Why I want to be a woman

[Muffin]

Now I remember why I quit susans the first time around, is this place cursed or something? ******* ******.

[tekla]

It's not cursed, its just real.  And reality exists separate from ourselves, and though we are free to define the world as we wish, we have no power to compel others to accept that.  And it's highly unlikely that the world is going to snap into a different frame of reference and all of a sudden throw down and create a national holiday for the wonder that is you.  So you pay your money, and you take your chances.  That's all there really is.

The future is here.  You are it.

You are on your own.

[Carlita]

Now I remember why I quit susans the first time around, is this place cursed or something? ******* ******.

What? Because I took a different line in a debate? I don't think there's been any personal abuse or sneering, which I certainly hate, too. Just a variety of opinions. Is that a problem? I certainly did not intend to flame or bitch ...

[Jester]

@Ketsy-->  I very much agree with your stance.  I want to add that I've always felt, and gender studies seems to agree even if that is a pseudo-science at best, that everybody's male and female sometimes.  These roles are meant to be more fluid than society allows it to be.  Most people seem to primarily fit into one gender category or another, but not one person can say that they are entirely masculine or entirely feminine.  I love heavy metal, video games, Sly Stallone movies and I also love posing for the camera, bubble baths, and What Not to Wear.  And at the end of the day, none of that is actually masculine or feminine except according to what society says.

You're totally right to point out that GID is an extraordinarily complicated issue, and I was going to point out before that people from all walks of life find themselves thrown into this life, and that means all possible kinds of motivation are possible.

And yeah... Carlita, enough people think we're wrong as it is.  We don't need dissent among the ranks.  That's what's killing heavy metal.

[spacial]

Let's say you were born as you were, woman in a male body.  Except you were abandoned at birth and somehow managed to survive on your own in the wild.  If we accept on face value that as a 'woman' trapped on a 'male' body, you would still suffer some form of gender conflict.  But how would you know you were a 'woman'?  You would just know that *something* about the way you feel doesn't match with the physical aspect of your body.  That these things are 'woman' and 'male' is secondary, you find out what those mean when you see other people performing their gender roles in society.  And you say, yes I see how that woman acts, and that's how I act, so even though I have male physical parts, I identify as a woman because internally I feel like she does.  But even this has more hidden assumptions - namely that the women you encounter are feminine women, and not let's say, butch lesbians who drive cargo trucks.  If those were the only women I ever met, I'm not sure I would say I wanted to be a 'woman' because that idea wouldn't really match with my internal idea.  But I'd still want to be me, in all the non-male ways I see in myself right now.

The problem with your seneriao is that it is restricted to women born in men's bodies.

What would happen to a man born in a man's body, or a woman born in a woman's body. How will their behaviour and attitudes develop?

There are certain behaviours that seem to be universal, among humans in all parts of the world. Many of these behaviours are alos observed in other primates and many in other non-primate animals.

But taking the other option, that behaviour is nurture, that might suggest that people become transgendered because of some aspect of their development.

That raises two questions, firstly, why do some people react to experiences by becoming transgendered?

This first is actually trite. The asnwers are rather obvious.

But the second is, is a behaviour wrong or unnatural, or even pathological, simply because it is developmental and deviates from a norm?

A young boy, raised in the US becomes obscessed with baseball. Not uncommon among American boys and perfectly acceptable.

That young boy is moved, permanently, to the UK, where baseball is a bit of an oddity, to be honest. Most young boys like him will be obscessed with football. (Soccer to the colonials). Or cricket. (Equally boring as baseball). The young American boy will be out of place. He will be socially awkward.

Is the young basball obscessed American boy now clinically ill?

Does he require treatment for baseball obscession?

Is being obscessed with baseball an illness, because of geography?

[Muffin]

... And it's highly unlikely that the world is going to snap into a different frame of reference and all of a sudden throw down and create a national holiday for the wonder that is you. ...
You are on your own.

