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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Understanding Transsexuality
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
First some terms: a transgender person is anyone who identifies as a gender than his/her biological sex, or who identifies with an expression of gender that is different than the gender role given by society to his/her biological sex. A transsexual person, for the purposes of my discussion here, is someone who want to transition to a public gender identity that is different than his/her biological sex. This transition is often due to a psychological condition called gender dysphoria (which is not necessarily a disease although it may require treatment), which refers to an intense unhappiness with the discrepancy between one's gender identity, which is believed to be innate and immutable, and one's biological sex. Gender dysphoria is sometimes treated with hormone therapy and/or sex reassignment surgery (of the chest, face, and/or genitals).
My question is, to what extent is gender dysphoria and the desire for hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery caused by rigid social gender norms and social disapproval of nonconventional expressions of gender? What worries me about medical intervention to assist one's gender transition is that it seems to imply that having an unconventional gender identity should be something that causes one psychological distress.
Those people who wish to have hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery often state that they identified as a gender other than their biological sex from a very young age and that not only the gender role imposed on them by society, but their own bodies caused them great distress due to the differences between them and their own identity. Moreover, even children with very tolerant and open minded parents who let them express themselves more or less freely from a young age have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and wished to undergo at least hormone therapy before puberty makes their bodies appear even further from their gender identity. I doubt, though, that any individual family's tolerance can make up for the immense pressures put on all children in subtle ways from birth to conform to certain gender roles. Even if a family gives a child a non-gender specific name, haircut, and fashion style, refuses to call the child by a gender-specific pronoun until the child chooses one, and hides the child's biological sex from everyone else, a child is likely to grow up with a clear sense of who society wants them to be because of their genitals.
My question is: would people's extreme discomfort with their own bodies as part of gender dysphoria exist if children and adults were allowed to express their gender identities freely with no expectations that anyone do or be called anything "male" or "female" based on their bodies? To what extent is medical treatment for gender dysphoria an attempt to cure in the individual what is really a disease of an intolerant society?
I've heard gender dysphoria explained as having a male brain in a female body, or vice versa. Doesn't this completely ignore the possibility that brains or bodies might be something between male and female - or something completely different? Why does everyone have to have a gender identity (ie, a "brain") that is male or female - if someone feels that their brain and body do not match, perhaps that person is androgynous, a third (or fourth, or fifth, etc.) gender, or agendered? If "being in the right body" is so important, does that mean that intersexed people (whose genitals and other sexual characteristics do not fit neatly into being strictly male or female) are more likely to have gender identity problems than those with completely phenotypically male and female bodies?
The medical community agrees that gender dysphoria is real, that it involves distress over one's body - not just one's gender role - and that hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery are appropriate treatments for some people with gender dysphoria. I do not dispute that, nor am I trying to make medical decisions for anyone. I just think that the conversation about transsexuality is oversimplified, and that perhaps some people who undergo hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery may not have needed to do so if society was different. Even if people are much happier after these medical procedures, would they have been even happier if they had not been coerced from birth by society into any feelings about the correctness or deviance of their gender identity and not had any medical alterations to their body at all?
If there is such a thing as a real physiological (ie, in the brain) basis to gender identity (and comfort or distress with it) as distinct from biological sex, how will we ever know it exists and be able to isolate it from the effects of society? All too often, the scientific research I see related to "female brains in male bodies" and the hormones released in the womb that determine what gender brain develops seem like they could apply equally to sexual orientation as to gender identity, and as the LGBT community will tell you a million times, those are completely different things (you can have a Male to Female Transsexual attracted solely to women, for example). So I'm not sure if we really have any scientific evidence yet to really explain where gender dysphoria comes from.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Please be sure not to confuse sex and gender - it is a transgender person, and gender reassignment surgery, not transsexual and sex reassignment/sex change.
Also, not all trans people experience dysphoria and many do not have reassignment surgery. In the UK you can get a gender recognition certificate even if you choose not to have surgery but you must present compelling reasons for not having surgery. Many trans men (assigned female at birth, existing as men) choose to only take hormones, as the transitioning process is usually easier for them (trans women take more hormones) and if they are naturally flat-chested they may not need a mastectomy at all. Genital surgery is more complicated in trans men due to a vulva having less tissue than a penis, and since penises are just bigger clitorises (clitori?) many just take hormones and don't bother with surgery, or just have a mastectomy but no genital surgery.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Also sorry for the double post, but a correction - intersex people do not always have obviously atypical genitalia. Many intersex people (not intersexed people) have a chromosonal difference that is neither XX or XY but genitals that resemble one sex. Sex exists on a spectrum for everyone, not just intersex people - very few people have genitalia exactly like the phenotype for their sex.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
What worries me about medical intervention to assist one's gender transition is that it seems to imply that having an unconventional gender identity should be something that causes one psychological distress.
Should? It doesn't imply any such thing. It implies that in some cases it DOES cause psychological distress.
Doctors aren't out there rounding up patients for surgery and telling people they have to have it. People are asking for surgery. People in fact have to go through a lot of rigorous testing before having surgery, to ensure they are not going to regret it afterwards.
You seem to have taken one path through these issues and assumed it's the path that everyone takes. That's simply not correct.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
But the "one path" I am discussing is the only path that gets any coverage in the media and the only path any kids in school wondering about their gender identity are likely to learn about - if they learn about it at all.
I don't think any doctors are coercing people into taking hormones or having GRS (I actually did a google search to determine whether it was SRS or GRS and followed wikipedia - but since what Jade Constable said makes sense I'll say GRS). However, for many people (and many professionals in schools, prisons, and elsewhere likely to deal with people struggling with issues about their gender identity, there really is only one narrative out there - you are either cis or trans, and if you're trans, there is one "track" of "treatment" and all that needs to be determined is how far down you want/need to go.
But even WITH the great diversity of sex and gender taken into account - absent cultural coercion to conform to gender norms would anyone feel any desire to have a different body because of their gender identity? That is my big question. How do we know that gender dysphoria of the kind that wants a change of one's body is something people are born with? If we do not know that, should the way the media (and even science) talks about gender dysphoria and its treatment be changed?
