What does it mean to be transgendered to you

[r31gnb3au]

Personally, I identify as transgendered because I don't feel comfortable with the sexual parts of my body. It's partly a matter of gender roles, other's perception of me, etc. But my desire for a penis and ambivalence about having a vagina is the main thing for me. If I were happy with my physical sex I'd prolly identify as simply (ha!) an androgynous woman, female-bodied androgyne, or something along the lines of "chapstick pansexual" (that last one could describe me as I am actually).

[snowlight]

To me, being transgender is a matter of being who I am. It's a bit more complicated than that as I do personally feel my gender is separate from personality and the sort so it's not just that, but it's still me and it has to be part of my lifestyle, if that makes any sense.

[BenKenobi]

To me, being transgender is like being stuck in a part I feel like I was never meant to play. Forever, I felt like I was given this "role" and I was never quite good at it. For a long time, I didn't really know who I was because I was wearing this mask for so long, I had pretty much accepted it (begrudgingly of course). Then I felt that I couldn't wear the mask anymore. I couldn't live my life as a straight woman. I would rather live as a gay man.

So I guess, to me, transitioning isn't even transitioning. That implies changing who I am, and I'm not. I'm not changing who I am because I never was that person. I was only pretending because that's how I was conditioned to be.

[HoneyStrums]

It means, to be born into a world of boxes, and be placed in a bow at birth, that comes with do's I can't stand to do, and donkt I have to do. To be reffered to with words I can't stand to hear. It means to fit sterio types designated for people in another box and to grow feeling increasing different. It means to learn I am different.

It means to understand I am different and will always be, and because of that embrace everything about me that makes me, me.

To accept myself for who I am.
To reject what I can't live with.
To understand that wether one is male or female depends on who you ask.
To realise that when it comes to being who I am, man and woman are irelavent.

I am me, this is all I ever was can and will be.
It ment being held to exspectations.
It means understanding exspectaions are nothing but a gamble.

It means being able to find people that truelly care about me.
It means growing to be content.

It means who I am is hidden so deep benieth a what hardly anyone can find me.
It means learning to accept parts of my life and body I can't change as I change the parts I can.


I think I'm geeting to the point where I repeat myself now. I'm sure their are other things that I can't think of just now, but I'm surr that's the same for most.

[Asche]

FWIW, I just ran across a beautiful transgender story by Heather Rose Brown called "Shoes" in which one character tries to explain this to their cis brother using shoes.

I won't link it, due to the Susans.org policy on external links, but you can find it pretty quickly via Google.

[Ian68]

Being transgender is simply being a part of the natural variation of our species.  Statistically, it's simple (see attached picture).  We represent probably a third standard deviation of gender/ sex within the population.  It would actually be very strange if we didn't exist. 

Philosophically, being transgender means for me that I have experienced more aspects of society and socialization than either a cisgender man or woman would be likely to experience.  This is particularly important in the development of my staunch feminism that I may not have had if I'd been born male.  I don't see myself as having been born in the "wrong" body but rather that the intersection of my body and society is laden with all sorts of unrealistic expectations based in deep ignorance.  I'm not comfortable with my chest and never have been, whether or not that would be the case if I had grown up differently (i.e., in a society that accepts women and men of different sexes) is a question that I'll never have the ability to answer.  However, I despise the pressure placed on myself and other transgender people (especially women) to modify our bodies when that may or may not actually be desired.  No one has the right to tell someone else what they should do with their body. 

So, I guess that in summary, being transgender means that I often feel unseen, stigmatized, or even fetishized by a society that doesn't understand that I'm just another data point of equal value to them.  It also means that I am less likely to see binaries or to draw conclusions when I shouldn't.  It means that my mind and society disagree over what my body should be like and what rights I have to it.  It very likely means that I'm more understanding than if I'd been born male or as a girl - though, that's not to say that being transgender confers enlightenment. 

It means a lot of things and very little all at once.

[Atypical]

First, I don't identify as "transgendered". I'm transgender. Transgendered implies that something happened to you to make you this way. Nothing happened to me. It's just the way I am.

And I agree with Kate. It's just a medical condition that I manage with medication in the form of hormones, and lifestyle adjustment in the form of transition. Aside from impacting my life in those ways, I don't feel that there's anything meaningful about this condition for me. I'm just a guy who had the misfortune of being dealt female plumbing and the bits that are associated with it. Nothing more, nothing less.

