Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
What do they call him/her now?
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
She works in the same building same office space. I don't know which department which team who she is what her name is. I see her every now and again and I know a lot of people whisper about it.
I ask the questions out loud. That's the difference. I don't judge. I wonder. I don't STRUGGLE to understand. I TRY to understand.
I struggle with a lot of personal issues myself. My self image is in pieces to express it mildly. People like her make me think of things. Acceptance. Of others and
Her own. Mental strength to be able to go through a big thing like that.
Thank you for the response.
Lot of there I already suspected but lot of new things as well.
It's 2012. This kind of subjects shouldn't really be such a taboo any more. Often people joke about things because they don't understand it.
Sometimes they joke about things because they try to
Show they accept it but don't really know how else to
Deal with it. Almost like a panicky attempt to try and not look offensive in any way.
I've gone through bullying at my workplace for the past two years. I know what it's
Like to be under a constant judgement. What makes some
People so strong that they knowingly take it on in order to to become
Who they are? And most of all, to KNOW who they are.
I'm 32 and ive no idea who i am. What I do know is that I'm naive
In believing that every person is truly good inside. Even after seeing and dealing with lot of arseholes.
I got really upset when I realised that people were taking my posts as offensive. It was never my intention. I often come across totally different
To what I mean. I don't know why this is. All I know is that it's
Draining me inside. Anyway. I'm not coming back to this thread. Thanks everyone who has made a decent comment and shared the knowledge. Like OW said I'm certainly not the only one who has ever thought of these questions.
Elli, some people are primed to be offended.
🙂
For me - it's whatever THEY want to be called/seen as is good for me
I don't think there should be an onus on anyone to explain him/herself but agree that it can be helpful if someone is willing to do that. Suppressing all discussion often says more about the issues of the person suppressing, than the enquirer.
I think the same about racism, sexism and other unpleasant traits. Just fighting with them won't aid any empathy or comprehension and often increase their sense of indignation. Far better to change behaviour with discussion. (Obviously some violent bigots fall outside of this ideal!!)
I have a friend who made the decision three years ago to have their gender realigned from male to female.
Previously he was extremely unhappy. He had known since he was a child that he should have been a girl and fought aginast that for 33 years. During those years he attempted suicide and self harm regularly as he hated himself so much. Anybody who met him coud see that he was extemely unhappy, lacked confidence. He never socialised and even avoided the canteen at coffee breaks. He was attracted to women and lived with a finance and had a child with her. She was well aware of his desire to be a women and she would often advice him on make up and encourage him to wear her clothes.
Eventually he made the decision to go ahead with the change. Due to the nature of his work (compulsory communual showers being the main issue), each member of his department was approached and asked how they felt about it. With the exception of one person, everyone was really supportive and were willing to treat him as a female. He in turn was willing to wait until the others had finished in the shower before going in, and to be discrete when getting changed etc.
I don't think the OP meant to cause offence but the first few posts were along the lines of what do her family call her/he/it and what toilets does it use which didn't really seem to me to be opening the subject up for a reasonable discussion, more of a laugh and point session. The use of the term 'it' I found particularly unpleasant as that's a very unkind way to refer to a human being but I understand that English is not Elli's first language.
I don't think it was the topic which some people found offensive, it was the way the topic was introduced.
She came back to work as a female after Christmas. She dressed like a normal female, not some freak, and you could instantly tell that she was happier. In fact she was a completely different person. She was bubbly and cheerful, wanted to socialise, wanted to communicate with people instead of hiding away, was suddenly more productive at her job. Basically she now wanted to live again. I have never seen someone change so much over night. It was so obvious that it had been the right decision for her.
She paid a big price for it though. Her family no longer acknowledge that she exists and she did lose some friends who couldn't accept her as she now is. She split from the finance but has weekly contact with her son who calls her Mummy. He has no problem with having two mummy's and so far he hasn't been subject to any teasing or bullying at school.
The financial cost is exhorbiant. She could not get funding on the NHS as there is limited funding avaiable for this treatment and the waiting list is years. So she is spending several hundreds of pounds each month on hormone treatments. That restricts her lifestyle a lot and she is struggling financially to pay for her treatments as well as her rent. One day the NHS might take on the costs but until then she will be living in poverty even though she earns a good wage. She is happy with that as she feels the price is worth it.
Last month she had the operation. She had to go abroad to a clinic of dubious repute as she couldn't afford the treatment in a Western country. Luckily she seems to have had a good experience with no infections.
As for sex, she says that this is the first thing that people ask her (she is quite willing to talk about her experiences if you ask her but otherwise she doesn't mention it). She said that she never fully enjoyed sex as a man - she had fun at the time but it always came with a feeling of shame and guilt as she felt she was being disloyal to herself. Now she is still attracted to women, but has accepted that she will never have a sexual relationship again as she is unlikley to ever find someone who is willing to accept her as she is, and the chances of them also having a compatible personality is even slimmer.
