Post by @gaditb@icosahedron.website

@gaditb@icosahedron.website · 1 hour ago

Wait hold on wait a sec this is not just me right--

this is a transition narrative, isn't it?

Like, the internal emotions she describes, the reaction of family and community,,.. that is straight-up dysphoria, that is the bog-standard-"will be supportive later but--"-family-baseless-anxieties-thst-I-don't-have-a-name-for, ---? this TOTALLY is, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6erbMfbYHXc&t=340

(EDIT: CW a cis woman in a very-traditional religious community changing slightly but staying within that strict-gender-roles religious community.)

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website · 1 hour ago

(Feel free to go, mentally to yourself or verbally in the comments, "no Gadit it's not; the emotions you are recognizing in this narrative aren't the same as the generally-shared experience of gender dysphoria", I won't push back unless you want. If you say that I'm misinterpreting MY experiences of gender-dysphoria-and-everything-around-it in seeing my own a similarity I'll read-you-but-disagree-with-you, but I won't try to convince anyone on the general case if they're like "..nah".)

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website · 1 hour ago

[after knowing for a while she wanted to do it, after a year of having been talking it through with her husband, after a lot of therapy, talking it over with her therapist and her husband -- approaching her parents and especially her mother:]
"""
... so, I understand her fear.
And I tried explaining to her that that's not the case, I just /hated/ how I looked in the shpitzel [this particular style of traditional hair covering], I just really disliked myself when I looked in the mirror,

and, you know, I even said to my mother "I KNOW this is not gonna make me happy, you know, happiness is from within, and, and, this isn't something that's just gonna make me magically be a happy person, but --"
and my mother knew at that point that I was struggling. I told my mother that, I know that it's gonna, it's gonna give me some, you know,
something to let me go forward,
it's gonna give me some, a push to continue going in my journey.
"""

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website · 1 hour ago

"Was is simply about the physical appearance of the shpitzel versus the wig? or was there an identity issue that was involved?"

"""
There definitely was an identity-- like, I sort of had an identity crisis, which was basically I, I did not feel like myself in my shpitzel, I felt like, this doesn't-- it just doesn't BELONG to me.
"""

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website · 59 minutes ago

Anyways my point is that while therapy is definitely, in many cases very helpful and should be extremely available to all who need it, because transition is a very complicated process that many people will need a lot of support in,

both sheitels and hormones should be available over-the-counter on-demand.