• keyA
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    7 months ago

    Panic. I’d immediately wonder if I suffered a stroke in the middle of the night that makes me think I changed. Or if I did magically change, did other people’s memories change too? I’d check my ID, birth certificate, any other paperwork, even old pictures for signs of gender. Figure out a way to indirectly ask a family member. Try to tell if my pets recognize me or are treating me like a stranger.

    I’d have to text out sick from work as long as possible because I wouldn’t know how to explain my sudden difference in voice and appearance. I’d be too busy panicking over what happened and trying to reevaluate everything I know about myself. Am I gay now? Am I trans now? Do all my interests stay the same? My socialization as a child didn’t change and it’s nurture not nature, right? Are my genetics different? Am I prone to different health risks now? Am I still me or did asgardian aliens put my memories in a clone body and mess up a chromosome?

    If I don’t change back I’ll start doing research into legally changing gender and coming up with a story to tell everyone who knew me. I live in an area that’s fairly pro-trans so at least I wouldn’t have to face insurmountable legal hurdles to get a name and ID swap. At some point I’d consider HRT to go back, but that can take so long (especially because I’d sound insane if I explained what happened) I’d realistically have to transition both directions legally, which I imagine would be its own hell.

    Eventually I’d calm down enough to explore myself physically.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Sounds like the most thought out response. I sometimes wonder how many cis folk are cis because they have a gender identity solidly planted in the cultural and phenotypic sex of their body and how many are cis because they really don’t have a strong underlying preference so whatever their body is it would not cause them any real discomforts.

      I definitely know folk who I suspect fit both of these models. Those cis folk who experience gender euphoria are sometimes not very subtle about it.

      • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
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        7 months ago

        I’m believe I’m the latter in this unauthorized and unofficial poll.

        I’m a lot more attached to my sexuality than my gender. I am definitely attracted to women. I am a man because it’s more convenient for me to be a man however. I have thought about whether I’m NB due to my indifference, but then I rethink my thoughts and notice

        I am a man […]

        and just decide to stop there, I don’t have to care about the “because”. I’m a keep it simple stupid kinda person.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          It’s valid. Being non-binary trans being treated as my birth sex causes me all kinds of underlying social anxiety and makes me hate being around people the same way I hate looking in mirrors. I assume the inconvenience of having to educate people on my specific needs because the burden of doing so is more often lesser than the discomfort of not doing so.

          If I don’t bother to correct someone’s assumptions in a social setting it’s usually because either I expect to deal with the person only very rarely and I do not give much weight at all to how they think of me… But the interaction does still remind me of everything I don’t like about my experience and makes me self conscious in a harmful way.

          If it were something based out of a lack of feeling rather than a surfit it would probably be a fairly innert part of the way I express myself.

          • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
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            7 months ago

            If it were something based out of a lack of feeling rather than a surfit it would probably be a fairly innert part of the way I express myself.

            I obviously don’t know what it would have been like if I were born female, maybe I would still be a man. As of right now though, I wear men’s clothes because I always have, wear a man’s hairstyle because I have always have, use he/him because I always have… It feels more like inertia than a part of me, along with just being easier to conform to something I don’t particularly care about, so if the ball had started off rolling the otherway… I dunno though. I suppose another explaination is that I’m just really secure in my “manness” I don’t feel any need to convince myself that I am man, I just am one. Probably why I don’t care about the “because” I just don’t need it.

            My answer to the initial question would depend on how much it upended my life I suspect. If I woke up, I was a woman and everyone remembered me as always being a woman, my wardrobe filled with skirts and I could slot right in, I think I’d just keep on trucking after some initial shock. But, if I had to explain that “I’m a woman now”, buy new clothes, and all that nonsense, I think my answer would more closely resemble the parent comment.

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        That’s an interesting thought.

        Back when I was five or seven if I suddenly one day woke up as a girl I probably would have had a massive panic attack and freaked out for a day and after some therapy and time to process I would have just been like, “oh okay well I guess I’m a girl now”.

        Nowadays other than the fact that it would cause ripple effects throughout my life that I can’t even possibly predict, i wouldn’t even care that much. Oh shit, dick fell off.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I mean for a lot of us the horror doesn’t kick in til puberty. When you are a kid all it takes for someone to clock you as another gender is changing your clothes and whatever you have in your pants doesn’t really matter so much. You might have been more okay than you think at age five or seven.