General rules:
1.) don't be a dick
2.) don't ask me about my sex life (frankly it's boring and nonexistent anyways so there's not much to tell)
I Can't speak to the transmasculine experience, I'm a trans woman. I can also only talk about my experience, which is one of many different trans experiences.
Ask away. I'll try to clarify lingo as I go - The QUILTBAG community loves its lingo.
I've never heard the term QUILTBAG community before... I feel like it's something I would call my mom (she's an avid sewer and quilter).
What does that mean? And don't quit there, you mentioned lingo. Cultural lingo fascinates me. What else have you got?
QUILTBAG is like LGBT, or LGBTQ, or LGBTQ, or LGBTQIAA, etc. It's just an acronym to describe the community of people. I use it mostly because it's funny, but also because it's more inclusive then LGBTQ+. Really, if i'm being serious the one I like the best is GSM, which stands for Gender and Sexual minorities.
I think QUILTBAG is generally accepted as being Queer, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans, Bisexual, Asexual, and Gay, but honestly the letters all get reassigned all the time because sometimes the GSM community just likes making its own life more complicated.
As for lingo, man, there's so much. Some of it is serious, and some of it is the community having a laugh at itself while describing common life experience
Passing is a very common one. It basically means presenting as the gender you wish to be seen as and raising no eyebrows, or not being what one could describe as "visibly" outside of the gender binary.
If you can do this - because not everyone can, or wants to - it is said that you have "passing privilege". Some people desire this because it is safe, or safer to be a trans person if you can pass as cisgender.
Cisgender just means that your gender and the gender the doctor assigned you at birth are the same. I'd say that your Gender and Sex are the same, but the truth is that unless you've actually had it tested, you probably don't know what your chromosomes actually are, and they might be different from what you think they are.
A "Beard" is a term that describes an opposite-sex partner for a same-sex attracted person, usually for the purpose of deceiving unaccepting relatives, but occasionally sometimes when they're lying to themselves, too. In some cases the Beard is complicit (it's usually much better this way), but in other cases the Beard is being strung along and it's a gross situation.
I can add more if people want, and other people who are hanging out and are part of the GSM community can add some too.
It's Latin. It's just the opposite of Trans. An example would be Cisalpine Gaul - The section of Gaul on the same side of the Alps as the Romans.
well, i think aplying cis- to -gender is newish, but really it's just the correct grammatical way to deal with it if we are going to call people who don't identify with their assigned gender "trans".
Wow - I didn't know chromosomally gender could appear on a spectrum. How many chromosomes can determine gender and how many gradiants are there on a genetic scale? It totally makes sense having heard that, and you get a feel with some people that their gender is a mismatch, and that feeling goes on a scale too.
I'm thinking particularly of a woman I worked with we are pretty sure she had misplaced gender. She is pretty as a woman, but has some masculine features and moves like a man. It's strange and hard to explain, but with some people you just know, do you know what I mean? Well, this woman was from a very religious family and wouldn't dream of exploring anything outside set expectations. She has a serious boyfriend now, and I feel a little sorry for her, but at the same time what do I know?
well, we have to be careful here with terminology.
Gender has nothing to do with Chromosomes - Sex does. Gender's in your brain, mostly. I think you're
referring to when I said this:
- I'd say that your Gender and Sex are the same, but the truth is that unless you've actually had it tested, you probably don't know what your chromosomes actually are, and they might be different from what you think they are.
When I said this I meant more specifically that there are many chromosomal disorders that are more common than people realize, and that some people who have them may not even know because they don't make you very different - XYY for example is one of the more common ones, and is found in around 1:1000 male births (and most people who do have it don't even know). XXY, or Kleinfelter's, is even more common, being pegged between 1:500 and 1:1000 male births.
So, Sex exists in a wide variety of forms outside of XX and XY. To further complicate things, there are also some disorders like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which affect how testosterone is absorbed by the body. With Complete AIS, One can be a biologically XY person that presents and grows and goes through puberty exactly as someone with XX chromosomes usually would, including having a womb and being able to carry children. I've even read a paper of one XY woman giving birth to an XY daughter (I'm not sure if AIS is hereditary).
