PhD #trans girl! She/Her, thing explainer and technical writing scholar interested in trans usability studies and design theory. Gender questioning folks are very welcome to message me! ⚢ Married. Opinions mine.
Okay, I'm doing one of those anonymous AMA thingies! I'm using Google Forms instead of that one app, but it's still 100% anonymous, and I'll be checking and posting replies over the course of the day.
"Regarding the voice training, can you assess how much there are things which are universal, independent from the language being spoken, and how much they are strictly English specific?"
OOOOH THIS IS A REALLY HECKIN GREAT QUESTION!!!
So, all linguistic gendered features are culturally contextual, meaning that while a given sound is objective, it's meaning is relative to the language and culture it's a part of. One of the best examples of this is Chinese, a language which has--
--multiple tonalities, and which one you use changes the meaning of a given word COMPLETELY. As a result, in tonal languages like Chinese, all that the tonal variation that says "I'm a girl!" in English does is confuse people.
Expand this small principle to every feature of language.
As a result, your voice trainer should ALWAYS be a member of the community you're going to be communicating in, and if you have a significantly different one, you'll need more than one voice trainer, each an--
--expert in their own language and cultural context. This can even apply to regional dialects in a given language or nation, or racialized dialects like African American Vernacular in the US! If you're Black and voice train with a white lady, you're liable to come out of it sounding like some Karen from the burbs!
"How can being ace play into a trans identity / how can it confuse the process of questioning one's gender? I think it describes how I present, but not necessarily who really I am. Like I find myself repulsed by the idea of myself having sex (possibly just in my current form?), but not by the concept of it in general. Also thank you for your work on SGW, it's depressingly rare to find such high quality writing. "
--REALLY goddamned complicated. Let's take one example for illustration: a sex-repulsed asexual binary feminine trans gal trying to figure her stuff out.
One major feature of high femme clothing is that it does display and present our secondary sex characteristics for admiration--boobs and butt, mainly. Take a '50's swing or tea dress as an example here: lots of cleavage, and a skirt made to accentuate hips and attract attention. If you're a sex-repulsed ace, that exact attention is--
--probably going to feel pretty icky to you, so untangling the ickiness of that feeling from how you feel about presenting as your gender is often going to be a tricky process!
Now expand that idea to be inclusive of the boobs and butt you're trying to figure out if you want to go on HRT to get in the first place.
Now expand it further to be inclusive of, for the sake of this example, this gal having significant bottom dysphoria.
The key question: *is she actually sex-repulsed, or even--
--asexual, or is her gender intertwined with her sexuality in such a way as it's basically impossible for her to distinguish between bottom dysphoria and being sex-repulsed?
That's a HUGE problem, isn't it?
Many trans folks are on the ace spectrum, and it has nothing to do with dysphoria. Some people are so sex-repulsed by the body there in at the moment that they think they're ace when they're not. But until you pursue and resolve your dysphorias, it's often impossible to tell the--
To be honest, it's one reason why I take the very firm line on gender affirming surgery that "wanting it is all the justification you need." I met a girl once who had been certain that she was sex-repulsed and asexual for her whole life... until she got her bottom surgery and suddenly found herself attracted to people of all genders, and wanting to use her new bits a whooooole lot, and very enthusiastically.
"Not a question, but I just wanted to confess having a bit of imposter syndrome for a fake academic paper project I finished in high school because I exaggerated some of the data, despite knowing that some people outright faked all of their data. Thanks for being so awesome and listening to everyone!"
Mmmmm here's the thing: as an English teacher, I don't really care that you did this. You wanna know how much I don't care?
Bullshitting helps you learn the form and function of how to build a scholarly argument and use data. It doesn't actually matter if the data is real, in the classroom--the question is how you use it in your writing. By Bullshitting, you're getting comfortable with that form and structure so you can do it for real later.
"In your experience both personal and anecdotal, how common is the "I felt noticeably different and better the day after taking HRT" as a response over not feeling anything at first? "
I felt a noticeable boost right away. My bestie didn't feel a damn thing until her second dose increase. Both are completely normal.
"What are you secretly hoping to be asked about because it's something you want to tell us, but aren't sure how to bring up?"
Honestly? That's not why I did this, but I can see now how that'd be a thing for some people. Mostly, I was hoping that shy people or lurkers would have more confidence asking things if they knew it wouldn't be tied to them.
"Only considering sex toys, kinky gear (could include cuffs, gags, blind folds) or hot accessories all people can use: Did you start or stop using some toys, gear or accessories compared to before your transition?"
Phew. Okay, I did say anything.
First thing: I can't answer most of this question without potentially revealing things about my wife, and that's a boundary I need to keep. Sex takes multiple people, after all.
That said, what I can say is that I've procured for--
--my own enjoyment some outfits, and especially platform heels (seriously, ankle booties are the place to start if you wanna try but are scared) that I love to wear and that make me feel very sexy/altersex-good (there's a venn diagram thing going on here).
I'd really like to try out some latex, but it's very expensive, and we've got enough other financial priorities right now that custom tailored (cuz my boobs) latex is a non-starter for me right now.
@mazel I was trying to make clear from the preface of it that this is far from universal--that many trans folks are ace. I myself am on the ace spectrum.
What I was trying to illustrate was not asexual people "growing out" of asexuality, but rather that some allosexual people mistake themselves for ace because their dysphorias are so bad.
When I met people like this, it certainly made me feel ooky and self-conscious, and I decided to try to dig into that discomfort to understand it--
@mazel
--better. For me, at least, the source was allonormativity, and the fact that I wasn't very confident in my (then-recently discovered and understood) demisexual it. I was afraid that that would be taken from me, or that I would be erased.
After working on it in therapy for a while, I came out a lot more comfortable and confident, because it's a part of me that nobody can take away.
But at the same time, I'm a teacher. I see people mistaking one thing for another all the time. I have--
@mazel
--to leave room, in any context, for people getting stuff wrong, and for that to be both normal and okay.
I mean, put another way, what asexual person hasn't, for some portion of their life, thought they were allosexual? It only seems fair to me that the inverse is okay, and that it be okay for that to be acknowledged.
"What words do you appreciate in compliments from other women and what words are ick?"
Honestly, very little in terms of compliments from ladies or enbies bothers me. People hitting on me overtly isn't an ick, per se, but it's very unwelcome because I'm partnered and in love. It more of a boundary violation/rudeness--like if you're hanging out at a bar and some drops a pickup line and you go "Not interested, thanks," that's fine. They had no way of knowing you didn't want that.--
"Okay, an answer to another question made me think of a new question. Did you think of yourself as ace before you realized you were trans? If not, is it something you have recognized in your pre-comprehending self after? If either, how have things changed for you since?"
I discovered I was demisexual a little less than a year into transition, and it wasn't until I was that far in that I could untangle my gender envy from my attraction. Sorta the old lesbian" do I want to be--
"My last question spawned a worry that spawned another question. Been day drinking, and it made me worry whether I articulated my previous question well, but also made me remember that you wrote that you were averse to any intoxication prior to transition. 1) Has that changed? 2) curious to hear more about that fear? Personally, I craved and embraced intoxication of all forms.--