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
My question is, to what extent is gender dysphoria and the desire for hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery caused by rigid social gender norms and social disapproval of nonconventional expressions of gender?
I suspect not so much. I don't have data, but I do have an anecdote. I am familiar with two small boys, both 6 years of age.
Boy 1 likes pink, sometimes wears his sister's clothes in order to match her, and tends towards cooperative "girly" play with dolls and the like.
Boy 2 has grown his hair long, prefers to wear sparkly dresses and pink barrettes, and currently uses both male and female pronouns to refer to himself. He has recently started dance classes, where he presents as a girl and uses female pronouns (his choice) in order to avoid confusing his classmates.
(Both boys are homeschooled, so neither is subject to the kind of peer pressure that you tend to get in schools.)
Boy 1 does not conform to rigid social norms for his gender, but is unquestionably a boy - he's a boy who likes pink skirts.
Boy 2 may well end up transitioning to female.
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
As usual I am having trouble phrasing exactly what I am asking in the OP.
Why does being a woman require having a female body (for a MTF transsexual who wants hormones and/or surgery) or vice versa? That's what I just don't get. Isn't it mostly about being accepted as a woman (or man, in the other case) by others? If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman. Period. If society stopped associating penises and testicles with manhood and large breasts and vaginas with womanhood, would anyone care what body they have? It's this hatred of one's own body that I do not understand. With all other medical conditions, we are trying to teach people to love their bodies for what they are - unless they are born with something severely debilitating in which case reconstructive surgery can be appropriate. Is being born with whatever underlying condition causes severe gender dysphoria really equivalent to being born with a birth defect that for some requires surgery to remedy? It's just the opposite of everything else that our culture is moving in with regards to sexuality and gender. Why should (some) transsexuals be embracing their "disorder" and "need for treatment" instead of simply embracing who they are - a female in a FEMALE body that is no less female for having a penis, for example.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
As usual I am having trouble phrasing exactly what I am asking in the OP.
Why does being a woman require having a female body (for a MTF transsexual who wants hormones and/or surgery) or vice versa? That's what I just don't get. Isn't it mostly about being accepted as a woman (or man, in the other case) by others? If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman. Period. If society stopped associating penises and testicles with manhood and large breasts and vaginas with womanhood, would anyone care what body they have? It's this hatred of one's own body that I do not understand. With all other medical conditions, we are trying to teach people to love their bodies for what they are - unless they are born with something severely debilitating in which case reconstructive surgery can be appropriate. Is being born with whatever underlying condition causes severe gender dysphoria really equivalent to being born with a birth defect that for some requires surgery to remedy? It's just the opposite of everything else that our culture is moving in with regards to sexuality and gender. Why should (some) transsexuals be embracing their "disorder" and "need for treatment" instead of simply embracing who they are - a female in a FEMALE body that is no less female for having a penis, for example.
Again, it's transgender person, not 'transsexuals'. They are people who are transgender. It is GRS not SRS because it is gender that is changing.
'If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman.'
Um.....that is what happens. ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
That is widely accepted within the trans community, and no body dysphoria or surgery is needed to be a trans person. In the UK at least, you can get a gender recognition certificate without having GRS or having body dysphoria.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
If society stopped associating penises and testicles with manhood and large breasts and vaginas with womanhood, would anyone care what body they have?
It is not making the association, but not allowing for the association to be set aside.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
As usual I am having trouble phrasing exactly what I am asking in the OP.
Why does being a woman require having a female body (for a MTF transsexual who wants hormones and/or surgery) or vice versa? That's what I just don't get. Isn't it mostly about being accepted as a woman (or man, in the other case) by others? If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman. Period. If society stopped associating penises and testicles with manhood and large breasts and vaginas with womanhood, would anyone care what body they have? It's this hatred of one's own body that I do not understand. With all other medical conditions, we are trying to teach people to love their bodies for what they are - unless they are born with something severely debilitating in which case reconstructive surgery can be appropriate. Is being born with whatever underlying condition causes severe gender dysphoria really equivalent to being born with a birth defect that for some requires surgery to remedy? It's just the opposite of everything else that our culture is moving in with regards to sexuality and gender. Why should (some) transsexuals be embracing their "disorder" and "need for treatment" instead of simply embracing who they are - a female in a FEMALE body that is no less female for having a penis, for example.
Again, it's transgender person, not 'transsexuals'. They are people who are transgender. It is GRS not SRS because it is gender that is changing.
'If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman.'
Um.....that is what happens.
That is widely accepted within the trans community, and no body dysphoria or surgery is needed to be a trans person. In the UK at least, you can get a gender recognition certificate without having GRS or having body dysphoria.
Jade Constable:
Ok, transgender persons and gender reassignment surgery.
I am wondering why anyone who IS accepted by society as whatever gender they say they are would want to alter their bodies through hormones or surgery. It seems to imply that there is something wrong with them. I find the very idea of being born in the wrong body troubling. Plenty of FTM and MTF people do not want hormones or only want hormones and not surgery as you say, but why do those who choose these interventions do so? Comfort with oneself in the mirror is all about feeling secure that you can "pass" to others as the identity that you feel is authentic. I don't see how drastic bodily modification to conform with gender norms is healthy.
I'm not a doctor and I can't speak for the experiences of transgender people (but how on earth do I know if I am really cisgender?). So people are free to make their own choices about these things and I support them (and I especially support their right to not be discriminated against in any way). But I do not understand why hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery would be helpful except as a relief from the psychological wounds imposed by an intolerant society and I think that these procedures might in fact be very harmful by reinforcing stereotypes of what men and women "should" be.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Because a disconnect between your real gender and your body is uncomfortable? Because you want to pass as your real gender? Because you want to be able to use the bathroom for your real gender with no questioning? Some trans people not experiencing dysphoria doesn't mean that trans people who do have dysphoria are somehow weak or lacking. People take hormones and have surgery for the same reason anyone does some modification to their body, so they can feel comfortable in their bodies.