^ Exactly how I feel.

[enigmaticrorschach]

i tend to keep adding ed to everything plus i type awfully fast. by the time i went to change it, i couldnt. sry about that

[sonson]

Being transgender is simply being a part of the natural variation of our species.  Statistically, it's simple (see attached picture).  We represent probably a third standard deviation of gender/ sex within the population.  It would actually be very strange if we didn't exist. 

huh, this is very interesting to me. I pretty much said the exact opposite in the previous page. I believe that, from an evolutionary standpoint, the fact that we exist is highly extraordinary.

I'd love to read more into your views on this, im very open to changing my perspective. could you send a link to the picture you attached? I dont think you're able to post it since you're still new to this forum.

[Atypical]

It's natural that trans and intersex people exist just as it's natural that any other 'exception to the rule' category exists. From genetic abnormalities to homosexuality (which is highly evidence to be genetic anyway).

It's natural, but not what I would call normal.

[suzifrommd]

huh, this is very interesting to me. I pretty much said the exact opposite in the previous page. I believe that, from an evolutionary standpoint, the fact that we exist is highly extraordinary.

Notice, though, that many of us have the ability to ignore it long enough to procreate, so it isn't an evolutionary dead end.

I think that we're important to the species - to help people escape the straightjacket of their gender. We bring perspectives that other people don't have, so one could argue that cultures where transgender people are respected might have higher survival rates.

[Ian68]

Notice, though, that many of us have the ability to ignore it long enough to procreate, so it isn't an evolutionary dead end.

I'll reply to the other post in a moment but wanted to quickly respond to this one...

The "ignore long enough to procreate" bit may be true but is also kind of artifactual, right?  Technically, there's no reason why we should be expected *not* to be able to reproduce even when we recognize and live as our true genders.  It's only very recently that GCS (formerly SRS) and hormones were available but transgender people have existed for as long as we have historical records.  We're not inherently infertile, that depends entirely upon who we partner with and whether or not our reproductive organs are functional (or in the case of surrogacy, we've "banked" eggs or sperm). 

A gay trans man who partners with a cisgender man can theoretically procreate as can a lesbian transgender woman with a cisgender woman.  Obviously, transgender men and women are reproductively compatible.  Really, the only incompatibilities that arise reproductively are direct analogies to those that exist for cisgender people (i.e., two gay transgender men or two lesbian transgender women).  The issue here isn't actually gender or even sexuality but simply of reproductive compatibility and the presence/ absence of reproductive or sexual dysphoria (i.e. whether or not a transgender woman or man is comfortable with certain sexual practices, and whether or not a transgender man is willing to physically have a child).

What all of that is trying to say is simply that even though it commonly happens that gender-suppression enables reproduction within the context of a falsely heterosexual-cisgender relationship, it doesn't actually mean that is the only way that we can be reproductively successful even in the absence of modern medicine.  Clearly, with modern medicine, we have more options (i.e. surrogacy for genetic reproduction, and adoption for social reproduction).  I think that it's important to point this out because society *expects* all of us to give up our reproductive potential when that is absolutely not a requirement for being transgender or living as ourselves, and is entirely a personal decision.

[sonson]

It's natural that trans and intersex people exist just as it's natural that any other 'exception to the rule' category exists. From genetic abnormalities to homosexuality (which is highly evidence to be genetic anyway).

It's natural, but not what I would call normal.

That definitely makes sense, it does seem natural for humans to deviate from the gender norms considering how massive our population is, and how loong we've been reproducing. I'm more saying that our existence as a thriving community is what seems to go against natural selection to me. living with gender dysphoria and such high suicide rates doesn't lend itself well to survival, so the fact that we're here feels like an unlikely miracle.

though to be fair, I guess you could say the same about any subset of humans with any sort of disability, so I guess its not that farfetched that we're here.

Notice, though, that many of us have the ability to ignore it long enough to procreate, so it isn't an evolutionary dead end.

I think that we're important to the species - to help people escape the straightjacket of their gender. We bring perspectives that other people don't have, so one could argue that cultures where transgender people are respected might have higher survival rates.

this is a good point that I hadnt considered, many of us do end up procreating before transition anyway.

and you're totally right on that second point. if a community supports transgender people, then that community is probably open to all variations of people, and more likely to be living harmoniously. that would reduce suicide rates, and bring the general quality of life up for everyone. that makes a lot of sense to me, I hadnt thought of it that way.

