A straight girl enters the queer world...

[EnderD_503]

A few people have brought up "research." I tend to agree with that perspective, only because, at least from the way I learn, reading about something as a whole tends to clarify it and give it context. That doesn't mean that you can read about one trans experience and see it as an all encompassing trans experience...you certainly can't, but it can give you greater context.

I notice that some people coming from a more strictly ingrained straight and cis background really have trouble. All their lives they think in binaries; female and male, gay and straight, masculine and feminine etc. Then suddenly they somehow come into contact with someone who is trans or someone who is queer. Maybe they fall in love or maybe they're just friends. Then it seems like everything they were ever taught about sex, gender and sexuality is being upended. It would make sense (though it still certainly sucks) that such a person would have issues with pronouns, if they still have an understanding of sex as a part of a binary, or if they still believe that a sex assigned at birth = "real sex"; certain genitals = certain sexes and all the usual incorrect assumptions.

That's why I think that maybe reading a book or two on transguys/trans identities might be useful to put things into context for her, and bring her understanding of sex/gender outside the typical binary. At least coming from the perspective of someone who learns better with a combination of lived community experience and reading about others' identities and experiences. Personally I try to do the same with femmes as well as other queer women and/or lesbian-identified women. Hell, I enjoy doing so for any identity within the queer community because its my community. These people are important to me community-wise, so I want to get as much as I can about varying experiences, and if hearing about one experience doesn't allow it to sink in for me, then sometimes hearing about various experiences in a written context helps bring a perspective more into focus.

So maybe that could actually help your friend as well.

Also, a bit off-topic, but it's been briefly discussed in this thread the experiences of queer and/or lesbian women in relationships with transguys and the struggles they might go through. That's something that interests me, because often (at least, I've found) the struggle is maintaining a queer and/or lesbian identity while dating a transguy. The assumption is, then, that the transguy may very well identify as straight and what, then, of the queer and/or lesbian identity of a partner and her identity? I feel like for me, personally, that is a struggle I share to some extent even as a transguy/male-identified butch. How do you remain a transguy who identifies as queer who is into queer women, who doesn't identify as bi or pan, and still remain visibly queer and trans? Especially in a psychiatric-influenced trans community that still thinks that being a transguy who is into women while identifying as queer somehow is a denial of maleness or an admittance of femaleness. Maintaining visibility (and in the context of relationships) is definitely something that has concerned me and other transguys I know. I think that some transguys and their partners who are queer women and/or lesbian women may share more in some of these struggles than is often talked about...maybe people should just talk more. I dunno.