Making Friends as a Trans Girl
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- čas přidán 24. 09. 2022
- Making friends can be tricky for just about anyone, but add having to come out as transgender on top of that, and it becomes quite an adventure!
In this video, I detail you through the various periods of friendship in my life and how aging and transitioning affected me socially.
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Twitter: boonewwilliams?t=...
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Im a trans girl but I just managed to out myself to my family though I guess it still needs some time till things get going for my transition. I have a little sister and she becomes 12 in December so at the start of puberty and the thought of how she’ll look in a few years and what clothes she is and will wear makes me really jealous and every time I see her my mood just becomes very bad. I really hope I get over it somehow because I love to spent time with her but I feel like I will have to cope with it a few more years
Hey you're not alone. I've experienced a very similar thing. I don't have a sister, but I had an experience like that with a close female friend. It's so hard, but I promise you it gets SO much easier. In my case, it was gradual and took a while, but it constantly got better. I'm really proud of you for coming out, and I'm wishing you the absolute best !!!! ❤️❤️
Now I am very passing and don't even bring up questions. But making friends was always hard for me to do. I had very few friends in school and even less into adulthood. Now I got a few more than ever and they just see me as one of them. I can hang out and be invited along and do girl things! Some of them know I am trans and some don't as it hasn't came up. But none of them have problems with bathrooms or me being in women's meetings. And I really appreciate it. I can just hang out with the girls and be one of them and just be me.
It was harder before I was passing to make friends but now it isn't hard anymore as I gain a bit more confidence in myself and how I look. But it still is rather hard for me to bring myself to socialize.
I'm so glad you've found a life for yourself where you can comfortably be yourself!!! That's so wonderful!! I understand the difficulty socializing, but I do believe it will all get easier with time. I really appreciate you sharing this with me, and I'm wishing you the very best going forward:))
Hey I was also homeschooled and am a transgender woman. Kinda rare to find the intersectionnality of Transgender and Homeschooling! Also it's nice to hear your point of view. You are very articulated and your videos are just great. Thanks for putting up great content!
Thank you so much for saying that and for watching!!! It's so cool that you're homeschooled! Definitely a rarity!!
Totally can relate to your childhood feelings as a transgender person. It's always a very powerful and innate feeling you have of not feeling okay and knowing you're "weird".
Exactly!! It's such a unique experience. I never know how to explain it to cisgender people.
@@boonewilliams5338 I know, little sis. It's really tough to try to explain. It's almost impossible. Don't feel you need to explain though. Just be kind and be yourself. That's all you ever need do.
@@britpoppansy well said, my friend. :)
Thank you 💛
Omg, and also, I protected myself as a little teen myself when it came to boys. Anyone who seemed like they were "too masculine" I sent to the outer edges of my life. Not actually very kind when you think about it. Because I've met some very macho men who are very kind. But it's a protective mechanism. You are just trying to keep yourself safe against a perceived threat.
@@britpoppansy exactly. It may not be ideal, in hindsight, but it was done out of a feeling of necessity, which is completely reasonable and even admirable, if you ask me! I'm sorry you had to go through that too 💛
I was just thinking about you yesterday! Happy to see another video, and a great topic as usual.
I started feeling like I was "the weird one" when I started junior high, but it wasn't until high school that I actually had some girls I talked to. I didn't care about my appearance at all because I hated what I looked like and didn't understand it was dysphoria, so I always had greasy hair and ill matching clothes, so not a lot of girls talked to me. In high school I still appeared very male to everyone, so it wasn't until I was 19 that I found myself in a group of only girl and me and it was such a revelation and just felt so right. After that I leaned into femininity a lot more and also made more female friends so now I'm at a point where all my old male friends have accepted that I just look like a woman (I don't think I pass really, but most people assume I'm a girl if they see me at a distance). I also have a female friend who's accepted me as a girl (the only one I'm sort of out to except for my parents) which feels really nice. She's also somewhat familiar with what transgender means, so it's possible to be open with her about that sort of stuff, which makes it relaxed. I don't have to pretend anything with her. I am still very careful about new people that I meet, but usually people who turn out to be transphobic already has something else that makes me not like them, so it's usually okay!
Your hair is really pretty btw, I'm in awe! I really want longer hair now~
Thank you so much for your lovely message and for sharing some of your story with me! We have such an abundance of obstacles and challenges that we have to deal with as trans people, but I love hearing about how things have gotten better for you. Things are only going to get even better :)
All the best 💛
~Boone
Boone your voice is hotter than doughnut grease. I could literally listen to you all day.😊
I never knew being compared to donut grease could make me this happy!!!
