Transgender Q&A to reveal the mystery of transgender people

For cisgender people, it’s hard for them to understand what it is like to be a transgender. Just imagine, if you are told that the gender you thought yourself to be is wrong, what would it be like? If one day you wake up only to find your body doesn’t match with the gender in your mind, how would you feel? If every one in your life, your friends, parents and even strangers in the street think you are a man and expect you to act like a man. But actually you are a women. You are the only one who knows it. You think like women and you feel like a woman, but you are the only one who believes it. What would you do? Here are some common questions and answers asked by cisgender people. If you are interested, take a look.

What’s the difference between gender identification and sexual orientation?
First and foremost, let’s be crystal clear with one thing. Sexual orientation and gender identification are two different things which do not have anything to do with one another. For example, gender identification is a recognition of yourself about you are male, female, or some other genders. Sexual orientation is decided by the gender of the person whom you are attracted to. Just like cisgender people, transgender people can have any sexual orientation. For example, a transgender woman can be attracted by women or men or both of them. There are straight transgender women who are attracted to men, transgender lesbian who are attracted to women and also transgender bisexual who are attracted to both. The same case works the same for transgender men.

What is the difference between transgender people and intersex? Some people would confuse transgender people and intersex. The latter is often born with unusual body structure that does not comply with the regular cognization of male and female. In the meantime, as transgender people, it is decided by your gender identification. Transgender people are usually born with regular body and gene, but their gender identification is different from what it is from their appearance. Although intersex can be transgender people, while most transgender people are not intersex. Find local transgender community.

Some people think it’s easy to decide an infant’s gender. Just check it’s genitals. As a matter of fact, there are a lot more needs to be done. It is estimated that every 2000 new born babies, one of them would be transgender or non-binary.

What is the difference between transgender people and non-binary?
Non-binary means it’s gender does not belong to any stereotype people usually have. For example, one’s dressing style, haircut, body language, hobbits might be considered as something related to their gender. It is either feminine or masculine. The behavior of non-binary does not comply with their birth gender. For example, some people who are recognized as girls might portray themselves to be boys. They prefer to keep a short haircut, wear pants instead of dresses, etc. Non-binary may be or may not be transgender people and transgender people might also be non-binary. She is not ladyboy.

How to help transgender people?

Recently, I got lots of emails from transgender supporters asking me how can they help them. Looking at those supportive voices, I am really glad. I feel proud that at least some of my actions finally paid off one way or another. I know there are a lot more people who would like to do something for the lgbt community. Today, I would like to share something I have been doing in the past years.

Do not say anti-transgender and sexism language. This should be self-explicit. Referring transgender women as ladyboy, shemale or lesbian is not only an ignorant behavior, it will also be considered as violate to transgender women. Never use these words and if you heard someone talking like this, correct them. From the perspective of transgender women, the cause for transphobia is misogyny itself. Remember, ladies, you cannot only pay attention to those words that are against transgender women, while ignoring those which are against females.

Date them. There are many amazing and feasible ways to deal with social relationship. Each individual can take different approach. One thing we can do for transgender women is to be open to intimate relationships. Some people have fetish over transgender people and it might serve their personal preference to date us. For people who don’t have such preference, do not mind if your tranny date tells you that she is a transgender woman. There is not much difference between dating a cisgender woman and transgender hookup. Just try it and you will see. I happen to have had several great relationships with them and now most of them are committed in a monogamous relationship. Even though these relationships didn’t last long, I still have great memories and I cherish them. I really hope there are more people join me.

Do not pay too much attention to genitals. Obviously, this has something to do with fetish. Do not bewilder them with this question. There are some transgender women are quite open to this question, but they cannot represent all transgender people. Even if someone is willing to share this information with you, it does not make it okay for you to share it with other people.

Some cisgender people might have problem with whether to date a transgender person. First of all, never feel stressful to do anything you don’t feel like to do. If you feel uncomfortable or you don’t like it, just say no.

If genital is the only reason why you wouldn’t date them, I think this is something worth thinking about. Your result might still be “no, it’s not for me”, then great! You can go away without any regret. Transgender women will not want to be with someone who don’t want to be with them. What I would like to address is that genitals should not be the only obstacle in true love. I truly hope you don’t miss the chance to gain something precious just because of your parochialism.

A few words from a transgender female to all cisgender people

Recently, I had a tranny date with a cisgender female friend and it didn’t turn out very well. We shared some very nice conversations. We talked about movies, foods, art, etc. Then she told me an experience of her. She and her several female friends felt gender discrimination when they participated in a performance art. Their opinions were not adopted at all during this activity. They were so angry.

People can be easily irritated by such a declared sexism, which reminded me of my own experience in life and work. I often feel ignored. Then she said “yes, I feel really pity for you ladyboy”. The minute she said the word, she regretted it. I could sense it from her face. I know she didn’t mean it, but what is pathetic is this word is so common that sometimes people don’t even realize that it is impolite for us. I could imagine a crowd of cisgender people talking about us and all of them referring to us as shemales or ladyboy as if these words are just the right ones to call us. Even more pathetic than this is that some people who claim to be transgender supporters cannot even find the right words to call us. They think transgender female or transgender woman must be the most appropriate addressing, but it only proves they still think we are somewhat different with them. The fact is, we are the same.

