Dear Anita

Sending healing and positive thoughts to the child identifying as a transmale. hoping that their parents will provide them support and kindness as they work on their journey in discovering themselves.  Having family support for transgender children can help them lower than anxiety and depression. Since transgender people experience bullying and hateful violence, having supportive family might allow them to build mental resilience and lower their traumatic experiences. Parents provide stable foundations for children to grow and learn skills as they prepare to go out into the world and having a supportive base might help boost a child’s self-esteem more to express themselves. Oftentimes if transgender people are in unsupportive homes and they are getting bullied in school, they may start to internalize feelings of trauma and develop high levels of anxiety and depression. Sadly, many parents don’t accept their child’s gender identity as transgender and this leads to transgender people having higher suicide rates 43% compared to other members of the lgbtq community. Although, parental support will not cause  transgender people to not develop anxiety or depression  it can go a long way in reducing the anxiety levels and feelings of internal trauma transgender people may face. Currently there have been parent support groups for parents who are working on understanding how their children feel as they are working on their gender identity. Parents may feel confused, isolated, in denial, angry or accepting. These differences are based on the parents’ main beliefs and values and some may be more accepting than others. Transgender people who feel comfortable talking with their parents develop better relationships with them and tend to be more self-confident when socially transitioning. When socially transitioning, the transgender person will ask to be identified by their preferred pronouns he/they for transmales, she/her for transfemales and they/them for nonbinary and other gendernonconforming individuals. Studies have shown that transgender people experience a significant improvement in their mental health when socially accepted and they have people use their preferred pronouns. During the time of social transitioning, the transgender person may start to live as their gender identity. this time they tend to have high gender dysphoria because they feel discomfort with their physical bodies that don’t match their gender identity. But during this time, counseling is very important for the parents and the person identifying as transgender to help them with their mental health. Sometimes during this socially transitioning process as they come out to friends, family and school and if they have a supportive environment they are likely to have lower suicide rates. However, transgender people still deal with discrimination since 20-40% of transgender youth often find themselves homeless due to lack of family support and being kicked out of their homes. That’s why some transgender people choose to stay in the closet and not tell their family but this can have long term negative effects on their mental health because they are not being able to express their feelings and they will later have higher risks of depression. this is why it’s important to support transgender people and be compassionate to them.

Binders are made of nylon which can help bind and compress things. They help ease the gender dysphoria for transmales. But nylon traps heat so in the summer months it can be hot when wearing a binder. wearing a loose cotton shirt can help because the loose cotton shirt allows air to pass and helps the person feel cooler. most binders have a nylon layer for binding and a cotton layer for comfort. gc2b is a company that sells binders for transmales. wearing a binder can significantly improve mental health and alleviate gender dysphoria. Some transmales wear trans tape when they go swimming because it’s less restrictive but trans tape sometimes sticks to skin after long periods because of sweat so it can be hard to remove which is why having baby oil can help remove it. trans tape is mostly used by transmales who don’t have a large chest size whereas chest binders are used by all transmales and sometimes nonbinary identifying people to make their bodies appear not in a binary gender.

Puberty blockers are used for transgender people who have not reached puberty yet. Many psychologists believe that the child starts to acknowledge their gender at age 5 which is the youngest someone can identify as transgender. When someone is younger than 18 and identifies as transgender, doctors may prescribe puberty blockers to stop or slow the onset of puberty so the person doesn’t develop the sexual differentiate characteristics at puberty for biological males or biological females. Puberty blockers allow the child to develop and consider whether they still want to continue with the transition as they get older. If they do, then doctors may refer them to a gender therapist who helps them work our mental health issues and a writes them a note to visit a nurse practitioner to get lab tests and blood work to see how much hormone levels are in the body and how much they should have. For biological males, they have about 70mg of testosterone in their bodies and when getting the lab done with blood work, a transmale will have their doctor prescribe hormone therapy with testosterone injections to raise their testosterone levels in their body to 70mg which is average for a biological male. Testosterone is a steroid hormone meaning it is lipid soluble and can cross cell membranes easily. Testosterone acts on target receptors in the cell and it gets carried throughout the body via the bloodstream. Testosterone can boost energy, help improve bone density, raise blood pressure (so people feel less cold which can be a good thing, but too much can cause feeling too hot in summer), and weight redistribution (meaning that it helps redistribute fat on hips to other parts of the body and helps tone things making it easier to build muscle),. Testosterone also results in a voice cracking as the voice becomes more deeper pitched, and it allows for secondary male sex characteristics such as facial hair. Most transgender males who get on testosterone feel improved mental health and are much happier.

