Transgender people: do you know/have you met any?

Oberlin™

there was a M2F at one of my old workplaces. When she came back post-op they held a big drinks do in the canteen and the director gave a speech which began "This is P, doesn't she look beautiful?"

There was a quite burly M2F in one of the bands that used to practice in the studio I work in, tattoed Polish metalcore types would sidle away from her in the corridor with looks of horror on their faces.

OK, this is the thread for this story I guess...

The place I used to work at had a M2F transgender who was aiming for the physical change, i.e. surgery. To be able to get this, you have to live as a woman for two years, so this was about to begin. His close friends were being supportive, but the controversy level was high as he was married with two children, but his wife was standing by him, etc.

There was lots of conversation, a lot of pro- and anti- whispering, as you can imagine. The story went round that one of the senior managers had gone to Human Resources and asked, friendly-like, if the person could be fired for doing this? The reply came that not only could he not get fired, but the senior manager could get fired himself under sex discrimination laws. To which the SM obviously indicated that he didn't want him fired, but etc..

So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of tension in the air. My position, as I said upthread, is that I didn't really 'understand' why someone would need to make such a change that required moderating their behaviour for the rest of their life, talking to one of the girls that knew him well, I added that all the things she does (walking, picking up a knife and fork, scratching yr ear) doesn't have to be done ina qualified manner. But, you know, whatever.

Anyway, one thursday there was a big general staff meeting, around 50 people there, (not the M2f person), and the department manager (not the same guy that had gone to HR, but one of those that had not exactly been going "oh good" about it all)described how the person would be officially leaving the company as a man on Friday, returning in two weeks time as a woman in the same job position after that date. There was a lot of describing of the two-years of living rule, that after that time he would be allowed to have the surgery, that he would no longer be wearing (admittedly feminine styled) trouser-suits but actual dresses, that there would be NO anti-vibe around this person, that they would be using the disabled toilet, and so on.

So, anyway, I had had a thought. Toing and froing about this one, the right words, the right order.. Was it ofensive? Would I get immediately sacked? Or would it be taken in the spirit? dot dot dot

So, after around ten minutes of the GM's 'speech', he said "Right, if you have any questions, now would be the best time to ask."

To which I asked "OK, does this mean he's having a leaving drink on Friday then?"

At which point the whole place cracks up, the tension dissipated, and the GM, close to crying, said "ah... I dunno, you'll have to ask him that one"

Lots of people came up to me afterwards, both pro- and anti-, smiling and thanking me for saying that.

And, of course, as a funny line I know I can never top that.

Mark that is a fucking awesome story and good on you :)

As far as I know, I have never met a transgender person.

I have relatively unprogressive opinions on this topic, but I was struck by the rubbishness of a shock horror expose in an Irish tabloid last week, which was of the level of "Sex Change Person Has Job".

I didn't know about Bimble until like 2 months before he died, he was drunk and said it (in chatz) and of course I & whoever else was there didn't believe him. I mentioned it the next day to KJB and i still wasn't sure if he was in on the joke when he confirmed it was true, but he was of course telling the truth. He never spoke about it really after than other than him saying his mum had paid for an op and that he had been engaged when younger.

I have a few acquaintances/friends-of-friends. Kind of surprised I don't know more now I live in the radical queer capital of Britain.

Although I still find it unusual (as in uncommon enough to be interesting, rather than 'ooh strange', I guess), I got my head around the idea relatively young, as my mum was friends with a formerly-lesbian couple one of whom went FTM when I was growing up.

I've known several few TG folks in my life, which I guess isn't surprising considering that I've hung with queer activists, anarchafeminists, etc ever since I was a teen. No transgendered folks among my closest friends though.

"several few" = "quite a few"

I have some transgender customers at work.

Someone very close to me has occupied various points on the queer spectrum for much of the time I've known them. I knew that they i.d.'d as transgender for a while. They hadn't had an operation or even begun using hormones, but they dressed in the different gender role and were in a relationship with someone who had.

One day, they told me that they were considering getting surgery. I let them know that I supported them and loved them, but that it scared me that they were considering doing it. Being operated on is very, very serious. I feel that it probably should not be done unless your life is in danger because when you go under the knife, even in a relatively routine procedure, you are putting your life in danger. You can get a life-threatening nosocomial infection or they can fuck up your anaesthesia or a number of other things. Plastic surgery killed Kanye's mom, to cite a high-profile example. This is something that I believe deep in my heart and it would destroy me to lose this person.

