Met in a fandom, she early 20s, me 30s. She started as one of those bisexuals who constantly has sex with different men and never women but is bisexual all day (bisexually). Childhood abuse saga that I do believe happened, from observed effects on her adult behavior, but I wouldn't guarantee any of the specifics.
Was going to go into the armed forces to escape living with abusive family and dead-end town, decided her bisexual-who-only-fucks-men status would not be respected in the armed forces. Instead decided to couch-surf across the country. Incidentally became a Homestuck fan, acquired new typing quirks and more brittle emotions and wham! Now a FtM with makeup and tight girl clothes over huge free-range titties (not her choice to have breasts, but it's part of the picture) complaining people are staring at her on the bus "because I'm trans."
Also having sex on a borrowed couch with people literally from craigslist casual encounters (betraying the time setting here), when she isn't dogging with same craigslisters in the park, then breaking down and being near-catatonic for days after each instance. Craigslist sex randos pulled the surprise bareback, didn't listen to "nos," may have handcuffed her at different points. I noted gently that this seemed to be a pattern that was not good for her, and learned I am "sex-negative." Although she did ask me to help her buy Plan B, both financially and logistically. I readily did this as a service to her and the universe, and then helped her get to Planned Parenthood and get on birth control.
I was a softie then, but I was still a
wire mother, although this isn't about my own personal failings.
Friends, I confess it was my poor couch that had craigslist sex on it while I was at work. She was supposed to stay with me for [short period] before a normie relative could take her in, but this did not occur. Her lolcow relative was supposed to be giving her a car, which did not occur. She did not want to live with the lolcow, because (per her report) the lolcow's partner had tried to badtouch her, but that made sense.
I sponsored the kid into a short vocational program that would give her the income to rent a one-bedroom and live decently here, moreso if she ended up with a roommate situation. I took her to the public health office and got her her vaccines updated, kept track of dates and appointments, and got her new glasses after her near-blindness ended up being from a junior-high prescription. (If nothing else, this was concrete proof there was something up with her parents.) I showed her how to use the bus system and got her a pass, which worked a lot better after she could actually read street signs. I gave her a decent netbook. I helped her get her learner's permit and took her out driving (when she was still anticipating a gift car). She was still on her parents' insurance, so I encouraged her to get to a shrink, because (at the time) I thought "well OK if she's trans, uhhhh I guess that means therapy->hormones->a bunch of legal paperwork->surgery->normal life again, so we'll put that on the list and work through it like anything else."
I drove her to a local Homestuck fan meetup in the park, where she made a lot of new friends who were exactly like her, except jobless and living off their
parents instead.
What I learned firsthand is that troons do not want help; they want "help." She didn't want to take any steps to change herself or her body; after declaring herself trans, she doubled up the makeup and the flouncing. She wanted to do nothing, act helpless and over-the-top femme and be treated (?) as a man. My research into what transition timeline the state health insurance required wasn't helpful. I started to put things together; before the sojurn at my place, there were always
reasons that she couldn't take advantage of social programs, couldn't join the armed forces, couldn't do Americorps, couldn't go to a food bank.
I started to overhear voice chats about how I "wasn't exactly transphobic, but..." She made it through her program and got a job, and I helped her find a good, actually not-creepy rooming house situation literally down the street from work and on a bus line. Without my dubiously stabilizing influence, she spun further into the internet. She called me and part of a rant was that "I guess if you want people to see you as a boy, you have to dress like a boy."
As I know now, the correct answer to that was
not a chuckle and "yeah, probably." It turned out to be a relief being unpersoned slowly; she socialized with her Homestuck genderspecial friends, she quit her normal job with benefits and became a live-in nanny, with no contract and being paid under the table, for one of the Homestucks' younger siblings. She later contacted me with regrets and fear that she was now in an undocumented position with unstable income, and through the Cluster B lens my careful advice was still seen as that of an evil transphobe, so she never talked to me again.
I was constantly worried I'd run into her at a store, or she'd call/message me in the middle of the night with a new plateau of psychosocial troubles, but she eventually fell in with a man, centered her life around him, and was last seen on her way moving across the country in a different direction. By then the FtM/FtX meme had metastasized in the female-heavy fandom community where we'd met, so I was able to delete all my links to her socials and be uninformed about her future life. I have had only occasional moments of worry in the years since. She could have actually done something about trooning out, she could be medicated and employed, she could have several kids or still be couch surfing and probably calling herself nonbinary by now.
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