A gender-nonconformist is a person who has a creative gender expression not following set societal rules of binary female or male. instead of being pink or blue, they tend to be purple and enjoy being outside the box expressing their creativity.

Books are quite fun to relax and read. I have been reading more books about herbs like chamomile, basil, peppermint, marigold, pennyroyal, queen annes  lace and other medicinal herbs. nature is filled with quite amazing things.

Sometimes I still have memories that I repressed come back that haven’t healed and I find myself doubting myself again. But I take a breath and enjoy nature, study the environment and learn the cool geography and it helps me enjoy the little things. and i am starting to not beat myself up for things that i couldn’t control or didn’t do well. i’m starting to rebuild and work on learning ways to speak up for myself even though it’s still hard and sometimes i still feel like i am not the best at setting healthy boundaries. i do have some regrets about things but i realized that i didn’t really make the best decisions at the time because i was so lost and didn’t know myself. i tried to work through what i thought would be something that would be helpful for me but in the end i started realizing that i was chasing after things without really taking a step back to fully reflect on me and now i’m starting to enjoy nature, studying things along the way and rebuilding myself and healing.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643823/full

https://transequality.org/issues/housing-homelessness

Dear Anita

Transgender people have faced the stigma of identifying as transgender as being a mental illness since 1994 when the DSM-III (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) listed  it as a “gender identity disorder.” (Washington post). The term disorder in mental health tends to lead some people to believe that a person doesn’t fit into the normal order of things and cannot function as a normal person thinks; which has lead to much negative views on how people view of transgender people. However, many transgender activists have fought for trans rights saying that identifying as transgender isn’t a mental illness that impacts a person’s cognitive abilities. Many transgender people once they have transitioned into the gender they identify as feel gender euphoria which is the feeling of a sense of elatedness finally connecting with their body. Being transgender just means that the person’s mind feels that they are a gender identity other than the sex they are born as. Trans is latin meaning “opposite ” so transgender means a person who identifies as a gender opposite of their birth sex. Sex is the biological traits people are born as with females and males. Females produce eggs, can have children, and have wider hips than males who have sperm and cannot have children and grow facial hair as secondary sex characteristics because of testosterone rise in puberty while females develop breasts and start menstruation at puberty. Sex is determined by chromosomes while gender is how people identify. If a person born biological sexed girl identifies as a girl in her gender identity then she is cisgender meaning her gender identity matches her birth sex. Cis is latin for “same” so cisgender refers to people whose gender identity matches their birth sex.

If a person identifies as male in gender identity but biologically sexed female then they are a transmale.

Similarly if a person identifies as female but biologically born male, they are a transmale.

In 2013, the DSM was revised and now the version DSM-IV no longer has transgender in as a mental illness, instead the intense anxiety and discomfort transgender people feel over their bodies called “gender dysphoria ” is now in the manual. Because many transgender people function well in society after they transition, being transgender is no longer seen as a mental illness but rather as a way people identify. The DSM-IV classifies gender dysphoria as a feeling of discomfort varying in intensity between people who identify as transgender. Some transgender people might experience extreme gender dysphoria over parts of their body that they feel don’t correspond to their gender identity. Such as a transmale will experience gender dysphoria over their breasts, hips, thighs because they don’t look masculine enough. One step in expressing their gender identity is social transitioning when they ask friends, schoolmates, or family to call them by a chosen name that better reflects their gender identity. During the social transitioning process, the transgender person might ask others to use different pronouns to indicate their gender identity. A transmale may start asking people to use he/him pronouns while a transfemale may ask a people to use she/her pronouns.

