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[Loud Whispers]

Yes, that's what I meant. The trans experience.

I am terrible with words when talking about these things and it has offended people in the past, which is why I don't really like talking about them.

It's all right, as long as you keep communicating and you have good intent, you can always build a better relationship with others after you all come to a mutual understanding over why you accidentally offended the other and that it was an accident. A lot of magnanimity goes a long way for both sides 

[Iris]

I suppose I may as well just ask. I know that references were made to cishet people not "Truly Getting It", and I wonder, what is "It" in this instance? It doesn't square with what I know about human nature - namely that people are individuals and no two are the same. This seems to imply there is one Trans Experience, that you either understand or don't understand, but talking to other people beforehand about this issue has brought me to the conclusion that it is a highly personal journey. I don't quite understand what was meant by this. Is it that there are common threads between all trans journies, or...?

[Vector]

I don't think that there's a singular trans experience, at all, but I also think that people tend to notice the relentless transphobia and ... don't have a word for it, but adoration of cisness we're swimming in a lot less if they're not its intended target. There's a lot of stuff that's treated as "just opinion" (neutral) and it's not understood that circulating those ideas has the ultimate purpose of preventing trans people from transitioning.

There's in-jokes, lingo, and preferences, too, which trans people are much more likely to know than cis people. Such as what "cracking your egg" is. Much as you're likelier to know what an otter or a bear is if your social circles are gay male adjacent, or to know what a uhauler or gold star lesbian is if your social circles are lesbian-adjacent.

[alway]

I think the word you were looking for there was cisnormativity? That entire ideology that to be cisgender is Normal and Good and Desirable, and that those who are not should aspire to be as close to it as possible, and to do otherwise is to be morally suspect. It's something I was intentionally poking fun at with the comment early in the thread about trans meetups being a chance to hang out with normal people, instead of cis people.

You see similar patterns in other contexts as well; with misogyny for example, men are viewed as superior, and thus, women aiming to enact masculinity are viewed as misguided, misled, or confused, but ultimately understandable as they are aspiring to become superior. Whereas men aiming to enact femininity are viewed as deviant, and morally repugnant, as they are aspiring to debase themselves into the inferior group.

The intersection of this with transphobia becomes transmisogyny, where transphobia interprets people into these categories, and misogyny does the rest. This is also why, in most media today, you see trans women depicted as predatory, morally suspect, and criminal. And why you see trans men depicted as confused, misled, and infantilized such that they aren't allowed agency over their own decisions. They also don't really care whether these categories are particularly accurate, and will slot in nonbinary people, or just anyone, into whichever side of this binary system they find most convenient to interpret them as through the lens of transphobia.

Heteronormativity is similar: This underlying belief in society that to be heterosexual is Normal and Good and Desirable, and that The Gays should attempt to emulate it as closely as possible, and assimilate into straight cultural norms in order to be accepted within society.

To really Get It, those normative beliefs need to be jettisoned. Not only are cisheteronormative systems not what should be considered 'normal' or something to aspire to and look up to constantly, but that going beyond them and annihilating them is what should really be aspired to, as they are actively evil and actively making the world a worse place, both for those considered normal and those considered abnormal. They are a giant set of invisible chains binding every person in society to useless expectations.

Break those chains and understand it's not "this trans person may some day live a normal life if given enough assistance to become normal" but rather "this trans person has been doing intense self-examination for the past 4 years and has crafted their very being into an intentional work of beauty to which everyone around them should aspire, and whose existence outshines dozens of others put together." There's like, this slogan y'all have probably heard, "Love is Love," which constantly gets mocked in many of the queer spaces I'm in, specifically because of the implication that normative straight love is the gold standard by which all others are measured. But why should it be? Aspire to be better tbh; look at the failings of cisheteronormativity, learn from them, and build something better in its place.

[Loud Whispers]

I suppose I may as well just ask. I know that references were made to cishet people not "Truly Getting It", and I wonder, what is "It" in this instance? It doesn't square with what I know about human nature - namely that people are individuals and no two are the same. This seems to imply there is one Trans Experience, that you either understand or don't understand, but talking to other people beforehand about this issue has brought me to the conclusion that it is a highly personal journey. I don't quite understand what was meant by this. Is it that there are common threads between all trans journies, or...?

In the words of Nujabes 'you either get it or you don't though, the choice is yours!'

There'll be a lot of things that are hard to "get" if you haven't lived "it." Same ways you can empathise with someone who's been struck by lightning, won the olympics or lived with wolves, you can even understand it and relate to it. But you won't know what it really was like - and take that and amplify it by a lifetime. Lots of people have lived lives where although there is no singular experience, there are things - usually common sufferings, jokes and joys - that only some peoples will get. There's a reason why there are 5,000 years of recorded history of sailors complaining that land-dwellers don't 'get' them on that fundamental level. Because no matter what nation or life they lived, every sailor knows what the sea's like in a way no one on land believes

[Imic]

I'm not 100% sure what I am. I'd identify as asexual, since I just do not give the slightest shit about sex. It just does not interest me in the slightest. I get that it's a thing that other people enjoy, but I really could not care less.

