Imagine ....

[Asche]

Lately, I've been hearing the John Lennon song "Imagine" with a different first line:

Imagine there's no gender

Not being a lyricist or a poet, I haven't continued it in verse, but the thought in my mind was:

What if we (our society) didn't pigeonhole people as "male" and "female"?

What if what a person had between their legs was considered about as relevant to how they were treated or what was expected of them as, say, their eye color, or their height, or how fast they could throw a baseball?  So that saying "vagina-bearers aren't cut out to be CEOs" (or nurses, or whatever) would seem as nonsensical as saying "green-eyed people aren't cut out to be CEOs".

What if there weren't whole categories of clothing, or mannerisms, or interests, or emotions, or personalities, or abilities which were forbidden (or compulsory) to half the human race?

What if people could call themselves "man" or "woman" or anything else, and people would just kind of go, "okay, if it makes you happy, go for it."?  And SRS and FFS (is there such a thing as FMS?) were seen as sort of cosmetic surgery, like a nose job or a boob job: a non-trivial medical procedure you'd undergo if you were convinced it would improve your life.  And if you did it, the people in your life wouldn't suddenly treat you like you were a whole different person?  (Of course, your medical insurance still might not pay for it )

[Add to this as you feel moved.]

In such a world, to what extent would there be what we think of as transgender-ness?

Would there be a need for what we call "transition" if each and any of the pieces of what in our society we think of as "living as a woman" or "living as a man" were considered appropriate to anyone (to the extent their personality allowed)?  And if changing the shape of your genitals, or the size of your breasts, or your face, (or for that matter, the shape of your ears) were just a matter of personal preference, rather than your membership in one or another supposedly immutable social category?

And would this seem like Heaven?  Or Hell?

[suzifrommd]

I derive a lot of pleasure and affirmation from my gender. Whenever I feel female energy and do characteristically female things, it gives me a jolt of euphoria and well-being.

I've seen cis people, especially women, do the same thing, perhaps unconsciously. They pick out jewelry, dress attractively, pay attention to their hair. It gives them a good feeling, though I don't know if they'd always think of it as gendered.

[LordKAT]

And SRS and FFS (is there such a thing as FMS?) were seen as sort of cosmetic surgery, like a nose job or a boob job:

No, bad idea. You are making a world where it would not be covered by insurance where we are battling so hard to get it covered. It is medically necessary, not cosmetic. Even if gender played no part in clothing choices or work or any other social aspect.

[Edge]

No, bad idea. You are making a world where it would not be covered by insurance where we are battling so hard to get it covered. It is medically necessary, not cosmetic. Even if gender played no part in clothing choices or work or any other social aspect.

This.
It sounds like a society where gender is confused with gender roles and where being trans is not considered medically necessary. Sounds like Hell to me.

[Felix]

I agree with not wanting gender-affirming surgery to be classified as cosmetic, but maybe we need to be careful about how vociferously we disagree.

I agree we should be allowed more imagination and flexibility, and more freedom to define ourselves. I wish we could make changes to our bodies without it necessarily being a political act.

That said, it is a political act to change our bodies. I want to be a man. Until I'm further into transition and more accepted by society, I don't even want to be ambiguously or confusingly a man. I just want to be a regular guy. I've had so much of vagueness and ambiguity. It's hard at this point to want to imagine anything at all.

[Polo]

If we lived in a world where there is no gender, that would solve issues for those with social dysphoria. But as we know too well, sex and gender are not the same thing. Untying social gender from biological sex would be helpful, but it doesn't help those of us who feel we are of the wrong sex.

[Asche]

If we lived in a world where there is no gender, that would solve issues for those with social dysphoria. But as we know too well, sex and gender are not the same thing. Untying social gender from biological sex would be helpful, but it doesn't help those of us who feel we are of the wrong sex.

I was thinking of something more like the world John Varley's stories paint, where not only was it possible to change one's anatomical sex, it was treated as no more of an issue than a boob job is today.  (Which is to say, not nothing, and something that People With Opinions will have an opinion about, but also not something that means your life gets turned upside down.  Also note: some women feel that getting a boob job really is essential to their happiness.)  So if you are unhappy with your sex, there would be no particular barriers to changing it.

However, from some of the responses in this thread, I get the impression that many trans people (like many cis people) want a world in which whether you are in the category "male" or the category "female" makes a big difference, in terms of how you act, how you interact, and how you see yourself.

Or have I misjudged?  (Since I don't feel that way, I may be misinterpreting what I'm reading.)

[Edge]

However, from some of the responses in this thread, I get the impression that many trans people (like many cis people) want a world in which whether you are in the category "male" or the category "female" makes a big difference, in terms of how you act, how you interact, and how you see yourself.

Or have I misjudged?  (Since I don't feel that way, I may be misinterpreting what I'm reading.)

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't want that either. Either case seems to confuse gender with gender roles and I very vehemently want those two separated.
Yes, I want to live in a world where I am seen as male because I am male. I do not want to live in a world where I am seen as gender roles because I am not gender roles. Does that make sense?
Neither do I want to live in a world where gender dysphoria is confused with body dysmorphia.

[Nero]

So that saying "vagina-bearers aren't cut out to be CEOs" (or nurses, or whatever) would seem as nonsensical as saying "green-eyed people aren't cut out to be CEOs".

I like this idea and I would love to live in a world where that is the case. I think we are slowly getting there. Or at least we're a lot closer than before when the idea of a vagina bearer doing anything outside the house was nonsensical. It'd be great to live in a world where nobody had preconceived notions of who should be a nurse or interior decorator or construction worker. I suspect right now, there are a lot of people not using their best talents and not expressing themselves the way they'd like. Just because they don't realize it's an option (and in some places it really isn't).

I'm not really attached to gender roles. What I am attached to I guess, is having the secondary sex characteristics I want. And being addressed how I want. Even in a world like this, I would want a physical transition. I think it would be fine as long as being trans was still recognized as a real condition and medically necessary.

[Jill F]

We are making progress, but I would like to see it happen faster.  We still have yet to have a female president, yet women make up at least half of the population.   

My mother told me about when she was growing up in 1950s Ohio, she was well recognized as one of the "smart kids", and was even valedictorian of her high school class.  She got a scholarship for college, and her high school counselor tried to tell her how wonderful that was because she could aspire to be either a teacher or a nurse one day.   She got a PhD instead.

I was also shocked when my wife told me that her ivy league school would not admit women until 1969.  Seriously?

My go-to contractor told me that my first-time interior designs were better than most pros he's dealt with.  He had never seen such a thing from a supposed cis-het guy and commented that I missed my calling and wondered if I might actually be gay!?  Well, he knows the deal now, but why wouldn't a straight cisguy be able to excel at this?  Are there not artistic and creative cisguys out there with an eye for detail, or does pseudo-macho BS cloud peoples' career choices?  Yeah, god forbid if someone might assume you're gay... 

I used to press homophobic supposed cishetguys' buttons all the time by saying, "I don't think you're a very confident hererosexual." You should see the colors they turn!

[Asche]

(Coming back to this after a lot of mulling over....)

I derive a lot of pleasure and affirmation from my gender. Whenever I feel female energy and do characteristically female things, it gives me a jolt of euphoria and well-being.

I've seen cis people, especially women, do the same thing, perhaps unconsciously. They pick out jewelry, dress attractively, pay attention to their hair. It gives them a good feeling, though I don't know if they'd always think of it as gendered.

What I'm wondering is: does this pleasure and affirmation require having these activities coded as "female"?  In particular, where "female" refers to a  designation more or less permanently assigned (or not assigned) to roughly half of the human race?

I'm not asking this to be difficult.  I find I am drawn to many "female" activities, but am not aware of feeling female while doing them (with the emphasis on "not aware of".)  I'm wondering to what extent I -- or other people -- are doing them because they are coded as "female" and how much simply because they would like them whether they were labeled "female" or "male."  How much of my gender-variant behavior and preferences are simply preferences not caused by any inner gender, and to what extent are they expressions of some "inner femaleness" that it never occurs to me to call "female"?

My OP was kind of a thought experiment.  Your answer suggests another in the same vein: if jewelry, attractive dress, nail polish, (or whatever), were tomorrow to suddenly be seen by most people as "male" and unwomanly, would you (or anyone who might respond the way you did) still get the same pleasure from doing them?

[Asche]

I was ... shocked when my wife told me that her ivy league school would not admit women until 1969.  Seriously?

Hmm.  My university (also Ivy League) first admitted women in 1969, too.  Could it be the same one?  I don't think any Ivies admitted women until the 1960's.

(I believe when I entered was the first year that women weren't segregated off into a separate dorm. I heard lots of weird stories about that first year, like how news photographers would stick their camera lenses through bathroom windows.)