I think I understand why so few people get it

[Kim6]

Caprica, OK, you are a female, constructed. I mean, that is the point, no? The distinction between one female and another that is relevant to boards like this is that word some will add, "constructed." It's a weight, a weight all of we "constructed" females deal with that our more naturally "constructed" female cohorts don't deal with.

No Nichole, I didn't become female by constructing myself.  I was a woman whether or not I ever wanted to be a woman.  It was something that was assigned to me at birth, it was not a decision or a construction.  I transitioned because it was the only way I could ever have a life.  If I could have "constructed" myself I would have been male, it would have been easier, I would have had more prestige and the world would have been easier to navigate not to mention having saved thousands of dollars I could have applied to vacations or investments or conquering the "lesser" sex.

But no, I found out first hand that the lesser sex is not lesser nor is it a "construction", not because I wanted to find that out, because that was the outcome of being born female.

[Kim6]

A woman can be born without a vagina or ovaries and still be a woman, I mentioned how the brain is our largest sexual organ, etc.  I don't have to "construct" my womanhood to be a woman, I might be able to have a better life because of hormones and surgeries but who and what I am was set at birth.  I didn't have to fake or construct or manufacture my womanhood, only to nons only to people who believe that what is between your legs makes or breaks your gender is that an issue.

[NicholeW.]

OK, then in this case we are not so very far apart afterall. Given my own experience I believe I can understand yours.

But when it comes to the things we are discussing in these posts ... well, the words themselves become fraught with misunderstanding.

Of course, we are both female. However, at some point our natural "constructions" didn't match who we were (identity?) with the bodies we were born with.

Again, though, this is language that's causing the divergences. The same divergences, I find, that are caused in the original argument I thought you were making about the "identities" of those who want to go through their lives saying "I am a transsexual."

I generally imagine that our experiences with such other women and men are quite close. Yet,something makes us want to use one set of words and ideas in our language and them to use another set in their own.

If I don't tell x,y, & z that I had a surgery or three ... is that a lie? I don't think so, it's something that for my own reasons I don't chose to share. Just as I don't always choose to share that I had chicken pox at age six, for instance.

But, the fact of my life remains, I had, what for me, was birth-anomaly surgery. Many will, if they know, perceive that as "constructed female." See what I mean?

Nichole

[JenniferR04]

All I can say after reading these well articulated responses is WOW.  Some of you, if not many, are far more well versed than I am.  I am educated and can understand the thoughts being conveyed, but I don't express my own thoughts nearly as well.

I would have to say I agree with much of what is being said in this thread and it is a very good topic at that.  I am newly beginning my transition and much of this information is very fascinating.  I have often wonder how I will view things at different stages in this journey and after it's complete.  How will I categorize myself in the future?  I know that I will always have some significiant parts of my past which will carry over and into my future being, some of which include my young daughters who are very important and dear to me, and it'll be up to me and me only to integrate them and some other events successfully into my future so as to be a positive rather than a negative influence.  How I define myself and the attitude I present will play a huge role.

I look forward too and am interesting in reading much more on this topic.  I hope some others have thoughts and constructive comments to add.  Great dialogue, let's keep it going.

[Kim6]

Nichole, I totally appreciate what you are saying... and I appreciate your patience and your giving me the benefit of the doubt.

You mentioned how "language that's causing the divergences", I totally agree.  In another post I mentioned...

It is difficult to talk about this kind of stuff with people who have no interest in it.  And it seems like trying to explain it takes away from it and pollutes it because when you try to explain it to people, they begin to relate it to their own ideas, they reinterpret what you are trying to tell them and something get's lost in the translation, the translation from something you know in the center of your being without words or ideas, translated into words and ideas.