Anyways, the person never did get surgery or take hormones and we're still close. They seem to be doing reasonably well, emotionally. I haven't talked to them about their desire to be transgendered since then, but I worry because I know that obviously that desire is a serious, serious thing too. I don't know how much my discussion with them factored into their decision - probably quite a lot. I hope that it didn't hurt them too much. ;_;

i have got one FTM acquaintance

Well, Jayne/Wayne County is commonly regarded as post-op, but (unless things changed recently) that never happened.

Apparently, the psychiatrist had advised J/WC never to do this as there was a strong chance of suicidal depression.

my wife's undergrad major advisor transitioned (M2F) after she graduated and we ended up reading about it in the NY Post. Also, I don't know to what extent this is relevant but there was a synagogue my family went to once in awhile when I was growing up and one of the regular congregants there was an open transvestite who wore high heels, skirts and carried purses to synagogue. not sure what gender he identified as tho.

a friend of a friend is a transgender woman-who-became-a-man who then had a baby (afaict the same thing as the 'pregnant man' who got all the press a couple years ago but this was before that and i always kinda assumed the guy that went on Oprah was just a media whore making a big deal out of something other people had done before more quietly?), have made small talk several times at parties but i don't know if that makes them an acquaintance (option 1) or just someone i have met (option 2).

The only trans person I have ever known - rather than noticed in passing etc - was an MTF neighbour who had the op 20 years before I met her. D was a sex worker and had been to prison for clipping; the other measure of her as a person was that she'd dated someone in EastEnders and went to the tabloids to get paid for 'TRANNY LOVE OF ENDERS BLOKE' and stuck the proceeds up her nose/in a pipe. Still, even though she is hands down one of the shittiest people I've ever met, I walked by her door one day to hear her trying to ring her mother, who would not speak to her. It was really sad.

had been to prison for clipping

gotta love the uk justice system...

What is clipping in this instance? I'd assume from '...was a sex worker' it's some form of prostitution, but am unsure.

Clipping is slang for the cheat when a prostitute takes a client's money, but does not supply sex.

suzy that story is [funny but] extremely sad! sounds like she was a shitty person with a shittier life.

'funny' here mostly referring to the tabloids thing

I felt really guilty for thinking her life was just a series of bad choices punctuated by the lighting of cigarettes, but then she'd bust out some ridiculous bigoted speech about immigrants or someone else who wasn't entitled to benefits and I'd be silently judging along the lines of 'LOL you hypocritical crack-whore.'

there's a young woman in a discussion group w me who started transitioning recently iirc. It seems like she's already kind of fed up with having to have the "so btw i am a girl" conversation, and indeed with strangers asking 'are you a boy or a girl' out of the blue (which i have seen people do, which, wow, so rude). She's not a very high-heels-and-make-up kind of person, though she does wear skirts sometimes, and her name's quite gender neutral but has a feminine spelling. I sort of want to double-check i'm using the right pronoun (ask whether genderqueer or mtf, i guess) but it feels like... doing something i know is annoying, just for the sake of neatening out my own mental categories. so, idk!

About five years ago I met a tiny little butch lesbian Korean powerhouse named Jean. She was my roommate at the time's best friend and practically lived with us she was over so much. We became close and she was just great. At that point she was pretty content being a girl although she often mentioned wishing she could have her breasts removed and would tape them down regularly. Anyway, everyone that knew her loved her. After a year, I moved into my own place and Jean moved to NY and we weren't in touch as often as we should have been. About a year and half ago I got a call from my old roommate at 7:30 in the morning that Jean had been hit by a car and killed right outside her place in Brooklyn. It was awful. After her death I learned that she'd decided to transition and was about 6 months into the process and taking hormones. She had even started a really well-written and interesting blog on the subject. She had a girlfriend and was apparently the happiest she'd ever been. I still miss her.

:(

Also, I knew about Bimble for a long time before he passed. There must have been some thread where I mentioned some research I'd done on intersex individuals that he found interesting. He IMd me one night and started talking about that and told me he was FtM. After that I think he felt like he could talk to me about it because he would often do so especially when he was having troubles.