Why do you get to be the trans police and decide that it's not OK to go through medically recognised treatment for gender dysphoria? Yes, it's fine to be a woman with a penis, but it's also fine to be a woman without a penis - forcing trans people into not having any kind of GRS or treatment is incredibly harmful. You are not trans, it is not your decision to make and you are not really supporting them if you turn round and say that they're reinforcing unhelpful body/gender norms. It is cisgender people who are doing that. And you know that you are not transgender if your gender matches your sex. You could be genderqueer or genderneutral, but that's for you to decide for yourself.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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infinite_monkey
Shipmate
# 11333
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Posted
Disclaimer: I am cis, ie the body I was born with matches my gender identity.
But I have a growth on one of my elbows--a significant protruding bone tumor that is noticeable to those around me. If I could, I'd have it removed: I find it jarring and unpleasant, alien to the rest of me. Society has given me a fair share of negative feedback about it, but it's not just about what others think and say--at the core of myself, this is simply not a body part that feels 'right' for me to have.
I can't have it removed: I'd very likely lose the use of my wrist if they tried.
But if I could...yeah, I would do.
My assumption is, for people who go the surgical route, that it feels a bit like that--that their experience of a body that just doesn't "line up" is just as authentic and strong as mine is, if not more so.
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His light was lifted just above the Law,
And now we have to live with what we did with what we saw.
--Dar Williams, And a God Descended
Obligatory Blog Flog: www.otherteacher.wordpress.com
Posts: 1423 | From: left coast united states | Registered: Apr 2006
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
It seems to imply that there is something wrong with them. I find the very idea of being born in the wrong body troubling.
What's the alternative? That we're all born in perfect bodies?
We know this isn't true. People are born in bodies that have all sorts of things wrong with them, ranging from the fairly trivial to the deadly serious.
Once you accept that, then I don't see anything especially remarkable about the proposition that a person can be born with a body where the brain is a gender mismatch with the other organs.
There is an argument that can be made that in those situations, it may be the brain that is the odd one out and therefore 'faulty', and perhaps should be fixed. But there are a couple of things to say about that. First, that we can't 'fix' it with current medicine. Second, there is a serious ethical question about whether we should even if we could. If we regard the brain as the primary source of us, of our identity, then is it really appropriate to fiddle with the core of our identity?
One might just as well ask, as more evidence arises of differences in brain structure in homosexual people, whether this knowledge should be used to 'cure' homosexuality. Some conservatives apparently think that it should.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
Jade Constable:
Ok, transgender persons and gender reassignment surgery.
I am wondering why anyone who IS accepted by society as whatever gender they say they are would want to alter their bodies through hormones or surgery.
I also wonder. And you know what? I'm fucking glad I don't know the answer to this. All I know is that they do - and it isn't something you could pay me to have done to myself.
Which means the best thing I can do is accept it, be supportive, and do my best not to contribute to problems that lead to them needing such extreme measures. And I'm aware that people are different - meaning that what's needed by one person is different from another, and different people will need different solutions.
quote:
But I do not understand why hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery would be helpful except as a relief from the psychological wounds imposed by an intolerant society and I think that these procedures might in fact be very harmful by reinforcing stereotypes of what men and women "should" be.
Again, I don't understand it either. But I don't need to. I just need to accept that it is.
Now it's possible that a society that was much more gender fluid wouldn't have such problems. It would certainly, in my opinion, be a better society (ceteris paribus). And I suspect there would be fewer transgender people in one. But fewer is not the same as none.
This is all theoretical - and even if I believed as you seem to, the absolute last thing I would do is condemn those most obviously and deeply hurt by gender stereotypes to the point of needing surgery for reinforcing those stereotypes by having the surgery. Such is tantamount to victim blaming.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If we regard the brain as the primary source of us, of our identity, then is it really appropriate to fiddle with the core of our identity?
People try to change themselves all the time. There are entire sections of bookshops devoted to "self-help" type books that claim to help you re-pattern your brain to make you better at things that you want to be better at - better memory, more confidence and so on, or to eliminate addictions that you have.
Assuming that medical science were up to it, I don't see why a person asking for help to switch his sexual orientation from gay to straight, or vice versa, should be any different than a person asking for larger breasts, say.
We allow people to have breast implants without making some global value judgement about small breasts. It should be possible (although I'll grant difficult in the current climate) to allow people to modify their sexuality, or to modify their brain from transgender to cisgender, assuming that some hypothetical future medical science was capable of this, and that that was what the person wanted, without making a global value judgement about homosexuality or transgender.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
We allow people to have breast implants without making some global value judgement about small breasts.
Um, no, but it's the other way around. As a woman I experience the judgementalism about breast size, small breasts are likely to be seen as lacking and unfeminine as there is an expectation that women have big breasts à la Lara Croft in Tombraider, hence the perceived need for breast implants.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Fineline
Shipmate
# 12143
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I am wondering why anyone who IS accepted by society as whatever gender they say they are would want to alter their bodies through hormones or surgery. It seems to imply that there is something wrong with them.
There is more to having a fulfilled life than being accepted by society. You also need to be yourself.
There is something wrong in gender dysphoria - the person has the wrong body for their gender. It's not something I understand personally, as I seem not to have a gender identity - the fact that I have a female body means nothing to me, and if anyone ever thinks I'm a bloke, I'm fine with that. But from what I understand, this is quite unusual - most people have an inherent gender identity, and most people are lucky enough for it to match their physical gender.
I know a female to male trans person, and he really hates his breasts - they seem alien to him and not part of who he is. It's nothing to do with society - it's about him as a person, needing to be himself. So he is saving up money to get them removed. I don't understand that feeling, but I do understand the importance of being oneself, being free to be who you are, rather than simply do all the right things to conform to society's approval. Being accepted for being something you're not is not very fulfilling.
Posts: 2375 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2006
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Fineline
Shipmate
# 12143
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Please be sure not to confuse sex and gender - it is a transgender person, and gender reassignment surgery, not transsexual and sex reassignment/sex change.
Is the sex v. gender terminology also used in the UK now? This used to be the American terminology, while Brits have used 'biological gender' v. 'gender identity'. It would be handy if we all had the same terminology.
Posts: 2375 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
We allow people to have breast implants without making some global value judgement about small breasts.
This, as CK points out, is the opposite of reality. I am shocked you put this forth.
