Boosting My Hopefulness: a Tumblr post

I am sharing a post which I recently found on tumblr.  I am keeping the poster and the forwarder anonymous to protect them.  This is not “transphobic”.  This is information about one person/family’s experience.  It boosted my hopefulness today.

I want to share a story with you because I really admire the opinions you share on your blog, and the way you are handling the situation with your child. You are doing the right thing, no matter what anyone says. You get so much undeserved hate, and handle it very graciously. I’m hoping this story will help people understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.

My sister believed she was transgendered for at least 7 years. She had dysphoria and had done tons of research and had gone to see multiple therapists for years. She did hormone therapy for at least 4 years.

She had depression and anxiety and other problems that were showing in such a way that she truly felt like she should’ve been born male. But this is not at all how she feels now. She deeply regrets going through the hormone therapy all the time, and it breaks my heart. The testosterone changed her body permanently, especially her voice, and she’s very self conscious about it. She loves to sing, but she has a bass range now, so she doesn’t sing nearly as much as she used to. I’m just glad that all she did was hormone therapy, and she didn’t transition in any other way. If she had, I don’t even know if she would be alive right now, and that’s so scary to think about.

I am positive that if she didn’t make these permanent changes to herself, she would be much, much happier now and have way less stress and anxiety.

This is why it is extremely important to not transition right away if you believe you are transgendered. Even if you KNOW you are, and KNOW you’d be happier if you transitioned, you could still be completely wrong. You could be making the biggest mistake of your life. You need to talk to many different psychologists, and try as hard as you can to find any other cause for your feelings. You need to analyze your entire brain, and work on your self confidence, and focus on family, friends, and hobbies, and try to make peace with yourself as hard as you can. You may feel like you won’t be happy until you transition, but you have to try to be with all your being before you do. Please. If someone wants to transition, it needs to be something that they are so sure of that they’ve waited for maybe ten years before they do it. These are PERMANENT changes, and if you realize you made a mistake after they’re made, you can’t just change your mind and get rid of them.

I fully support transgendered people, but many people (especially people under 21) who think they are transgendered will end up realizing in the end that they’re not. And if you are still a teenager, there is NO WAY you can know for sure if you are transgendered or not. Your brain isn’t fully developed and nobody at that age knows who they are or what they want. It’s especially difficult for the people who don’t have an understanding family, because it makes them feel more alienated and it’s harder for them to know if they can ever be happy in the body they’re in. People in the tumblr community (especially sjws and feminists) do not help with this at all. It’s good that people are becoming so accepting of trans people, but they’ve almost become too accepting. So accepting that too many people don’t realize how huge of a decision transitioning is, and how much it could potentially negatively affect you later in your life. And if someone points these things out, they get yelled at for being transphobic, or even told to kill themselves. It’s a terrible thing, and it’s truly frightening. And all we can really do is raise awareness and hope that people will start understanding more.

“This is why it is extremely important to not transition right away if you believe you are transgendered. Even if you KNOW you are, and KNOW you’d be happier if you transitioned, you could still be completely wrong. You could be making the biggest mistake of your life….. It’s good that people are becoming so accepting of trans people, but they’ve almost become too accepting. So accepting that too many people don’t realize how huge of a decision transitioning is, and how much it could potentially negatively affect you later in your life.”