Thank you 🤣💛💛
I also got a Polly Pocket on my 5th or 6th birthday! My first girl toy. Also the last I got, I'm afraid.
i just found your channel today, and it’s blowing my mind how similar my personal experience is to yours. the only real differences are that instead of recognizing how people perceived me and trying to fit in accordingly, i tried to prove everyone wrong and be very macho and masculine. i also started transitioning at 20 (21 in November), and instead of smash bros i had cars, which also put me in a space where i really got to see masculinity around me and was like “yeahhhhh, that’s not it”.
i’m rambling, thank you so much for this video, i’ll be showing it to lots of people, and it means the world to me💗
This means the world to ME!! Thank you so much for sharing. That really resonates
@@boonewilliams5338 🫶🏻🫶🏻definitely a new sub, thank you for making content 💗
this video is awesome. i love these deep heavy topics sm
(also love your hair!)
Thank you SO much!!!! This was so much fun for me, and thank you for the hair compliment! I was feeling pretty good about it that day, not gonna lie 😏😏😂
I hope your experience will never be mine. But every time I ever told anybody I was transgender especially at work it resulted in me losing my job. I even had a counselor tell me that I needed to stop telling people so that I could keep a job. So like I said I hope the world changes to where you don't have to experience what I experienced but now in my retirement years and I'm struggling. Oh and I don't have any friends.
P.S. just a PSA, don't ever try to force yourself to be attracted to something that you just naturally are not attracted to. It will make you feel icky. I've done this and it really ended badly. People get hurt because you can't "pretend" forever and also this is not "authenticity". This is just doing what is "easy" or "acceptable".
I appreciate the PSA, and I'm very sorry to hear it ended badly for you :(
I'm entirely with you. I could only pretend for so long. It never works
You’re so inspiring Boone thank you!!! My video suggestion is what love means to you.
Thank YOU!!!! and, wow!! What a suggestion. That would certainly be a big topic. Will have to think about it.
Thanks!! :) 💛
@@boonewilliams5338 💜
in primary school (elementary for the US) i went to a face to face school. i think because it was face to face gender stereotypes were definitely there. Sometimes heavily enforced, but sometimes more subtle.
I always felt awkward around my groups of guy (or tomboyish) friends. I gravitated to the nerds and outcasts, all but two of whom turned out to also be trans. not that there were many of us.
i guess it's true that we travel in packs
either way though, i felt somewhat uncomfortable with them. i think our personal discomfort as trans people without knowing what that discomfort was meant we kept each other at arms length, i think we sensed something about each other. lots of subconscious stuff i think.
i was into sports, though very not good at it, so i also hung around sporty guys a bit. half of them were respectful of my strangeness though (keep in mind i had no idea i was trans).
I tried to see what it was like, be a part of their group, but i really couldn't take it. Their boyishness was overpowering. The toxic sides of social gender definitely showed up in them, but I don't think that was all that upset me.
So I kinda stuck with the nerds. I'm still friends with one of them. But yeah. I could get along well enough, but I was very uncomfortable.
I remember, around the time I became aware of crushes (i'm a trans lesbian), that i wanted to know more about the girls around me, and once i heard their conversations and got let in a little, i knew i wanted to be having those conversations too. I wanted to talk about the mermaid tv series all us girls watched after school, about crushes, have sleepovers, learn to braid each others' hair.
but really, they got hyperaware that i was a boy, or so they thought. i think they sensed a bit of girlness subconsciously, but they didnt really know what to do with it.
i think they started having bad experiences with guys that liked them around that time. it's pretty shocking how young that sort of thing starts.
maybe that was part of the reason i got pushed away.
i also was very clear that i had crushes on girls, not boys. i think that put a wedge there. they didn't know what to do with that, and there's this sense of unsafety in letting someone who likes girls into the core of a friend group. especially when the people you like is such a big topic.
i think i may have been a bit of a chick magnet, too, for the wrong reasons, because they liked that i (to them a guy) was so confident and interested in non-conventional guy stuff. i was the only guy in our school's choir. i liked to sing with the girls in breaks. i made connections with the younger kids (and wow was a three year difference so much back in those days). i always quietly prided myself on that. it was hard to figure out how to get people to like me as a trans woman because of that. I couldn't rely on that anymore.
anyway, yeah. i always longed so heavily for that kind of friendship. i have a lot of existential dysphoria about it. one day i hope to make friends that i can sorta create the memories i should have had with me with.
i got a lot more distant when i went to intermediate (middle school). part was moving schools, but puberty was pretty tough for me. i made connections with, like, ALL the queer kids, a few strong ones but mostly shallow. even the strong ones i kept at arm's length.
then in high school, i moved and went to correspondence (like homeschooling, but more standard curriculum i guess?). I withdrew completely, having lost confidence in my ability to make good friends. i wanted to go back to primary school, where people cared less, no matter how big gender stereotypes seemed to be at the time, to me.
