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

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!

Jan Morris' memoir "Conundrum" is really interesting, if you want to read somebody talking about transitioning- she was a great writer anyway, and her life was amazing.

now that I think of it, I guess I've known/know four transgender people, not the two listed upthread. I kind of forgot about some folks.

It was kind of interesting but disconcerting to see that one friend who had been cool with being part of a larger "queer" art community in SF in the early 90s got very, er, straightlaced once her surgery was done. Once she was post-op, she just wanted to date a normal dude and be a wife and live in the suburbs and really wasn't into gay activism / lesbians / drag queens /performance art "weirdos" / marginality in general. I guess for me that was when the penny dropped that a deliberately "anti-" stance is something that some queers identity with for life, and for some people, it's a kind of temporary zone while they are on their way to something more gender-normative on the other side of surgery/drugs/transitioning in the case of transgender people, or more gender-normative on the other side of assimilation / focusing on yr career / getting on with life in general. Queerness doesn't seem all that at stake for some people.

I had a big argument with a str8 friend about transgender people once. She was saying (I'm summarizing here) "I feel when I see an obvious transgender person like they are forcing me to be in some kind of play that they are putting on, like I have to pretend to not notice that they are transgender- I feel sort of co-erced into being a prop for their identity". I was annoyed by this argument and just said "What makes you think that this person living their life in gender X or Y is somehow for or about YOU-as-spectator? It's not about you, it's about their autonomy." It was weird, because she was a smart, not-homophobic person, she was cool w gays and lesbians, but trannies, specifically, triggered this reaction.

I have never met one, but I'm sure in my travels I've probably passed some and didn't even know it, the medical technology is getting so significantly better that you cannot tell anymore.

Only ever met one, an RAF helicopter pilot, M2F. Quite disconcerting the first time I met her, looked like Grayson Perry dressed as a woman, even though she was wearing her flying suit. Can't imagine what it must have been like to come out to your fellow pilots and other personnel, the military's not renowned for it's touchy-feely side of things.

Those who worked with transgendered people, what were your/their jobs?

one worked with me at a coffee shop in college, the other did our phone service/system installation at my current office. I'm probably forgetting others, certainly in SF there's plenty

Link to an entry about her FTM transition on PZB's blog if anyone's interested http://docbrite.livejournal.com/766469.html

I met one a few years back when she came to my house to service my washing machine. Christina was her name, MTF. Cool person, huge hands.

I published PZB in the late '90s and haven't been in touch for years, so... whoa!

Yeah I know. She blogged about 12 months ago about how she isn't writing any more and please don't ask her to kind of thing, but the FTM transition thing was something I only recently learned...though all I could think was, well I guess that explains the detailed sex scenes in Exquisite Corpse :)

a series of bad choices punctuated by the lighting of cigarettes

this is rather fine, i'll be passing this line off as my own at the soonest opportunity

I've been in a few bands with a man->woman who dated women and always thought of her as a her, nothing else really. She's a really great person and in all my years of knowing her all of our friends have been supportive of her. Never asked if she had an operation or anything, never really thought it was my business.

Also years ago i lived w this girl who dated a guy who wore fake boobs and was pre-op and I dont know if he ever went thru it. They were crusty art kids but he was definitely into it as a lifestyle choice. I took my girlfriend at the time on some double dates with those two where everyone was cross-dressing, which was pretty fun!

uh PZB is now F2M?
wow.

LOVED HER BOOKS AS A TEEN!

yeah, she was #1 on my list back in the day, for sure

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!