what is the root cause of trans self destruction?

[Deleted]

Why do we self destruct?

What installed that trigger of self hatred that brings us and those we love down?

What is it that makes us take our own lives?

How do we heal it?


What destroys our communities?

Fear,cut off by others from spiritual food, cis anger??
We need to know why our community generally fails.

We self destruct as entire groups, one hating the other.

Then we feel hopeless, or go stealth.

The social perception of trans is ...not good...

They see the desperate, the wild. The others hide and are silent.

It's time to find the roots. Find a better motivation than anger, bitterness, fear, hate, desperation and spiritual famine.

How do we do that, each of us, together?

Rise and live my dears, unite as trans, we are one.

Trinity

[Edge]

Do we self destruct? Not all of us, no. If we do, is there one, universal reason why? No.
Do we have self hatred that brings us and those we love down? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I love being me, I raise myself up, and if those I love are brought down by that, then they clearly don't deserve my love. If we do, is there one, universal reason why? Not by a long shot.
What is it that makes us take our own lives? Well, again, I can't speak for everyone else, but when I did attempt to take my life it was after years of increasing abuse, repeated betrayal of everyone I cared about and people who were supposed to help me, and the side-effects of the medications I was forced on included suicidal tendencies. Is that the same reason anyone else does? Probably not. Right now, I know I'd be distraught and would contemplate suicide if I couldn't transition. I suspect there are other trans people who would for that reason.
How do we heal it? Depends on what needs healing. From what I can tell, body dysphoria can be relieved by transitioning. Other than that, any psychological healing that takes place needs to come from the person, not from outside of them or else they aren't really healed.
Are our communities destroyed? The city I'm in is dying from lack of money and stupid decisions, but other than that, no communities that I'm in have been destroyed.
As long as there are groups of people together, there will always be some fighting. Is that what you meant? That's just the nature of people. We are all different and, although great, that can and does cause conflict.
Again, who is this "we?" I don't feel hopeless anymore and I'm not stealth.
Social perception of trans people is mixed.
Desperate or silent are not the only two options. There are many more of us who are neither desperate nor silent.
Motivation for what? And why not use those things? I used my anger at my situation to make it better, leave my abusers, and make the life I want. I used my spiritual famine as motivation to accept my beliefs in faeries (the old folklore, none of that midget moppets in mini skirts crap) and the gods. These things aren't bad. They're indications that something is wrong that needs to be fixed.
How do we do that? We find and walk our own paths, of course. Sometimes, our paths cross and we walk together and we can certainly support other people on their paths, but ours are our own.
If you're talking about the roots of being trans, studies suggest that it has to do with structures in the brain (number of neurons and stuff like that). How this affects you and what you decide to do about it is up to you.
We are many and we are diverse and that is what makes us strong.

[Ayla]

Mar 24, 2015 21:52:43 GMT 8 Edge said:

Do we self destruct? Not all of us, no. If we do, is there one, universal reason why? No.
Do we have self hatred that brings us and those we love down? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I love being me, I raise myself up, and if those I love are brought down by that, then they clearly don't deserve my love. If we do, is there one, universal reason why? Not by a long shot.
What is it that makes us take our own lives? Well, again, I can't speak for everyone else, but when I did attempt to take my life it was after years of increasing abuse, repeated betrayal of everyone I cared about and people who were supposed to help me, and the side-effects of the medications I was forced on included suicidal tendencies. Is that the same reason anyone else does? Probably not. Right now, I know I'd be distraught and would contemplate suicide if I couldn't transition. I suspect there are other trans people who would for that reason.
How do we heal it? Depends on what needs healing. From what I can tell, body dysphoria can be relieved by transitioning. Other than that, any psychological healing that takes place needs to come from the person, not from outside of them or else they aren't really healed.
Are our communities destroyed? The city I'm in is dying from lack of money and stupid decisions, but other than that, no communities that I'm in have been destroyed.
As long as there are groups of people together, there will always be some fighting. Is that what you meant? That's just the nature of people. We are all different and, although great, that can and does cause conflict.
Again, who is this "we?" I don't feel hopeless anymore and I'm not stealth.
Social perception of trans people is mixed.
Desperate or silent are not the only two options. There are many more of us who are neither desperate nor silent.
Motivation for what? And why not use those things? I used my anger at my situation to make it better, leave my abusers, and make the life I want. I used my spiritual famine as motivation to accept my beliefs in faeries (the old folklore, none of that midget moppets in mini skirts crap) and the gods. These things aren't bad. They're indications that something is wrong that needs to be fixed.
How do we do that? We find and walk our own paths, of course. Sometimes, our paths cross and we walk together and we can certainly support other people on their paths, but ours are our own.
If you're talking about the roots of being trans, studies suggest that it has to do with structures in the brain (number of neurons and stuff like that). How this affects you and what you decide to do about it is up to you.
We are many and we are diverse and that is what makes us strong.

We are many and we are diverse.  Our departure points and our paths vary.  However we each seek to progress, to learn, to explore, to accept, express and to grow as folk.  The fact that our journeys and our identities are not well understood, that we are a minority and that we are often vilified, disowned and marginalised often results in challenge, sometimes overwhelming challenge and despair.  Self destruction can and does happen but it is not inevitable, it is not the norm and many of us are finding our way, creating and owning powerful lives which are constructive, positive and to be celebrated rather than trivialised or ridiculed.