My grandmother belongs to a group called the "Happy Hookers." She assures us that I t's a rug-hooking group.
Music's going pretty good! I have been getting more orchestra gigs lately, which feels good.
this weekend I'm working. UGH. trying to do the job of two prep cooks all by myself.
Thanks for being open about this!
What's your opinion on - I don't know the lingo - 'alternative pronouns' besides the classic two him/her? I get that language and acceptance are quite related, but to me having to say 'xyr' or something like that does not get me closer to empathy.
I have some of the same feelings about Alternative, or Gender Neutral pronouns that you do. I find that they can be exclusionary to people who are just trying to deal with you in every day life.
That being said, early in my transition I went by They/Them, which is a Gender Neutral pronoun, for my own comfort and because of my own insecurities.
Gender is on a spectrum, so there are a lot of gradients between the most Masculine and the most Feminine, and there are also people who feel neither masculine nor feminine. I accept all of these people, and think that their identities are valid - But trying to get our language as it stands right now to wrap around them is a problem.
We don't want to change the people, so we have to change the language. We just need to... y'know... agree on a gender neutral pronoun.
The people I know who use it pronounce it "Mix". I have a friend who was Mx. Capital Pride 2016. Capital being Ottawa,
edit: as a sidenote, i think "Mx. " Is a really good gender neutral solution for how to address people in a formal way. Ontario has also started to include an "x" for gender designation on drivers licenses.
How difficult is it to find trans specific healthcare?
One of the receptionist's area in the doctor's office my mom goes to is plastered with LGBT posters, etc. and it seemed to me like many of their clients might have been trans. Then recently I noticed the doc helped open a Trans Care Clinic that has 21 people working there. So even in that fairly small town it would seem to be pretty well covered. Which surprised me.
As always, it depends where you are. In Canada, it depends on how far away you are from a major centre. If you're near Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, it's gonna be pretty easy. Even places like Winnipeg are okay. However getting into places like northern Ontario even (not even 4 hours away from Toronto) there can be serious problems with access.
The biggest problem is starting trans healthcare. Most doctors don't have a problem continuing your care if you're already on hormones, and will help fill out paperwork for CAMH for surgery stuff if that's the route you want to go, but are sketchy about changing meds and don't want to start new people on meds because they don't have any experience.
Of course, how does one gain experience, right?
The other problem in Canada in particular is that (if you decide to do it), the wait list for surgery is around 2+ years as of last month. so that's... a pain.
How about in your experience? You tell your doctor you are trans, they understand they have no idea what they are doing.... then easily refer you to a trans specific doctor that is available in a reasonable amount of time?
On a Frivolous Friday note: what do you think about Caitlyn Jenner? On one hand, she is a very high-visibility person who has been widely respected for decades as a world class athlete. On the other, after their association with the Kardashian attention whores I can not shake the suspicion that it is all just a publicity stunt.
nah, Jenner's had way too much work done for just a publicity stunt. Plus, at the end of the day all you can do is believe someone. HOWEVER she's a really bad example of what being a trans person is like. Most trans people can't just take a year and just have all your surgeries, hair removal, etc done and taken care of. Jenner is rich,and she is an example of what a rich trans woman has access to. Most trans women aren't rich - I'm still working on affording some more laser hair removal, and it'll be years before i can get surgery through government access.
In answer to your first question, it again depends. In my personal experience, when I was investigating getting treatment in Northern Ontario, it was looking like I would have had to get an appointment in Toronto at CAMH to get started on Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT. This would have taken 6 months or so from my initial request. Instead, I looked into Ottawa, where i also had a place to live, and getting access to care was as easy as getting a referral to a local free health care clinic. I then had to go through a few months of counselling appointments, but that would have happened at CAMH too, so I ended up about 6 months ahead. If you live in Nunavut, say, you ALSO have to go to CAMH because there are no services there.
Basically, trans health care access is spotty and all over the place, and you need to know how to navigate the system.