Breast augmentation far exceeds any other cosmetic surgery precisely because there is a value judgement about small breasts.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
We allow people to have breast implants without making some global value judgement about small breasts.
This, as CK points out, is the opposite of reality. I am shocked you put this forth.
Breast augmentation far exceeds any other cosmetic surgery precisely because there is a value judgement about small breasts.
Value judgement, or aesthetic judgement? Maybe I wasn't clear enough.
I agree that the standard western cultural ideas about female attractiveness include moderate-to-large breasts. I'd agree that women who have breast enlargements, whether they intend to make themselves more attractive to men, make themselves feel sexier, give them more confidence, or whatever other reason, are trying to make their bodies a closer match to this cultural template.
I don't think this is the same as saying that small breasts are wrong. Less attractive, by average cultural standards? Sure (and let's not get distracted by individual preferences...), but nobody is claiming that it is wrong to have small breasts.
Similarly, society, on average, finds a man with a muscled chest and a penis more attractive than a woman with a muscled chest and a penis.
If someone who identifies as a woman, with a muscled chest and penis, chooses to have medical treatment to make her body more closely resemble the cultural female beauty template, or chooses to have treatment (if any existed) that would make her identify as a man (and the body she has is already a good match for the male beauty template) then certainly this is influenced by cultural ideas of male and female attractiveness, but I don't think it's necessary for this to imply that being a woman with muscles and a penis is wrong.
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
Andrew Sullivan has written a blog post on this subject. Some of you might find this interesting.
quote:
The Linked article:
And the elaborate and neurotic fixation on language – will writing “transgender” rather than “transgendered” reveal my inner bigot? – is now so neurotic even RuPaul has been cast aside as politically incorrect.
Ah yes. Whining about political correctness from a conservative commentator. Which is simply a way of saying "I don't like the idea that I should bother being polite". Everyone puts their foot in it at times - but Ru Paul chose to double down. And has a long track record of this.
And for the rest:
quote:
Andrew Sullivan's own views:
Kevin Williamson notes how Laverne Cox, appearing as a trans person on the cover of Time, nonetheless refused to answer a question about whether she had had her genitals reassigned as too “invasive.” Sorry, Laverne. But if you’re out there explaining yourself, you’ve gotta explain all of it.
Andrew Sullivan, as a gay man in the media, do you take it up the arse or are you a fudge-packer? What do you do with your genitals? Sorry, Andrew. But if you're out there explaining yourself, you've gotta explain all of it.
It's exactly the same chain of logic. But for some reason I think you'd find that question unacceptable. And I'd agree with you.
So, as we've established, Andrew Sullivan doesn't know all the issues involved and misrepresents others while including double standards. That said, credit where it's due the following appears right on the nail.
quote:
Andrew Sullivan again - this time (unliss I've missed something) saying something good:
But Williamson is just as wrong in his brutal, even callous, denunciation of transgender people as acting out “delusions”. And he’s wrong not because he politically incorrect, but because he’s empirically off-base. He too is creating his own reality. For Williamson, it seems, you can only have one sex and it is dictated by your genitals. End of story. Naturally, he doesn’t address the question of what biological sex is when you are born with indeterminate genitals that are not self-evidently male or female. The intersex are a small minority – from 0.1 to 1.7 percent, depending on your definition – but in a country of 300 million, that adds up. And the experience of those people – especially those have been genitally mutilated to appear as one sex, while feeling themselves to be the other – is a vital part of understanding what gender and sex are.
Kevin may not like this – but it’s complicated.
We can see crucial differences between male and female brains, for example, and they do not always correspond to male and female genitals. Since by far the most important sexual organ is the brain, the possibilities of ambiguity are legion. And this is not a matter of pomo language games. The experience of a conflict between self-understood gender and assigned gender is real, and a source of great anguish. That human anguish is what we should seek to mitigate, it seems to me, rather than compound as Williamson does.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
I don't think this is the same as saying that small breasts are wrong. Less attractive, by average cultural standards? Sure (and let's not get distracted by individual preferences...), but nobody is claiming that it is wrong to have small breasts.
But two women from different cultures and continents and from different age groups have told you that that is their experience. It does seem a bit strong a man telling women that their experience of being a woman is incorrect.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Qoheleth.
Semi-Sagacious One
# 9265
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Posted
Rachel Mann speaks of her experience, now a Minor Canon of Manchester Cathedral.
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The Benedictine Community at Alton Abbey offers a friendly, personal service for the exclusive supply of Rosa Mystica incense.
Posts: 2532 | From: the radiator of life | Registered: Apr 2005
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But two women from different cultures and continents and from different age groups have told you that that is their experience. It does seem a bit strong a man telling women that their experience of being a woman is incorrect.
Your experience is that women with small breasts are seen as not female? That wasn't what you said earlier. If that is indeed your experience, I'm not going to deny it, but I find it surprising.
To my mind, unfeminine, unattractive, and so on are judgements of aesthetics (and I agree that there's a widespread male perception of non-physical Lara Croft or Katie Price breasts as being "normal").
I'd say that women with small breasts were viewed as less feminine, not less female, and that that is a judgement of aesthetics.
But I won't argue with your experience. If your experience is that women with smaller breasts are viewed as less of a person, rather than a less attractive person, then I will declare myself surprised, accept it and move on. Clearly I have no personal experience of being told that my breasts are too small.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
<total tangent continuing>I didn't say less of a person, but certainly less of a woman. I've heard teenage girls taunted as being asexual or lesbian if they have small breasts not seen as women as per all the other threads that are running on rape culture.
As an anecdote - it's easier to find 28G and 28H bra sizes than it is to find 28D. Normally 28 bras appear in 28AA, 28A and maybe 28B, you have go to specialist shops to find 28C and 28D, let alone 28DD / 28E, but breast augmentation means that enough women have had their breasts enhanced to 28G and 28H sizes that more of those bras are made.
My daughter is a 28E and I am a 34E naturally and we both get told we don't have proper boobs now (This wasn't true when I was younger when breast augmentation was exceptional not, as it is now, a not unusual 16th birthday present for teenage girls.) <end of tangent>
[ 07. June 2014, 22:08: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Please be sure not to confuse sex and gender - it is a transgender person, and gender reassignment surgery, not transsexual and sex reassignment/sex change.