[Leena]

Mar 24, 2015 17:48:28 GMT 8 Trinity said:

We self destruct as entire groups, one hating the other.

Then we feel hopeless, or go stealth.

The social perception of trans is ...not good...

They see the desperate, the wild. The others hide and are silent.

It's time to find the roots. Find a better motivation than anger, bitterness, fear, hate, desperation and spiritual famine.

How do we do that, each of us, together?

Rise and live my dears, unite as trans, we are one.

Trinity

I sometimes think all of these different labels and groups are in some ways more harmful than helpful. We are all experiencing the same thing, not feeling one's gender assigned at birth is exactly one's true gender, we are just experiencing it in different ways for a wide variety of reasons.

Some of the hate between the groups may be internalized transphobia, such as I am be an A but at least I'm not a B. Maybe some of it is a bit of jealous towards crossdressers/bigender/genderfluid/(any other group I'm missing) that are able to have some cis-priviledges sometimes. 

The way to do that is through action, and mainly by treating all trans people well, regardless of what labels and groups they choose.

[Ativan Prescribed]

That's how this forum came to be, the need to get away from that transphobia kind of thinking.
Labels and the boxes that they generally seem to be on, differentiate people when it isn't a necessary thing.
We learn and become better by experiencing not just our own gender as we might see it, but by experiencing others as well.
The more everyone interacts on that kind of level, the more we find out that we are all just people, regardless.
The younger generations are doing it by ignoring the bigots.
They know they have a lot more important things to take care of for their own futures.
They are refusing to let gender get in their way, to where they need to go.
They are more and more getting used to the idea that gender labels mean very little when it comes to them getting ready to take over and run this world the way they need it to run.

[Edge]

There are some things I have noticed:
Prejudice and bigotry seems to go hand in hand with assuming that all or most members of a group are the same. I guess it's easier to ignore that people are people when they're seen as a homogeneous mass instead of an array of individuals.
As people have noticed, this seeps into the trans community. I keep hearing things from people who seem to be stuck in this idea that there are limited options for them if they are trans. I mean, we all know about the narrative thing and that, yes, you can still be trans if you didn't know when you were 3. But beyond that. Some people seem to have this very bleak and limited view of what their life could look like as a trans person. Like in the OP (I mean no disrespect, Trinity. I just makes me sad and I wish you could be happy), there are many more options besides feeling hopeless or being stealth or being desperate or hiding. Being trans isn't a death sentence. We don't have to self destruct. We don't have to hate ourselves. We can live the lives we want.
Ironically, a lot of prejudice also seems to be based on other people being different from oneself. I don't really understand this at all since, in my opinion, people being different is one of the things I love about people.
There's a picture I saw recently with a character who said, "Gay or straight, black or white, boy or girl, trans or cis, abled or disabled, we are all teh same!" and another replied, "Or we could just accept that we'll all different and that's okay."
I hope I made sense.

[Deleted]

Mar 26, 2015 23:29:08 GMT 8 Edge said:

There are some things I have noticed:
Prejudice and bigotry seems to go hand in hand with assuming that all or most members of a group are the same. I guess it's easier to ignore that people are people when they're seen as a homogeneous mass instead of an array of individuals.
As people have noticed, this seeps into the trans community. I keep hearing things from people who seem to be stuck in this idea that there are limited options for them if they are trans. I mean, we all know about the narrative thing and that, yes, you can still be trans if you didn't know when you were 3. But beyond that. Some people seem to have this very bleak and limited view of what their life could look like as a trans person. Like in the OP (I mean no disrespect, Trinity. I just makes me sad and I wish you could be happy), there are many more options besides feeling hopeless or being stealth or being desperate or hiding. Being trans isn't a death sentence. We don't have to self destruct. We don't have to hate ourselves. We can live the lives we want.
Ironically, a lot of prejudice also seems to be based on other people being different from oneself. I don't really understand this at all since, in my opinion, people being different is one of the things I love about people.
There's a picture I saw recently with a character who said, "Gay or straight, black or white, boy or girl, trans or cis, abled or disabled, we are all teh same!" and another replied, "Or we could just accept that we'll all different and that's okay."
I hope I made sense.

All of that made sense Edge. Very insightful too. It's kind of like when you are a small child and everyone says you can be whatever you want to be. Really? I know they are talking about careers and stuff but is it really just limited to that?

[Deleted]

Oh BTW I don't think self destruction is limited to just trans though. Yeah there are more instances of suicide in the trans community but cis people are just as prone to commit suicide than trans people. I think it comes from a feeling of desperation, hopelessness, helplessness and a bunch of other negative feelings.

OK so take the plane that crashed in the French Alps. The copilot for whatever reason last I heard flew that plane purposely into the mountains. It may have been Terrorism but if it was something like him and his partner broke up or a family member just died and he decided to end it all. He still killed 149 other people. I do believe if I was suicidal, I damn sure wouldn't be homicidal too. But what was he thinking and where was he at mentally? I don't think we will ever know why if it was a suicidal action that he had to kill everyone else on board too. But what frame of mind he was in will remain a mystery.

[Edge]

Agreed. I've known lots of self destructive people who aren't trans. One thing they do all have in common though is that they think what they're feeling and what they're going through is the end for them. That their options are limited. They also can be whatever they want to be.
I don't think that's just limited to careers. It's limited to things within reason and reality (for example, I currently don't have the money to travel the world), but even then, dreams and goals are good.