The LGBTQ+ Community Topic

Its sort of self explanatory. This topic is in absolutely no way meant to be political. It is simply a place for people of the LGBTQ+ community to share and discuss their lives and experiences. A place for people like myself and others to come together and support one another.

I know that there’s at least a few other LGBT folk around here besides myself, and figured a space like this would be nice to have.

(I also couldn’t decide if this would better fit under the Community or Off Topic categories. I’ll leave it up for the mods to decide if its fine as is or should change)

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Kinda figured this topic would have more attention by now. I wonder if other people don’t want to admit it publicly?

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That’s certainly a possibility. Honestly I was surprised a topic like this didn’t exist before now.

Though considering how nervous I was initially when I started expressing myself, I wouldn’t blame others for not wanting to come out so publicly. But I still hope that this topic will pick up some traction in time.

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I was going to say something, but I just wasn’t sure what to say.

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All right then, I’ll say something

I’m guessing, based on what you’ve said and the username change, that you are trans, and only recently realized and/or accepted this.

I am trans; I have not told anyone about this, however. I don’t know how people IRL would react to knowing this, and I’ve never spoken to another trans person before.

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Well I’m happy to talk to you then!

I have known for a while. Definitely a while before the username change. It just took me a while to feel comfortable enough to try and express myself here. I was afraid some sort of judgement or ridicule. But instead everyone either didn’t feel the need to comment, or was very positive about it! Which definitely felt great. Which is in part what inspired me to create this topic.

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That’s cool that you two feel comfortable enough to speak up.

I am non-binary, I go by he/they pronouns. I’m also bi if anyone cares about that too. It’s nice to see some other LGBTQIA+ representation on this sight.

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I’m bi as well. It’s actually a pretty funny story how I discovered that, involving a very attractive fish man and The Legend of Zelda.

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King Zora is certainly a charmer
Kingzora

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@Willess12 out of curiosity, how/when did you realize you were trans? If you don’t mind my asking.

And if you’d like, I’d be more than happy to talk about my own experiences.

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(Took me a while to figure out how to formulate a response)

Hard to say exactly. There wasn’t really a single moment so much as a long time of consideration.

The first time I’d say I seriously thought about it, not just as a joke or hypothetical, was sometime last year, when I was thinking about relationships and abruptly realized I’d rather be a girl in a relationship. My immediate thought at the time was “okay, I’m going to worry about the implications of that later.” Well, later came, and I spent several months thinking about the matter, finally declaring myself trans at the start of this year… and then second-guessing it again before reaching the same conclusion again a few months later. More conclusively this time – I wouldn’t have made that post if I wasn’t sure of it.

As for how, that’s even more difficult; it was a combination of things. A lot of it was the many times I imagined myself as a girl, starting as just a fun game/thought exercise and turning into my comfort zone, to the point where I was more comfortable viewing myself as a girl. Some of it was realizing things I’d rather experience as a girl.

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Thank you for sharing! And it’s really nice to know it’s something you feel confident about. I’m very familiar with those early doubts. “Am I faking it?” “Is this really what I want?” “Are my feelings invalid because of x reason?” I feel that getting past those thoughts and feeling fully confident in yourself and who you are, can be just as much of a trial as realizing you’re trans in the first place.

For me, its a long story. (Seriously, wall of text ahead. Sorry)
My experiences go as far back as middle school, though I had no idea at the time. See that’s the earliest I can remember really thinking about gender and what it meant to me. And I decided that it didn’t mean much of anything. I never felt entirely tied to being a man. If someone were to ask me for a list of all the defining features I describe myself with, being a guy would never be on that list. And I even distinctly remember thinking that, if I were to wake up the next day and magically become a girl, I wouldn’t mind. I might even find it interesting just to see what it’s like. No way these feelings will be important later in life. Nope. Not at all.

