What is something you learned or experienced from being trans that you wish you knew pre-transition, or that you wish cis people knew?

I’ll go first: the temperature differences when going from testosterone-dominance to estrogen-dominance is not just real but significant, my body just puts out less heat and I feel colder much easier now even when otherwise maintaining a high metabolism, eating in excess, etc.

It may have just been my trans denial before, but I really wanted to believe that the difference was not that great and I was wrong.

What’s something you wish people knew?

  • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    641·
    2 天前

    How many trans people completely give up not just sports, but many types of exercise altogether. Swimming is particularly fraught, but so are plenty of other activities. There’s this narrative that trans people are beating down the doors to all sports, but for plenty of trans people just being active and healthy is out of reach.

    Edit: oop, sorry, didn’t realize this was posted in the transfem community 😅

    • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      25·
      2 天前

      so true, and such a good example.

      Personally as a kid I never exercised unless forced to (e.g. the annual 1 mile run in gym class) and didn’t enjoy sports, even before I realized I was trans.

      This was for so many reasons, too. For example with swimming, not wearing long-sleeves & pants was unbearable in social situations as a kid, let alone taking my shirt off & wearing swim trunks around peers.

      I also had very poor body coordination / awareness (“proprioception”), and frequently was injured when I would play.

      (I was hit in the head by balls so many times in sports it became a running joke with friends and family - I have distinct memories of having painful experiences being hit in the head when playing basketball, baseball, and kickball, some of these happening more than once.)

      As an adult I learned coping strategies, and I adapted to living as the wrong gender and dissociating from the body. Looking back, it was dysfunctional the way I used my self-loathing and gender dysphoria as tools to push myself to endure physical suffering that wasn’t safe or healthy. I also had a hard time gauging my body’s needs and injured myself many times, and I now have life-long conditions as a result.

      I have heard similar stories from other trans women IRL about not being able to read the body and injuring themselves, and about poor body coordination / proprioception. There is also just the obvious discomfort of the way sports puts you into your body in a social context, and for trans women the way sports is male-coded and all the complicated social dynamics around being “athletic” or into sports as being masculine.

      What were your experiences, and do you have any advice for trans people wanting to be healthy with movement?

      • EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        10·
        2 天前

        The proprioception thing is interesting because it’s also linked to things like ADHD and autism along with other sensory processing difficulties.

        For me, my own poor proprioception actually feeds into my dysphoria on its own because it feels like somebody hit me with the Scale tool in Blender and added like 2 inches to all my bodily dimensions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve just barely smacked my head or hands on things or kicked furniture and how much frustration it has caused me with this damned flesh prison.

        • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          5·
          1 天前

          yes, it wasn’t until I transitioned and read all the studies about shared genetic causes of gender dysphoria and autism, and the high overlap between the two that I finally took seriously the feedback I had been getting my whole life that I might be autistic - so my own proprioception issues might also be linked to neurodivergence. Estrogen seemed to help a little bit with my proprioception, but I am still clumsy and my spouse has noted that it hasn’t been fixed by transition.

          I do feel like you that my body just feels too large, and I do think that’s part of why I run into things - the hormones haven’t fixed that, so maybe that’s a life sentence, unfortunately. And “damned flesh prison” is pretty much how I would describe my body since I was maybe 15 - 17 years old? But hey, still cis tho.

      • Taalnazi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        2 天前

        Would be a great idea imho to start organising queer&ally sport groups.

        Regular swimming sessions in groups, perhaps?