I don’t think this is a “who has the most grief” contest. These are different types of adjustments, and maybe we don’t have enough words to express them all, but everyone going through these difficult times needs understanding and empathy, not “my grief is worse than your grief”.
On a more mundane note, I watched her ESPY award speech and have to say I was rather startled by hearing the hearty and deep “Bruce” voice coming our of the otherwise very feminine Caitlyn. D alleges there are surgical solutions to raising the voice for transwomen, but I’m not sure she’s correct. Perhaps it’s a matter of voice training that takes a long time?
She sounded very ‘Lauren Bacall’ to me.
No, there isn’t a viable surgical solution; a type of surgery exists to alter the vocal cords, but the results have generally not been good, and sometimes they’ve been disastrous. So much so that nobody reputable that I know of recommends it. Voice training can take a long time, and I assume that if Caitlyn uses a voice coach, she hasn’t been doing it long enough to make a major difference. But eventually, she’ll probably be able to sound more “feminine.” (Not that she sounds terrible now, in my opinion.) I know one trans woman who had a very deep male voice (almost James Earl Jones territory!) and now sounds so good that you’d never know it wasn’t her original voice. (Of course, she was a professional actor prior to transition – playing leading man roles in Off-Broadway theatre – so I’m sure that made voice training easier for her.)
As I’ve said before, I was very lucky in that aspect of my transition (probably more so than any other trans woman I know), because I didn’t have to change my natural voice at all. To the contrary, I used to have to deepen it on purpose in order to be able to “pass” as a man on the telephone, and still wasn’t always successful. For whatever reason, my voice didn’t change in my (belated) puberty in anything resembling the same way it does for most people assigned male. Just like I didn’t grow very much at all. Both of which made it much harder for me to live as a man, but have made it much easier for me to live as a woman.
Saintfan, I’m so sorry for your loss.
Pizzagirl, I never suggested that it hasn’t been difficult for your friend to handle her child’s transition, or that it wouldn’t still be difficult even if she had known for years that it was a possibility. (Sudden conscious realizations in adulthood may be unusual, by the way, but certainly aren’t unprecedented. One woman I know has said that she didn’t consciously understand what was “wrong” until she was in her 30s.) Believe me, I understand. In the last decade that I’ve been actively involved with the trans community, including as a participant in and moderator of an online trans forum meant for trans people and their partners, I’ve heard – directly and indirectly – the stories of enough non-trans loved ones of trans people (partners, spouses, siblings, parents, and children) to be very familiar with how difficult it can sometimes be (and how long it can take) for them to adjust. Sometimes impossible.
I hope you can understand, conversely, just how personally hurtful it is for me – as a trans woman, a parent, and someone who suddenly lost my own mother when I was 20 – to hear people reflexively repeat the “transition is like death” comparison. People need to come up with a more thoughtful, and less hurtful, analogy.
Donna - Of course. I don’t know how to reconcile the two sentiments.
Saint fan - what I’m saying is that this young person herself (himself) explicitly says that this was not an always-felt-this-way-and-never-said-anything situation. I have to take this person at face value.
I’m ver sorry for your loss. In the theme of “you never know” - our accountant, whose office is next to mine, put her daughter and grandson on a plane to Tucson Wednesday afternoon after a week long visit and, while we were at the office on Thurs morn, received a call from the d that the baby had gone to sleep and never woke up. We have a small office and we are all shuddering from this tragedy.
I feel like everyone is so thin-skinned about whatever their cause or life situation is. I’m multiracial, so I flip about people being labeled “black” or “white” or “brown” yet I have to cave to it. I am female but it is just not a part of me, I just do not care one bit about it. I care very deeply that I am a human being.
I agree with “I don’t think this is a “who has the most grief” contest.” A friend’s mom was raped as a 6 year old by her 20 year old cousin, and it was not reported to the police, all that happened is that their grandmother threatened to “throw him out of the house if it happened again”. I can’t imagine someone being forced to grow up with that daily baggage, and then telling her child that when she was in her 70s (never having had therapy or ever mentioning it again). We can always find someone else’s life that was more miserable and more sad, and someone who has experienced more discrimination and more feelings of self-hate.