I said in my language we don't have he/she. It's one word. Like he. Means both woman and a man.
However in spoken language he turns into it. No matter who it is you talk about. Third party person is always referred to as it in my spoken language. It sounds weird when you translate it into English but it's not in my language. I mentioned this in this thread to clarify that i meant no offence if I was under the impression that he/she is all about a male/female concept and to me such thing doesn't naturally exist. I brought it in as it was appropriate to explain I meant no offense and it is rather humorous when you think about it. If my partner or a friend is in the toilet and their phone rings In my language I would say it is Having a shit.
There was a lot of trouble and confusion in the work place as to how we should 'deal' with her, i.e. come to terms with it in our own minds. Some people made a joke of it, which I found really offensive and I jumped down on them hard. But most people where only curious.
An all users e-mail was sent around (it was a small company and everyone knew everyone) saying that she was going through this process and that from now on she would be behaving as a women, including use of toilet and shower facilities, and that we should call her by her new name. Otherwise HR didn't give any guidance except where it caused a specific incident between individuals.
There was a lot of criticism as the email was sent out while she was on site, whereas she had asked for it to be sent the following day when she was on annual leave,as she wanted to give people time to come to terms with it and not be bombarded with it all on one day. Otherwise she was happy with how it was handled.
Seems Elli's posts have been taken in, turned around and read wrongly.
I have at 1st hand had/having this happen in close proximity shall I say. This is the 1st time I have said anything about it as there are a few nasty other things going on in my family. These I have told friends on FB, some of whom are reading this, and commenting.
He has moved on from being a male to being female and he has a g/f that has held his hand all the way through the change. He has not gone downstairs yet, but has breasts and wears heels to work. His HR dept and people at work were told and workmates asked if they had a problem. As its been pointed out its 2012 and things move on in everything. What was taboo is now the norm in most places.
My view on his change of life????????
I don't care one iota, its his body not mine. His g/f is happy as she is actually bi, work are ok with it.
And he actually looks better as a woman than a man, so enjoy the rest of your life T. Your a stronger person than me. Well nearly, i've done an IM distance race you haven't
We were friends with a male/female couple who married and had children. Then he suddenly announced that he was undergoing gender realignment (it was 'sudden' to us because we do not live very close together and did not see the often. Clearly, this was not 'sudden' to them).
The children called the male persona 'daddy' but the female persona was always, and still is, called by her first name. Unfortunately, although the wife was very supportive and they remain friends, the marriage did not survive and the 'changee' moved to another area.
We still see the wife about once a year but haven't seen the ex since she moved away. I do remember discussing heels and make-up with her once though, which seemed a bit bizzare at the time. She encouraged us to ask any questions we wanted because she felt that we were not being judgemental. She still fancies women - her gender has changed, not her sexual orientation.
The children seemed to accept things well at first, but they have had some counselling since. They still see each other regularly though and she plays an important part in the children's lives (even though they are not 'children' anymore), it's just that she is not 'Daddy' now.
From my point of view, this person was the same inside, however the body was presented. If we believed that 'he' was a nice guy, it stood to reason that 'she' would be a nice woman too.
Going back to the original question, why not just call her by her new female name? Saves a lot of hassle.
Easy for me it now has an I at the end instead of a Y
A couple of months ago MrGFB got a phone call from a dear friend of ours...he said..."do you know where I am...I'm in the airport dropping off my father who is flying to England to talk to a surgeon about gender reassignment...!!!" his mum and dad had called a meeting THE NIGHT BEFORE! to tell him...100% out of the blue that..(a) they were splitting up and (b) that 67 year old father was coming out as transgender.
To say this was a shock is an understatment. Apparently he had been cross dressing all of their married life, his wife and found out many years into the marriage and was distnctly unhappy with it. He then decided at age 67 that he could take it no longer.
Now some people will say that it was brave of him, that if he had been unhappy then it was the best thing to do.
All I can say is what I've seen from our friend's point of view...they are devastated, the father is living still in our town, dresses as a woman...his daughter has shunned him completely, his wife has since had a heart attack they say from the stress! His grandchildren are broken hearted that their grandparents have split up and obviously because of the changes in grandfather!! My friend, because he is a special human being, has helped his dad move home, visits him on a weekly basis, tells him that he loves him...but inside is full of pain and rage about it.
And apparently the National Health are covering the whole thing. (and I don't know what people will think of this point but... he will never, ever fit in...he's a short fat baldy man!! - it boggles my mind!!)
I agree.
Some people seem to have jumped on Elli's posts without reading them properly.
Where I work the toilets have been refurbished and we no longer have 'ladies' or 'gents' loos.