I've been reading through Queer: A Graphic History and it's been simultaneously helpful, eye opening, and not entirely unlike having my brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
The lingo can be so obtuse, especially as this is coming from an academic perspective, but then groups take offence with the use of certain terms, others revere them as symbols of power over hated, sometimes the terms exclude people in one context but include them in another... Ow.
So here's two questions for you:
1) What lingo comes up the most in your day to day life?
2) How do you feel about the QUILTBAG (love it) community?
1.) Well lately it's been "Glow Up". It's like the Queer version of "grow up", where one is becoming closer to the person they want to be, and is becoming much happier. Smiles are more prevalent in selfies, for example. It's referred to as "Glow Up" not just because of the smiles, but also because there tends to be a lot more glitter.
2.) I have a love/hate relationship, as I think most people do. At its best, it can be a supportive, open place where one can feel safe being themself. At its worst, it can be like a shitty high school clique. I think the thing that frustrates me the most is what we've been talking about - Lingo. It can be used to exclude people you don't like, or to puff yourself up as most knowledgeable and best. It can be very ugly, and is really the logical extreme of what everyone hates about fringe communities and academia combined.
In so many of these discussions, I get lost almost instantly. I have 6 or 7 friends who do not identify with their birth gender, to differing degrees. To me they are just Scotland, and Alex, and Deanna, and Kiki, and Caro, and Evie, and... whatever. You get the point.
But in your post I am lost by the second sentence when you say, "I'm a trans woman."
I have no idea what that means. A man in a woman's body? Or vice-versa? Sure, I have a 50% chance of guessing right - "I'm a woman in a man's body" - but I had to scour your posts to find your mention of a beard before I could be sure what that meant. It honestly took me something like 10 minutes of looking through your posts to find something that clearly indicated your birth gender, so I could interpret the "trans woman" phrase, and know what gender pronoun to use. And that's kinda ridiculous.
Am I being insensitive? A typical white middle-class American male? Maybe.
On the other hand, your gender is way more important to you than it is to me. I honestly don't give a shit one way or the other. We aren't dating, and that's the only time your gender means anything to me.
The fact you were "once a guy", or "a guy in a girl's body", or any other permutation has absolutely zero impact on our relationship, and only becomes relevant if you decide to take offense at my use of a gendered pronoun. I have no idea what a "coffeesp00ns" is... male, female, or otherwise.
I call Scotland "dude" because I'm from California, and she and I have that kind of comfort in our relationship. I call Deanna "Studley" because... well, it's her last name, and she's more male than I am... but still identifies as female. I regularly screw up Evie's name because we used to work very closely together and I knew her as Tom for years, and I confuse her porn star name with her chosen female name because they are both "not Tom" in my head.
Am I Insensitive?
The real question is, am I rude or inconsiderate or diminishing if I don't remember your gender preference and preferred pronoun to put in front of "coffeesp00ns"?
I'm honestly asking. I have no idea of ooli or War or rd95 or snoodog's gender, and only know Elizabeth's and Lil's because of their names, and know kleinbl00's because I know the guy in person.
So while it is important for me to walk carefully in the world, and to be sensitive to other people's needs and preferences, I gotta wonder if the gendering of anybody is really of material value. Isn't this just another way to "other" someone? A new class we can pigeonhole people into, so we don't have to deal with them as a person, rather as a cardboard cutout?
In short, each of us has our identity that is important to us. But how important should it be to others?
I know... weird open-ended question, but it seems like the people here, participating in this post, in this little corner of the internet, might have some interesting things to say about this....
... I know I'm all ears...
- I call Scotland "dude" because I'm from California, and she and I have that kind of comfort in our relationship.
For the record, I consider "dude" to be gender neutral ;)
- The real question is, am I rude or inconsiderate or diminishing if I don't remember your gender preference and preferred pronoun to put in front of "coffeesp00ns"?
- I'm honestly asking. I have no idea of ooli or War or rd95 or snoodog's gender, and only know Elizabeth's and Lil's because of their names, and know kleinbl00's because I know the guy in person.