Okay, that’s it. Now if you are also worrying about all these complicated transgender issues, then what I want to say is, after all is said and done, all issues come down to one issue of respect. Respect us female just like how you want yourself to be respected. As a matter of fact, transgender women are a small part of human-being and also a small part of females. Therefore, if we are discriminated, that equals the discrimination for females. The truth is we are never short of such discrimination.

Due to the mistreat for transgender people, many considerate and nice cisgender males are not able to build connection with us, because they will be mistakenly deemed as gay. That is totally ridiculous. Such perspective is caused by the ignorance and the lack of basic knowledge for transgender group. First of all, transgender females are women. We are never males even though we are assigned with the wrong body. We can be even more feminine than many cisgender women, but there is no need to make such comparison. Second, men are attracted by our female characteristics but not the thing between our legs, that makes them 100% straight. But if your obstinacy and prejudice prevent you from admitting the truth, I won’t blame you for it, because you can be so wrong in many other aspects in your life. The opinions of such persons cannot be taken into consideration.

At last, I really wish us transgender people can get a small room in the world for us to live happily and more easily. I really wish there is a day that we can stand in the sunlight and be who we are without any danger or concern.

What is the best time to come out as a trans?

Once one of my friends asked me this question, which I believe is the common concern for transgender people: I have told men up and front that I am a male to female transgender woman and I date straight guys. I want to wait until this relationship gets more mature to tell them, but I still don’t know which way is the best. I don’t want them to get upset, but I do want to let them know that I am an honest person. Someone they can build a long-term relationship with. What is the best strategy?

Whether to come out to your tranny date and when is totally up to you, so there is no wrong or the best time to come out. Being a transgender is purely personal. If your relationship developed to some degree, then it might have something to do with the person you are going on a dating with a ladyboy, but that is not the main reason for you to do it and neither need you to explain it to other people.

Some transgender people prefer to come out to all people in their life, while some prefer to keep it as a secret until they feel safe to do so. Some people prefer to do it between. In the past, many transgender people are told by many medical service providers that they should try their best to hide their identity. However, nowadays, more and more people realize that hiding such an important aspect from people might result in serious emotional cost.

Here is some suggestion that might help you decide what is the best action for you.

Let’s assume if you stay silence from the very beginning, what will happen? You might spend more time and energy to worry about when you should reveal such fact and how the other would react. With time passing by, the fear of coming out might grow stronger. The longer you wait, the more scared you are, because the more you will be deemed as a cheater. With regard to this, if you come out as a transgender from the very beginning, you can prevent wasting time with people who cannot accept you or people who may feel being cheated because of this fact. Discussing private things with new people might be difficult, but this is a huge return.

No matter when you decide to come out, you should make sure you are safe. What is pathetic is that the violence for shemales are so common and it is almost impossible to know whether someone has tendency for violence. If you spot any sign, for instance, if he seems to have transphobia or desire for control, you should be very careful. No matter what, make sure you can get help and support when needed whether it is from your friends, family or local police station or government, that is, make sure you come out in public where there are people around.

Let’s give transgender people a better world!

 Dating a transgender person or any other non-binary person can make you stand out from the crowd. In most circumstances, the person you are dating is a part of you making the right gender choice. For example, for heterosexual people, men usually tranny date women. While dating a non-bisexual person means to jump out of the conventional.

The important thing is when you introduce your transgender partner to a stranger or acquaintance, you might have to repeatedly explain the concept of transgender and non-binary, they might not understand no matter how many times you have explained to them. You even will be discriminated, harassed or violated. LGBT Dating might be difficult and it might even cause resentment for transgender people. I firmly believe walking beside your partner is the best strategy. From long-term, you might break up, but you certainly do not want to leave any damage to your partner just because of this short-term relationship. All transgender people have already experienced enough damaging to their every aspect of their lives. If you sincerely care about the wellbeing of transgender people, you should try to educate yourself and then educate the people around you to leave a better future for transgender people in the world.

Speaking of transgender people, the top priority for them is respect, which is also one thing they are most lack of. For cisgender people, respect is never a problem for them. Even though we are mistreated sometimes, we wouldn’t care too much. We will get it over with in no time. However, for transgender people or shemales, respect is something related to the courage for their existence. It’s 2020 now. Unfortunately, the fact is there are much more people don’t accept the existence of transgender people than those do. They despise transgender people. They think they are maniac. They can’t understand and they hurt them, let alone respect.

I know to increase the recognition for transgender people, it still takes a long time, even for decades. For people who cannot accept them, I am not asking you to try to comprehend. What I am asking is for you to ignore them. Just do not hurt them and mind your own business. There are still a great many of transphobia in the world. All of them can’t wait to “teach transgender people a good lesson” if they meet any. Let me ask you a question: What have they done to you? You don’t have the right to decide the existence of any person and neither should you influence anyone’s life. The disapproval of the existence of transgender people just exactly proves how narrow minded you are and you should be ashamed of it, but not transgender people.

Gladly, despite so many trans haters, there are still a great number of people who are willing to stand beside transgender people and support them. It is them who help improve the life quality and happiness of transgender people. I firmly believe this group would grow larger in the coming future. Let’s give transgender people a better world!