Lately they/them pronouns have been added to merriam websters dictionary to refer to a singular person as well as a group. For some transgender people who have unsupportive family members they may ask their friends to use they/them pronouns as a safe guard. They/them pronouns are used by transgender people and nonbinary people. transgender people encompasses nonbinary people and gender-nonconforming people in the community because transgender is a wide term to describe a person whose gender identity doesn’t match society expectations or the sex they were born as. So in essence, transgender is a catch-all for everyone who doesn’t fit into the binary box of female and male. There are many different gender identities.

Some include:

-Transgender (a catch-all term for people whose gender identity doesn’t match their biological sex)

-Neutrois (a french term meaning gender-neutral for someone who doesn’t identify as masculine or feminine)

– gender-noncomforming (a person who doesn’t follow societal expectations of gender)

-agender (a person who doesn’t identify as any gender)

– gender fluid (a person who exhibits both masculine and feminine traits and can change depending on how they feel)

-gender-neutral (a person who likes dressing as neither gender and enjoys the benefits of both)

-Nonbinary (a person who doesn’t follow gender roles in society, sometimes people questioning their gender identity will identify as this until they explore more)

Also in the gender identity community are intersex people who were born with extra or missing  sex chromosomes and have characteristics of both male and female sex. an intersex person might have both ovaries and testes for instance. Intersex is fairly rare, about 1.7 % of the population and most individuals are sterile (american progress).

Sadly society tends to think that people who don’t fit into the gender identity of society sometimes have a disorder but with more awareness things have changed. Transgender rights is becoming more common with people like Elliot Page, Laverne Cox, and Chaz Bono helping promote activism. Many transgender people seek to medically transition to alleviate their gender dysphoria and it can significantly improve their self-esteem. The transgender community has high risks of suicide compared to other people in the lgbtq community at 43%. Transgender  people have been around in history; sumerian and akkadian texts from 4500 years ago document priests who were likely to be transgender (Wikipedia).

Dear Anita

I never really felt that I belonged in the gender binary. When I was growing up, I didn’t really care whether the actions I did were masculine or feminine as society tried to place on them. When I was in elementary school, I was a brownie girlscout (first level of girlscouts) and the troop often raised funds by selling cookies to go camping. The girls in my troop often teased me because I would enjoy coed games and often play with the boys. I felt more comfortable playing with the guys. My parents came from fuzhou, a place close to southeastern china and I was born in the United States. My family coming from Asia didn’t really have access to much information about gender and for quite some time I wasn’t really sure why I never really seemed to fit in with the girls. On the camping trips with the girlscout troop, I would go out and climb trees and catch frogs with the boys. When I got to middle school, my gym class would always play girls against boys and I felt more welcomed by the boys so I played with them. In sixth grade, I got called a “tomboy” but I didn’t really like that label because I felt that I was equal to the guys. I also felt more comfortable going into the boy’s bathroom than the girls and some people used to make fun of me for it. It was during the summer before starting seventh grade when I had my hair cut short and a mailman called me “sir” I felt elated like something fell into place, it made me laugh. It was second semester of seventh grade when I was sexually assaulted by a guy. I became quite depressed and lost my self-esteem,  I  didn’t really trust guys as much and was very confused about things. I couldn’t believe a guy would try to coerce me into showing my chest to him and he showed me his genitals. It made me deeply hurt. I was grateful to have met griffin a few weeks later who helped me learn to love and trust again. griffin made me laugh with his jokes and we would play soccer or field hockey together. I was grateful for griffin who helped me defend myself when that guy tried to hurt me again. I made friends with all of griffin’s friends and they made me feel better about myself. There was a gay-straight alliance at my middle school and they had allies for lgbtq people and I decided to join the group. But the group members weren’t really accepting of me. They made fun of me for the way I dressed because I liked dark colors and looser clothing to help hide my body. There was one person in the group that I liked, their name was bec leo. people called them a tomboy but I felt they didn’t like it much. We became good friends after I thought they (using they because bec leo identifies with he/they ) were a boy and told them they were handsome. They said that they always felt like they were a boy but was born a girl. At that instant hearing bec leo say that, it was as if something clicked. I told them that I admired them and felt the same way but wasn’t really sure how to express it. in eighth grade, I had a friend named elisha who i liked but she turned out not to be a good person. she would sometimes tell my secrets to other people and would put me down. i did tell her that i didn’t like my body and connected with the guys more and elisha embraced it and said “that’s great, you do you.” I also told her not to tell anyone because I was still trying to figure out why I felt happier with the guys and being a guy. But she told griffin and griffin was quite shocked to hear about it and we took time off our friendship/relationship. But after sometime griffin said he was proud of me for being myself and we renewed our friendship/relationship. I became very depressed in high school in junior and senior year. I liked my high school lgbtq group more because the counselor named diane was very supportive and helped me with my anxiety. she had a self-help book and i started doing more research on gender identity and discovered susan’s palace where i could talk with people about me not being sure about my gender and not really fitting with the girls. susan’s palace for transgender people was the first place i started gathering resources about people who felt they didn’t belong in the gender binary. I found the term transgender and it meant someone who identifies as a gender outside of societal masculine and feminine roles. Also, transgender is a common term used for people whose gender identity doesn’t match their birth (biological) sex. I felt that I had found something that fit and made me feel more aware about myself. At first, exploring on the site I felt I might be nonbinary (nonbinary is also a branch of the transgender community) just not really identifying as feminine but not really sure about masculine either. I tried presenting as nonbinary for a time not really caring for societal expectations of gender. I didn’t really feel like I was nonbinary though because I identified more with the guys. So I left susan’s palace and tried finding more resources. I was curious about whether people who weren’t comfortable with their bodies would undergo surgery. So I spent time looking at sex reassignment surgery and that was when I started learning about gender dysphoria and how some people have anxiety over parts of their bodies and some change it with surgery. I felt that gender dysphoria fit because I was struggling with my body a lot at the time especially my chest. When I started reading more into it, I discovered that sex reassignment surgery is an outdated term and has been replaced with gender affirming surgery. People who identify as transgender often seek gender affirming surgery to help with their gender dysphoria. Gender affirming surgery requires a therapist note and for the individual to have lived a year as their gender identity along with the hormones that they were prescribed for their transition. So the person would have to be on hormones (either testosterone for trans guys or estrogen for trans females) and live as their gender identity for a year before undergoing gender affirming surgery.