IMO, no, you're not being inconsiderate. The nature of online discourse means that gender is generally a lot less relevant unless it is inherently a part of the topic being discussed - which is how it should be IRL as well. If we were in public, however, and I had spoken with you and told you the pronouns I wanted you to use, and presented as female, and you still used "he/him" for me, I'd probably be seriously uncomfortable.
The most important thing to do? If you don't know - ASK. I have never met a trans person who would be more upset by you asking their gender than they would be by you getting their gender wrong. And if you mess it up the second time around, just correct and don't make a big deal - We're way more scared than you are.
I do think it's a good case of due diligence to look up some of the linguistics behind trans stuff, just because It's not really going away any time soon so far as i can see. So, like email and internet and cell phone, it's something we all have to learn. the same thing might become the case if the community and/or english scholars can decide on what gender neutral pronoun to use (probably singular they because our language already sort of supports it - like taking advantage of a weird compatibility in a program).
So here's a basic rundown on some stuff that, if you know, makes wading through conversations
Transgender person - Someone whose gender differs from the one their doctor put on their birth certificate.
Trans(gender) woman - Someone who previously used he/him pronouns who now uses she/her pronouns. That person could have been assigned male by their doctor at birth, or possibly had unclear genitalia at birth and was raised as a male. Regardless, they now will likely be going by female pronouns.
Trans(gender) man - Someone who previously used she/her pronouns who now uses he/him pronouns. That person could have been assigned female by their doctor at birth, or possibly had unclear genitalia at birth and was raised as a female. Regardless, they now will likely be going by male pronouns.
genderqueer - One of many words used to describe people who don't feel strongly as either male or female. An example might be someone who dresses very androgynously and uses they/them pronouns.
Cisgender - Cis is the opposite of the latin Trans - Cisalpine Gaul, for example, meaning the area of Gaul on the Roman side of the Alps, and Trans Atlantic meaning across the Atlantic Ocean. A Cisgender person is someone whose gender is the same as the one the doctor put on their birth certificate. That means that a cisgender man will likely, but not exclusively have XY chromosomes and a cisgender woman will likely, but not exclusively have XX chromosomes. Chromosomes, and genetics, are complicated.
- I gotta wonder if the gendering of anybody is really of material value
I mean, in a perfect world gender wouldn't be a factor in how we talk about each other. Men and women would exist perfectly equally. Trans people would still exist, but their taking of hormones to change their body wouldn't be a social issue, just a private one.
However, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where we put people into boxes because humans like little tidy boxes. Turns out that the world of human gender doesn't fit into our two box system of male and female, or even into some other cultures' Three gender box (though more boxes is likely better). So we are currently at a cultural turning point where we have to deal with trans people again. It's happened before (see the Weimar Republic for a recent example), and our choice has been to sweep trans people under the rug - Hopefully we can prevent that from happening again and start to change the way we look at gender.
Hope some of this helps.
I just bought this killer dress from Killstar, it's prob my fave right now. I also like the stuff I have for my Concert Blacks (what I wear onstage for orchestra) - I have sort of a black cardigan, then a a sleeveless black tunic dress and some leggings. It definitely feels like a "power outfit" for me.
As for being trans in Canada vs. the States, It's very much about where you live. Canada is of course generally more safe because of trans protections,some of which are still being passed through legislation. If I was beaten for being trans it would be considered a hate crime here, unlike in some parts of the US.
Having said that I would feel more comfortably being visibly trans in a Metropolitan American city than I would in small town Saskatchewan or Alberta (no offence Alberta. Full offence, Saskatchewan). Being trans and out can be dangerous everywhere, though, especially if one doesn't "pass" (defined elsewhere). It can be hard to get work, old workplaces can become toxic. There's a reason so many trans women, especially trans women of colour are in sex work - Sometimes it's the only work that will have them. But that means being a person in danger in an even more dangerous line of work (due to laws around sex work but that's a convo for another time) - it can be a deadly way to live. 7 trans women have been reported murdered in America so far this year, all of them women of colour. If I remember correctly, someone worked it out a few years ago as trans women of colour having a 1 in 8 chance of ending up murdered - I couldn't cite a source on that, but considering their percentage of population they certainly do get murdered a lot.
not a dumb question at all, actually.
the truth is that anyone who presents outside of the gender binary has a more difficult time getting work, even counting people who just happen to dress more androgynously. However, Trans people definitely do have a more difficult time finding work, and if you come out in the US in a state where there is "At Will" employment, you may find yourself without work. It happens.