Is the sex v. gender terminology also used in the UK now? This used to be the American terminology, while Brits have used 'biological gender' v. 'gender identity'. It would be handy if we all had the same terminology.
Well given that 'biological gender' is nonsense, the medical profession in the UK (generally) uses sex v gender.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
As I said in my OP, I can't and shouldn't make medical decisions for anyone. If anyone feels like they should take hormones or have gender reassignment surgery, that's between them and their doctor. I'm not talking about the micro level of individual people doing what they need to do to live authentic lives - I'm talking about the macro level of a society where anyone feels pressure to "pass" as anything.
As for one of the tangents - I don't think therapy intended to make a gay person stop feeling attraction for the same sex and develop attraction for the opposite sex - if you can even call that therapy - is comparable to gender reassignment. First of all, such therapy doesn't work at changing people's attractions - all it can do is help gay people to avoid sexual contact with the same sex - and different celibate religious and non-religious groups have been practicing avoiding sex for thousands of years, so that's really a lifestyle choice (no sex, or at least no sex with people you are attracted to) rather than any change in sexual orientation. People with gender dysphoria that want gender reassignment feel uncomfortable in their bodies regardless of any issue of the morality of any sexual relationship they may or may not be in. Although the Iranian theocracy may be cool with gender reassignment, they've veered away from traditional Shi'ite Islam in various other ways that have been convenient to their maintenance of power, and aside from that (and Pat Robertson), it's not very common for religious conservatives to think that female brains in male bodies is a possible thing (and when they do, they confuse sexual orientation with gender identity, which is typical).
Going back to my OP, I think that any concept we have of what constitutes a "female brain" or a "male brain" is a gross oversimplification (and exaggeration) of the biological reality, and is impossible to separate from cultural notions of how men and women are supposed to think.
Furthermore, I don't think we really have any idea of what causes people with gender dysphoria to feel that the bodies they are born with are not who they really are (focusing on the body parts, not anything to do with behavior). Any studies that have looked at hormonal exposure in the womb or in brain scans of adults don't seem to be able to show how the "femaleness" of gay male brains is different from the femaleness of MTF transgender brains (and therefore have no explanation whatsoever for MTF transgender people who are attracted to women).
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Stonespring - there was a point to my tangent: if heterosexual women feel the need to enhance their bodies to make themselves acceptable, and those enhancements include genitals, breasts, noses, faces, then surely you can see why men transitioning might feel the need too?
And if you look in Hell we've been having some of these discussions about male and female brains, and because life is too short I'm quoting what I said there:
quote:
The problem with looking at brain differences is that:
quote:
At first glance, studies of the brain seem to offer a way out of this age-old nature/nurture dilemma. Any difference in the structure or activation of male and female brains is indisputably biological. However, the assumption that such differences are also innate or “hardwired” is invalid, given all we’ve learned about the plasticity, or malleability of the brain. Simply put, experiences change our brains.
Scientific American article from 2009
That's the problem with all gender studies - what makes the difference, conforming to expectations or hard-wired differences?
But there's a whole lot more where that one came from.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
And you know that you are not transgender if your gender matches your sex. You could be genderqueer or genderneutral, but that's for you to decide for yourself.
What is my gender? I have no idea, and I don't particularly care. I answer "male" on forms because that is what other people have told me that I am more than anything else. But being genderqueer or genderneutral - if that is a matter of gender identity - is that a decision? A "choice"? That bogeyman of the the LGBT movement? There is the choice to come out, a choice to accept within oneself who one really is - but there isn't any choice to be that or not be that. Or are genderqueer and genderneutral different than transgender (or sexual orientation, for that matter) in the element of choice involved?
I am not only asking this in order to question your assertion of my cisgender privilege. I'm actually curious, because LGBTQAIQGPP discourse often does mention a "choice of being" once you get to the latter initials, no matter how much the former initials scream that they were born that way and never made a choice.
Going back to privilege, if I'm not even sure that I am cisgender, is it fair to call me privileged? Does the definition of transgender mean that a person has to be unhappy with some obstacle, biological or cultural, to their expression of their authentic gender? Or does transgender just mean that a person's gender does not match cultural expectations of what the gender of their bodies should be? Because whatever my gender is, I can think of tons of ways that it does not match cultural expectations about what my body's gender should be. So is my privilege defined by how psychologically troubled I am by that? This is why the T in LGBT... differs from all the other initials (as far as I am aware) in that it seems to be defined by suffering and/or a clinical, patient status.
The only definition of transgender that I can think of that does not have the connotation of "disorder" is by simply saying that transgender people (and genderqueer and genderneutral people) have a heightened awareness of (and preoccupation with) their gender and its difference from cultural expectations of what their gender should be based on their bodies. It is unfair to call everyone else cisgender and privileged just because they do not have this heightened awareness and preoccupation. If someone runs around saying how much their gender matches their genitals then fine, call that person cisgender and privileged. But as for the rest of us who are comfortable with the gender question mark hanging over our heads (and that includes being unsure even if our gender is ambiguous or absent), is it fair to label us as cisgendered or to criticize our discourse as coming from a place of privilege?
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
As for one of the tangents - I don't think therapy intended to make a gay person stop feeling attraction for the same sex and develop attraction for the opposite sex - if you can even call that therapy - is comparable to gender reassignment. First of all, such therapy doesn't work at changing people's attractions - all it can do is help gay people to avoid sexual contact with the same sex - and different celibate religious and non-religious groups have been practicing avoiding sex for thousands of years, so that's really a lifestyle choice (no sex, or at least no sex with people you are attracted to) rather than any change in sexual orientation.
I think you've completely misunderstood the nature of the tangent.
I wasn't talking about what happens now. I was talking about what would happen if science advances to the point of understanding the differences between homosexual and heterosexual brains such as to be able to physically change a homosexual brain into a heterosexual one.
Gender reassignment surgery happens in part because it is possible to switch the body to match the brain, but it is not possible to switch the brain to match the body.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
[QUOTE]Gender reassignment surgery happens in part because it is possible to switch the body to match the brain, but it is not possible to switch the brain to match the body.