Fast forward many years to last May. I was on a discord call with a couple friends, and somehow my views on gender came up. I don’t exactly remember how or why it came up, but I ended up talking about everything I just described. Next thing I know one friend is just going off in the text chat. “Oh my god Max is an egg! Oh my effing God I can’t believe Max is an egg!” To which I respond “What are you talking about??? You’re scaring me.”

The other friend explained that an egg is a closeted trans person who hasn’t realized they’re trans yet. My immediate response was to say that they were both insane and there’s absolutely no way I could be trans.

Six days. Six days of anxious self reflection and talking to friends was all it took for my meger and fragile shell to crack and break. I vividly remember the evening it happened. Staying up really late, playing Bug Fables, quite literally huddled up in a closet. At the suggestion of a friend I decided to use a face change filter app, just to see how I might look as a girl.

And it was at this moment that everything I knew about myself, my entire world and how I saw myself, it all shattered. I saw my face looking back at me, in a way that I knew I wanted to be. The feeling in my heart was indescribable. My first taste of gender euphoria.

The following month was kinda rocky. I spent time exploring myself, getting to try on lots of different dresses and women’s clothes which was great. (Shout out to my amazing aunt who sent my mom home with a huge bag full of dresses and skirts as soon as she found out I was trans). But that time was also filled with a lot of doubt and second guessing myself. And there was also all the difficulty that came with coming out to my parents. They weren’t hostile or anything. They just had a lot of doubts and misconceptions that were really frustrating to work through.

And by the end of the month I found myself question who I was again. And ultimately I decided it just wasn’t for me. It was nice to experiment and explore myself, but being trans just who I was. As you can probably tell this idea didn’t stick.

While at first my thoughts were genuine, that was only in the beginning. For the longest time I was content being how I always was, not because I was happier that way. But instead because I thought it wasn’t worth the hassle of transitioning. “I’m perfectly fine living as my mediocre self even though I know I’d be happier as a girl, all because I don’t want to deal with the troubles it would come with.”

This period of denial lasted for just about an entire year. But thankfully a close friend of mine talked me through all my worries and concerns, and helped nudge me to realizing who I really am again. That was about four months ago, and I’m more confident now than I’ve ever been.

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This is such an incredible and insightful description of how you feel. I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to share this.

For me, I realized I was non-binary just last year. It was after I started college and finally had a lot of alone time with my thoughts and I realized some things about myself, including the fact that I have never really considered myself to be “a man,” so to speak. I did even consider the possibility of being a trans woman, though ultimately came to the conclusion that I’m gender fluid. After that I just started saying Non-binary because it’s a little easier to explain, and it ultimately doesn’t matter that much to be. I’m just happy “being not a man,” so to speak.

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That’s it
That is
Exactly what I was like for the first half of this year
I couldn’t have summed it up better (I’ve tried to)

Interestingly, this is one aspect of girlhood I actually have no vested interest in. Like, even if I were to fully transition, I don’t want to wear a dress. I personally don’t care for how they look, or the thought of wearing one.

That was definitely a doubt for some time – “what, you think you want to be a girl but then you don’t want to wear ‘girl clothes’?” is a thought I’ve had.

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Well this topic caught my attention when I did my periodic “did anyone ping me” check, so I guess I’ll drop a comment.

Back in 2015-ish, I thought I was transgender. That’s…uh…not all that surprising, to be entirely honest. The Bionicle (and for my specific case, also Warframe) community seems to have been quite the source of eggs, and this topic seems to be supporting that analysis.

Anyway, as “I thought” implies, I’m not. Reality ended up being something a lot more in-between. For me it’s a pendulum swing. I flip-flop between feeling masculine and feeling feminine, so I most identify with being genderfluid. I don’t really go with “nonbinary,” since people most commonly associate that with neutral pronouns, and really, I don’t care enough to bother with that - he, she, they, it’s all the same to me. I’m not really “out” to anyone IRL for that reason - it’s largely just something I keep to myself, since I don’t really mind being referred to as a “guy,” and in a lot of cases it would largely just complicate stuff - especially since I live in the South, if you catch my drift there. As far as I know, this is the first time I’ve ever even acknowledged it in a public space that can be traced back to my IRL identity by…well, anyone. As an amusing side realization: anyone from the old days probably isn’t terribly surprised to read any of this, given that Entropy was specifically designed to be androgynous, with very intentionally effeminate features. Which I suppose is terribly unsurprising given that he was designed in 2015 when, as mentioned, I thought the feminine part of my back-and-forth was a more permanent fixture. I’m also bi, which I’ve known for significantly longer, but I feel like that one’s a lot more common, especially within the circle of people I regularly interact with.

