I simply tell people that we're all trans. I don't differentiate, at least in terms of validity, between a CD, or someone who does a full medical, social, and legal transition. (We hate the term "transsexual" now, just FYI.) I know people who transition, but are no-hormones, non-op. That's fine with me. I know lots of CDs who'll never consider transition. I don't consider the path someone like me is on as being in any way superior to the path y'all are on. There are differences in who we are and what we do, and the path we take. That's fine.

I do not look down on CDs, gender fluid, two spirit, gender queer, gender ****, neutrois, agender, bigender, drag queens, transsexuals. I don't care if you take hormones or not. I don't care if you are pre-op, post-op, or non-op.

I don't care whether or not you pass as male or female - or if you even attempt to pass - because you may not identify strongly as either one.

I don't care if you are gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, asexual, queer, or pansexual.

I don't care if you are vanilla or kinky, monogamous or poly.

All I really care about is that all of us get the chance to be who we really are - whoever that is. Not what they tell us it's OK for us to be.

I apologize to anyone I left out of those lists - between our bodies, our gender, and our sexual orientations, we cover a lot of area that the cisnormative, heteronormative world doesn't understand *at all*.

They barely understand someone like me - I look like a woman, smell like a woman, act like a woman, I dress like a woman - really almost overdress and mostly sound like a woman. I am a freaking woman - as long as you don't look at one small portion of my anatomy. I'm only moderately less girly than my sister - and she's a girly girl. (And a lot of times, I present in a more feminine way than she does.) This is not a difficult thing to understand - I'm a woman. I'm straight on top of that.

However, lotsa cis people have trouble wrapping their head around who I am - at least if they hear that I'm trans. If they meet me first, and don't know - they just treat me like a woman. So if they have trouble with someone like me - they don't have a chance with anything more exotic. Part of the problem is they don't seem to want to understand us.

Quote Originally Posted by pamela7
but I'm feeling a difference between CD and TG/TS, with a considerable portion of CD'ers being heterosexual enjoying dressing en-femme, and another considerable portion being female in a male body transitioning. I feel the T tends to support the transitioning leaving the CD largely out of the LGBT community, albeit accentuated by the closet-like nature of the CD tribe?
What does your being heterosexual have to do with anything? I'm heterosexual. I really like men - a lot. Honestly, y'all kind of look like lesbians if you are out en femme and your spouse accompanies you. But that's cool too - most of the trans* I know are in same sex relationships, so that's no big deal at all - I'm certainly used to seeing couples that look like that. Really, I don't think labels for your sexual orientation are all that helpful - or maybe I just don't care. If your version of heterosexual involves a man who presents female sometimes with a cis woman, then I'm certainly delighted to count you as a straight couple. As long as you love who you love, and they love you back, that's good enough for me.

(My point in that little aside was to simply say that you are conflating sexual orientation with gender, and the two really don't have much of anything to do with one another. Lots of trans women I know still like women, either cis or trans. Lots of trans men I know end up with other men, either cis or trans. Some of us end up with someone of the opposite gender, either cis or trans.)

The closeted nature of the CD population does tend to make a lot of us not think about you - or at least not willing to fight very hard to carry you along, risk free, while we are literally shot at from time to time. And unfortunately, there is sometimes a kind of elitism in the trans community, where some have a mindset of "I've been on hormones longer than you, and I have had all these surgeries - so I'm better than you." And there is some misunderstanding between the communities - some of us viewing you all as just fetishists. (As if there were anything wrong with that.) But most of it is just that a lot of us don't get to know the CD community - because there virtually is no CD community. A few of you venture out in public, the vast majority do not.

So there are plenty of trans women who don't ever wear women's clothes until they've been in transition for a while. They don't identify with CDs at all. That doesn't help either - some of us get a mindset where we are certain that our experiences with being trans are the only ones that are valid. They don't really get y'all either.

Nevertheless, some of us do get it, and advocate for everyone in the trans spectrum, including CDs. I certainly do this. Some of us did start out as CDs, and some of us know that some of you will transition. And that alone is reason enough for me to advocate for you. But that isn't why I do it. I do it because it's the right thing to do, and because many of you, and others here locally, are my friends, and it just pisses me the hell off to see someone treat my friends badly.

I sometimes go to events that are mixed between CDs and transitioning trans*. I enjoy them. I have local CD friends. I do notice that sometimes it seems like local girls I meet are a little intimidated by me. I'm not sure why. I'm not trying to make everyone transition - and I promise you - you won't catch whatever I got that makes me like this. :p

So please don't give up on those of us who transition. Some of us really do care, and want to help.