As for my own experience, I can definitely say that I have had difficulty finding work. I am currently in school, but even looking for summer jobs, or work when I was between my previous program and this one (currently doing post-grad work), has been difficult. I live in Canada, which is generally a much more accepting place, and there is still this difficulty, so I can only imagine the difficulty that someone would face in other, less accepting places.
It was nice to read all these comments, so now I do not have questions anymore, thanks.
Do you have an opinion about historical gender bending personna. The male actor, dressed as women during Shakeaspear era, the chevalier d'eon .. Probably a lot more, I dont know about..
In your opinion could it be related to trans (before the era of surgery and medication) or has probably nothing to do with it
Well, I think each case is different, and some are related to transgenderism and some are not. The Elizabethan practice of men playing women's roles has much more to do with English concurrent cultural rules about what women were and were not allowed to do. It can be contrasted with the practice 40 or so years later of women playing "breeches" roles in plays and operas, where lower voiced women would play young men and other maculine roles. In Opera there is some confusion because it's unclear where some roles were for women or for Castrati (men who had been castrated as children to keep their singing voice high and "pure")
You could definitely argue that some of these practices have something to do with western European culture trying to figure out what to do with masculine women and feminine men, I just don't think you can argue that it's the whole purpose, or even the main purpose - just a... side purpose?
Someone like the Chevalier D'Eon is more likely to be related to the concept of intersex people, or people who have both male and female genitalia. They occasionally get lumped in with Trans people, but are really a separate group of people. There are some intersex people who later transition, though - XY or XX people whose genitalia were unclear at birth (either too large or too small of a phallic/clitoral structure) who later on transition to confirm their gender identity and have a phalloplasty or vaginoplasty to repair what doctors may have done to them at birth.
What questions or comments do you hate getting from people about your trans experience?
"Would trans people exist if we didn't have gender as a social structure?" is a big one. It's even been asked here.
It's just such a pointless question that is functionally designed to discredit the trans experience. "Your existence is only a thing because of the way our culture is, and is therefore invalid", is basically what they are trying to say.
It also makes little sense because there are other cultures which have more than two genders (both currently and historically). Basically, humans as a species have been trying to explain trans people for thousands of years, and have mostly been unsuccessful.
Most of the questions that I hate getting are the ones that are leading - people with a little bit of information and a whole lot of opinion who want to tell me how wrong I am for being trans, or want to create a "gotcha" moment. Like, Yes, i did in fact decide to play my life on Hard Mode and decided to be trans - Like, come on, really? I don't have all the answers because science doesn't have all the answers either - no one does so far as we can tell - but that doesn't mean that I can be dismissed because I make your life inconvenient (the plural you, not you specifically).
The question was from a place of ignorance, and was asking for your insight. I am not trying to discredit the trans experience, neither actively nor by "functionally designing" questions.
If you read that sort of malice in me, then I'm not sure what hope there is in us talking over the internet. Like I'm for real confused as to how, in my effort to be respectful when baring my ignorance to you, I piss you off. More than confused, I'm discouraged and upset. I couched my question about gender identity in pointing out how clueless cisgendered jocks are to what grounds their identity. What was leading about my question was me asking you to speak to cisgendered masculinity, something you might not know personally about because you identify differently. I was still just asking your opinion. If you thought it was leading because I was asking you to discredit the trans experience, you have me wholly mistaken.
naw man, If I was pissed off specifically at you, I would have responded directly to you instead of . You just happened to ask a question that does often get asked with malice in the heart. I got where you were coming from, and took your question in the spirit it was asked, which seemed to be a good one to me.
