danielaemtranse

[danielaemtranse]

[danielaemtranse]

[danielaemtranse]

I am always dumbfounded by men who come to me and say: "I am straight BUT I am attracted to trans women".

It is obvious that straight men will be attracted to trans women, after all straight men are attracted to women and trans women are… women.

I don't expect a gay man to be attracted to me, not least because gay men are attracted to men, to the physique of men, to what men represent. And I am very far from all that.

Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity.

I am a transsexual woman who is straight (unfortunately), which means that my affective and sexual attraction is directed toward men.

And all this also has nothing to do with the genital that we are born with.

In this way, I consider it normal for a straight (or bi) man to feel the desire to be affectionately and/or sexually with trans women.

And being attracted to trans women does not make any straight man gay or bi.

Being gay means, besides being attracted to men, by the male physique, also when imagining building a life together, to think of other men.

We would urgently need to break the false conclusion imposed by the cisheteronorm that: he was born with a penis, therefore a man, and therefore must be attracted to women, or he was born with a vagina, therefore a woman, and therefore must be attracted to men.

In this way transphobia is different from homophobia, since transphobia is discrimination based on gender identity and homophobia on sexual orientation.

Another thing, sexual practices do not define sexual orientation. So, if a man is exclusively attracted to women, regardless of what he likes sexually with these women, he is still a straight man. In other words, no one automatically becomes gay for having had anal sex, as is generally held.

In fact, reducing being gay to having anal sex is one more face of homophobia and phallocracy, which determines that the uses or non-uses of the penis determine sexual orientations. And for this same reason they generally imagine that in a relationship between women without penises they are just making room for a man with penis to arrive, one more face of lesbophobia.

[danielaemtranse]

It took me years of being depressed and uncomfortable with myself and my body, I couldn't get any joy out of life.

When I looked at the future and all its possibilities, nothing was enough because I always thought that I would have to live life pretending to be a man.

But the moment I accepted myself, I felt this new joy and passion for life that I had never experienced before.

And suddenly I had a hard will to fight for my life because I knew I could do it all by experiencing it as a woman.

And that to me is just one of the most important things that transition has brought me: the will to live.

For years I believed that I would never be able to have a life like everyone else's, that I would ever feel happy.

Waking up from the surgeries I had and seeing a body I never thought it was possible to have was liberating, it was as if I finally had the chance to start from scratch as my life should have been from the beginning.

The Brazilian state forced me to undergo compulsory treatment with a psychologist and a psychiatrist in order to get the reports that gave me the right to get on a SUS surgery line, I waited for 2 years for an appointment with a SUS psychiatrist and I went through several transphobic psychologists until I found the one who attends me until today.

I remember the first appointment when I told him that I was there because the government demanded a report for "transsexualism" (sic), as transsexuality was then known, still pathologized; but that I was a woman and that was not in question.

On the other hand, all those years of therapy led me to know many places about myself that I didn't even know existed.

Even though cisgenerism dictates that we need to treat ourselves mentally, and the stigma of mental illness has accompanied us since forever, I trust that if cisgenerism itself went to an office for therapy with qualified and non-transphobic professionals, perhaps cisgenerism itself would question the prison it has created with this compulsory gender training based exclusively on genitalia, as if we all had to be prisoners of our biology, as if the genital we were born with had to always be a destiny.

[danielaemtranse]

For the child and the teenager that I couldn't be, for all the times that I was punished for acting like a woman, that I was cursed at, that I was bullied, that I was beaten for not fitting in with gender expectations.

For all the times I thought that the life I was living wasn't worth living anymore, that living wasn't worth living, the many times I thought about putting an end to my days.

For the lonely child and teenager that I was, believing that I suffered from a serious disease that would kill me one way or another, having no one to vent with, thinking that I was wrong just for existing, going every day to places where they made me feel like the worst person in the world.

For all the times I was told that I had to learn how to be a man, for all the times I was told that I wouldn't get anywhere, that people like me always ended up in the gutter.

For all the times they used transphobia to ridicule me, for all the tears I shed, for all the loneliness I felt, for all the antidepressant tablets I was forced to take.

I look at this child and teenager that I was and I tell her: give me your hand, walk through this dark tunnel with me, I know it is frightening not to be able to see even your shadow in this darkness, but just weeping and gnashing of teeth, I promise you that at the end of it you will find the happiness you always believed you didn't deserve to feel. He will no longer meet you, but me.

I am immensely proud of the transgender woman I have become because I have battled enormously to be who I am. Along the way, dead and wounded, but ultimately, survivor.

Living is worth it.

Trans people should have the right to exist being respected and be happy too.

[danielaemtranse]

Have you ever wondered how many trans women and trans men you have worked with in your life? With whom you have studied in school or college?

How many times have you turned on the TV and seen trans women and trans men playing characters in soap operas, movies, and series passing on positive messages?

How many times have you gone to a doctor's office and the patient was a trans women or trans men ?

How many times have you read that trans women and trans men were in important positions in companies, were CEOs for example?

How many times have you heard compliments from your friends, or even your family members about trans women and trans men ?

Have you ever wondered why in prostitution areas there are usually many trans women? Is it in our DNA the propensity to be prostitutes? Well, you see, the overwhelming majority of our population prostitutes, there is no other group in society that we find 90% of this population prostituting themselves.