I think about what I read once, that every night we go to sleep, and we die and wake up in the morning a new person. It is like we really have many many lives punctuated by when we close our eyes and sleep. I can see how when someone goes to sleep with two children, a daughter and a son, and has been raised to believe strongly in gender stereotypes, and wakes up and finds out that they have two sons, it would trigger the grieving process. Similar to someone marrying outside their religion, or marrying someone of the same gender for that matter. Just because we are all supposed to be loving and accepting does not mean our brains can cope with significant change in the same way we can logically explain it to others.
I saw a brief clip of Ms. Jenner, and all I could think about was how much plastic surgery she had, a la Joan Collins or Liz Taylor. I have a very low voice and actually saw a site about voice change surgery when I had vocal cord trouble due to my job: http://www.thaimakeover.com/transgender-srs-thailand/voice-box-surgery-bangkok.html
and it says:
“The characteristic pitch or fundamental frequency (F0) of the male voice ranges from about 100 to 150 Hz; for the female voice, F0 ranges from 170 to 220 Hz”
I have a lower voice than my husband, and other anecdotal evidence is that there is significant overlap. I can speak in a higher voice but it is taxing and not normal for me. I think the voice aspect of changing genders is highly overrated, and just like Lauren Bacall was taught to speak lower, people can be taught to speak lower or higher by a voice coach, or more importantly, perhaps modulate their voice more in a way that society would be more likely to accept them as one gender or the other.
(I’ve been called “Mr.” more than once due to my low voice, on the phone…)
It’s not a “grief contest” but a challenge to the idea that a change or loss of a relationship is like death. Relationships change. People get divorced. Kids grow up and move across the country. Sometimes they choose to move away from their family of origin emotionally for one reason or another. All of those types of things can engender a grieving process and a coming to terms but still, they are nothing like having that person die. Go ahead and grieve the loss of your relationship as you knew it but that’s a personal thing. To actually act as if a person has died when, in fact, that person is moving on to a more open and genuine place in their life is narcissistic in the extreme. Maybe some people pull away from family by choice during a transition but my impression is that more often than not they are driven away by family who won’t accept them.
This may sound stupid, but do 100% of lifestyle changes result in a “open and genuine” place, not limited to this issue? Sometimes I wonder why people must make a choice, especially because I believe in gender fluidity over binary gender definitions. Can’t someone just do what they want and not have to declare anything? Isn’t it more open and genuine that people can do what they want not just check a box?
It’s a shame that women can live gender fluid with minimal if any repercussions, and men cannot.
what is dying, for the mother of the trans son, is her vision and dream of a daughter. Even though the mother adores her child and utterly supports the transition, she still may grieve for the daughter she no longer has.
It’s somewhat similar for parents of children with disabilities. When your child is diagnosed, even though you love the kid with all your heart just the way they are, you still grieve for your imagined nondisabled child and the future expected experiences that you now won’t have. Perhaps Pizzagirl’s friend imagined her daughter as a bride or as a new mother-- she must now abandon these dreams.
It’s not death of a person, but death of a dream isn’t always easy.
Your link didn’t work, jym626. One way of avoiding enormous url’s like that is to use ■■■■■■■.com, which will greatly shorten it for you.
The other links I tried didn’t work. Will retry when I get home
rhandco, I wouldn’t call it being “thin-skinned” given the amount of hatred, ridicule, and discrimination to which so many trans people are subjected on a daily basis. And simply because you’re content with gender fluidity doesn’t mean that trans women shouldn’t have the same right to identify as “women” that non-trans women do, or should be criticized for it. After all, even if gender is a multi-dimensional spectrum with a virtually infinite number of locations where people can be, the areas called “man” and “woman” are as valid as any other.