I have only met one once so far as I know - there may well be dozens as I am not a particularly observant type around people.

Anyway, this one appeared as a particularly flamboyant woman - all leopard prints, bright lipstick and so forth - in an otherwise very sober meeting. She was also being very loud, scatty and indiscreet, so once I twigged the effect was totally drag-queenie. Certainly the ladies were all giggling along naughtily at her conversation.

I say 'twigged', but actually she announced in a very loud voice that she was transsexual, which was at least partly on-topic in the conversation. The really funny thing was that as she talked about this she continually kept tripping up and had to correct herself to 'transgender', which made me wonder who exactly the more pc terms are meant for.

bashful people who blush at the syllable "sex"?

the only one I really knew was Bimble; there was a professor I think at Spring Arbor University (Free Methodist university I went to for a year) who was MtF, but he didn't get the surgery done til after I had left; I don't think I ever knew who he was...

I know a few. I've met many.

have worked with several over the years, but that's about it

Well, Bimble was one for starters of course.

whoah I did know this.

:(

My position, as I said upthread, is that I didn't really 'understand' why someone would need to make such a change that required moderating their behaviour for the rest of their life, talking to one of the girls that knew him well, I added that all the things she does (walking, picking up a knife and fork, scratching yr ear) doesn't have to be done ina qualified manner.

from the little i know about the subject, i think it is actually just the opposite - transitioning to the gender they most identify with means they can ~stop~ having to self-consciously moderate many of their behaviours.

anyone seen Prodigal Son? very interesting doc about a M2F, but actually ends up being more about her brother.

amy bloom also has a really interested book on this: Normal

*interesting

I have some odds and ends of books that I pick up just around, and one called Transgender Warriors was and has been really fascinating to me. Favorable review here.

from the little i know about the subject, i think it is actually just the opposite

I was basing that on hearing that people do go to 'feminising' classes, to learn walking/wine-glass holding, speaking, etc...

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but.

A guy who used to work where I work transitioned after he left here (he had come in for some consulting work a couple times so I had met him as a man). He dropped in again once after this, I guess in the "living as a woman" phase and I didn't recognize her; pretty passable as a woman. Later got the surgery and moved to the Bay area. And someone said she was living with another M2F.

I know a couple of M2F transgender people. One of them I knew for 3 years before she mentioned this fact, and I almost fell off my chair with surprise.

Normal they have at my public library, I just put it on reserve. They do not have the one Laurel recc'd but it sounds interesting too.

I read a book called Born A Boy, Raised A Girl about David Reimer (orig article the book developed into here). Reimer's physchologist/doctor was a guy named John Money, who I guess was orig a big leading supporter of transppl & research abt transppl. HE...he is a man I would like to figure out.

I know a few. I've met many.

I'm surprised at the number of people who say they have worked with transgendered people. Those who worked with transgendered people, what were your/their jobs? (I mean, I know transgendered people have jobs with other people, so I don't know why I should be surprised. Maybe b/c I've held quite a few jobs but I'm as sure as possible that I have never worked with a TG person. Closest would be a guy I waited tables with who lived as a transvestite for a couple of years while he was prostituting, but I don't think he identified as a woman.)

I have known one TG person, a MTF who was in a couple of my college classes.

Im in IT. You don't see the public working on a helpdesk, so.

(also, ISP work is heavily skewed with nerd/alt lifestyle types anyway quite often)

My mom had a friend who was also a coworker of mine at one point who has since decided he identifies as a woman. I haven't really seen him since the change. It was sort of surprising though, because (1) he didn't come off as feminine at all and (2) he was just physically very unwomanlike and probably does not make the greatest looking woman -- he was sort of stout with a bald head and a turtlish face. He also seemed happy and funny and well-adjusted when I worked with him. One never knows, do one.

The person I mentioned is a software engineer, quite smart (Caltech graduate). I didn't pick up on any feminine characteristics the 2 or 3 times I was around him before the change. In fact, when a coworker told me i had to have her repeat it because I was sure I had misunderstood her.