when I started community college, the lgbtq community was amazing and they had a trans guy as their president. I spent some time with him and he helped me a lot. I struggled with anorexia from junior year of high school to my community college years because I had so much gender dysphoria over my body. Many trans guys do develop eating disorders, it’s not quite uncommon for trans guys to become anorexic to look more masculine and try to build muscle. It was very difficult struggling with anorexia and the feeling that I wasn’t really masculine enough. I graduated community college and went on to stockton. I had a gender therapist who was very helpful and joined the transcendence group at stockton which helped me work on things. My therapist and the support groups helped me heal from anorexia. I also discovered the facebook group binder boys and made friends with the trans people there. I met liam in binder boys who helped me through the depression and believe in myself. also, ashley has been an amazing friend since community college and is still helping encourage me. at community college and stockton, I was able to express myself more and I lived as a guy and found it made me happier. I still struggled because my parents weren’t ever emotionally supportive and I didn’t really have healthy ways to cope with my emotions. But being at stockton is great because i have found friends who help me work through things. Liam and ashley helped me work through things and we had therapy together. Now at stockton, helping out at the farm with my friends christine and nicola i realize i love nature. learning about sustainability which is about a system that can go on without depleting the resources it’s going off on is fascinating. I love learning about the earth and wildlife which is why I decided to pursue biology and environmental science. christine and nicola have further helped me learn to channel my emotions and i love painting with them and going on nature hikes with them. I have accepted myself as trans and worked through lots of toxic beliefs and although I struggle with anxiety at times I feel more connected with myself and I love working in nature. The trans support group at stockton and living as a guy for a year made me feel happy and I felt like I found a place of belonging. Also, working on the farm is awesome helping with planting vegetables and fruits

Dear Anita

Hope that you had a good rest for Tuesday night. I was quite restless Tuesday night and stayed up late. My parents restaurant that I helped out with was very busy and rushing to fill orders was a bit stressful. I found myself thinking about memories and people and you came into my mind. It is helpful posting on tinybuddha writing things out to help release some tension.

