Hi! Here are some questions nobody's asked but might?

My name is Ginny Mae, and you can call me Ginny or Ginny Mae! I'm a stereotypical girl who likes: programming, video games, and lots of other nerdy things!

My life has changed a lot in the past few years, so I wrote about it. I also thought people might have questions even though everything is very straightforward, so I pretended people asked me questions and answered them in advance!

If you still wanna know something you can always talk to me or you can even ask me a question anonymously too!

What should I call you, you seem to have too many names now

okay. yeah. that's fair. in most places i use ginny, ginny mae, or some ginny-based derivative. At work I go by my middle name, Mae.

Legally changing my name is in progress, but takes months. So I still have to use my legacy name in situations where that matters, like my Costco membership card.

What if I get it wrong, should I just stop talking to you to be safe?

Mistakes happen! Sometimes I still forget to hear and respond to my new name~

Despite some popular conceptions, it's usually easy to tell when someone makes a mistake or is being an asshole.

Are there any negatives to being transgender?

Not inherently! Some do come along with living in a transphobic society though!

I am not out and still dress and exist as a generic cis dude, so my exposure to this is limited. Despite that:

• Got evicted. When the little bitch (Olgierd "Oli" Frenchowicz who is a civil engineer for the City of Seattle) that owns the house I was renting saw my trans stickers they told the property manager (Gregory Property Management) to violate the law and revoke my lease extension and made me move (which those bitches happily did). They also kept around $4,000 of my security deposit for charges like "adjusting the heights of the kitchen cabinet shelves" and generally tried to fuck me over as much and as hard as possible. It sucked.

• Verbal assault happens to me now too! The first time this happened I was just picking up some chicken take-out when a dude yelled something about my shirt, then persisted in staring at me the 5 or so minutes I waited for my chicken. When I left he followed me to my car, yelled some more stuff about stuff, and I quickly drove away.

• I got banned from Tinder about 20 minutes after signing up! They won't tell me why - they have a whole process by which they waste your time then say they won't help you. Since I hadn't interacted with anyone or really done much of anything, the only rational possibility is my gender identity (which included the fact that I was transgender).

• The legislative and religious fad of transphobia is exhausting and painful. It also makes my life as a trans woman more dangerous, and I actually like my life now!! (Transgender folks existed long before any government or religion.)

• Transitioning itself is hard, slow, and very expensive. For many trans folks trans healthcare isn't available at all (this is especially hard for transmasc folk as testosterone is a controled substance). For others, there are year-long waits before you can start the process... of getting approval... to get on the waitlist... to start the multi-year process of transitioning. Some are held back by arbitrary gatekeeping like transmedicalism (which btw is complete bullshit nonsense and truscum should go fuck themselves with a pineapple).

• I don't feel comfortable wearing a dress in public because I still look like a stupid boy.

Are you a boy or a girl? What is your gender?

I'm a girl, and always have been.

Are You Sure? What if you are wrong or change your mind?

Am I sure? Yes and no, but mostly yes.

It's not uncommon with pre-acceptance trans girls: we will do a lot to convince ourselves we aren't really transgender. Being transgender is dangerous, even for those of us that are fairly privileged. There are millions of reasons to not transition woven tight into the fabric underlying society. And on top of all that, it seems impossible!

The trans brain is very clever and finding excuses or explanations on why something is very normal cis behavior when it's trans as fuck.

I've written a bunch more about this on the what's poppin' page. Probably one of the more telling thought experiments: suppose there was a button that would permanently turn me into a girl. On every day of my life I would have pressed it instantly and without a second thought. After pressing it a few extra times to be really sure it activated I would look around for a skirt.

So yes, I’m sure I know what I want and who I want to be.
The doubt, when I have any, is an acknowledgement of very real risks and dangers.

Speaking more generally: the number of trans folks who regret transitioning is absurdly miniscule. I’d wager it’s among the least regretted decisions of any kind.

Gender is innate and the body knows when it's not aligned. This happens even if you are cis - psychologist John Money killed a bunch of people to prove this and now he has a museum gallery named after him!

Gender-affirming care regret rates are about 0.2-0.3%. In a study of ~20,000 trans folk, 62 patients express regret (~0.3%). Only 26 of those people regretted it for gender reasons; most the others had regret only due to socieital pressures.

For comparison, cancer treatment regret rates are around 13%. Plastic surgery regret rates are much higher at ~50-70%; ~80% of all patients say they’d never do it again.

Are you gay? What’s up with sexuality and gender talk about that a bit?

First, my cis friend, there are two distinct concepts here that get conflated for no good reason: gender and sexuality. These things are independent and can come in any combination.

Changing my gender does not mean either of the other two change. I mean, they did, but they didn’t have to.

I identify as panromantic; I am attracted to people without regard to gender. I'm also demiromantic; romantic feelings usually come from having a strong emotional connection with another person.

Are you just going to talk about transgender stuff constantly now?

… possibly. I kinda talked about it a lot even back when I thought I was cis to be honest.

Without exclusion, this is the most significant thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. It’s kinda taking up a lot of my headspace at the moment and probably will for a while.

Plus a substantial number of people want us dead, so it stays top of mind.

What does {person} think?

I don’t know or care that much, you should ask them instead of me. Maybe y’all can keep a spreadsheet.

Where did your name come from?

My legal first/middle names will be Ginny Maive.

Ginny came from a book series I loved reading when I was in my 20s. Ginny is the youngest daughter in a large family. She starts shy and somewhat frequently in need of saving, but grows into a powerful and fierce woman. I considered other names, but Ginny stuck. (As a side note, there was a high chance it’d have been Luna if a bunch of cis friends hadn’t named their stupid babies Luna and who even knows what gender those babies really are. {Come to think of it, Luna would have made my initials LMR which is basically “lamer” so..... babies forgiven?})

Maive (also spelled Maeve or Medb) is a queen from Irish mythology, described as “so beautiful that [she] robbed men of two-thirds of their valor upon seeing her”. Medb insisted on being equal in wealth with her partners, and when she realized she was short one very good bull she started a war. A lot of people died! Maive is goals.

I like the flow of the two names together as well as each name individually. I also like that they have different vibes. Ginny feels diminutive, soft, cute, and feminine. Mae is a single syllable and feels a bit more mature.

Also, importantly: the domains and usernames were available.

Am I, the asker and current reader of this question, trans?

I'm happy to talk about experiences with gender and gender dysphoria. I can send you tons of resources - more than you could possibly want.

But I can't tell you if you are transgender. Heck, even if I did... would you believe me?

I mention it above but I'll repeat: trans girls are very good at self-deception.

Telling someone they are trans opens the door to internalized transphobia and maladaptive self-defense mechanisms (fyi, mine were mostly subconscious and sneaky). Or maybe later you could convince yourself you were tricked or coerced into thinking you were transgender.

And - by the way - being confused or tricked into thinking you are transgender is not something that happens or is even possible. Even cis folk will know when their gender identity is misaligned; if you are not a girl you will not feel comfortable living as a girl. There is strong scientific evidence and consensus that gender isn't malleable nor subject to external influence.

How did you figure it out?

I tell the story over here!

Why does your website look like this???

web design is my passion

The current site design, unless I do a redesign and forget to update this question, is a copy of the first proper website I launched back in 1997. I grabbed the source from the Wayback Machine, did a few very small tweaks, and then turned it into an eleventy template.

(Throwbacks like 90's designs and 88x31 buttons are considered retro cool, so I am both a trend setter and a trend follower.)

Alternatively and more simply stated: i think it's funny but ymmv