The only one I know of, and not peronsally, is the author Poppy Z Brite, who I was a huge fan of in college and met a couple of times. Recently I learned through twitter that Brite now identifies as male and goes by Doc. But harder to do that because though she always had a big lgbt following, the early celebrity has made it hard for her to transition from she to he. It's interesting to me ...and a brave step, because you are really inviting people to know you from the inside out, and there's a certain openness that you have to have...I think about it a lot,

Whoa I used to love PZB's stuff in high school. Did not know that!

I never read PZB but I know of her and her cult following. I didn't know that either. interesting!

i think what is frustrating for me is that my classroom is the one social space where i can exercise (extremely limited, possibly illusory) control over how people socialize ... so i want to make it as safe a space as possible ... and it’s upsetting to be the person that undermines that sense of safety

i'm not too worried about being disrespectful, it's more that i have no job security and don't expect to be given the benefit of the doubt should i ever inadvertently give any offense

i suspect that establishing pronouns as a discretionary rather than compulsory linguistic item in a way that people can master (i.e. become able to use routinely without any risk of giving offense or losing face) really calls for a change in the ways that people introduce themselves and one another, sociologically/ritually speaking - which would be a lot more marked a change than just swapping in a singular 'they'. which is why schools have been a vanguard for the change; they are places where authorities can exercise control over how people socialize, and places where there can be a certain formality to linguistic practices of introduction and address and reference, without it seeming like an absurdity or a nicety or an optional convenience.

there's a countercultural type restaurant around here that had lots of staff with (declared—i think on their nametags?) non-standard pronoun preferences, some of whom became increasingly uncomfortable when they found that they were nevertheless being misgendered by customers who did not know how to call for them where they would normally say 'sir' or 'miss'. at the time their idea was that they might conduct more detailed introductions where they supplied not just pronouns but preferred forms of address, as well as names ('i'm conor, and i'll be your server'). i don't know how that went over.

ideally i would like to manage this dimension of my classroom without talking about it, so that it can't become a thing for students who have any problems with it, and students who care can see it work without a lot of overt ritual showing of respect (or heavy-handed intervention from the person who can exercise control over how people socialize).

More than anything, I'm just amazed how much the discourse has moved in 8 years

It's amazing and wonderful because one of the biggest things Santorum types were crying about in the fight for marriage equality has come true and every normal person is just like "oh, cool, good for them."

remember back in the mid-90s in my first co-worker is trans experience. there was a lot of pushback on bathroom issues
weirdly unaware of individuals in current large corp, although there was a recent internal intranet discussion about neutral bathrooms and lack thereof

the interesting thing to me about pronoun anxiety is the way it fundamentally represents a linguistic failure - the inability of users of the english language to agree on a consensus set of gender-neutral pronouns - and the way we're working through the effects of that failure. we may wind up just abandoning third-person pronouns entirely, at least for a time. it's also interesting to compare it to a successful attempt to address an inadequacy of the english language some decades earlier, namely the way women's honorifics were predicated on marital status.

i wonder if any larger conclusions can be drawn by comparing and contrasting these cases. probably not.

spending time w/ younger ppl via activisty things over the last couple years has been tremendously helpful in meeting more trans and nb ppl. it's amazing the gap btwn even older and younger millenials, let alone gen-zers or whatever we're calling them

it's also interesting to compare it to a successful attempt to address an inadequacy of the english language some decades earlier, namely the way women's honorifics were predicated on marital status.

I don’t think it has been entirely successful. Yes, there’s another choice in the drop-down but I feel uncomfortable about assumptions being made about me whenever I use Ms. I still prefer it to the alternatives though. And sometimes I *still* haven’t had a choice - I had a run in with The Palace who insisted a member of the royal household would call me Miss when they met me. In the event, I was introduced to them with my first and surname only, and it wasn’t an issue. But purlease!

(Sorry to derail, this conversation is not about me ect ect)

tbf they have an individual they refer to as *the* Queen which seems disrespectful in many ways but it's nice they're into queens

i dunno madchen, i think there's a similar potential with pronouns.

i was surprised to read in the nyt that amy klobuchar was a 'ms'. i don't know why, i guess i was familiar with their practice, which officially is to default to ms for married women like political figures/political figures' wives unless that person chooses to be known as 'mrs'. i realized that the usage made me feel more uncertain who or why the title was being used, who chose it, whether it had to do with her last name (being retained after starting a career despite a marital name, etc.), or what.

a pronoun practice that paralleled the use of ms as a social title might settle on a default to be used before one knows a stated preference. i wonder if married women, or unmarried women, had any tendency to bristle at being called 'ms' when that usage started making what headway it did.

i've always been all in for Ms -- didn't realize people still felt weird about it today?

