Transgender Teen Survival Guide

Lee says:

We’re as active as our busy lives allow!

So sometimes we’re very active in answering asks on the blog, and sometimes we only have the time and spoons to post good vibes or follower responses. But even when we’re focused on IRL stuff we still haven’t forgotten about the blog or any of you!

This is the last week of the semester for me and I’m really really really behind, so I am trying to focus on my school work because I’ll be lucky if I don’t get Fs in all of my classes at this point. Wish me luck...

Lee says:

Yup! You can be bisexual if you experience attraction to more than one gender, even if you’re romantically but not sexually attracted to one of those geders.

When someone is bisexual, they usually experience attraction to two (or more) different genders (maybe women and non-binary people, for example). 

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they experience the same kind of attraction for all of the genders they are attracted to. 

For many bi people, gender can be a factor within the attraction and that can mean they have a preference for one gender over another, or they might experience attraction that feels different when it’s directed at a specific gender.

There’s a lot of different ways to define these terms and a big overlap between the two and their communities, but the graphic in the Overlap of Multisexual Identity Definitions post shows a basic distinction between being bisexual and pansexual. 

Generally, pansexual people usually experience attraction to people of all genders, and often their attraction occurs regardless of gender. That means gender is not a factor for a lot of pan people and they often don’t have a gender preference.

So yes, it’s possible to be bisexual but not be both romantically and sexually attracted to all of the genders you’re interested in the same way, and that’s often why people choose the label bisexual instead of the label pansexual.

Followers say:

singingshadowfox said: You could also be biromantic (romantically attracted to two genders) / panromantic (romantically attracted to all genders) and heterosexual/homosexual (sexually attracted to one gender). Your romantic and sexual orientations do not have to match up!

Lee says:

It’s like if I posted “I like a certain type of jewelry...” and then didn’t specify. If you ask me to explain whether I’m talking about rings or necklaces or earrings and I say “NopE! I’m just never going to tell you!” that might be frustrating for you, and you might wonder why I even bother talking about something if I won’t give the details or context you need to really understand what I’m talking about.

But if you continue to harass me about it and send a bunch of asks when I’ve said “conversation’s over, I will not discuss this topic further” then you’re upsetting both me and yourself and gaining nothing here. Even if I didn’t have a reason to withhold info (which applies to the jewelry example but not triggers, as there are legit reasons why someone might not want to talk about triggers) it’s still my choice to stay mum and you can’t force someone into telling you anything. Sometimes you just gotta let it go. 

Let’s recap here.

Now you have two options:

Getting more specific to your situation, sometimes people are triggered by a specific thing because it was associated with a traumatic memory.

Let’s give a hypothetical- say I had a traumatic experience involving a Honda Odyssey. Now whenever I see posts with a Honda Odyssey car shown or mentioned, I get panic attacks. So I ask folks to tag things that are related to the Honda Odyssey vehicle. 

But I might not want to explain why I have that particular trigger because then I have to talk about something that I find really hard to talk about or think about, or maybe I don’t want to share something traumatic and personal with the whole world wide web. 

So maybe I was hit by a car once and was left with a traumatic brain injury and the car happened to be a Honda Odyssey. Or maybe I was abused in the back of a Honda Odyssey by a family member once. And so on. There’s a lot of things that can cause someone to be triggered by a random object/show/topic/etc and sometimes they’ll ask for their mutuals to tag it without them also wanting to explain why those things are triggering. People have the right to privacy.

Nobody “owes” you an explanation of their deepest traumas- but you don’t owe anyone a “follow” either. If you can’t accept that you don’t know what their triggers are or why they’re triggering and it’s becoming an obsession for you, you need to take a step back, disengage and take care of your own self.

There’s going to be a lot of stuff on the internet you find upsetting. There will be people who are intentionally trying to mess with you, there will be well meaning people who you have misunderstandings with, there will be hostile people, people who will refuse to explain themselves, people who are mean, rude, transphobic, racist, abusive, etc. There will be posts and blogs with triggering things and videos that are disturbing or have misinformation.

You need to take care of yourself, which means avoiding places you know will be upsetting, whether that’s certain blogs or entire websites, the comments section on most websites, particular tags, etc, and recognizing when you’re getting stuck on something that’s frustrating or harmful to you, and trying to redirect yourself.

Our Mental health page has a few links you may find useful, and I’d suggest getting a therapist because they can help you work on coping when you get stuck like this.

And yes, you gotta stop asking them about it.

Lee says:

I was using she/her pronouns to refer to Janelle Monáe because it looks she came out as nb on Twitter, but as far as I know she hasn’t officially announced that she uses different pronouns yet (and not all trans ppl change their pronouns and that’s okay!)

Lee says:

At one point in the past, some mods did get fed up and just deleted certain asks if they were clearly answered in our frequently asked questions page so mods could unclog the inbox and focus on the more complex questions and the more unique ones.

But I personally prefer to use the anons as an opportunity to explain how followers can find the answer in the FAQ themselves- that way they know in the future how to find the things they’re looking for (if you teach a man person to fish!) because there’s a ton of resources we spend a lot of time creating and maintaining. It’s the most practical use of everyone’s time- the followers get the info that answers their question and the mod can spend more time answering complex questions. 

Our FAQ starts by saying “Here is a click-through version of our FAQ. This may be more accessible for folks who have a hard time reading through large chunks of text. If you’re unable to read the FAQ (because of disability or time constraints), say that in your ask and we will try to accommodate you.” but the vast, vast majority of anons who send questions answered in the FAQ don’t say that they tried to access it but couldn’t. 

But of course I know some people do have a hard time with the pages, even if they didn’t say so in the ask, so I always do include an answer to the question by putting the link to the post that answers exactly what they’re asking us. I never delete it or just tell them to find it themselves, I include the link that answers their ask in my response after explaining how I got it. 

We get a Lot of anon hate when we remind people to read the FAQ even though we word it politely and answer the question too, so I know followers do get frustrated with my boilerplate response.

In the end, you can’t please everyone but I do what I do because I think it’s the best way of helping people. 

Ren says:

Although I don’t know any of your other symptoms, it’s very possible that this isn’t a normal period experience, especially if you’re experiencing a lot of pain or heavy bleeding.

I suggest talking to @plannedparenthood - they have an online chat function on their website that I highly recommend. If you talk to them about your symptoms, they might be able to help you understand what’s going on, what might be causing it, what you can do in the meantime, and help you make an appointment at a local Planned Parenthood, if possible.

I’ve never heard of antidepressants doing such a thing, but there are a lot of medications and a lot of different ways they can interact with your body. You’ll definitely want to talk to a doctor to find out for sure, though.

!!

Lee says:

Yes, that’s possible!

Planned Parenthood says: “Being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans, and isn’t a medical problem. It’s also more common than most people realize. It’s hard to know exactly how many people are intersex, but estimates suggest that about 1 in 100 people born in the U.S. is intersex. 

For people born with more clearly “male” or “female” external genitals, they might not know they’re intersex until later in life, like when they go through puberty. Sometimes a person can live their whole life without ever discovering that they’re intersex.”

Here’s a post about asking your doctor about testing.

Lee says:

We don’t get into that too much on this blog because we’re trans-focused, but Kii is Native and  they actually already answered this question here! 

& as always, Native followers are feel free to add on!