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Gender and Sexual Minorities: An overview and living in the world as ourselves

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BeautifulShy:
Hi everyone I am very pleasently surprised to be making this topic on the forum but I got permission from Insanolord that I could so some basic ground rules for the topic. 

This is a topic to learn about those in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum and for those under that umbrella to talk about their experiences as living as themselves in the world today.

Right now until I can get further confirmation from the mods this topic is just going to be about learning and introducing each other to the forum again no matter if you fall within that spectrum or not.  It will also be a topic about our experiences of living as ourselves in the world.

So using the above for now at least we won't be talking about bills and politics that affect the LGBTQIA+ community for now at least.

Also please no jokes about helicopers and such in relation to ones gender or other such trolling. I don't expect this from anyone here but I feel I should still put this out there for the mods sake.

Now you may be asking what are all those letters mean well here is a general overview of those letters.

The L means lesbian and that you are a woman that is attracted to other women.
The G means gay and that you are a man that is attracted to other men.
The B means bisexual and it means you are attracted to at least two genders.
The T means transgender and it means that you identify as a gender different from what you were assigned at birth. This includes no-binary folks. (I'll get to this)
The Q means questioning or Queer.  For Questioning it means you are not entirely sure on your sexual orientation or gender identity. Queer is more of a catch all term for that that are not Heterosexual/straight or cisgender meaning you are comfortable with how you were assigned at birth. Yes Queer has some bad history with it but it is being reclaimed as something that works for the community.
The I means Intersex and that means one had a mixture of anatomy at birth or later on in life or different combonations of chromosomes.
The A means many things but the most common are Ally and Asexual.

The + is everything that isn't listed alongside the above which I will go over below.

Pansexual or Pan for short is someone who is attracted to people of all genders. Typically Bi and Pan are interchangable.
Asexual or Ace for short is someone who isn't interested in Sex, don't feel sexual attraction, Don't want to have sex with people.
Demisexual or Demi for short is someone who doesn't feel sexual attraction with someone until they form a close emotional bond. 

Non-Binary is a term for folks that fall outside of the male and female binary.  So if you can picture an bubble up top with Transgender in it to the left is Transgender Men and the the right is Transgender Women. Right down the middle of those two are Non-Binary.  There are several identities under Non-Binary such as Gender fluid, qenderqueer, bigender and agender.   

 To go over them... Gender Fluid is where someone feels more masculine one day and then feminine the next day. 
Genderqueer is a someone who doesn't really subscribe to traditional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combonation of male and female genders.
bigender is where someone could be two genders at the same time so female and nonbinary for example.
Agender is someone who doesn't identify with any gender at all.

A few other terms....

Assigned gender -- The gender you were assigned at birth, aka whether the doctor/midwife said 'it's a boy!' or 'it's a girl!' when you were born.
AMAB -- assigned male at birth
AFAB -- assigned female at birth
Sex -- generally refers to physical sex, what genitalia and hormone levels you have.
Gender -- generally means who you see yourself as.
Gender identity -- whether you identify as a man, a woman, or neither. Ex. I feel like a woman and I want to be treated by others as a woman, so I identify as a woman.
Gender presentation -- how you present your gender to society. Ex clothing, makeup, hairstyle, etc, as well as whether you tell people you're a man or a woman or neither.
Social gender -- how other people perceive you and what they expect from you based on that. Ex someone who has a beard is perceived to be a man, and is expected to act as such (be strong, stoic, etc)

My personal story.

I will try and keep this brief but when I was about 5 or 6 or so I didn't feel like I had the right body and I started to grow my hair out until I cut it and then suppressed things till I turned 15 and those feelings came back and then I suppressed them for 15 years and in 2013 I started transition to fit who I should be in body. I have been on estrogen for about 5 years now and about 4 months back I started on estrogen injections which I have been told is supposed to be better.   
 I started hair removal around 2014 and I still go monthly when I can afford to. I am looking into ways to pay for bottom surgery but it is difficult but I have a few means lined up that might work.  I am also demi-pan and I have a girlfriend for the past 5 or 6 months now. Currently working on now stuff that isn't directly tied with my transition like community college, jobs and improving the house for even more stability.   

You are free to reintroduce yourself using the above descriptors or just say hi in support. 

ejamer:
Hello in support!

I'm old and a bit ignorant about the topic, so don't know much of the terminology. I also might be slow to learn, so if I say something weird or stupid or offensive (here or elsewhere) then please call me out on it in a friendly way. I won't be offended and will hopefully learn a lesson.

That said, I think it's really good to have threads like this just so that we can all talk and try to better understand each other. Even when we don't totally understand, hopefully we can at least respect each other.


Bonus question: What pronoun do you prefer we use when talking about you?

BeautifulShy:
Thank you for the first post in the thread. Hi there.

Yeah a lot of the terminology has changed in the past 10 years or so but yeah I will be there to kindly correct you.

Yeah I totally agree just in general to try and meet common ground. 

Pronouns are she/her/ Miss.

BeautifulShy:
So today is Transgender Day of Visibility and for those that don't know it is a day where trans folk like myself go out into the world and show that we are who we are. Since the current situation makes that difficult I will say that the second best alternative is this.   



Yes go ahead and ask me one of those questions and I will answer it and give you an idea of how things have been for me since coming out.

Khushrenada:
Some of those questions seem very similar to each other and some you seem to have answered in your first post. I was thinking about 5 since it is so different from the others but I'll ask you question 19 because that intrigues me a bit. After all, what does it mean to be fully transitioned? From the first post, it seems like that idea is different for each person. How does it count or how is one considered fully transitioned?

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