[AtLast]

When a close butch friend decides to transition- an example of what might be discussed in the thread…..

Sometimes I really think that we don’t look at just the interpersonal side of friendships and transitioning of a close friend and what the ramifications are for our friendship. And if we did, a lot of strife could be avoided.

I have had very close butch friends who struggled in our childhood with really being men and just not having the right body. Due to being born in the early 50’s, there are a lot of things about availability of support, medical and psychological support that differ from today, but, the emotional impact between friends, one identifying as a masculine woman and the other as male probably remains the same.

For me, even though it was clear that my buddies needed to transition to have a more congruent persona, I did feel loss in terms of the fact that they (for a time), needed to move to trans friends pretty much exclusively. Consequently, I felt a little kicked to the curve simply because we stopped doing the things we always shared as buddies. It felt a lot like when a good friend gets involved romantically (and you are not) and they spend almost all of their time with their gf. Haven’t we all gone through this? Much more so for me as a young person. Later in life, this isn’t as true. My friends (as well as myself) make an effort to keep time for friends/buddies even if in the throws of passion!

I think that sometimes these kinds of things can begin to flow over into defensive posturing between butch women and trans friends. That sucks, but it feels human to me. The problem is recognizing what is really going on and talking to each other. To me, it makes sense that even though I get transitioning, the fact remains that I have never felt male or that I am a man.

I have masculine traits and am a butch, but remain a woman. My childhood trans friends certainly understood this and I understood them but, I still believe there is a missing link with the actual internal processes of our gender identity. So, their needing to hang more with other transguys makes sense (especially in terms of being able to talk on a different level about T ,surgeries, etc). I feel this way even with a professional background that brought me more information than just folks outside of queerdom, yet, I don’t have a problem at all with accepting this missing link. Yet, we have a friendship that matters. Friendships do have to be nurtured. Sometimes, I think that not recognizing the missing link really causes some problems that don’t have to happen.

So this is what I am trying to get at in the thread. Our processes and interactions, not to be or not to be…

Note- of course there are differing trans positions/identifications. My personal experience with people close to me just happens to be with FtMs and an inter-gendered cousin. And I am not going to talk from outside of my experience. There are trans masculine butches, for example, and not all butches are female-identified. If these fit for you… bring this up! I can’t speak for anyone else.

Yup, we talk about just about everything else except our human interactions with each other!