Do you think gender identity has both a direction and a magnitude?

[metal angel]

you could call it "metal angel's vector theory of gender identity" i guess, let me run it by you.

I've been thinking - in  the course of talking to someone who is not very accepting of TG people but who is generally relatively liberal in her views - maybe gender identity isn't just a matter of which gender you feel you are but also how strongly?

Maybe my friend doesn't have a very strong gender-identity, and can't relate to those who do? She says something like: gender is just biology, you can't be a man trapped in a woman's body cos your body is the only place that has the gender, what is a man if not the body? Maybe she just can't relate to having a strong gender identity?

So people who have a strong gender identity matching their body are happy or content about it. People with a week gender identity may be indiferent or experiement. People with a strong gender identity that missmatches their body will only be happy with living as the other gender or maybe SRS.

Does that make sense to anyone?

[Nero]

I think it's more that people whose sex matches their body can't conceive of it being any other way.

[LordKAT]

The idea makes sense, I"m still pondering on to what degree I agree with it tho.

[metal angel]

I think it's more that people whose sex matches their body can't conceive of it being any other way.

No i don't think that is it. If anything, i think my friend has something in the way of TG tendancies herself, she just has the attitude of: i was born in this body it's healthy and relatively attractive i may as well just accept it, or doesn't "identify" with either gender.

[Eva Marie]

I do believe that there is wiring in our brains at birth that has to do with our gender identity, and it has nothing to do with whatever body we happened to be issued. One only has to browse this board to see the number of folks expressing that they knew that there was a gender mismatch early on between their body and their brain. And I also agree that people who's gender identity match their body cannot understand what we feel and how we are.

As far as the strength of the gender identity - it varies. Thats why we have all of the various forums here, to accommodate everyone. I happen to be mostly in the middle, with some days feeling girly and some days being the man, and having a mix of male and female tendencies, behaviors, and mental outlook.

[Arch]

maybe gender identity isn't just a matter of which gender you feel you are but also how strongly?

From my perspective: yes, of course. I have always assumed that degree has everything to do with how far, if at all, a person pursues physical transition. For example, I haven't had hysto (yet) and don't feel a particularly strong urge to do so at this time. Maybe later.

Other transmen are adamant about getting rid of those organs right away, as soon as possible, NOW.

She says something like: gender is just biology, you can't be a man trapped in a woman's body cos your body is the only place that has the gender, what is a man if not the body?

I've always felt that the "P trapped in a Q's body" statement was simplistic, inaccurate, and misleading. Any paradigm based on the concept of the mind vs body split is likely to be problematic.

All the same, I think that your friend is missing the point. If my outer body looks female and I have internal sex organs that are female but my brain--which is in my body--tells me that I am male, then we cannot say that I have a fully female body. Obviously, part of my body has some kind of male component, even if we can't see that part of the body or empirically verify what that part of the body is telling me.

My feeling is that my entire body is basically a slave to my brain. I can do without quite a lot of body parts, and I can replace many of them, but the brain is indispensable. The brain rules all. The brain cannot be safely and reliably changed. So I must transition to bring my body in line with my brain.

Not to mention that I have a very strong sense of my own personality and character--I wouldn't WANT someone monkeying around with my brain. It's what makes me who I am.

Does your friend not consider the brain to be part of the body?

[Calistine]

Well..Im not sure if anyone else felt this way. Like you thought of yourself as your birth sex all your life, and then when you come out as transgender you can't just go back to being your birth sex, because you know in your heart this is what you want. Im just speaking the best way I can put it but does anyone know what I mean?

[ginger39]

Greatness! 

Do I need to brush up on my vector calculus before reading your posts?

The analogy seems to fit if you ask me. I think the dysphoria really varies in magnitude but I don't know about the direction thing. Seems to me that one is fixed.

[Tammy Hope]

I think it's more that people whose sex matches their body can't conceive of it being any other way.

I agree.

and this:

"...ou can't be a man trapped in a woman's body cos your body is the only place that has the gender..."

just displays a simple ignorance of reality.

Even if one dismisses the concept of being transgendered, it's pretty much "settled science" (inasmuch as science is ever settled) that there are marked differences in the brains of women and men.

[Nero]

No i don't think that is it. If anything, i think my friend has something in the way of TG tendancies herself, she just has the attitude of: i was born in this body it's healthy and relatively attractive i may as well just accept it, or doesn't "identify" with either gender.

