To summarize, a vagina can now be constructed from peritoneal tissue, meaning that it will self-lubricate, doesn’t require prior electrolysis, will be stretchier than one made from skin tissue, and doesn’t have any external grafting sites to worry about.
My wife, Zoe, is transgender. She came out to us — the kids and me — last summer and then slowly spread her beautiful feminine wings with extended family, friends, and neighbors.
A little coming out here, a little coming out there — you know how it is.
It’s been a slow, often challenging process of telling people something so personal and scary, but pretty much everyone has been amazing.
However, she dreaded coming out at the office.
She works at a large technology company, managing a team of software developers in a predominantly male office environment. She’s known many of her co-workers and employees for 15 or so years. They have called her “he” and “him” and “Mr.” for a very long time. How would they handle the change?
While we have laws in place in Ontario, Canada, to protect the rights of transgender employees, it does not shield them from awkwardness, quiet judgment, or loss of workplace friendships. Your workplace may not become outright hostile, but it can sometimes become a difficult place to go to every day because people only tolerate you rather than fully accept you.
But this transition needed to happen, and so Zoe carefully crafted a coming out email and sent it to everyone she works with.
The support was immediately apparent; she received about 75 incredibly kind responses from coworkers, both local and international.
She then took one week off, followed by a week where she worked solely from home. It was only last Monday when she finally went back to the office.
Despite knowing how nice her colleagues are and having read so many positive responses to her email, she was understandably still nervous.
Hell, I was nervous. I made her promise to text me 80 billion times with updates and was more than prepared to go down there with my advocacy pants on if I needed to (I might be a tad overprotective).
And that’s when her office pals decided to show the rest of us how to do it right.
She got in and found that a couple of them had decorated her cubicle to surprise her:
And made sure her new name was prominently displayed in a few locations:
They got her a beautiful lily with a “Welcome, Zoe!” card:
And this tearjerker quote was waiting for her on her desk:
To top it all off, a 10 a.m. “meeting” she was scheduled to attend was actually a coming out party to welcome her back to work as her true self — complete with coffee and cupcakes and handshakes and hugs.
NO, I’M NOT CRYING. YOU’RE CRYING.
I did go to my wife’s office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone.
I wish we lived in a world where it was no big deal to come out.
Sadly, that is not the case for many LGBTQ people. We live in a world of bathroom bills and “religious freedom” laws that directly target the members of our community. We live in a world where my family gets threats for daring to speak out for trans rights. We live in a world where we can’t travel to certain locations for fear of discrimination — or worse.
So when I see good stuff happening — especially when it takes place right on our doorstep — I’m going to share it far and wide. Let’s normalize this stuff. Let’s make celebrating diversity our everyday thing rather than hating or fearing it.
Chill out, haters. Take a load off with us.
It’s a lot of energy to judge people, you know. It’s way more fun to celebrate and support them for who they are.
Besides, we have cupcakes.
Thank you. I needed this story today.
What a lovely story.
First happy tears of the day. Read it, let it soothe a little of the ugliness of today’s news.
hot take: hrt, gender therapy and trans surgeries should be free
if cis people don’t have to pay to have a body that doesn’t make them dysphoric, neither should trans people
So by that logic does that mean that I should get anti-depressants and all the other pills for my mental issues for free because the people who don’t suffer from them don’t have to pay to have them?
When my Mum was pregnant with me she was in the pub and this random creepy elderly woman that nobody ever saw before or since told her that she was going to have a boy and when I was born everyone was like “the creepy lady was wrong” but it turned out I’m trans and THE PUB WITCH WAS RIGHT!
I WAS FORETOLD BY THE PUB WITCH
Witches are always pro-trans culture, transphobes cannot be witches.
So, letting people be who they want to be is a good thing. That’s shocking I tell you, just shocking. All I want to know is, how much time and money went into this research when you could’ve just asked trans folks how they felt for free
The way research works is they probably did ask trans folks, and then systematically collected their responses. Research often is the collection of many many people’s responses, collected in a rigorous standardized way. They are not just saying “this is the case for some trans kids” they are saying “this is the majority experience” for the trans kids they studied/ which is a powerful and useful thing to be able to say.
Yes it seems obvious but especially with social justice and medical research even if it is well known having a peer reviewed paper saying means that when some cis person is arguing the opposite you have a peer reviews paper to go, “look it’s been studied you are wrong”.
Research studies inform policy and medical practice. It is a good thing that this paper has been made because it can be used as evidence.
Minority groups benefit from research that looks at how things affect them and gives them a voice that is harder for policy makers to ignore. Bashing this study because it is obvious isn’t helpful, this study could seriously help trans kids, especially if it had been published in main stream media, because parents who are cis and don’t know anything about trans issues or don’t know if anyone they know is trans might find out their kids are and search for info and this will pop up. And because it’s from a trusted source, it’s research! they might think “oh maybe the best thing I can do for my kid is let them transition”.
Poo pooing research that gives minorities a voice because it’s obvious for the maringalised group but not the hegemonic one hurts the marginalized group because the hegemonic group is the group that needs to learn how “obvious” it is.
Didn’t realize someone had posted this on Tumblr. Cool.
As exhausting as all the blowback I’ve gotten for this (trans women are remarkable able to unify misogynists and radical feminists in their disgust of us), I’ve been really touched by how many people have reached out to say this argument has changed their mind on the subject.
I’m going to keep talking about it until it stops happening, or trans women cease being murdered for triggering male anxieties.
Hey this is super important. Thanks for having the bravery to say it.
reblog guys this is important
This is one of those things where if it wasn’t so prevalent, it wouldn’t be a big deal, it genuinely would be artistic freedom etc, but because it is the norm, every new instance is terrible.
Which is always a really hard paradigm to explain so someone gets it. But I think, if it could be generally communicated effectively somehow, would lead to a massive drop in pushback against anti-discrimination measures from people who are basically good people but who without a sense of how context matters have a tendency to not take problems that don’t apply to them seriously.
Especially problems that require them to accept responsibility and/or feel bad. Important self-defense mechanisms against people in your life walking all over you by making everything your fault engage in social justice situations, and then it’s just like, goodbye. No conversation here.
As much as I like the non-binary flag I’d prefer it if people could just remember that the white part of the trans flag
represents non-binary people and stop treating people who don’t fit the gender binary as “less tans” than binary trans people
Lots of non-binary people have felt worried about if they’re allowed to call themselves trans, or if they’re “trans enough” to use the trans flag or join in during trans events like trans visibility days without even knowing that the white stripe on the trans flag is for us non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid/agender/intersex/etc folk.
I feel like it is important that the white stripe is recognised because currently so many people who don’t fit the gender binary feel less valid as trans people than binary trans people.
Steel Phoenix Studios 