Sorry for assuming you were sneak throwing shade at me. I guess I'll never learn not to ass u me.
you're fine. It was definitely written unclearly. <3
When did I know? It's actually a bit of a complicated question. I think that if I had grown up in a more gendered household, I would have known earlier, but my home was very egalitarian - Everyone did housework, everyone did yard work, everyone did heavy lifting. My sister taught me how to drive stick, my Army brother taught me how to sew on a button.
So for me, it wasn't until I tried to start tackling my depression. I'd been depressed since high school, and at first I thought "well, you're a teenager, of course you're depressed," so I did nothing and just tried to wait it out. But then I did a three year college program, doing what I love (music), and was still depressed. Then I went to university after that college program, and I was still depressed. So I started seeing a therapist irregularly, and got onto some antidepressants.
Here's the thing about antidepressants that most people don't get. Their job isn't to make you happy, or to numb you. their job is to get you to a place where you can deal with your shit. It turned out my "shit" was being trans.
I... didn't want that to be true. So I grew a beard, and tried to be "manly". A few years later, at the end of my bachelor's degree, I had a moment where I realized that I hadn't looked at myself in the mirror in 6 months - This is more difficult than it sounds, the average person at the very least looks in the mirror when they wash their hands. I looked homeless - Shaggy, unkempt. By december of that year, now in my Master's, I had finally convinced myself to talk to a therapist about trans stuff, and I had come out to a few very close friends.
Is this a similar experience? It's one of many different experiences. There are eight million stories in the naked city, as they say. Mine is just one of them. Some say they knew from their first memories, some live in deep denial until their 80s, some transition in their teens, some don't transition at all.
I'm writing a paper for a class I'm taking on masculinity. I'm choosing to explore the topic of biological bases to gender identity. I'm still in the gathering phase of the paper, and I'd be very curious to hear your take on the subject.
I find that amongst some of my more liberal friends, there's an aspiration to see the world in gender-neutral terms. For instance, not assigning gender roles to work, or not ruling out domains of human experience based on gender (athleticism is for guys or fashion is for girls, etc.). This seems sensible to me. Culture, while an enormously powerful determinant of expectations and norms, is somewhat arbitrary.
Yet, there seems to be a lot of benefit to conforming to some of these traditional gender expectations. Obviously there are and have been huge excesses. A lot of men have lost out on the richness of a developed emotional perspective for fear of being called pussies, and a lot of women have been unfairly relegated to positions of inferiority and servility. But people who fall into a more moderate position within traditional gender identities enjoy a large amount of personal security that comes with a grounded identity. I'm thinking of the kids I play college soccer with--smart, from middle-to-upper-middle-class families, a bunch of good-hearted jocks of all races. Now I could be completely projecting, but these kids seem to be possessed with a breezy confidence and self-assuredness that comes not just from their material wealth, but their status as cisgendered men. These kids surely have private anxieties and an inner life that they don't share with random teammates on their club soccer team. But I'm fascinated by such confidence. The same could be said for the cisgender girls I've met in class or out and about, but I've been mostly focused on men because of my class.
This confidence has some (a lot of?) basis in gender conformity. Furthermore, the validity of such gender identities can't be negated away by my liberal friends as mere vestiges of patriarchy. One of the reasons I believe that is because of transgender people. If gender identity were 100% arbitrary social construct, would there be any transgender people?
Sorry for asking such a leading question. 1) I'd like to know your personal reasons, if articulable, on why you feel your true gender identity is closer to that of female rather than your sex assignment of male. 2) Do you know of any good sources that treat the topic of biological bases to gender identity? You'd think there'd be a veritable shit load on the subject, but my head spins at how much of it is politicized nonsense and I have trouble sorting through it. (Though to be fair, since notions of gender identity are as proximate to questions of human flourishing as one can get, it would make sense that people get politicized on the subject.)
- If gender identity were 100% arbitrary social construct, would there be any transgender people?
Absolutely. Being trans has little to do with how other people perceive me, and almost everything to do with how I perceive me. This is why Gender Dysphoria is the description in the DSM, and why the treatment is to have Hormone replacement therapy, and then surgery.