As for this:
Please try to keep in mind that although I’m sure there was an element of vanity (and wanting to look more youthful as well as more conventionally “attractive”) motivating Caitlyn Jenner’s FFS (facial feminization surgery) – and I’m not suggesting that there’s anything wrong with either – the primary motivation for trans women in having such surgery is an understandable desire to be perceived by people as what they are, i.e., women. Very few trans women (even the small handful who are as insulated by wealth as Jenner) want to be so “visibly trans” as to cause cognitive dissonance every time they’re out in public, let alone the object of ridicule or violence.
Believe me, I was tempted at the outset of my transition to have some sort of facial feminization surgery myself, but I ultimately decided not to when I realized that it wasn’t necessary for me in order to be perceived as a woman, and that if I went ahead and had it, it would be entirely for reasons of vanity. Given how much my son hated the idea – he was afraid he wouldn’t recognize me, and that in that sense I would be lost to him – the decision was easy for me.
Please also try to remember that it takes up to a year for the facial swelling from such surgery to recede completely, and that it looks more “natural” as time goes by. Jenner had her surgery only a few months ago.
So I don’t think that your comparison is really apt.
No, it’s not easy to let dreams go. What helps is to remember that even our kids’ lives aren’t ours to decide. While we get vicarious satisfaction out of sharing in their milestones from school to sports to marriage and family, their life choices aren’t done TO us they just are. I remember hurting and grieving when my kid gave up a sport that he was really good at. I actually cried. Then I remembered that it’s his life and moved on to appreciate the reason why he moved on. I have a daughter who will almost certainly get married (likely to college sweetheart) but there will be no “say yes to the dress” moment. I’m pretty confident that she will go the Abby Wombach route with a tux. I gave up the “shopping for a prom dress” moment too. I can have all the wedding dress fantasies that I want but if I’m forced to let them go I just have to remember that the fantasies were mine but the reality isn’t mine.
RE post #954 I live in a place where many women have plastic surgery and it is very true that their face doesn’t really “settle in” for about a year. They can look really freaky at first and it seems to get better over time as long as they know when to say when.
@rhandco:
“Sometimes I wonder why people must make a choice, especially because I believe in gender fluidity over binary gender definitions. Can’t someone just do what they want and not have to declare anything? Isn’t it more open and genuine that people can do what they want not just check a box?”
The problem with this response is assuming that someone who is transgendered is making a ‘lifestyle’ choice, this is not gender blending, this is not gender fluidity or gender play for them in many cases, this is fundamentally who they are, and what they do isn’t because they don’t fit the gender binary, it is because they identify as that binary. This isn’t about someone who id’s in the middle who is bio male who wants to wear a skirt, a la Will Smith’s kid, this isn’t a woman who is butch wearing men’s clothing and such, this isn’t the performer Big Freda who id’s as a gay man but is over the top femme, these are people whose fundamental gender identity is binary and doesn’t match their body.
Put it this way, there are M to F’s who are like Caitlyn Jenner, who love the whole feminine image, the makeup and manicures and heels and dresses and so forth, and there are M to F’s who wear little or no makeup, wear jeans and sweatshirts, but both id as women. The presentation is different, but the core identity is the same, the lifestyle is how you play out the gender identity, it isn’t the identity. People don’t transition to be free to ‘express themselves’, it is about how they see their core identity. For example, wearing women’s clothes alone would make many transgender people (talking M to F) happy, among other things, their body, having a penis, not having breasts , the texture of the skin and hair, all would be wrong (to them)…the dysphoria varies from person to person, but the idea that gender is all blended, that all that matters is expression, simply isn’t true for a lot of people.
Loving the Big Freda reference! 
@saintfan:
Not necessarily a fan of his music or whatnot, but I love when I catch the show from time to time, seems to be someone pretty comfortable being who he is and what he is doing, and I admire that a lot, I am sure he took plenty of crap, probably still does, being himself, and that takes a lot of courage, too.