limits of the ways that cissexual privilege or transphobic actions manifest. They are examples, and are only the tip of the iceberg.
Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches the sex your brain expects. Cissexual privilege is the privilege of having a body that matches what society expects. Cissexual privilege is the assumption that your sex, your gender are superior and more valid than trans people’s sex and gender, that you have the right to tell trans people who and what they really are, what their motives are for transitioning, to deny that their most basic realities are false because you cannot imagine how they can be true. Cissexual privilege is the sense of entitlement that tells you that you have the right to discuss my genitals at any time and then claim I’m the one bringing genitals up all the time. Cissexual privilege is the belief that you can declare what “being a transsexual” really is because you’ve thought about it a lot after rejecting what actual transsexual people and the entire medical profession have said about being a transsexual person. Cissexual privilege is the insistence that you have the right to shift the meaning of what trans people say about ourselves so that you can then use the reinterpreted arguments as easily destroyed straw men. Cissexual privilege is the attitude that you can interrogate and criticize everything a trans person does even though it’s no different from what a cis person does simply because the person is trans, and thus her sex and gender are not as valid as yours. Cissexual privilege is what makes you think that you can berate trans people for reifying gender roles and reinforcing the gender binary while at the same time remaining comfortably ensconced in your life as a man or a woman. A trans person claiming to be a man or a woman is doing it wrong but you claiming to be a man or a woman is only natural.
Cissexual privilege is the insistence that being called cissexual is othering and demeaning and implies that trans people are trying to make ourselves the norm and you the other, when it is simply a matter of equalizing cis and trans, defining both as normal and neither as other. It is no more othering and demeaning than distinguishing straight people from gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Cissexual privilege is the fact that you do not have to pay thousands of dollars for hormones, electrolysis, surgery, a new wardrobe, you do not have to risk losing your job, your family, or your friends. Cissexual privilege means that you don’t have to take hormones or undergo surgery to be comfortable – to be able to live with - your body’s sex.
Transphobia is the exercise of that privilege. It is not restricted to violence. It is not restricted to men. When you refer to a trans woman as a man, or a trans man as a woman, you said something transphobic. When you say that all trans people are fetishists, you said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are mentally ill, that is not only transphobic but also ableist. When you say that trans women should be excluded from domestic violence shelters, you not only said something transphobic, you also said that trans women should suffer emotional abuse, battering, or even die instead of possibly inconveniencing a shelter.
When you say that trans women should be placed in a men’s prison because their male history means they might rape someone, you have not only said something transphobic, but you have also said that the trans woman should be placed into a situation where she will be raped repeatedly. You have profiled all trans women as dangerous to cis women. When you say that trans women reify the gender binary, you absolve yourself of your own responsibility for reifying that same binary by simply existing and hold trans people to a standard that you simply do not demand of cis people. Plus, you said something transphobic. When you make a blog called “breathing is transphobic,” you did something transphobic, and you did it in a way that allows you to blame trans people for being too angry and bullying when we point out that you said or did something transphobic. That positions you in such a way as to dismiss everything that trans people say to you when they criticize your words and actions.
When you say that trans people should be denied access to hormones, surgery, and social transition and insist that we should instead seek therapy to help us stop being trans, you’re ignoring our voices and telling us what our real lives are like. You’re ignoring all the medical literature to date that says that the best treatment for trans people is to allow transition. You also said something transphobic. When you say that trans people are walking stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, you’re applying a double-standard to trans gender expression vs. cis gender expression – where a feminine trans woman is seen as a caricature of femininity while a feminine cis woman who presents exactly the same way is seen as natural and normal. You also said something transphobic.
When you claim that you have trans friends and that they agree with you, you said something transphobic. You also tried to claim that your friends’ voices and opinions should be more important than the voices and opinions of trans people who call you out on your cissexual privileged shit. You’re trying to establish that there are good trans people and bad trans people.
If you’re a trans person, and you participate in the bashing of other trans people, you have done something transphobic. Being trans does not make you immune to playing into cissexist normativity. It does not make you immune to saying hateful things about other trans people.
If you try to raise the spectre of men pretending to be trans women to gain access to restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, or any other space set aside for women, you have not only said something transphobic, you are trying to hold trans people responsible for what other people may attempt to do (and something other people have not yet attempted to do).
If you try to raise the spectre of trans women triggering cis women survivors because of their assumed masculine appearance or penises, you are not only saying something transphobic, you are appropriating survivor voices to justify your transphobic statements. You are also holding trans women – and trans women only – responsible for managing triggers that are not theirs. You are also defining trans women by their appearance, as if what a woman looks like somehow reflects on her womanhood, as if it’s something she can control.
When you grab for a trans person’s genitals to find out what they are, you have committed sexual assault. When you attack a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed battery. When you kill a trans person because he or she is trans, you have committed murder. These are all transphobic acts, but they are not the sum total of transphobic acts. They do not define transphobia. You do not get a free pass out of saying and doing transphobic acts because you are not out there personally running trans women over four times in a row, or shooting them, or stabbing them, or suffocating them, or bashing their heads in. The fact is that people who commit these atrocities upon trans people believe that they can get away with it because of all of the insults, the denial of trans people’s agency, the belief that trans people are really their birth sex and gender, the belief that trans people aren’t really men or women at all, the belief that trans people are so different from cis people that the accommodations made for cis people cannot be extended to trans people, the belief that what a trans person looks like discredits his or her sex or gender, justifying ridicule and abuse on that trans person.
When you say or do the things I have described here, you are supporting a cissexist society that justifies killing trans people, that justifies slapping our murderers, abusers, rapists, on the wrist. That justifies the idea that we’re not really human. And if you insist that your own words and deeds have no importance because you are not personally out there raping, beating, stabbing, shooting, strangling trans people, then you are part of the same problem that creates Andrade, Oates, Hyatt, Blake, and men who have murdered numerous other women and men just because those men believed that transphobic words and deeds that so much of the world accepts as reasonable justified their decision to erase women and men from the world simply because they existed.
This is the system you support – a spectrum of words and deeds that ranges from “You’re really a man/really a woman” to “Man is charged with manslaughter for deliberately hunting down and killing a trans woman.”
You reify and reinforce the oppression that affects me and all other trans people.
You can’t really help it, mostly. You’re born and raised in a cissexual society, a society that programs you to believe that people who change their sex are less than you. However, once you realize that this is the case – once it is brought to your attention, once your privilege is pointed out to you, once the fact that you – like all other cis people – are complicit in oppressing trans people, if you choose to deny that such privilege exists, deny that you are doing and saying transphobic things, while deliberately increasing the intensity and frequency of these actions? You are no longer at the point where you are simply complicit due to privilege. You are now an active participant.
You can always choose to stop.
Edit: I forgot to write about what transphobia is not: Just having cissexual privilege does not mean that everything a cis person does comes from that privilege or is transphobic. For example, treating trans people with respect, treating trans people as normal human beings? That’s not transphobic, and I see cis people do it all the time.