[enigmaticrorschach]

for some reason, i feel like a lost puppy. can someone throw me a bone here  lol

[Obfuskatie]

Being Trans is just another hat I wear occasionally. Usually I'm just another woman, nerd, artist, audiophile, bibliophile, or cinephile. I've always been the same gender, it just happens that I thought I had to hide it for most of my life since it didn't match my sex assigned at birth.

     Hugs,
- Katie

Edit: Transgender isn't a prison or disability or abnormal, it's just another means of describing your circumstances. I've seen a bit of emphasis on the idea of "what is normal v. natural?" in this thread, but "normal" is bull people use as peer pressure. There is no such thing as normal or perfect, they are both judgmental concepts and as unattainable as the size 0 model figure is for most women. If you want to base your life on how other people think, by all means go ahead. But I've put up with that for too long and I won't apologize for not being normal. [emoji53]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ian68]

huh, this is very interesting to me. I pretty much said the exact opposite in the previous page. I believe that, from an evolutionary standpoint, the fact that we exist is highly extraordinary.

I'd love to read more into your views on this, im very open to changing my perspective. could you send a link to the picture you attached? I dont think you're able to post it since you're still new to this forum.

First off, I do understand where you're coming from with the probability being extraordinarily low.  I'm happy to explain where I'm coming from.  I don't think that I'm allowed to post links but if you Google "normal distribution" or "bell curve," you'll see images of what kind of looks like the first part of a sine function - or like a a symmetrical "bell."  The center is the peak, and is the point of division.  You can think of it being bisected directly through the peak.  We'll say that the right side is for women and the left for men.  Within one standard deviation from that peak in both directions, you encompass 68% of the population.  So, we'll say that at least 68% of the population is either male and men or female and women.  Now, we know that the sex ratio is about equal so, this makes sense, but we also know that most people are cisgender so, we'll go out to two standard deviations.  This now encompasses about 96% of the population.  The estimates for the percentage of the world population that is either transgender or non-binary are between 1%-5%. So, the remaining 4% that is mostly encompassed by that third standard deviation is numerically consistent with that estimate.  We can then say that it's plausible that about 2% of the population is female and either men or non-binary, and about 2% is male and either women or non-binary. 

I like math...  Hopefully that made sense...

Moving on to evolution (I'm actually an evolutionary scientist, haha), there is a thing called "intraspecific variation," that is, variation that exists within a species.  In our own species, height could be considered a type of intraspecific variation.  In large populations (like humans), the number of "morphs" or types of intraspecific variation typically follow a statistically normal distribution, wherein the majority of members exhibit one or two morphs (for example, a sex-based gender binary...), but there are the "tails" on either side of the bell curve that encompass that remaining ~4%.  Over time, if a "morph" is selected against because it is less successful (for example, a brightly colored moth that gets eaten by predators more than a darkly colored one), it will most likely be eliminated from the population because enough of them won't survive long enough to reproduce.  However, if that morph does not necessarily result in a loss of reproductive fitness, and especially if there are times in which that morph is favored, you will maintain that variation in low numbers within the population. 

As I mentioned in an earlier reply, there is nothing inherent to being transgender that makes us less reproductively "fit" than someone who's cisgender *unless* either society directly intervenes to curb our reproductive potential and/ or the majority of the population fails to reproduce.  Now, the obvious problem with this logic is that I'm treating being transgender as equivalent to being tall or having blue eyes.  While it may eventually turn out to be the case that this equivalency works, there's currently no support for it.  There is, however, support for transgender people being neurophysiologically different from cisgender people, possibly due to genetics (which would support the above) or possibly due to hormone exposure during gestation (currently favored but I suspect some degree of heritability). 

There are really no studies as far as determining whether or not the biology of being transgender is actually heritable but I suspect that there is given that we have been maintained through time.  Based on this, I find it likely that, for example, if two transgender people were to have a lot of kids (and I do mean *a lot*) together, that one of those children would also be transgender.  I would also not be surprised if historically, transgender people whose identities were suppressed by society were also more likely (if straight) to couple with one another (because presumably, the straight woman living as a straight man would be more attracted to someone who was actually a straight man living as a straight woman than to an actual straight woman, and vice versa), thus maintaining the genetics.  But again, no studies so, this is purely scientific and statistical speculation.