The switching is only available up to a point at this stage of technology. A transgender male-to-female cannot ovulate, conceive or give birth; the reverse is not possible either. Nor is it yet possible to change the genetic make-up of the person. They remain the XX or XY they they probably were beforehand. I say probably because there is a group which has a more complex genetic structure, and also acknowledge that there is another group of those born with mixed genitalia and reproductive organs.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
^ I agree entirely.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
As for one of the tangents - I don't think therapy intended to make a gay person stop feeling attraction for the same sex and develop attraction for the opposite sex - if you can even call that therapy - is comparable to gender reassignment. First of all, such therapy doesn't work at changing people's attractions - all it can do is help gay people to avoid sexual contact with the same sex - and different celibate religious and non-religious groups have been practicing avoiding sex for thousands of years, so that's really a lifestyle choice (no sex, or at least no sex with people you are attracted to) rather than any change in sexual orientation.
I think you've completely misunderstood the nature of the tangent.
I wasn't talking about what happens now. I was talking about what would happen if science advances to the point of understanding the differences between homosexual and heterosexual brains such as to be able to physically change a homosexual brain into a heterosexual one.
Gender reassignment surgery happens in part because it is possible to switch the body to match the brain, but it is not possible to switch the brain to match the body.
I was referring to Leorning Cniht's tangent, not yours, orfeo. Sorry for the confusion.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I was referring to Leorning Cniht's tangent, not yours, orfeo. Sorry for the confusion.
It was the same tangent. Orfeo and I were both discussing the consequences of a hypothetical medical treatment that would be able to realign the trans brain to match the body it was in, or indeed to convert a homosexual brain to a heterosexual brain.
None of this has anything to do with "ex-Gay" aversion therapy or anything similar.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I was referring to Leorning Cniht's tangent, not yours, orfeo. Sorry for the confusion.
It was the same tangent. Orfeo and I were both discussing the consequences of a hypothetical medical treatment that would be able to realign the trans brain to match the body it was in, or indeed to convert a homosexual brain to a heterosexual brain.
None of this has anything to do with "ex-Gay" aversion therapy or anything similar.
Ok. But the idea of directly changing a person's neural connections seems just like another means of attaining the same end sought by any form of "talk" therapy aimed at changing a gay person's attractions or at changing a transgender person's gender identity. So I agree that it's a very morally problematic thing that probably would be unwise to pursue - if it could ever be possible in the first place. And if talk therapy of this type is immoral, even though I am totally supportive of anyone
I don't really believe that there is such a thing as a stable sexual orientation or gender that anyone has - everyone should just fuck everyone and no one and be every and no gender at once.
All of which goes back to the discussion of privilege. Am I a privileged spoiled enemy of the revolution in countless ways? Of course. I am phenotypically white even ancestrally I am not white enough to have been forced to use "colored" facilities in the segregated South, I'm phenotypically male enough to not have to worry about quite a few glass ceilings, I come from the oppressor class of the oppressor superpower, I speak English with a generic non-ethnic, non-regional accent, and as heretical as I may be, I'm unoffended enough by participation in Christian culture that it counts as another form of privilege. If I am privileged when it comes to gender identity, it is also in this sense of "not being offended enough" with conformity to the hegemonic norm. I don't really identify as cisgender. As a child I HATED it when people started calling me a man and wanted to remain a "boy" as long as possible because I thought that men were brutal terrible things. I tried as hard as I could to hide any sign of puberty when it happened very early in me and did not admit to my dad that I shaved even my face (no matter how many times he asked me) until I was well into adulthood. Talking to my dad about shaving my face seemed like being Sansa Stark and having Joffrey find out that I had had my period. Ok, TMI. These may or not be strictly "gender" issues but I still hate being called a man even though I go along with it just to make communication easy.
So I guess I am a privileged cisgender oppressor. And I reiterate that anyone who wants or needs to undergo medical gender reassignment has my support. I still think, though, that it is not bigoted of me to have apprehensions about the very idea of gender reassignment. If I could snap my fingers and have a female or male body whenever I wanted, I would do it. Now. I agree with you that any medical intervention to make my "brain" male or female is a bad idea. (I still don't get this dualism about brain and body coming from so many people in the supposedly materialistic scientific community, but anyway.) But the instruments we have now are pretty blunt and our understanding of why using these instruments is necessary (even if I admit that it's not my job to say when they are necessary and when they are not) is frighteningly limited.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I don't really believe that there is such a thing as a stable sexual orientation or gender that anyone has - everyone should just fuck everyone and no one and be every and no gender at once.
Then you are denying the real life experience of the vast majority of humankind.
This comes back to another recent thread of yours, where you seemed troubled at the fact that you were gay and somehow didn't feel sexually attracted to women, and somehow thought you 'ought' to be attracted to them.
I refer you to my comments there. It's fundamentally wrong, in my view, to think that sexual attraction is an area where equality is morally required. It's just as erroneous as thinking that I have to like all ice cream flavours equally to avoid 'discriminating' against one of them.
[ 10. June 2014, 03:15: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Why should i be an equal opportunity fucker? For that matter, why should everybody else be obliged to endure me? It's not as if fucking me were such an unmitigated blessing that i have a moral duty to allow everyone to partake. And missing out on this dazzling experience hardly qualifies as oppression, gender-based or otherwise.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I don't really believe that there is such a thing as a stable sexual orientation or gender that anyone has - everyone should just fuck everyone and no one and be every and no gender at once.
Yeah, I am just not getting your issues here.
Once again, the problem is not that there are different preferences, but in the values we assign to them.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Why do we associate penes with men and vaginas with women? Well, there's this little thing called sexual reproduction. The association is more than just cultural -- it's not like associating pink with girls and blue with boys. Women with penes and men with vaginas are, in fact, out of the ordinary, and will presumably remain so while we remain a sexually reproducing species.
I am not saying anything about the morality of any of this; that's far above my pay grade. My moral choice is to accept people as they are and love them as best I can, however they present, and whatever they feel or claim themselves to be. God give me the strength to do so.
But I am saying, as God said to Bishop Berkeley in the famous limerick, "Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd."
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
Why does being a woman require having a female body (for a MTF transsexual who wants hormones and/or surgery) or vice versa? That's what I just don't get. Isn't it mostly about being accepted as a woman (or man, in the other case) by others? If someone says they are a woman, regardless of what body they have, they should be treated by everyone as a woman. Period. If society stopped associating penises and testicles with manhood and large breasts and vaginas with womanhood, would anyone care what body they have?
You may have to find somebody who fits this description, and ask them.
quote:
But being genderqueer or genderneutral - if that is a matter of gender identity - is that a decision? A "choice"? That bogeyman of the the LGBT movement?
Is LGBT a movement? I thought it referred to a group of people whose sexual/gender/sexuality identities were different from the "norm" of heteronormative society. Not being LGBTQ myself, I don't claim to know everything there is to know. But I would appreciate some help understanding what the "movement" is that you're referring to?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Macrina
Shipmate
# 8807
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Posted
The thing is, cisgendered people do not often stop to really think what life is really like for transgender people on a daily basis.
Imagine if you woke up one day and you were in the body of the opposite gender. (Woohoo say some folk when you ask them this) But no one seems to notice the change, you kind of hope it will resolve but this continues and you are concerned, so you try to explain to someone close to you that you trust and they brush it off, tell you that this body is your body and of course you match it, why wouldn't you? I mean, isn't it some sort of weird sexual perversion to want to be the opposite sex?
But you know you don't match, something is really off and you KNOW it right in your core. You go about your day to day life as best you can but it's hard, you walk into the wrong bathroom completely on autopilot and are met with a barrage of abuse, called a pervert and threatened with violence. So you decide to calm down, have a coffee somewhere and overhear a gaggle of teenagers loudly discussing what genitals you might have.
The months roll on and you've tried to adapt as best you can, to present your true gender as best you can to avoid confrontation and to feel a bit more at home in your own body. But people still smirk at you when you're buying clothes, you had to argue with the GP the other day that you're not depressed or anxious that you really do feel ill and you'd quite like some tests to make sure it's nothing physical. Fighting each and every day to get through is exhausting, so you withdraw and stop trying to interact with a world that just doesn't see you.
This body is like a horrible oppressive mask forcing you to play a part in everyone else's play that you know you shouldn't play. And then one day someone tells you that they know a surgery that can help give you your own identity and make it a little easier for the world to finally see you as you truly are. Would you take that?
Posts: 535 | From: Christchurch, New Zealand | Registered: Nov 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Once again, the problem is not that there are different preferences, but in the values we assign to them.
Bingo.
The reality is that cis-gendered heterosexual people represent the majority. That's precisely why they've become the 'norm' from which deviation was seen to be a problem.
The proposition that being something other than cis-gendered and heterosexual should be perfectly okay does not alter the fact that most people, still, will be cis-gendered and heterosexual.
If we move towards the position that people should be free to be whoever they want to be/feel themselves to be, then it's vital that this means that people are free to be cis-gendered and heterosexual, instead of having some radical person standing there shouting "NO! You have to REBEL! You mustn't conform!"
Otherwise it's rather like all those radical homosexual folk who are outraged at the fact that some homosexual folk want to marry, settle down and have kids.
Giving people permission to be unusual is fundamentally different from suggesting that everybody ought to be different from the current status quo.
On a personal note, I spent years and year coming to terms with and accepting the fact that I am a homosexual cis-gendered man. I know myself, now. I'm not about to become bisexual and gender-fluid just because someone tells me they think THAT'S somehow preferable. Listening to other people's ideas about what was preferable is what held me back from acknowledging I'm a homosexual cis-gendered man to begin with!
[ 10. June 2014, 07:20: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
I always give a bit of a side-eye to any argument that is about what people "should" feel. It seems backwards to me to say "why should they feel this way? What is gender anyway?" as though you start with a concept of what gender is and how it works, squishing people into that concept and telling them that their feelings are wrong if they don't fit. This applies equally to the kind of binary gender essentialism that you tend to get from conservative religious people, and the "gender doesn't matter! Who needs labels! Let's all be human" stuff that you can get from others.
Perhaps this is part of the human tendency to go with the idea that "I don't intuitively understand it so it must not be real". Why would someone feel so strongly that they need to change their body that they go through painful surgery, spend all their savings and risk rejection from family, friends and society? Even if it doesn't make sense to you (general you) personally, the fact is that people DO. And they come out of this situation feeling better about themselves than they did before, in spite of everything. We know this, because these people exist and they say that this is what has happened. So start with that fact and work out your understanding of gender from there.
For my part, I find it much easier to understand the experience of someone who is binary trans than genderqueer or agender. I have a pretty strong sense of being a woman, so I have a vague idea that it would be distressing to me if my body didn't match up with what my brain was telling me there (I'm cisgender, so it does in fact match up nicely). That makes more intuitive sense to me than someone who doesn't fit into a binary sense of male or female and for a while I was a bit snippy about "genderqueer special snowflakes", but then I came back to what I've said here. These people exist, they're telling people how they feel and it's a certain kind of asshattery to insist that my little world of concepts inside my head trumps the lived experience of others. Listen to what people say and THEN form concepts of how things work.
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Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous God that Desert Bluffs has. - Welcome to Night Vale
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
I'm not convinced that there is any material basis to gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation whatsoever. I think we confuse our genes and bodies with a psychological "reality" that is only real because it is felt, but not because it actually exists in our bodies (or in some inherent and immutable aspect of our brains). Every time that anyone, cis or trans, says that they are male or female, I think that they are committing a crime against God. But I'm fucked up like that.
Posts: 1537 | Registered: Mar 2010
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stonespring
Shipmate
# 15530
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Why should i be an equal opportunity fucker? For that matter, why should everybody else be obliged to endure me? It's not as if fucking me were such an unmitigated blessing that i have a moral duty to allow everyone to partake. And missing out on this dazzling experience hardly qualifies as oppression, gender-based or otherwise.
But the very notion that anyone would want to not have sex with anyone specific is what I believe is evil. If you are asexual, fine. But if you have any smidgen of sexuality in you, it should be for everything that moves (and everything that doesn't move, too). The only reason that pedophilia, bestiality, incest, etc., are wrong is consent. Other than that, all sex is the most natural thing in the world. I spent my whole childhood praying that some adult would come and sexually use me. And it never happened. And here I am with so may psychiatric symptoms that seem to only appear with people who were molested as children, and I don't even have the privilege of having actually been molested! My mom got that privilege. Repeatedly from her uncle. And she still can't forgive her mother for doing nothing about it. And so she raised me to be the fucked up person I am. But she didn't have the common courtesy to rape me and that pisses me off.
Everyone must fuck everyone or else God will cry.
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Amorya
Ship's tame galoot
# 2652
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I am wondering why anyone who IS accepted by society as whatever gender they say they are would want to alter their bodies through hormones or surgery. It seems to imply that there is something wrong with them. I find the very idea of being born in the wrong body troubling. Plenty of FTM and MTF people do not want hormones or only want hormones and not surgery as you say, but why do those who choose these interventions do so? Comfort with oneself in the mirror is all about feeling secure that you can "pass" to others as the identity that you feel is authentic. I don't see how drastic bodily modification to conform with gender norms is healthy.
It's a hard question to answer, because society has a nasty habit of not accepting trans people as being their true gender. I'm one of the lucky ones — the worst I've had is verbal abuse, being put in a separate room on a university trip because I might distress the other students, that kind of thing. All the things related to transition — a new birth certificate and passport, the various anti-descrimination laws, and yes, the physical changes — are so I can look someone in the eye and say "I am a woman", and they won't have any ammo to disagree with me.
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
It is unfair to call everyone else cisgender and privileged just because they do not have this heightened awareness and preoccupation. If someone runs around saying how much their gender matches their genitals then fine, call that person cisgender and privileged. But as for the rest of us who are comfortable with the gender question mark hanging over our heads (and that includes being unsure even if our gender is ambiguous or absent), is it fair to label us as cisgendered or to criticize our discourse as coming from a place of privilege?
Cisgender is not a pejorative term, merely a descriptive one. If you have no gender incongruity, i.e. you feel that your actual gender matches how your body looked at birth, you're cis.
Regarding privilege, it's a term that refers to the advantages that someone enjoys often without even considering them. Cis privilege includes things like being able to walk into a public toilet without anybody screaming. Things like having a credit history. Things like not having your bank tell you you've failed security check over the phone because they think your voice sounds wrong for the name they have on file. Things like not having to work out a subtle way of telling someone they're using the wrong pronoun.
Trans encompasses lots of things. As well as transgender people, there are genderqueer people, agender people, and doubtless many others. I wouldn't refer to people in these groups as cisgender.
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I'm not convinced that there is any material basis to gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation whatsoever. I think we confuse our genes and bodies with a psychological "reality" that is only real because it is felt, but not because it actually exists in our bodies (or in some inherent and immutable aspect of our brains). Every time that anyone, cis or trans, says that they are male or female, I think that they are committing a crime against God. But I'm fucked up like that.
“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Posts: 2383 | From: Coventry | Registered: Apr 2002
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
I'm not convinced that there is any material basis to gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation whatsoever. I think we confuse our genes and bodies with a psychological "reality" that is only real because it is felt, but not because it actually exists in our bodies (or in some inherent and immutable aspect of our brains). Every time that anyone, cis or trans, says that they are male or female, I think that they are committing a crime against God. But I'm fucked up like that.
Just because something is found in feelings rather than in something obviously physical (and let's not forget that feelings are, ultimately, the result of electrical impulses in the brain, so are physical in that sense) doesn't make it not real. This applies to many things: love, fear, anger - that we accept as real even though they're "just" feelings. In many ways, feelings are a better thing to take as a basis for how the world should be, because when you're thinking about feelings you are actually taking note of something that makes a difference to someone, somewhere.
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Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous God that Desert Bluffs has. - Welcome to Night Vale
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
But the very notion that anyone would want to not have sex with anyone specific is what I believe is evil. If you are asexual, fine. But if you have any smidgen of sexuality in you, it should be for everything that moves (and everything that doesn't move, too). The only reason that pedophilia, bestiality, incest, etc., are wrong is consent. Other than that, all sex is the most natural thing in the world.
With the greatest respect, that is a completely absurd position.
You've just turned sexual arousal into an abstract, undirected urge. "I don't care what I have sex with, I just want to have (consensual) sex".
On what basis do you suggest that having sexual preferences is evil? Again, I have to ask: have you become so indoctrinated with anti-discrimination ideas, in the abstract, that you think that ALL discrimination is wrong?
[ 10. June 2014, 14:01: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Why should i be an equal opportunity fucker? For that matter, why should everybody else be obliged to endure me? It's not as if fucking me were such an unmitigated blessing that i have a moral duty to allow everyone to partake. And missing out on this dazzling experience hardly qualifies as oppression, gender-based or otherwise.
But the very notion that anyone would want to not have sex with anyone specific is what I believe is evil. If you are asexual, fine. But if you have any smidgen of sexuality in you, it should be for everything that moves (and everything that doesn't move, too). The only reason that pedophilia, bestiality, incest, etc., are wrong is consent. Other than that, all sex is the most natural thing in the world. I spent my whole childhood praying that some adult would come and sexually use me. And it never happened. And here I am with so may psychiatric symptoms that seem to only appear with people who were molested as children, and I don't even have the privilege of having actually been molested! My mom got that privilege. Repeatedly from her uncle. And she still can't forgive her mother for doing nothing about it. And so she raised me to be the fucked up person I am. But she didn't have the common courtesy to rape me and that pisses me off.
Everyone must fuck everyone or else God will cry.
Okay, NOW I'm worried about you. You're getting care, right?
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by stonespring:
But the very notion that anyone would want to not have sex with anyone specific is what I believe is evil. If you are asexual, fine. But if you have any smidgen of sexuality in you, it should be for everything that moves (and everything that doesn't move, too).
Why? Based on what? Your feelings? Why do you make your feelings the basis of what you think the rest of the human race should be like? That's exactly what homophobes do when they assign to their "ick" response to LGBTQ people the status of eternal moral law. This is no better, and no more enlightened.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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