Transcribed from the web, the preceding was not written by myself, but was too powerful not to post here!

~April~

Welcome to the Crossroads

My name is April. I am a 41 year old single bisexual MtF Transsexual in the midst of transition.

 A few weeks ago I admitted publicly being transgender, and amazingly the world did NOT implode as I had feared. Funny how a revelation that you fear so much in sharing can almost seem to mean nothing to everyone else. I don't mean that in a bad way; rather I am expressing what a big deal it was to me, and how to others it didn't seem like any big deal at all. I was so scared, beforehand, and thought my whole universe was going to crash to a screeching halt.

Discovering that you are transgender is at once the most freeing, liberating, and yet terrifying and confusing revelation I can think of. I can't even describe how it is I really KNEW. It just hit me one day. Everything that never made sense about me and my life suddenly fell together and DID make sense. It was like the world's biggest light bulb popped on over my head. It was my "Eureka!" moment. It seemed that the whole world opened up before me; I saw the possibilities and the promise. I finally understood why I had felt the way I had all my life, and I started to learn what I needed to do. Then, I started seeing the boobytraps and pitfalls. I began to really LEARN what being transgender would mean, if I were to continue and go through with it.

Admitting that you are transgender, and of course beginning transition, changes everything. If you are M2F like me, you have to give up a lot of the 'male privilege', that is if you ever had it to begin with, especially when it concerns jobs and financial security. Living as a woman, you learn quickly how bad women really have it in the working world. You aren't taken seriously, you aren't as well respected (at least not when you aren't in earshot) and you don't earn as much. You also get overlooked for raises and promotions. Then there's the harassment, which would be an entire post in itself.

This is all provided that you finish transitioning, and then begin to live full time in your true gender. During transition, it can be nearly impossible to find or keep a job, especially a decent one. The only real solution there that I can see is to hide the transition for as long as possible (at least in the workplace) until the majority of the work is done, then if possible, transition within the company. If not, you leave (worst case scenario you get fired) and find a job in your new gender.

Gender is a strange and ambiguous thing. Ask someone what makes a man a man and their first response will likely be "they have a penis". What if the penis is destroyed by some horrible accident and the "man" no longer has it? Is he no longer a man? The next response might be hormones. Men have testosterone, women have estrogen. This is true, but what some don't know is that we all (for the most part) have a certain level of each, produced by both our testes/ovaries and pituitary glands. Remove either the testes or ovaries, and the person's hormone levels are generally about even. The next answer might be that women have two X chromosomes, men have XY. While this is true, it is not an across-the-board answer. Other combination's include XXY, XYY, and XO. Each of these carry their own specific "gender" traits that do not follow the norm, and these anomalies happen far more often than most people are aware. If a natal female has a hysterectomy whereby her ovaries and womb are lost, is she then no longer a woman? She can no longer reproduce, has no menstrual cycle, and often has to take estrogen the rest of her life... much like a trans woman such as myself. I may or may not have the "correct" chromosomes, I may have a penis (for now), but those things alone do not prove gender. There is also rather new research that shows that TS people have at least a partially female-wired brain (if MtF) that responds positively to the lack of Testosterone and the increase in Estrogen.

There are plenty of experts who theorize how a person might become trans-gender. It is true that signs of gender variance often begin to occur at a young age in a trans person. What some have begun to theorize in many cases is as follows.

During early stages of fetal development, we are not male or female. We actually have the beginnings of either gender inside our bodies. During a specific stage, the fetus is flooded with either testosterone or estrogen. This hormone flood "maps" the brain of the fetus with a gender identity imprint . It is then determined which gender the new human being will identify with. Later, at another crucial stage in development, the fetus is again flooded with hormones. In "normal" cases, the flood is the same hormone as before, and the fetus's body develops to match the brain. The male bits inside develop, and the female bits are dissolved and reabsorbed into the fetus, or vice versa. The gonads either descend and become testes, or they stay within the body and become ovaries.

What some people believe is that trans people are "mapped" with one gender, then the body develops as the opposite because the flood of hormones at those two crucial stages was different.

Ignorant people who either lack or refuse to accept these things, think that we "decide" or "choose" to be trans. That is not the case. It is simply what we are. We are born with it. We are not freaks. We are not less human. We have rights. We have hearts, minds, souls, feelings, and beliefs. We exist. We deserve equal and fair treatment; whether in the working world, or in medical care. We don't deserve to be ridiculed. We deserve to be respected. We deserve to be loved. We deserve to live.

~April Dawne~