The thing is that it is not a words and ideas concept.  It is a wordless and idea less concept.  We use words and ideas to alienate others, to alienate ourselves from who we are.  We use words and ideas to form judgments.  Many people begin to believe that they are their ideas and that without their so-called wisdom and ideas they would be nothing.  But what they don't realize is that their words and ideas are actually their prisons, their self-imposed slavery, their insanity.

There have been people who have stood out like Thoreau and many of us read their words and think to ourselves, oh what a great man he was, such sage wisdom, such a great man.  But the greatness is not in the making of the man, the greatness is in the unmaking.  Many of us think that our intellectualism and wisdom will become our salvation, we just need to gather more ideas, the right ideas.  But freedom does not come from creating a bigger and better ego, a bigger and better construction of ideas racing about in one's mind like infinite logic loops, circular thought leading nowhere.  Freedom comes from recognizing the ego for what it is and finding yourself apart from it, alone from it.  Sadly so many of us are so bonded and identified with our egos that we will always interpret the unspeakable, the unwordable with our own preconceived ideas and preformed notions, the insanity of our own making, when two worlds collide, the worlds we have created in our own minds opposing a world where anything is possible.

What was this thread about again?

It applies to this topic as well

[Kim6]

greatness is not in the making of the man, the greatness is in the unmaking. 

A man-made womanhood is the making of the man.

[NicholeW.]

I quite agreed, as best I could read it and apply my own experience and thoughts to it, Caprica, with what you wrote to that poster when I read it last night.

As someone who's spent a great deal of her life involved with language, though, I realize that the difficulty you're writing about above is going to be one that is forever with us. Short actual divinity in the Judeo-Xtian sense of omniscience, I feel that we are always gonna find some loggerheads in our languages. It's that "boiling so pure" aspect I spoke about earlier.

Our desires, likes and dislikes, ways we learn to use language and, always, those same qualities a reader brings to our language once we free it are always going to cause misunderstandings and divergences so as to make us, at some point say in a discussion, "but you misread what I was saying."

The meta-language that encompasses 9/10 of the linguistic iceberg is almost always hidden, certainly most of it remains hidden, from the view out there.

That's why I try to walk that middle way I PMed you about. It's hard as either one "side" or the other "side" seems to "misunderstand" where I am trying to go. I think I find it more copacetic to have peace, although I have also been known to get pretty down and dirty with my own language when my emotional involvement in an arguement gets out-of-hand.

Again, I freely admit that I bring vast quanities of the unseen to my own writing and read vast quantities of the unseen into what others write. Heck, I already, even before i responded to this thread had "ideas" about who you were and where you were coming from with your posts. As I am reasonably certain you have done with my own.

I think the only way we will come to total agreement is to somehow merge with one another: a Borg Collective!

Until and unless we do so, I think that we shall always to some extent be at cross-purposes with one another. Not simply you and me, but we all. Alas, part of that blessing or curse of being human rather than divinity I imagine.

Nichole

[Ell]

well, ya are on shaky ground here from the start, i think, because you're attempting to es'plain the workings of the mind.

needless to say, that is a very complex piece of equipment, and, if the average person gets lost hearing a computer geek talk about operating system programming, how much more lost should we be when hearing brain function explanations?

one can say all they want about how they feel. one can hardly ever say how someone else feels.

-ell

[Lisbeth]

Identity is something we build for ourselves, a construct of who and what we are. But while that identity is perhaps an idea, the things it's based on aren't necessarily. We build our identities from our race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, political affiliation, our family. All of these are concrete, physical things rooted in our biology or our sociology.

reifying - Taking abstract concepts and acting/thinking as thought they are concrete.

No, none of those things is concrete or physical. Skin color may be physical, but race is not. Having sex with an individual is physical; sexual orientation is not. Sociological concepts are never physical or concrete.

As an example, in the last couple of days someone was looking at a photograph with me. She identified the person as black. I intentified the individual as white. The reason for our difference in opinion was that I was going by skin color, and she was going by facial features. Race is entirely constructed by society to determine who has white privilege and who doesn't.