When I look in the mirror, i see things that my brain says are wrong. my facial hair is wrong, my penis is wrong. They are not supposed to be there. It feels chemicals in my body that it says are wrong.
Having Hormone replacement therapy helps, not just because of physical changes, but also because my hormone levels are closer to what a cisgender woman would be. If anything, the physical changes are sort of secondary? they help with the mirror, and they help with people calling me what I'd like to be called, which are both good for the brain. When I've had to be off hormones for extended periods my mental health has been much worse generally, even though the physical changes have not gone away.
I guess a lot of that also goes to help answer your question 1. Basically, when I'm on HRT to change my body and to alter the levels of estrogen and testosterone in my body, I hate myself a whole lot less. I hate my body a lot less, and it's easier to function - It's like having a block lifted out of the way. I can focus on proper diet and exercise, I don't just get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleep, which is what my existence was by the time i finally got into the therapy step before HRT,, then some time later on to HRT.
As for 2.), well, your problem is that you're looking for biological stuff towards Gender, and most gender stuff is brain related, and unrelated to the rest of your biology. In fact, one of the biggest "theories" for why transgender people exist has to do with a testosterone surge in the intrauterine period of development. Basically, XYs get a shot of testosterone which affects their brain in some ways, and XXs don't. except, there may be times when XYs don't get that "shot" of T, or XXs do, or the amount of testosterone in the "shot" is not as much as it should be. All of these cases have the potential to create gender variance inside of XX and XY people.
If you take that hypothesis and throw it at the scientific data, you come up with this: Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus. If you read the abstract, you can see that the opposite is also true, that Female to Male trans people have Male Neuron numbers.
Does that count as a biological basis for gender Identity? I'd like to think so, I guess, but again you have to focus on brain and endocrine science in the literature to get anywhere.
- Being trans has little to do with how other people perceive me, and almost everything to do with how I perceive me. This is why Gender Dysphoria is the description in the DSM, and why the treatment is to have Hormone replacement therapy, and then surgery.
This is interesting to me. I apologize in advance if I ascribe any motive to you that you don't have, as that's not my intention.
When you say that being trans, in your experience, has little to do with others' perceptions but instead your perception, that seems circular to me. How were your conceptions of gender and sex formed if not by social interaction with others?
Thank you for sharing by the way.
- How were your conceptions of gender and sex formed if not by social interaction with others?
One could ask the question another way - How can we form a personal feeling of gender outside of social structure?
One idea is that there is an element of gender that is somehow inherent. A lot of people don't like that, because to them it says that women's and men's brains are "different" and therefore one must be superior - or at least people can start arguing about who is superior. And I get it, it's dangerous - but we already know men's and women's brains are different, and that the brains of trans people are more like the gender they feel they are than their assigned gender.
Makes a crazy kind of sense, and that's what I'm going with since it's backed up by the sources I showed you and that's about as good as I can get without actually studying to be a brain researcher.
- How can we form a personal feeling of gender outside of social structure?
I believe that we can't, since gender is a social construct. Our understanding of gender and what it means to "feel male" or "feel female" does not exist outside of our social context. Most cis people also don't have much of a "personal feeling of gender" since they don't experience dysphoria.
So I don't entirely disagree with you here - what I'm trying to say is that it's more complicated than that. I just replied to neurotransmissions mentioning this, but there are current and historic cultures that have more than two genders. Hardcore historical traditional Jewish culture has... 6 I think (?), not that they really line up with how we think about gender. India broadly has Three cultures including Hijras, though their official government recognition is very new.
Basically what I'm saying is that humans have been trying to describe and decide where to put trans people for a very long time. This is why I have a problem with the question "would trans people exist without gender as a construct", because it misunderstands the purpose of that same construct. Each of these current and historical gender constructs, including our own current one, are just a tool that we are using to try and figure out how we fit into the world. Trans people are often inconvenient because of how we complicate that tool's functioning.
The construct itself is meaningless because we created it to try and describe what we see - It is dependent on us, we are not dependent on it. So, Trans people do exist without the construct of gender, that's why different cultures throughout history have had so many different gender constructs: They're trying to describe everyone, including us.