Dear Anita

The court case was moved to June 24th and it went okay, the prosecutor helped me work on things and discuss it with the judge. I have been actively involved with the LGBTQ community online and found many good friends. The month of June went by quite quickly with good weather that wasn’t too hot but July is quite warm. The thunderstorms in July are helpful in keeping the weather cool though. I often go outside in nature to relax a bit and I talk with friends. I still feel anxious about things at times and sometimes I just need a break but I think that I’m managing. Thank you so much for all your encouragement. Lately I’ve been debating about my career path because I love nature and it would be fun to go into environmental science but I feel like I’ve been studying Biochemistry for three years and have some resumes and things set up already and I think Biochemistry makes more money and I will be able to save up money for good healthcare and transitioning. The quarantine has helped me be out in nature collecting plants and using them as nutritional herbal teas and I find that I enjoy being out in nature more than being in a lab. I love hearing the birds singing and the quiet peaceful atmosphere of the woods. That’s why I love the atmosphere at Stockton with the woods near by and I have been thinking that if I decide to work in a lab or hospital I want a place with lots of nature. I am currently feeling conflicted about how to have both science studies and nature as part of my career. I thought maybe of studying environmental biology and learning about the environment and plants and that sounds like fun. But I also want to work on building plants for medicine and I think that Biochemistry is more helpful. So I’m just wondering if there’s a way to be able to find a good career with nature and medicine which will help me become financially independent. Thank you and hope you have a good week ahead.

Dear Anita

Hope you are well. I have a virtual (online) court case for a ticket I received on February 24th (coronavirus has pushed court dates back) Wednesday. I wrote a statement explaining what happened so that I would be able to testify in court. I know that I am guilty and will say that in court and pay the fines, the reason I want to testify and make a statement is so that I won’t have points on my driving record. I want to make a plea bargain of paying more cost so that I won’t have points on my license or if the judge rules that I will get points on my license because the ticket I received on February 24th was for careless driving I want to suggest that I take a driving course to improve my driving skills and maybe that will soften the sentence. I looked at the violations and careless driving is usually 2-3 points and I’m hoping to not incur points on my license because I drive a lot to places like school on my own since my parents work, I have to work on driving on my own and I try to avoid getting traffic violations as much as I can. I am a pretty safe driver but occasionally my anxiety gets to me when I see a road closed off and sometimes I make mistakes but I always learn from them.

Since this is my first court case and it’s online, I have been reading some things on njcourts.gov, but  I still feel a bit nervous. If you have some advice it would be greatly appreciated. For reference here is the statement that I wrote: “Sorry, I live in Brick and just started school at Stockton University. On February 24th, I was driving home from college on County Road 539 and I saw the cones and road work sign. At first, I followed the cones to drive until the roadwork area almost passed and I saw a black car on the opposite lane and since the sun was very bright off my glasses that I wear to drive, I didn’t see clearly and thought the car was moving. I was afraid that I would hit the car and decided to swerve into the cones and wait until the car passed and then drive back out. ”

Thank you and have a good week ahead!

Dear Anita

I have been having muscle aches and pains and sometimes feeling just really tired due to the anxiety so sometimes I will feel shaky and off balance starting to sway a little. I think that my parents do notice the physical symptoms at times especially sometimes when I have a sharp jabbing ache in my hip bone and I call out, but they haven’t really cared much about seeing a medical doctor. I tend to run a lot because it helps with the anxiety and sometimes I think that the stiffness in my hips is the soreness from running. Other times I think that the sharp jabs of pain every now and then in my hips is from my full binder that I use to bind my chest and hips to make them look more masculine because the binder is a bit tight at times. I was feeling really dysphoric yesterday and I used trans tape to bind my chest and also wore a binder over it. The trans tape felt great and it significantly  improved my dysphoria that I felt happy for once, but I think that I might have wrapped it on too tight because after a while I could feel it digging into my sides and when I went to remove the trans tape, I had some cuts and my chest was feeling sore. So today, I currently have soreness on my chest and the sides from trans tape that is still healing. I think that I would like to be healthy but my anxiety and gender dysphoria is making it difficult. I wish that my parents would think about checking me in with a doctor but they don’t seem to think that I really need one and they think that it would be too much money.