but Arc said most people like that he knows are outside the fandom
I am a lady ;p
That said, I do indeed fail to see why it is such a big deal to people. They should simply be who they are and not have to/not worry about society or other people knowing it. But that may just be me [and my personal aspect of the issue], I don't really know.
That's a lovely idea
in theory, but the sheer amount of discrimination trans* people tend to face is astronomical. A male-bodied person might identify as female, but if people can tell that they're male-bodied, life is going to be very very difficult for them.
To explain terminology now,
sex is your physical body, what your chromosomes say, whereas
gender is your mental state of being. To the average non-trans* male or female, their sex and gender match, but to a trans*-identified person, they do not.
To explain it from a transsexual's perspective, yes, it is a big deal. The best analogy I've heard is - the first fish says, "Gee, the water sure is cold today," while the second fish says, "What the hell is water?" The best way to explain it is that it's something that people don't tend to notice too much unless they have a problem with it. Many transsexuals have a lot of serious emotional and psychological stress related to their gender identity, since their body doesn't match who they really are. They know they're an X inside, but appear as a Y outside, and thus many don't feel like they belong in the bodies they have.
Many others just don't identify with either binary gender, simple as that. Yes, some people do it just to be "unique," in the same sense some people claim they're bisexual to seem "unique," etcetc. But many people just flat out don't like the idea of being considered male or female 100% of the time, simple as that. It's not a grab for attention, it's just distaste of the idea; they don't feel as though they fit into the male or female molds, so they remain in-between, or just something else entirely.
It's a topic that's extremely hard to explain to someone who doesn't go through it themselves, but if anyone has more specific questions feel free to ask them.
A large reason you might have noticed it more lately could be attributed to the fact that resources for transgendered individuals have just become more widely spread in the past decade or two. Previously, if someone had gender dysphoric thoughts, there was little they could do to find support and guidance without a very large network of people that knew about it. Now, information and advice is much more readily accessible, which leads to two outcomes - people who are actually trans* learning ways to cope with their dysphoria and assist in "transition," and also increasing the number of people who do it just for attention since more people know of the existence of all of these different labels.
In the fandom, this is expanded on even more - non-binary genders, specifically "herms," "shemales," (as a note: both of which are considered offensive terms in actual usage outside of the adult furry community,) etcetc. - are highly fetishized. I have personally met a LOT of [non-furry, mostly, but in furry as well] folk that claim to be trans because they have a sexual interest in transsexual bodies, and nothing more. I imagine this is highly common in the more adult oriented furry areas.
Seeing as this is a very sensitive topic for a handful of our members, myself included, I ask everyone to at least be respectful of others' gender identities even if you do not personally agree with them. Thanks!
