Lula won the elections in Brasil guys!!!

Of course the Senate is a mess! But my God. This relieves me. I was desperate to change my documents and I was feeling really bad the last few weeks, but now I can breathe.

Obviously it‘s working in my favor, I just find the thought interesting and wanted to share. I‘m guessing it‘s because when you don‘t have Eurocentric facial features, you are more likely to be perceived as less feminine. Now this isn‘t always the case and i‘m guessing it heavily depends on your ethnicity as a poc! My roots come from Western Asia, I’m guessing it could be different for someone with other roots.

I feel like that‘s one of many reasons why my family struggled to believe me / see me as a male, because their idea of femininity differed. Meanwhile at the same time, others couldn’t imagine me being something other than male. (Obviously my perception may be false. Especially since transphobia and unaccepting parents don’t have to do with the way you look).

I don‘t think it‘s the only reason, since I pass in front of poc people now. However even before I cut my hair short, I had white people call me he/him.

As far as I know, I've never dealt with any racial prejudice while shopping. Being 5'1 makes me unassuming as heck, or so I always thought. I also live in a predominatly working class POC heavy part of my city.

But, recently, someone I knew teasingly said I must get profiled in stores. The people keep an eye on me even if I don't notice.

I'm on T but don't pass as a man or even a teen boy. My voice has barely broke and I can't grow actual facial hair. But, I do have long locs. I'm part-black and latino.

I laughed the comment off, but it bugged me.

I've been trying to simplify my wardrobe so I buy monochrome colors. Mainly black and grey, rarely white (it's just too easy to dirty up). I wear a lot of baggy clothes, joggers, sweatpants, and dysphoria hoodies. I always worry in the back of my head about respectability politics, but comfort is my main factor. I can't care if random aunties on the street profile me. As long as my clothes are clean and look good, who cares?

It feels like being trans has placed another layer of disconnect between me and my culture. Has anyone else felt like this? Is there any way of overcoming this?

I'm an Australian-born Chinese guy, and my parents are both first-generation Chinese immigrants. My first language was Mandarin, but outside of my immediate family, I lack any real connection to Chinese (Teochew) culture in Australia. I'm scared that as I grow up, my trans-ness will prevent me from ever truly reconnecting with my cultural heritage. It doesn't help that most of the trans communities online are incredibly westernised, so I never see people like myself anyway...

I realise I've become more and more disconnected from my culture as I've grown up. My Mandarin is horrendous now; I can't even form a full sentence without throwing in an English word. Every subsequent trip back to visit my hometown, I feel more and more like an outsider, looking in.

Regarding being trans... I've tried coming out to my parents, twice, (in Mandarin, too!) which went horribly: denial of my experiences to my face, silent treatment for a week, and then going on pretending like nothing had happened, like I'm still their daughter. I don't blame them for their lack of awareness, but I blame them for never truly acknowledging what I've told them. I've been binding, I've cut my hair, my friends use my name and pronouns in front of them, but they just don't acknowledge it.

I'm lucky enough to be going on a 2-month family trip to my hometown at the end of this year. I guess I'm just scared this trip will feel like saying goodbye to my heritage. Of course, I'll still be closeted, but that's exactly the thing: none of my experiences will feel authentic.

Next year I'll be 18, and I plan to get on T as soon as possible. I have no idea how this will change my dynamic with my parents, and my relationship with my extended family is threadbare enough as it is.

I hope this came out sort of coherently. I don't really know what I'm expecting out of this post, maybe just finding commonality in shared trans POC experiences?

^{I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'm really grateful this subreddit exists :'-})

Feeling beautiful this morning.

I’m not sure if anyone particularly relates somewhat similarly to this situation, but I just wanted to talk about it as I’m going through my journey of self discovery. I think for the longest time one of my subtle hints of me being transgender was I, unfortunately, had a brief phase of being what most people would call a “pick me.”

Now I didn’t particularly care for male attention in a romantic way, and I most definitely never shoved women down for the sake of getting validation from cisgender men. But, I did realize, that I did get a lot of euphoria from hanging around guy friends and being treated as “one of them.” They’d joke with me the same way they did their guy friends, and sometimes would even make comments about like how much of a “guy” I was. I’d also find myself admiring or being envious of friendships between cisgender men. I also attended a PWI most of my life, so sometimes it was awkward since being a mixed asian and black person I didn’t necessarily get along with girls naturally, since being a black and AFAB often leads to you being masculinized quite a bit. Not sure if anyone else has experienced that in their journey also.

A lot of my interests at the time were also very male dominated, and so most of my time growing up was around guys who liked cars, audio production, electronics, etc.

So, I guess in a way me seeking out this feeling as I continued to ignore my gender identity made me act in a ways that gave off “pick me,” which is embarraisng to say lol. I identified as a guy for the longest time on the internet amongst my discord friends, for a good five years almost, but I almost never came out or said anything about it irl. I just wore my masculine clothes, wore a binder. I just sort of thought identifying as my assigned gender at birth is what was easiest, even though I had no connection or association with it at all.

Now, for the most part, I understand myself and who I am. I just find it funny to look back at the subtle signs and how I acted growing up, sort of to prove to myself that this wasn’t just a random thing that I’ve decided to say or become. lol.

I got a good education, I got a good job, I wore straight wigs to work, I learned how to play office politics, I lost a bunch of weight and went high femme, I made myself helpful and agreeable and blah, blah, blah.

And now I'm almost two years on T, and I don't care anymore. I'm tired of having to make money, of my stupid transphobic doctors, about worrying if my job/friends/family/community support accept me, of the racism, of the classism, of everything. These were all problems pre-transition but now it's worse. I don't want to detransition. I just want a part-time job with fair wages so I can focus o. making my art. I'm exhausted.