Is it really possible that 90% of a whole group prostitutes because they want to?

Have you ever wondered how many times the media has presented positive accomplishments of transvestites, transgender women, and trans men that the public who read or watched applauded?

We are nowhere to be found, but we are the most visible part of the sex and prostitution market.

And we frequent the police pages assiduously, because there the media always remembers to report us.

If this has nothing to do with transphobia, then you need to rethink what discrimination and prejudice is.

I have been for years the only trans woman software engineer in the teams I participate in.

Trans people don't just need speeches of support from allied cisgender people, but action.

There is no possible talent to be shown when there are no opportunities.

#transgirl #transwoman #transgender

[danielaemtranse]

Incredibly, when I started hormonal therapy I was afraid that my breasts would grow and I would no longer be able to hide them to the extent that I would continue to hide who I was.

What I wanted most was what I feared most. What was I afraid of? Being free.

And in the end, I ended up getting prosthetics because I was not satisfied with the size after years of hormonization.

And this second puberty did not come without its side effects, I became totally emotional by blocking testosterone and taking estradiol. I became the kind of person who cries at romantic movies, in fact, to this day I watch romantic movies and series to cry. I like to cry a lot, because I was forbidden to cry my whole life, because they always said that boys don't cry.

At first I was ashamed because I was living something that is only for teenagers and I was already an adult, then I thought: and what do I have to lose? to whom do I owe anything? after all that these people did to me?

Today I want to do everything they forbade me, relive not the second adolescence, but the first, the one I gave myself the right to have, since they stole it from me.

The first bra, the first underwear, the radical mood swings after the estradiol pump, learning to deal with a new body that the second puberty gave me, all this I did alone, I was my mother and father. I had to birth and raise myself. Transition is also a very lonely journey.

I no longer need to take a testosterone blocker after the surgery, but to this day I am still adjusting to the hormonal storm.

For me transitioning into adulthood is like fixing a plane that is in full flight, because you relive (or live) an adolescence being an adult, paying bills, working, and needing to be responsible, answering transphobic questions all the time, dealing with discrimination and prejudice everywhere, and still smiling and being kind so they don't tell you you've lost your mind.

[danielaemtranse]

One of the rights of trans people often questioned is the issue of using the bathroom according to our gender identity.

In many states in the US this right has been banned, in Brazil the trial at the Supreme Court that will determine whether or not trans people have the right to use a bathroom according to their gender identity has been suspended since 2015.

I spent many years of my life without being able to use a public bathroom. In the men's bathroom the chance of me suffering aggression and abuse was the same as if a cis woman entered a men's bathroom, and in the women's bathroom it was forbidden, so that before leaving home I already did what I had to do because I knew I wouldn't have the right to do it outside the house.

In school for example, I spent all of elementary school and high school squeezing myself not to use a bathroom.

I spent so many years of my life holding myself back from using a toilet, even though my bladder was exploding, that I developed urinary problems requiring medical treatment and taking medication: oxybutynin.

Problems that are not uncommon among transgender people.

To have to fight for a primitive right to empty your bladder and bowels in peace is just too much, but it is very common for transgender people all over the globe.

And we need to hear that we cannot use a women's bathroom because we are all criminals, and we would all rape cisgender women. Well, in the eagerness to protect cisgenderism, fundamental rights of trans people can be exploded: where we go to do our primary needs is the least of our worries.

And well, if a trans woman commits a crime inside a bathroom, as it would happen with a cis person, the conduct should be individualized, judged and convicted if necessary, instead of simply turning a blind eye to our presumption of innocence and treating all of us as criminals.

I have never seen anyone's genitalia in a women's bathroom, and no one has ever seen mine, because there is a private cabin in the bathroom. We only cross paths in the mirror to wash our hands and touch up our make-up.

Trans rights are also human rights, because we are also human.

[danielaemtranse]

I read that an 8 year old trans boy will be removed from a religious school in Israel because he is trans.

The boy's parents were told by the government that since their son studies in a school that separates boys from girls, he should move, the parents regret that their son is being punished for being who he is.

Parents of other students and rabbis protested that the boy will study with other boys. Treating the boy as a girl said they would keep their sons out of school until he is turned off.

This hatred against trans people is the main cause of mental illness and suicides of trans people, which are a few times higher than among cis people.

I remember myself in school, I led a completely lonely life without being able to express who I was, what I felt, and all the dread I had of going 5 days a week, 5 hours a day to a hell where even teachers did everything to make me feel like the most unhappy child and teenager in the world.

There is an early complacency with homotransphobic bullying, treated as a "mere joke", I had a stolen childhood.

Last week a 13 year old gay boy killed himself in France because of the homophobia he suffered at school, today this news of an 8 year old boy being forced to do the same.

To justify transphobia, a group of 17 rabbis said that according to the Torah, fantasies don't change reality.

Until when will they use religions as an excuse to spread LGBTIphobia?

Until when will they continue to spread hate as if it were opinion?

As Laverne Cox said recently: trans children and teens are none of your business if you are not a parent of trans children and teens, but you have an obligation to respect how people claim themselves.

They are not worried about these children and teens, they are worried about keeping LGBT people from the earliest age in constant terror of assuming who they are, being punished continuously for being who they are, forcing them to be ashamed of who they are.

Here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/transgender-boy-to-be-removed-from-religious-school-against-parents-wishes/

[danielaemtranse]