just before i started gettin ready for venturing out to make friends again, and getting into church groups and camps and that sort of thing, i realised i was trans. that was pretty impossible for me to navigate. i stayed withdrawn. by then, i went into town once a month, and only got lonely on the days i went in and saw other people. or if i thought about friends had normal experiences for kids my age.
i got back in touch with that one nerdy primary school friend, and that helped with queer stuff. i chatted with their new friends too. but it was only ever online, and i was bad at keeping up
when i finally tried to make more friends, my first step was online. really worked well for me. i found some queer discord servers and that sort of thing. those were so incredibly valuable to me. they were a really wonderful kind of social scaffolding.
im getting better now. im a lot braver, worked hard to be out but also make friends. it takes much harder work than i expected it would when i was little. im pretty proud of how far i've come, though.
whew, that turned into a long one. sprry if that's oversharing haha. probably done more good for me to process it than any of you to read it ^^
oh also, a P.S: I very strongly acted as i was raised to be- a respectful young man, fiercely independent and never shackled down by societal expectations, chivalrous, honourable, etc.
i know how contradictory that sounds, and it is.
it was terribly difficult when i realised what i wanted was to be one of the girls.
those qualities instilled in me, very clearly, culturally delineated me from them, and i wanted so badly to get rid of that line. not that i knew what it was i wanted to get rid of in the first place.
Wow!! It's AMAZING how similar our stories are. Reading this has done a lot of good for me too. Trust me. Thank you so much for opening up and sharing your experience. This is why I love making these videos and really need to make more. These events and emotions feel so unique, but there are entire, silenced groups of people who go through very similar things. We are strong and resilient and creative and wise. I loved reading this, and all I can do is thank you and tell you that I have a feeling you have a very bright future. I'm wishing you the best in all your future endeavors!!!
Love,
Boone 💛
Hi I love your video I know you hadn’t made much content for a while, you’re stories similar in many ways to mine. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you enjoy them ❤️❤️❤️
Boone ... this was interesting, and I really do enjoy hearing you talk - would love it, however, if you moved into a more regimented release schedule, so it wouldn't be "I wonder what happened to Boone" but "ah, Boone should have a new video coming out next week", even if that was on a 3-month rotation. Also, on subject matter, while this was almost uncomfortably personal, that's great (if a bit voyeuristic!), I was wondering if you'd be open to doing some more work-centered talks. Needless to say, nearly nobody watching you from on this side of the screen has ANY experience in being a young working actor, trans or otherwise, and it would be fascinating to get to "follow along" with your stories from that side of things (with the names being changed to protect whatever needs protecting there). I think the last time you mentioned your work in detail you were doing voice acting ... is that still the case, or are you running off to auditions for blockbuster movies (are you going to be an X-MAN??? heh!).
I went through most of my life being an undiagnosed "neurodivergent" (on various axes), and have an appreciation of how hard it can be to interact with the "normal kids". One thing that really stands out for me in your story is being MTF without male attraction. That seems like a MAJOR obstacle for finding one's clique, with all the expectations running the other way. The complexities of that are hard to wrap my head around, although I'm aware of one FTM who was likewise uninterested in folks of their birth gender - so it's not strictly a unique situation. Have you eventually found friendship and support in the LGBTQ community?
You always talk so positively about your family growing up, but I keep thinking that it must have been sort of weird transitioning with three older brothers. I know that I was pretty awful to my younger brother growing up (I was just 18 months older, and we had a lot of mutual friends, so the pecking order had to be enforced), and I can imagine there was lots of opportunity to make things ugly for you. How did you manage to not have things go that way?
Anyway, thrilled to see you back on CZcams!
🤪
Hi, Brendan!! So sorry about the lack of a schedule. Honestly, I just don't always have inspiration as to what to post. I feel a little tied to my theme of trans-related content, but I think if I can be brave enough to expand into other territories, I'll feel a lot more inspired creatively. Your acting suggestion is wonderful! Thank you for that! I'll definitely start pondering topics there. I'm sure we have different situations, but I can at least partially relate to the undiagnosed neurodivergent challenge. I have OCD, and when I was younger, it was fairly debilitating. Being MtF and being strictly attracted to women has been and continues to be one of the most difficult aspects of this whole thing for me. It constantly threatens my security within myself. It's taken a lot of time to feel okay with who I am, and I'm still not 100% there, to tell you the truth. I'm so lucky to have three older brothers with whom I genuinely get along. We're very close and always have been. Homeschooling, I'm sure, helped with that immensely! They're very empathetic and kind people who all reacted wonderfully to my coming out.
I apologize if I missed any of your notes on here, but this was all so much fun to read, and I hope I can find a better schedule with more varied content. :)
Thank you SO much, and wishing you the best!
P.S.
Still working in voice over, but I'm putting a lot of time into on-camera as well. Not an X-Man, but that'd be a legitimate dream come true.... I'll keep you posted
I am very much interested to hear your life story. I want to be your friend