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?
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.
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.