It may be harder for people who don't identify with a gender to imagine a mind/body conflict. I don't think there's a magnitude. I think most non-trans people just have no reason to care or think about it much. I mean when you think about it, why would a woman with no issues about her assigned gender see it as a big deal?
It's the same reason you get people identifying strongly as a Black person but not as White. Or as gay but not as straight. Race plays a stronger part in Black people's lives than White people's. Sexuality plays a stronger part in gay people's lives than straight people's. White people don't have to think about race. Straight people don't have to think about sexuality. Non-trans people don't have to think about gender. If it's not an issue, it's just not an issue.

[metal angel]

Would you regard TS as an intersex condition? some parts of one gender (most of body) and some parts of other (brain structure/organisation)?

[Nero]

I'm not sure. I do think it is biological.

[Suzy]

Well I am still pondering the direction thing.  But the magnitude is a definite variable.  It even varies within individuals at different times.  Personally, I think that is the reason some of us feel a need to transition early on, and for others it builds up until it explodes later in life.  Even for me, I have times when the mismatch seems stronger than at other times.  I will also say that HRT has changed the magnitude for me.  With hormones, even if I have to dress gender-inappropriately that particular day, I find I can deal with it, because the hormones help me to feel at peace with the inner struggles I have and stop obsessing over them.   I know they do not affect everyone that way.  In fact, my experience does not seem to be the norm.  But I will just say that one of the things that HRT has done for me is to equalize the magnitude, kind of like an emotional cruise control.  I shudder at the thought of going back.

Kristi

[metal angel]

I guess my theory also stems from why i came here.

I don't feel entirely happy in my birth gender, i feel a bit of a miss match, but i don't feel sufficiently unhappy that i would go through the pain and health risk of a transition. My thoughts on it are all pretty muddled... this may disolve into an inelegant stream of consciousness... Maybe it's that i identify more with both or neither gender, in my ideal scenario i could switch at will between a fullly functional and beuatiful female body and a perfectly functional and beautiful male body, but i know i can't have that so i figure i may as well just not mess with the relatively functional and relatively good looking body i have now.

I guess i feel i have an "inner self" that does not quite match my body all the time, but i still feel that my body is me. I don't really belive i am a mind living in a body, missmatched or not, my body is part of me. But i guess maybe the feeling that my body is me is due to crutial parts of my brain being matched to my body, the mental map i have of my body kind of matches better than that of someone with the level of distress that leads to seeking surgery. Only more intellectual levels of my brain have any sense of missmatch. Maybe my friend thinks her body is her gender cos her brain is connected to her body right. Or maybe she is just a raging materialist? Maybe it's not a neuolgical difference between feeling your body is you vs being a mind within a body, maybe it is a matter of philosphical or spiritural persepctive?

I should get her to come and give her point of view, but i think her idea was that before removing working body parts and replacing them with an imperfect replica of the desired sex, every effort should be made to just be happy in the body you were born in? While i have a working body of either gender i think i would take that approach, but i acknowledge that for some people that's not possible, and sometimes schanging the body is a lot easier than changing the brain.

Yeah this is turning into a bit of a stream of conciousness, my ideas are not very well formed, hence i'm here for a few other perspectives. But my vector idea was that for someone to benifit from a physical transition they would need to have both a miss-match of physical schape and mental identity, and a very strong sense of gender being a crucial part of their identity.

[Nero]

I don't feel entirely happy in my birth gender, i feel a bit of a miss match, but i don't feel sufficiently unhappy that i would go through the pain and health risk of a transition. My thoughts on it are all pretty muddled... this may disolve into an inelegant stream of consciousness... Maybe it's that i identify more with both or neither gender, in my ideal scenario i could switch at will between a fullly functional and beuatiful female body and a perfectly functional and beautiful male body, but i know i can't have that so i figure i may as well just not mess with the relatively functional and relatively good looking body i have now.

This sounds a lot like statements from some of the androgynes here.

[miniangel]

It may be harder for people who don't identify with a gender to imagine a mind/body conflict. I don't think there's a magnitude. I think most non-trans people just have no reason to care or think about it much. I mean when you think about it, why would a woman with no issues about her assigned gender see it as a big deal?
It's the same reason you get people identifying strongly as a Black person but not as White. Or as gay but not as straight. Race plays a stronger part in Black people's lives than White people's. Sexuality plays a stronger part in gay people's lives than straight people's. White people don't have to think about race. Straight people don't have to think about sexuality. Non-trans people don't have to think about gender. If it's not an issue, it's just not an issue.

