“I didn’t see it therefore it never existed” is the most insane fucking logic to me

My dad's best friend from high school transitioned...I can't remember when I first met him (used to be "her"), but it had to be sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I was just a teenager. He had fully transitioned by that point. I remember thinking that made sense. It was before the culture war types discovered trans people and decided they were the literal devils. To me it sounded simple--as a kid Tracy always felt like she was a boy. So when she could afford it, she got surgery to fix her body to match what her brain was, since that's easier and less risky than changing your brain to match your body. It sounded to me like getting a prosthetic if you're born without a limb or something. Or getting an amputation if you're born with an extra limb. Like, you were born with something wrong with your body and you fixed it, not a big deal.

It wasn't until much much later that I realized how rare Tracy was for that time period...not just because the kind of biological mistake he fixed is statistically rare (which I understood as a kid), but because the vast, vast majority of people born that way hide it (which I did not understand). I also didn't really have a concept of "gender" as a different thing than "sex" at that point...I don't think the vocabulary for that really existed except maybe in a few academic circles. So to me, she was a she until she transitioned, then she became he. She had a problem, now he doesn't.

It also confused the fuck out of me when people started saying hateful shit about trans people. Like, no, I know a trans person, he's cool as hell, we went kayaking together.

Schools always did this.

Never expelling the bullies, always expelling the kid that was bullied to their breaking point when they retaliated.

I am convinced that the people who choose to be teachers (and especially principals) also tend to be the kind of people who like and relate to bullies.

In general a lot of them seen to enjoy bullying as a method of "correcting" other people to align with your will. A method some of them seem to feel they are unjustly restrained from utilizing fully.

So Heather thinks that no one talked about it because it simply hadn't occurred to anyone rather than being afraid?

Or is Heather saying she preferred it when they suffered in silence?

I was born in the early 90s and there was an AFAB person who very early on insisted they were actually a boy. I do remember thinking it was weird when I was a kid but the more they presented masculine the more it became "That's just the way they are" and I accepted it.

They were masculine presenting as early as 4th grade if I remember correctly. They were a beacon of light in high school for other queer people who hadn't figured themselves out yet. And they were super nice and friendly so everyone liked them.

They waited until our first year of college before asking us to refer them with he/him pronouns. It just made sense. I had a better understanding of gender and its spectrum by this point so it I remember thinking "finally."

Unfortunately he was in a car accident not too long after, and passed away. The world is sincerely lesser from his passing.

I never even had a chance to say I was Trans as a kid before being relentlessly bullied for acting myself. Judged for the smallest things because it didn't fit into "my" gender role. For people who knew me closely or the people who judged me, my transition was pretty obviously coming. It just took a decade of living as a husk, depressed and suicidal before getting the finances, strength, and confidence to fight past my childhood trauma.

Too bad I have to live with the consequences and dysphoria of a puberty that I did not want.

I graduated in '89. Queer as a $3 bill always was, but you didn't say that shit in high school back then. Just being gay was dangerous enough, can't imagine how being trans would have gone over.

If you did try to be who you were, you ended up ostracized at best, dead in a ditch at worst. I chose the lunch tray route, but outside of school...