💬 Off-Topic How did you first find out that trans people exist?

I live in California and I have access to the internet.

I was actually friends with one of those Klinefelter Syndrome dudes when I was in elementary and by highschool he looked like a girl.
Asked about it because they ended up in a DnD campaign with me way later in our late 20s, said they chose to embrace female status when they naturally started growing tits and doubled down later when they got testicular cancer which resulted in them losing their nuts.
Aside from that, there's always been San Francisco which has always had transgenders, back when you called them shemales and he-shes.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Soggy Breaded Wiener and Newton Pud
I thought it was a gay internet trend until I met a delightfully hideous one in the Air Force when my contract with the Army ended and I had to share an out-process class with him. Had the gender-symbol tattoo and everything, every stereotype was hit. Really enlightening and made my loathing a certainty.
 
South Park was my first introduction to Trannys when the episode about Mr Garrison getting his penis turned into a vagina.
The real surgical scene made me confused as a kid.
 
i can't remember when or how i was introduced to it but i do remember whenever it was mention they always said that they would surgically change to a woman/man and then just as easily change back and being a stupid kid i just though it worked that simply. i think most normies who support transsexuals do it because they think you can just switch sexes, if they knew how the sausage was made, the hormones, the fact our bone structure and DNA still remain the same, the fact that you either end up a eunuch or a woman with a skinsock on her crotch, i doubt any of them would support this shit if they knew.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Newton Pud, kindwater and 2SLGBQTIA+ 2 Furious
Nadia Almada on Big Brother in 2004. I think that was the first series of Big Brother I saw so I was just as awed by the format itself as by whatever I thought Nadia was. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the first Portuguese person I saw speak at length too, so it was a lot of new stuff to take in. I think I got that he used to be a man but didn't really think about the implications of that. For various reasons I didn't jump on the computer and google sex reassignment surgery. Even now I find myself wanting to call him "her".

I would've called Nadia transsexual and someone like the "I'm a lady" sketches in Little Britain a transvestite. Gay and lesbian were very much their own things, bisexual barely mentioned and none really linked to trans, although I remember Nadia being catty like a gay man and I'd assume he's HSTS.

I feel like the terms transgender and LGBT weren't widely used until the 2010s and trans men and non-binary were so vanishingly rare I probably didn't know about them until 2015 or later.
 
back when delivery place prank calls were all the rage, i wanted to sound more like a man over the phone. so, i looked up how to make your voice sound deeper, and the most popular/relevant videos that came up were for "transmasculine" women who wanted to sound more like a man constantly
 
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: MaximKnight76 and Newton Pud
John "Dumbledore" Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp which I chose as the family video rental because I was a fan of Mork & Mindy. It's a pretty good movie about pre-currentyear gender-culture wars.
 
I'm in my lower twenties and from a small town in eastern Europe, so for a long time this was something that, as far as I was concerned, only existed somewhere else and was just a stupid thing to laugh at. I think I first registered it around 2014 or 15 when youtube started pushing gay shit (remember "born this way" and "we're just the same as you!".. yeah) and troons began explaining how gender and sex are two different things entirely. I vividly remember laughing and joking about it with my mates at school.

Funnily enough around that time was also the first instance in which I met a black person (discounting gypsies) IRL. I remember being somewhat uncomfortable and at the same time feeling guilty about it.

Very sad how much more common both of these have become, even in my town.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Newton Pud and Sarah Connor
When I was in high school, I got into Warhammer and other Games Workshop stuff. There was a YouTuber that did videos I saw named "Girl Painting" and I remember thinking "This is a man."

I can count on one hand how many actual women play Warhammer.
 
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Newton Pud, Nancy, Pedophobe and 1 other person
1762349072887.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Newton Pud and Pedophobe
I probably saw them in media I don't remember anymore, but I met one in the 2000s. We thought it was stupid even then, but just went along with it because it was a girl (ftm) so we didn't see it as a threat. "So she's a boy, but she likes boys still? What's the point?"

I probably just thought they were a gag on TV from watching comedy shows till then. Now I think they're a gag for different reason.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Newton Pud and Ashamed of Yourself
I didn’t totally get it as a child, but my first exposure was probably through Lifetime movies my mom watched. Boys Don’t Cry and A Girl Like Me. Both were super effective in making me sad for people who were “different.” Would have been early 2000’s.

Then my friends, a couple years older than me, started their uhm… porn phases. Learned about the categories of “traps” and “chicks with dicks” probably in middle school.

Even with my conditioning, I just comically perceived all of these things as literally gay, not that they were different genders.

Freshly 18, I joined some dating sites, instantly got bombarded by people with CD/TV in their profiles. Typically all very fat, very 50+, incredibly bald, and illy dressed. I was kind in my responses because hey, they’re just cross dressers. Not for me, but whatever.

As for IRL, I spent a couple years running a shop around covid. Over those three ish years, I watched young women go from truly beautiful and energetic to doped up, titless, wildly unmanaged BPD cases. These girls are mostly NB, but some FTM. Established MTFs would come through, mostly trying to get me to sell their self published books or promote their drag shows… never bought anything. I swear to god, the only people who caused drama in my shop consistently were trannies… and bassists.

  • MTF started calling random people nazis/white supremacists during an open mic event(stopped hosting those)
  • NB woman came in crying that her dad came into town to deliver her her new laptop, but deadnamed her on accident(he was quick to correct and apologize)
  • Countless, “I’m not a lady, it’s they/them!”
  • Displayed art from a local, who suddenly came in one day, very belligerent, determined to collect all of her art because it had her deadname on it. (Wasn’t an issue to return it, but she acted as if I’d written her name on there myself)

It was the IRL exposure plus my years of being chronically online that allowed me to piece together that this whole movement is fake and fucked. To watch someone transition is to watch someone commit self harm and demand praise every step of the way. Hyper focus on sexuality will never be a good cope.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Soggy Breaded Wiener, Calvin Gabriel, Newton Pud and 5 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom