Various events in my own life and observations of others IRL and seeing people discuss things online have caused me to lose all hope that anyone who I am open with will ever really accept me as a woman. Possibly this would be less of an issue if I were always treated as "other". It is impossible for me to know for sure about that though. People who interact with me without knowing anything about my past automatically assume that I am a woman. This is how I see myself and when I was little I saw myself as a girl. It might also be less of an issue had I never had someone try to murder me over it and been told by police that trying to kill a freak is not a crime. This view of me as just another woman continues in other people up until they for one reason or another find out about my birth assignment. Then suddenly things change between us. Whether they have to find out for some legal or medical reason or if I need to let them know for my own safety (if I am going to live with someone or be in a relationship that might end up physical I let them know my birth assignment before getting into a situation where them finding out could seriously hurt me) or as in a few cases they find out from attacking me. After finding out people change how they talk around me and make assumptions about me that are no longer true (prior to finding out they treat me just as any other woman and I feel very comfortable with that). Watching other people both IRL and in discussions online it is pretty much the same issue. People see transitioned persons as "other". The vast majority of people who I see talking about dating transitioned persons do so because we are "different", sometimes they say that a transitioned person is "better" but no matter how it is stated it is obvious that we are not seen as really who we are. At worst (and very often in people who have expressed an interest in dating or being physical with me) we are simply seen as fetish objects and not people who have feelings and rights. At best we are still seen as not "real" and as something "other"/"different"/"special". I hate that the only way that I can get people to treat me as who I really am is to withhold medical details about myself.
Yeah, this is hard to deal with. It has recently been floating around work that I am trans again. It is always fun to get the comments of "I wouldn't even have known you were a girl". Thankfully my coworkers are accepting of me, but it can just be awkward sometimes when it comes up. It is hard because in some cases you do have to be honest and you know that you are going to be treated differently because you are honest. It is a bit of a catch 22 really. We kind of live in the middle ground that a lot of people do not understand because most have never been in a position to question their gender identity or sexuality.