(XP) For me it was the second time somebody assumed I was divorced — after I’d adopted Ms precisely because I don’t want to be judged in terms of my relationship to somebody else. Is Ms =
Divorced a particularly British assumption?

But yeah, I agree that in time there will probably be a transition wrt pronouns, whether or not that means everyone using ‘they/them’ by default. And it’ll be interesting to see what other languages do wrt m/f nouns, matching adjectives etc.

i think ms = divorced is not an american thing, i have never even thought about it!

I just wanna know if Jaq did great in her new job and left her husband

Also, my answer to the poll question now is "I have had trans friends for decades but in 2011 I would have said I had never met a trans person"

Yeah, to echo what everyone says, I thought more acceptance was coming but had no idea it would be this fast - it's pretty awesome.

I didn't know Ms was the way forwards, my angry feminist friends tend to use Mx for the reasons sketched above.

I know a married couple who are both trans (one is m2f, one f2m) and I feel stupid that their specific union makes me so happy because they're just two (really lovely) people making it work but part of me can't help but project hope for the future onto them.

sorry for the digression but hello Madchen, I haven't seen your name on ILX in many many years; but maybe it's just the threads I've been on.

Hello! I’ve never gone away but tend to stick to threads I’ve bookmarked. Which it seems I did with this one back in 2011 :)

I use Ms and never intend to change but a lot of women I know who aren’t married prefer Miss?

Wrt they, I always use singular ‘they’ when I don’t know the person I’m referring to (like if I’m waiting for someone I’ve never spoken to to get in touch) and I also agree that English lacks in this regard. Personally singular “they” feels a lot more natural/everyday to me than using the same word for second person singular and plural.

I’ve seen Mx on a lot more official forms and places recently.

I knew one M -> F trans who was a good friend growing up. One thing I always noticed - we played a lot of D&D in middle school and he would always choose to play a female character. And always Peach in Mario Kart & Smash Bros. I never thought much of it, all us dorks had quirks like that, but after a particularly lengthy Facebook post about making radical life changes and fear of being accepted I figured it out. We had some really good conversations about it, I never knew anything about how inaccessible hormone therapy is to a retail worker nor about the apparent hell that is gender dysphoria.

I wound up seeing her a couple times after that, presenting publicly as a woman (something she was terrified to do, especially around people who had known her as male for 15+ years), she seemed comfortable at a glance but I didn't know what to say. On one hand I wanted to say I was proud of her for having the courage to go through with it but on the other I figured she just wanted to be a regular woman for once so I just didn't say anything, probably making her feel awkward as well.

Unfortunately the election of Trump had a pretty big effect on her psyche and she wound up deleting all her social media. I don't know where she is or what she's doing...I don't really hang out in that circle anymore and she never really showed up to any social events so I guess I'll be left wondering forever.

Several when I think about it

1) family friend who i also used to work with later transitioned to female. Never remotely saw it coming, maybe in part because as a man he was completely bald on top and had a relatively deep voice.

2) Family friend’s daughter who I haven’t seen since the transition to female.

3) kid I went to middle school with who already presented borderline female. We kind of all *knew* before we actually knew what that was.

4) friends stepchild is non-binary - not sure if that counts

5) my wife’s friend is f to m. She only knew the friend post transition.

It is remarkable how much has changed—for good and bad—in eight years. OTOH, In 2011 I knew one trans girl (AFAIK) and most of the trans people I was even aware of were performers of some kind. Eight years later, I know/have known a half dozen or more trans people who are friendly drinking acquaintances, people in my local scene, etc., and the dozens or more that I stay aware of are novelists, game designers, scientists, journalists, musicians, artists ... OTOH, I'm much more frightened for my trans friends now than I could've imagined being in 2011.

(Also, in 2011 I thought of Linehan as a mildly amusing TV writer, not a manically obsessive spittle-flecked transphobe.)

(also I know hundreds, if not thousands of trans people)

wow, you know a lot of people!