Stupid Questions July 2015

Gondolinian

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.

It seems that people are born with a 'body map' in their brains that sometimes doesn't correspond with their actual body, so that they feel there are parts missing that should be there, and other parts that feel like they've been sewn on by Dr. Frankenstein.

This is a rather dubious explanation. Firstly because it seems unlikely that such a process would mess up only the sexual characteristics that happen to be in the brain. Secondly, many of the high profile "transgendereds" claiming that appear to have been perfectly happy in the bodies they were born with until in became fashionable to declare oneself "transgender".

When I wasn't exposed to more transgender people and viewpoints, I didn't pay attention and connect the dots I had that pointed at my not being cis, since I'm non-binary with relatively mild dysphoria. So, I'm planning on getting top surgery in a year or two, and wouldn't have if I hadn't introspected and found myself to be not cis. This could be seen as being perfectly happy in the body I was born with until it became fashionable to be transgender, but the connotations are very different.

5Richard_Kennaway11y

Examples?

8Sabiola11y

I don't know (don't know of, even) any high-profile transgender people. One of my husbands friends is transgender, but she doesn't like to talk about it, so I don't really know why she had years of hormone treatments (still has, I suppose; you have to take them indefinitely, don't you?) and traveled to Thailand to have major surgery. All I know is that it must have been very important to her to do all that; it's not something you do on a whim! And she's a perfectly normal woman now, not flamboyant at all. Heck, she doesn't even wear skirts most of the time. She still works at the same IT job, and is still as nerdy as before. She just feels more at home in her body, and has become less shy I think (I didn't know her that well before). For me, the 'body map' explanation I've read about makes perfect sense. In fact, it's the only explanation that makes sense to me. Why else go through years of trouble with hormones and major surgery? Of your private parts? When you could cross-dress instead? There are also people who have the same sort of feeling about other body parts. That's got to suck even worse; at least transsexuals are starting to become accepted now.

10

Stupid Questions July 2015

10

10

10

Stupid Questions July 2015

10

10