I agree with this. As a white, (sort of) straight ciswoman, I rarely have a reason to measure myself against those norms. I can try to imagine what it would be like to be otherwise, by drawing on various experiences (e.g. I've been a migrant, and I've come to realise that I'm not as straight as I thought I was) but the gender one is really tricky. If mind and body are in harmony, the sense of gender has nothing to test itself against. I feel like me, and I happen to be a woman, so what can I bounce my sense of "me-ness" off in order to figure out what my gender feels like?

The nearest I can come to it is the process of being a mother. I spent many years pretending to be a mother. I had given birth and I was apparently successfully raising my kids, but I didn't have a clue what being a mother was supposed to mean. All I knew was that I wasn't it. I was a fraud at the woman-as-mother role, and I hoped no-one realised that.

I can draw on that disarticulated feeling when contemplating the business of being trans, but I can't get any closer. I try very hard - by reading as much as I can, and by trying to feel what I'm reading - but I doubt I could ever come close. And how would I know if I did?

I can feel what it's like to be a woman in this world, so the feminist movement is important to me, I support gay rights because I see how my friends have been affected by discrimination and hatred, and I am fast becoming a TG advocate wherever possible, thanks to coming to know several people, and especially my dear boy. But with the best will in the world, I can't feel that gender disunity.

[metal angel]

maybe there's a third dimension in my model... there is direction of gender identity, strength of gender identity, and depth of gender identity.

if direction is a missmatch and strength and depth are both strong then maybe medical ways to make the body match the identity are the best solution. But if any are weaker a more "lean to love yourself as you are" approach, or find a way to express yourself (e.g. cross dressing) wouold be a more successful path to happyness? e.g.
* if the direction is not too far away, e.g. someone who is fully female but who feels kind of 50:50
* if the strength is not intense, e.g. there may be a 100% mismatch but the individual feels there gender is only a minor part of their identity
* or if the missmatch is intense but not at a deep elevl, e.g. they feel they are intellecturally male, but they feel their female parts are a part of them, if the brain body missmatch is higher up at kind of a intellectual and cultural level rather than a body-map level

I'm really wishing i'd listened more in those neuro-science lectures from my degree now... doeas anybody know what i mean by this depth of dissconnect kind of idea? I mean if the disconnect is really "deep", down in the "rpimitive" brain, no level of logic can remove the distress at the brain body missmatch. Sort of like in BIID (body integrety identiy disorder) or alien limb syndrome, where people feel such a deep brain-body missmatch that they are driven to seek a limb to be amputated. Are any of you familiar with that?

Post Merge: August 07, 2009, 11:49:51 PM
Or are strength and depth the same variable? From what some of you, mainly Nero, are saying it seems you think that the intensity at wich someone feels the missmatch (or any aspect of gender identity) is related to how deep the missmatch is? If it is just a kind of "higher brain" curiosity about being the other sex, e.g. maybe how a cross dresser feels, they will not feel such an intense and distressing missmatch as someone who's neurological body maop doesn't match waht they see.
Post Merge: August 11, 2009, 07:59:47 AM
Do you think there is a missmatch AND a disconnect?

I think i don't quite like being female, or i have a male "side" to myself, but i perceive my female body and that kind of feeds back to my identity. There must be something missing in this feedback effect in people determined to transition? I imagine even if whatever makes one feel what one's gender is deep down in the psyche is totally missmatched, it should be kind of re-aligned with the physical self? It seems like it needs a brain/body missmatch plus some sort of peculiarity in not perceiving the body as "self"? Or am i making two problems out of one? Does the missmatch cause the dissconnect? Some psychological or neurological mechanism perceives the body and notices the missmatch, and concludes the body must not be self?

I hope you odn't mind me over-analysing the concept, i'm party trying to work out where i fit in to things here, and in the process i've also i've just got really facinated by the science of it.

[metal angel]

do you think a really drastic missmatch between mind and body femininity could CAUSE a diconnect between body and identity?

or maybe there is some other dissconnect that causes the psyche not to be able to realign the mental gender identity with the bodily gender? asking people who identified as their biological sex (only two, but in depth) they both identified that their source of gender identity was their bilogical sex. One S.N.A.G who is a bit of a softie but has masculine interests. The other was a masculine female who fantasised about being male as a child and as adolecent, but still identified her mind as genderless and her only source of gender as her biological sex.