I'm heading to college on the 12th! Extremely excited/anxious/terrified to go, but here's to a new beginning! (!) I already talked things over with the Housing Director and the Uni's LGBT group director, and it seems like I'll have to stay in the female dorms for now since my gender markers are still female >.< Disappointing, but expected, i guess. Still, the staff has been pretty supportive within their power. But to the point, my last roommate has been changed due to reasons unrelated to my gender identity. My new roommate is an exchange student from China (which is great, since I used to live in China and speak Mandarin). I sent her an email, introducing myself and explaining my situation, basically saying that I'd understand if she's uncomfortable living with a dude and would want a room change. She replied saying that she's unfamiliar with the term "FTM" but that it should be fine...which leads me to my problem. Culturally, China doesn't really have much of an awareness of transgender people. There wasn't even an official term for "transgender" (aside from slurs) until the 80/90s, and the general viewpoint on the LGBT community in China is still relatively negative. I feel like I should send her some links or resources to explain further what being transgender means, but there isn't a lot of accurate information out there that's in Chinese. The only useful thing I found was the Chinese translation of this pamphlet from the APA. Would that be enough or too much information? I'm probably worrying to much, but this is the person I'll be living with for the next 9 months. Does anyone have any roommate experiences or advice they can share? Thanks!
Transgender individuals in western countries often weren't referred to by anything other than slurs in the 80s/90s either. Gender expression is not universal across all countries. There are many regions in the far east where men and women dressing in ways that would be classified as feminine or masculine and cause outrage here, wouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye there. Depending on where she was located before, it is perfectly possible that she wouldn't have asked any questions about the unique ways that you present yourself. At this point, I would wait until you actually meet each other. I have never had a LGBTQ roommate to my knowledge and all of the roommates that I have had were much different than me; however, we all found a way to coexist and get along well. Sexuality, gender expression, and orientation are very big things to use and clearly they are very big things to the world that we live in. However, they are not going to be things that everyone finds important. If she has questions, then offer to provide this additional information. Otherwise, assume that she is being truthful in claiming that she doesn't believe it will be an issue and avoid the potential of pushing your anxiety and apprehension about the situation onto her when she might truly be apathetic to it all. ---------- Post added 1st Sep 2015 at 03:31 PM ---------- Oh, and good luck! You are clearly on top of things having already spoken to heads on campus. I am sure that you will have a great first year.
I think you'll be alright. I think the most important thing is just to be willing to answer questions once in a while and for both of you to be open-minded. Since she doesn't seem to have a problem, I think it'll be alright. And if things ever get uncomfortable, you can always change roommates or bring it up later. I've had roommates before. I never really did get into what being trans meant to be honest. It was mostly just "okay, I'm a guy. I'm just a little different. Now what's the refrigerator situation? Here's when the rent's due". I find that most people, once they get to know you, usually don't care. In some cases, it might even be a non-issue. This might be one of those cases.
Thanks for the advice, guys! Yeah, I'm fretting a bit to much about this, it probably isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it. I think my main worry is that something was lost in translation and she didn't completely understand what I was saying =\ But as you guys have said, I'll wait to meet her in-person. She seems to be pretty friendly and open-minded, so I think there won't be any problems