However. I do still find some people... Aesthetically appealing? Attractive? Hot? I'm not sure, but I'm 99% sure it has something to do with femboys. I think that femboys are cute, and I'd love it if I had the confidence to wear big stompy goth boots and a choker and become the goth femboy I've always quietly dreamed of being. Okay, that got a little tangential, but um... so, a bit gay at the very least. Girls are cool too but I'm pretty sure I have a preference for guys.

Okay so this is diving about as deep into my internal workings as I'm comfortable going, so Imma stop typing now.

[Loud Whispers]

That's called being based

[Magmacube_tr]

I am literally a pan-dulum (geddit cuz am pan) when it comes to these. I feel no attraction to anybody for one day and feel irked by the thought of it alone, and then, when I wake up and go around the next morning, people turn all cute as fuck, and suddenly, I am daydreaming about them.

What the hell is going on?! I am just constantly confused!

I think I understand how sex-repulsed asexuals feel when in my down days, kinda. And I am pan; we are supposed to be opposites.

[Imic]

There's actually quite a bit of overlap when it comes to the asexual and pansexual/bisexual community, since, well... each label includes "Feels the same way towards everyone/most people" somewhere in it. There's a lot of asexual people I know and know of who'd identify as bisexual and asexual at the same time. Labels exist to make things easier to understand, but I swear, every label that exists falls apart the second you look at it too hard...

[voliol]

Hmm, I wonder if there is any truth to pansexuality being the opposite of asexuality.

Pan- doesn't imply more sexuality than mono- or bisexuality, just that there is less discrimination in terms of gender. And at some extreme point of the asexuality spectrum (not meaning it's uncommon, I have no idea how people are distributed on that spectrum) there is no attraction to people of any gender, and so this discrimination is lacking there as well. Of course, you may be mostly ace but with strong monosexual (and/or -romantic) preferences as well, in terms of the attractions you do have, but the point is it's more than 1-dimensional. You can be both ace-y and pan-ey, and if trying to make sense of it doesn't work, then it's fine to just give up and go with the flow. You are who you are, and you feel how you feel at the moment.

fake-edit: aarhg, ninja'd by Imic

[Grim Portent]

I think of it as multiple spectrums of attraction/interest, some of which overlap,* several of which change in response to various stimuli. Hormones, the weather and so on. Interestingly enough humans are known to become more horny at certain times of year, which vary from culture to culture, and in response to major events. Lot of babies can be traced back to sports seasons, public holidays, war victories, expansions in civil rights being passed and so on.


*For example, I would not say homo is the opposite of hetero, rather each is a seperate sliding scale at which the opposite end is asexual. Or two sliding scales each if we divide sexual and romantic attraction. Potentially more depending on what criteria we want to use to define things.

[Great Order]

The talk of pansexuality leads me to a question: What's the difference between pan and bi? Most people I've seen answering the question have boiled it down to "I prefer the name of one over the other" rather than an actual difference.

I've heard some people say that bisexual means you're only attracted to binary genders, but they've then been told it's not the case.

[voliol]

As I understand it, "pan" was concocted as a more inclusive version of "bi", as bi implies things about the gender binary, basically ignoring enbies for no good reason. On the other hand, "bi" is the older, better established term. So yeah, it comes down to a name preference.

Though be that as it may, I've also heard rumors of people who use "bisexual" intentionally, and not just because they are jerks slaves to the normative of the gender binary, but because they are attracted to two enumerable genders. Never met one of these people personally, as far as I know, but even if the rumor was taken out of thin air, I am sure there exist at least a few it applies to. There are plenty of people out there.

[MrRoboto75]

I've been wondering that myself, as recently I've been thinking I actually fall into one of those.  Not sure if I'm fully committed to identifying as either though.  Anyway consider this speaking as an outsider.

Frankly it depends on who you asked and what day it is.  Part if it seems like bi has a lot of baggage/stereotypes people don't want to deal with, part of it is gender got more complicated and "binary" doesn't entirely make sense anymore.

I've heard pan basically disreguards gender entirely when it comes to potential relationships, whereas a bi person might favor masculine over feminine (or vice-versa).  So I'm leaning to bi since I prefer feminine people.  Although I know of a youtuber with similar preferences that identifies as pan so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

also bi has a better flag

[Grim Portent]

I generally just use bi as a simpler way of saying I'm pan when talking to people who aren't familiar with the non-binary parts of the community. A bisexual of convenience as it were, because explaining that I'm pan with a preference for guys takes more time and fundamentally who cares.

There can be a distinction draw with proper bisexuals, for whom non-binary people just aren't interesting, romantically or sexually. Someone attracted to specific quality combinations, physical and personal, that are generally associated with men or women and where being a man or woman is a part of that quality group.


I've actually known a couple of them, guys who liked masculine men but also feminine women, and had no interest in feminine men, masculine women or non-binaries. They just didn't appeal to them in any sense. I imagine there's a lot of variations of them, much like with anything to do with attraction and identity.