At any rate, something I think many participants so far in this topic can probably agree with: Facial hair sucks. Holy crap. Please, stop growing, you abomination. You’re getting lasered the instant I have the financial freedom to do so.

Side note, I didn’t know they added the ability to see when someone’s typing on a topic. That’s weird. Not sure how to feel about it :thinking:

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Oh my gosh, YES!!! It’s especially annoying for me because it just grows in so darn fast! Whenever I hear people complain about their facial hair growing in slowly I’m just like, “you wanna trade?”

My turn for a side note, I just sneezed which caused me to bite my tongue, and holy cow did it hurt.

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Preferences → interface → “Hide my public profile and presence features” if you want to get rid of that. Will also block access to your profile, though. I’ve done it if you want a comparison.

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That idea of “Whatever I am I don’t want to be a man” is something I definitely get. Even in my year of denial I still strongly disliked thinking of myself as a man in any meaningful way.

I definitely get that. One thing I’ve learned a lot is that there’s a million different ways to be trans or even just to be a woman. And none of them are any more or less valid than any other. Even as I’m becoming more confident in myself, I still intend on keeping to my usual casual get up most of the time. Saving the skirts and dresses for wearing at home or the occasional special occasion.

Though that’s largely because I’m not confident enough yet to even try to present feminine in public. Despite the fact that I’ve hung out with two different trans-femmes in public and they never got any flack for the way they dressed.

And speaking of doubts, a big one for me was a lack of dysphoria. I never hated my body or anything about it. And that made me think that I was less valid somehow. “Is this really what you want when you’re fine as you are?” But I learned that it’s much more useful to measure yourself by positive feelings like gender euphoria, rather than negative feelings. It’s because of the feelings I get putting on dresses or seeing my face made to look like a woman’s that really reaffirm, this is exactly who I am, and there’s no changing that.

Though ironically as time has gone on and I’ve become more confident in myself, I’ve found myself becoming more and more dysphoric and unsatisfied with my body.

Same here. 100%. That and my body hair in general. It’s a tedious and annoying process to shave off, and grows back like weeds just a few days later. I’m planning on saving up for a hand heald IPL device and just obliterating it all off my body for good.

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It’s not even that I don’t want to be a man, for me it’s just that I know I’m not. Like, whenever someone says “ugh, I hate men,” and then do some form of apology to me, the apology is completely unnecessary, because I know I’m not a man, so it doesn’t apply to me. It’s very weird.

Actually, that reminds me of how I started to question my identity. A friend of mine was talking about how all men find Ryan Reynolds attractive, mostly as a joke, and I was like “I honestly don’t find him that attractive,” and she was like, “well that’s because your not a man” and that kinda confused me so I said, “then what am I?” And she was like, “you’re just you.” That’s what really got me thinking about my identity.

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This is kinda similar to the first time I got that “confirmation,” for me, about what I felt like I was. I was talking with my friend - who is, for context, incredibly and aggressively asexual, to the point he prefers not to hear about anything even vaguely related - and I made some joke about “well don’t worry, this is a girl day anyway.” And he sat there, thought for a moment, and responded with “This just makes sense to me, and I don’t know why.” It was the first time I’d ever really gotten confirmation that this wasn’t just something I’d convinced myself of and that it was something people other than me could pick up on and understand.

Thanks much! I don’t think I’ll enable that, since my profile is about the only way I think people would have of finding me if they needed to for…some reason, honestly I can’t think of why…but it’s nice to know it’s there.

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