Anyway, I don't know if that made sense?  Also, sorry for writing a small book but I think about this stuff a lot...  I'm also very much against the "some event "caused" a person to "turn" trans" and "gender doesn't exist" arguments so, that's definitely coloring my views on these matters. 

I look forward to hearing back from you, and what your opinions are.

[enigmaticrorschach]

i'm liking the different perspectives. its helping me understand a little more though i still have no idea. keep it up and thanks again 

[Obfuskatie]

@Ian68
Transgender is a heritable trait as far as I've heard, and while the bell-curve is inherently a nice method of evaluation, there are maybe a handful of trans people in a statistically significant sample of the American population for example, for a greater than 2000 person sample size. There's also inherent flaws in gathering the information for evaluation and a reliance on truth for a persecuted population. If all people were straightforward, I imagine gender would fall on a spectrum much like the Kinseyian sexual orientation one.
Transpeople aren't exactly physiologically different from cispeople, it's just that transpeople's brains have been found to mirror cispeople in their chosen sex rather than sex assigned at birth. There's a lot of variation in human anatomy that is ignored because of surgeons tendency to perform normalizing surgical procedures on infants "so they can fit in better with society." It's the same kind of pressure as circumcision among non-Jewish people.
I have a lot of issues with the veracity behind evolutionary biology, because it typically makes a lot of assumptions. I've also heard a lot of crazy and sexist theories coined by Evo-Biologists. They are kind of a joke in some feminist circles. [emoji19]


     Hugs,
- Katie
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ian68]

@Ian68
Transpeople aren't exactly physiologically different from cispeople, it's just that transpeople's brains have been found to mirror cispeople in their chosen sex rather than sex assigned at birth...


I have a lot of issues with the veracity behind evolutionary biology, because it typically makes a lot of assumptions. I've also heard a lot of crazy and sexist theories coined by Evo-Biologists. They are kind of a joke in some feminist circles. [emoji19]

Sorry, I should clarify that I meant neurophysiology - that the brains of transgender people are different than those of cisgender people of their birth sex.

Re evolutionary biologists, there are very, very few who make any sort of sexist assumptions, and most of them are quite old.  That said, I'm not really sure what your point was with that statement.  I'm an evolutionary scientist, and I'm a staunch feminist, and transfeminist in particular (I maintain a blog that is mostly (trans)feminist stuff).  Every other graduate student and faculty member I know in my field is a feminist as well, and I know a good couple hundred of them directly, and many more indirectly.  It's true that there was a good amount of sexism is early "evolutionary psychology" but not so much in the actual sciences, and again, most of this is dissipating as people retire or um... expire.

Hope that clarifies!

[sonson]

Anyway, I don't know if that made sense?  Also, sorry for writing a small book but I think about this stuff a lot...  I'm also very much against the "some event "caused" a person to "turn" trans" and "gender doesn't exist" arguments so, that's definitely coloring my views on these matters. 

I look forward to hearing back from you, and what your opinions are.

haha, dont worry, that definitely made sense! that was a great read actually. very informative, and I appreciate you taking the time to write all that. I think about this kind of stuff all the time too, though I think the difference between us is that you seem to have actual knowledge of the subject, whereas I'm always just speculating 

I found it very interesting when you brought up the question of whether or not ->-bleeped-<- is hereditary. I had never really actively thought about this before. I had always assumed that it was non-hereditary, and just a random occurrence during gestation. I figured that if it can't be passed down, then natural selection wouldn't be able to phase it out. though you seem to say the opposite:

There are really no studies as far as determining whether or not the biology of being transgender is actually heritable but I suspect that there is given that we have been maintained through time.

you're saying that the fact that transgender people have continued to exist throughout history is evidence that it's hereditary, correct? maybe I'm totally wrong in my thinking (never actually studied evolutionary science, in fact it wasnt allowed in my school), but I feel that although we certainly have the ability to reproduce, we seem to be far less likely in comparison to the other 96% of the population, given the social issues that you brought up earlier, not to mention dysphoria often leading to suicide or self-mutilation. It seems like if those traits are inherited, they'd have to get through a lot of improbable circumstances to remain at 4% today. I just feel like it might make more sense if it isn't hereditary.

though now Im reading that back, and I admit 4% is pretty damn low. so maybe it's not that improbable. sorry, I'm sort of writing my thoughts as I think them so Im kinda going back and forth here. anyway, as far as I know I could be totally wrong about all this, and please let me know if I am! I love discussing this stuff, thanks for engaging me!