If there is one thing I learned all those many years ago when I was first scouting out the internet is that people can and do lie about who they are. There’s an air of complete anonymity as we all sit at our computer screens and type out whatever words we want to convey a certain feeling or a certain story.
Having said that, most of my closest friends aren’t geographically close to me at all. My best friend lives in Illinois. Another close friend lives in England. I have even traveled to England three times because of the people I have met on the internet, so I know that not every single person I encounter is full of lies and merely online to fuck with people’s heads.
The worst place I found for the liars to hang out was the now-defunct Yahoo! chat rooms. There were chat rooms for just about any subject under the sun. I first started frequenting one about careers, because I was fresh out of college and not 100% sure of what I wanted to do. I also looked into LGBT chat rooms, though really they were just LG chat rooms that Bs and Ts were in as well. And it’s the Ts – the transgender chatters – who are the topic of this blog post.
I was hit on by many transgender women while chatting in the Lesbian chat rooms. My problem was that I don’t necessarily believe they were transgender anything, be it male to female or female to male. I think they were straight men posing as women in a Lesbian chat room, because straight men think it would be hot to watch two women together or would consider it a personal conquest to be with a Lesbian. I don’t necessarily believe that any of those people were really who they claimed to be. I never went into those chat rooms for anything other than chatting, yet I was constantly pursued by these “women” who wanted to be in a relationship when I did not. I was in the chat room(s) purely for fun.
During this time, I also met the person who would turn out to be the only transgender person I know. At the time we first met, I had no idea what she was going through. I only knew that she was severely depressed most of the time. I had a suspicion of the cause, but she disappeared before I could ask. A few years passed and we were able to get in touch. My suspicions turned out to be correct, but she doubted my sincerity in being okay with her transition because of my prior statements regarding transgender people in that chat setting. I do not have a problem with transgender people. Period. I do not understand how anyone can be born in the wrong body, but it’s not my job to understand it. I don’t understand most of science, but I accept that it is real. I accept my friend and I accept anyone else who may come into my life who has transitioned from one sex to the other or may be in the midst of transitioning. If I dislike someone it’s going to be for a valid reason – like you’re an asshole of epic proportions.
I have a part time job in which I deal with the general public and a bathroom is involved. I may or may not have encountered a transgender woman in the years I’ve been at this job. I don’t know, nor do I care. These women are just like me. They use the bathroom for one reason and one reason alone: to relieve themselves. I’ve never felt that anyone was in the bathroom for any other reason than to use the facilities for their intended use. End of story.
I don’t have a problem with transgender people, but I still stand by my beliefs of those specific people in that specific setting of an internet chat room. I just feel that my friend will never forgive my feelings from before we even met. In her eyes, I feel that way about ALL transgender people when quite the opposite is true.
Do you think I am wrong? Please share your thoughts.
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