We have separate, individual toilets which have a loo, sink and hand-drier in each, and anyone can use any of them. They have both the normal signs on the doors.
GFB................i still think its really sad that someone feels they have to live alie all their lives.............hide who they are...........yes its hard when they realise too late to avoid marriage and kids...............but then I think its better to become the real you before death.however old that it...............i also think that i would accept any member of my family who had struggkled to come to terms with such a hard decision...........
young children usually are very accepting......but they take their cues from the adults around them ......and so will learn to be upset.........adults so often are more worried about what the neighbours think than the reality of the situation........
At 67, the guy clearly doesn't give a toss what anyone thinks of his decision but won't have the choice after meeting with the NHS.
🙂
There are many many many transgendered people out there. Lost count the number that I know. Maybe you know some, but you just don't know that you know?
Lots of transgendered people don't have surgery. Some take hormones only. Some don't take hormones, but just dress to 'pass' as the gender they want. Some don't want to be one gender or the other and mix it up.
At the end of the day, who gives a flying fig?
I agree, Elli didn't deserve that attack. She was asking out of curiosity not being disapproving. I have worked with people who have undergone gender reassignment, and both went from he to she. I work in secondary school, so it was a big deal to students and some parents, but one of them handled it by saying "you have questions... ask them, and if they're not to personal i'll try to explain". That helped some of the students understand. To me thats all Elli was doing, asking the questions to find out facts.
I think that now people are more aware of transsexuality, its been on television a fair bit over the last year, My Transsexual Summer, My Dad's A Woman, and the drama Hit and Miss most recently.
Chances are that now a lot of transsexuals will be able to seek help at a younger age when its possible to halt or reverse the effects of testosterone and eostrogen. Even more than that, then the impact on other people can be minimised by helping them before they get married, have children and all the other things that people do and which quite a few transgendered people end up doing.
That's almost the same as my dad's generation. He is a gay man and when he was growing up it wasn't the done thing to be gay (think it was still illegal initially then age of consent was 21), so he got married and had me and my brother, but told me that I ruined his life because if I hadn't some along he wouldn't have been trapped in the marriage to my mom. His issue, but with the gay rights movement becoming more visible, it is easier to be gay now than it was back then, and so there are more gay men and lesbians that can choose to have children within a gay relationship, rather than having to get married to hide who they are.
You ruined his life! As if you had any choice in the matter of your existance.
🙂
Vixx, your dad may well have had a hard life trapped in a marriage he didn't want but to tell your child "you ruined my life" is inexcusable!
I know RicF and Wilkie. I have very little to do with him now, I perhaps see him once every 3 or 4 months. He only lives round the corner too, but I live my life in a way that he can't - and I think that upsets him. Apparently he told my mom to get an abortion (like you could that easily back then), and when I asked her she said he had indeed asked her that. She didn't know he was gay then. My brother is 9 months younger than me (we were both premature), so by the time he realised that being in a marriage wouldn't cure him of being gay, he had 2 kids.
It's his loss, not mine.
I'm trying to imagine if my 65 year old dad up and told me he was planning to have gender reassignment surgery, and I just can't. I know it would upset me, but then any big unexpected change is upsetting to a certain degree. It wouldn't make me disown him or stop loving him or anything like that. But I imagine it would be fairly difficult to work through all the repercussions.My mum's always been VERY bothered about other peoples' opinions. It would probably see her off...
My boyfriends's cousin used to be a chick. I think he's been a bloke for years now. I've only ever known him as a bloke, I only see him at family functions and in nearly 5 years I've never been properly introduced to him. So while he has a 'new' male name, all his family still refer to him by his 'original' name, which is suitable for males or females. But I find it really weird. Occasionally they slip up and refer to him as 'her' which is even weirder. And I don't ever know whether to call him by his 'old' name or his 'new' one. I usually use his old name, just because that's what everyone else calls him, but I feel not-quite-right doing it. And I don't want to ask him what he wants to be called, in case he thinks I don't know about it and it would make him feel bad to find out that I did...
His family all make a big deal out of it - kind of like, 'Oh, we're so tolerant, N***** used to be a woman you know...' And sometimes they make jokes about it. I just think it's awful. His two sisters are (IMHO) a pair of loud twats and he seems way nicer than either of them. His parents are arseholes too. They're really quick to jump on other people for any perceived intolerance etc but they don't ever invite him to their own parties where they're going to have their work colleagues or their own friends there. It's like they think he's okay to be there as long as it's only family but anyone else, they don't want him embarrassing them.
That's awful to hear runs-with-dogs!
I'd be embarrassed to have them as 'family' and I'd be off choosing my own if that were me......
runs with dogs.........i really can't understand why people call someone by one name if they have asked to be called by another name............i can understand the occassional slip ups as changing years of doing something is hard.....these accidental slipups will occur.but to deliberately call someone by aname they do not want is not right............