I miss the voices

While this seems to comes from a place of tolerance, it still frames being trans as a "want" or a "choice," rather than an inherent part of who someone is. Maybe a good example to help with understanding could be asking: When you did choose not to be trans?

People don't choose to be trans any more than they choose to be tall, or to have brown eyes. Or with whatever other color.

A better way to approach it would be: "I may not fully understand what it means to be trans, but I recognize that it's not a choice - it's who people are. Everyone deserves the right to live authentically, and trans people aren’t harming anyone by existing, and I support their right to be themselves."

Understanding isn’t always necessary for respect and acceptance, but learning and listening can help to move beyond passive tolerance to active support.

I appreciated your post. The 'choosing or ...' discussion with your story as a backdrop is something I have thought a lot about as the subject gets so much attention these days.

I want to match your honesty a bit. As a young boy, I didn't experience any reason to think I was anything other than a boy. That didn't mean growing up was easy. I found an unfortunate 'gender fixation' which was way beyond normal. I was fixated on the other gender and it was a sexual thing. I stumbled into this 'fixation' at age 10 and it was overwhelming. I was already a shy kid but a sense that I had something wrong with me that was beyond my control and which I had to hide took my shyness to a new level. In the years that followed I experienced a lot of emotional pain and emerged into adulthood somewhat twisted and scarred. I believe I developed to be schizoid. As I look back, I truly think it might have been better if I could have brought myself to talk to someone about what was going on. But this secret was too shameful in my eyes to let anyone see it.

I have psychologists in my family and one told me recently that 1 out of 100 people are born with both genitalia and those babies didn't make a choice to be born that way. I don't know much about Trans whatever. On one level, it doesn't matter. Anything that causes a child to disconnect socially and be troubled ought to be helped if we can do it.

The Golden Rule is awesome - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do unto 'others' - others are 100 out of 100 babies born. He who taught that Golden Rule and demonstrated it with His life was expressing: love is where it's at!!! Laws, rules, expectations, etc. have their reasons, some good and some bad I guess - but love is where it's at!!! I confess this old schizoid dude isn't always there. But love is merciful, compassionate and kind so I can keep trying.

Pills, wholesome comforting hallucinations, no pills, maybe no wholesome comforting hallucinations...autism, you write very well so you would be high functioning I guess. I hope you have an expert you can work with that can monitor these situations. Someone you trust and are compatible with. A two cent suggestion: wholesome comforting music might be a good substitute for the voices.

And thanks for the socially redeeming content you gave the forum. It is refreshing.

This is quite different from schizophrenia, my mother have been taking valproate for something like 3+ decades, for a bipolar disorder, and I don't know whether this diagnosis is accurate or not. I don't think it really matches with what I read about bipolar disorder but I am not a doctor.

She is a difficult person. I am totally unable to predict how she will react to anything, she can be very nice and she can also be extremely offensive, sometimes for really little things, even with people trying to help her, so that made many people try to avoid her, including me for a period of time. Still, she has some friends, I am guessing she has never been that offensive with them.

Recently, she was told to stop valproate, I'll see how it goes.

The "Golden Rule" was stated another way in the 10 commandments: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Unless you are referring to the "Book of the Law of the Lord", there is no such imperative statement in the ten commandments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Religious_traditions

There is in Matthew 19:19: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Matthew#cite_ref-539

@Geshmy: I have been visiting a close friend who had had schizophrenic episodes, followed by long-term stays in various institutions. I knew the family well enough to notice that their reactions were ranging from something close to shame (triggered by social stigma, not by the situation itself) to confident hope and a determined will to speak up and maintain as many social contacts as possible. The situation was made even more difficult to deal with because schizophrenia has remained an almost complete mystery to science and medicine until quite recently. In fact, the pressure and the unjustified burden also extend to the relatives, and they often become buffers without a warning and without any way to prepare for it.

Clearly, society often decides that unusual behaviours should be rejected and hidden from view, no matter the consequences for their bearers. In France, sometimes a judge is needed to tell society that it should not lock you up just because you need help to keep up with your daily routine. In some places in the US it looks like you may well get shot for lack of adequate medical support. It almost feels like society trying to get rid of its own members because it lacks the capability to understand them, possibly out of fear. Sometimes it tries to "accommodate" them, which usually still implies labelling them. This is true for people with disabilities and psychiatric affections, but also for people who are simply different, and also generally for people who have ideas about the world that differ from the dominant views of the time.

Certainly some societies and cultures have had opposite attitudes to individual behavioural variations, and I have always found it puzzling that some societies became so antagonistic to their own members, while others seem to have spontaneously fostered all their members and made those who needed it most the focal point of their care.

> Has your friend's situation been made better?

From what little knowledge is currently available about it, schizophrenia is a degenerative disorder. Symptoms can be alleviated by careful dosage of various treatments, though.

> I hardly know what to say about all you wrote there.

Exactly.

> And being forced by society using old name or/and pronouns most time in my personal experience creates gender dysphoria, even worse if that person knows that and continues this.

I'm extremely sorry about this, you deserve way better

Thanks for your helpful reply

I also have autism, so I understand that part. It can be messy.

People expect you to know something or focus on something because its a social norm.

Likely though, you the person with autism is so far away from understanding whatever it is.

As for the issue of being deadnamed, I still stand what I said before, tolerance makes way more sense.

Too many people are willing to fuel the flames of hatred in this world, its ugly...

Sorry you went through such problems.