Your Mind is My Play-Thing

I love you being trans I love you trans women i love you gender exploration I love you self discovery

[link to the Reddit post]

[ID: two screenshots of a reddit post on r/offmychest by user awaythrowjessie, titled "My girlfriend made me realize I'd be happier as a woman". it reads as follows:

I am 33, born male, and have had major self image issues my entire life. I hated seeing myself in mirrors, pictures, you name it. I honestly thought it was kinda normal so I just accepted it.

Now about 3 weeks ago I was at my girlfriends house, we have been dating a little over a year now, and have plans to move in together soon. Now recently she has shaved her head to support of her friends with cancer (side note thenl treatments for that friend are going very well). She had since bought some wigs to wear while her hair grows back out. We were joking around as I have male pattern baldness, and when she went to the bathroom I jokingly threw a wig on and waited. She came our, saw me we laughed for a bit and she said "you know I think you'd make a pretty girl" we laughed some more but those words triggered something in me.

Cut to a few night's ago she asked why I've been acting weird lately and I just told her how i was feeling. She said "alright let's do this " and when I asked what she told me she was going to give me a bit of a makeover and put me in one of her dresses and if i liked it then good. I was nervous and asked what if I did like it would she still be attracted to me. She just responded with "Baby you know I'm bi, guy or girl you're still mine." Her words reassured me honestly i love her so much.

Anyways she finished the make up, fitted a wig on me perfectly and got me in a dress and even helped me put a bra on and stuff in a little so i could see what breasts would kinda look like on me. Now I expected to see myself in the mirror, laugh this off and move on right, but I didn't. She did an unbelievable job, like I looked like I had been born a woman, and when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in my entire life, I liked what I saw. I probably stared at myself for a good 10 minutes before she finally asked me something. She asked what I wanted to be called. After a few seconds I said Jessie, I always like the name Jessie. She whispered in my ear "well Jessie, you look beautiful." And that was it, I knew this was who i wanted to be.

I'm nervous now though, my friends will accept it but my family are, well let's just say not very progressive. But this is what I want.

[link]

[ID: A screenshot of a Reddit post from r/offmychest by user awaythrowjessie, titled “I went out as Jessie for the first time and I was honestly surprised”. The screenshot reads: Hello everyone, this is an official follow up to my previous post that went viral and caught me off guard.

So me and my girlfriend, (Who has officially agreed to disclose her name lol) Emily, had gone shopping for me to get me outfits and the like. Earlier today i put on one of those outfits and officially faced the world as Jessie for the first time.

To say I was nervous would be an understatement. We went to our local mall and I was almost shaking, thankfully Emily calmed me down and said if anyone said anything mean to me she'd handle it, then playfully threw up her hands like a boxer lol. We stepped inside and started walking around going in stores and I noticed something, no one was staring. Like at all. I live in an area that still has issues with LGBTQ people so I was afraid of staring or aggressive people. But none of that happened. People greeted me, the store workers were kind and nobody looked at me like I was weird. I felt comfortable, and Emily even said she saw someone check me put, though i doubt that.

This was unbelievable to me and honestly I felt like myself. I feels nice that I can go out without worrying about Judging eyes.

And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.

And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"

It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".

"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.

in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."

this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.

this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.

we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.

now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.

he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."

which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples – idiot, imbecile, and moron – are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.

he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??

the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.