This is my exact point, I never once told anyone to think differently. It's like some of you have been waiting for me to express an odd opinion so you can all jump on me and hate on me for it.

edited out bad language-Nicki

[placeholdername]

Personally, I'm disappointed that one transsexual finds another transsexual 'creepy' because they disagree with their definition of what it means to be transgender. I'd hope we wouldn't be stigmatizing one another like that. 

Let's just be clear that I was talking only about hypothetical persons who may or may not be considered transgender.  To be honest, I don't think anyone is creepy (not even serial killers or other 'deviants').

The problem with your seneriao is that it is restricted to women born in men's bodies.

What would happen to a man born in a man's body, or a woman born in a woman's body. How will their behaviour and attitudes develop?

There are certain behaviours that seem to be universal, among humans in all parts of the world. Many of these behaviours are alos observed in other primates and many in other non-primate animals.

But taking the other option, that behaviour is nurture, that might suggest that people become transgendered because of some aspect of their development.

That raises two questions, firstly, why do some people react to experiences by becoming transgendered?

As far as the women being born into women's bodies, or men into men's bodies question, I think that's actually the best indicator of who is transgender/transsexual and who is a girly man or manly woman... this desire we seem to have to change something about our bodies.  I don't think that desire is result of societal influences -- I think that's the part we are born with.  We can view it as, "I'm a woman who was born in a man's body, so I want to change the male parts to female so I can be the real me", which seems to be the current view of many if not most TS people (or vice versa for FTM).  But I think that *reasoning* IS a result of societal influences.  All I personally know is that I was born XY, but I don't like the XY parts of my body and I feel profoundly more comfortable when I do things to make my body more feminine, such as getting rid of facial hair, or (for now) pretending I have boobs or trying to hide the bits between my legs.  I do things like growing my hair long, or dressing in feminine clothes for two reasons: 1) I like them and 2) they accentuate the female body I'm trying to get to (for now by simulation, but soon more concretely with hormones).

So I don't think it's a nature vs nurture question.  It's always both.  I like some girly things because of the effects of society (like high-heeled shoes! love!), but part of it is nature, this body dysphoria.

And that's what I don't like about this idea of saying that you're only really a transsexual if the cause is nature and therefore out of your control, but if the cause is somehow nurture, then it's obviously your fault so you're creepy.  This is the view that many people who are pejudiced against us take.  At first, most thought it was obviously somehow our fault, so we were always 'creepy'.  Then someone came along with the idea in the first part, to say that it wasn't our fault, we were born this way (which I think is probably true), and so if we convince people that it's not our fault, then maybe they won't be prejudiced against us.

And I say **** that.  Why do we have to justify ourselves?  This is the way I am, and I don't give a damn if people decide to be prejudiced about it.  I don't feel the need to justify it to other people.  It's really not their business.

But the second is, is a behaviour wrong or unnatural, or even pathological, simply because it is developmental and deviates from a norm?

That's a tricky question that has a lot of hidden assumptions in it.  We're mostly brought up to believe in this idea that it's possible for someone to somehow be unnatural/pathological/deviant etc.  But it's a relative term, defined by society, and has no intrinsic meaning in reality.  Society may look at one of us and say we are unnatural because we do X.  We say, from our perspective it's totally natural for us to do X.  But then all of us will look at a serial killer and say it's unnatural to do X.  But he or she may think serial killing is totally natural!  Before anyone cringes about me comparing us to serial killers (probably too late), my only point is to highlight that natural/unnatural is entirely about perspective.

The second thing is that this pattern of identifying individuals as unnatural/deviant is a meaningful function of society.  Society is a complicated system, and to work most efficiently, it requires that individuals conform to society.  Anyone who deviates from 'normal' causes more work for the other people in society.  They can either try to fix that person, or shun that person as deviant and exclude them from society.  There is nothing in this mechanism that is inherently hateful towards the 'deviant' people.  It's just about making society work.  The reality though is that most of the time, 'deviant' people aren't entirely fixed or excluded, and over time the 'deviance' gets integrated into society itself.

You can see the process happening very visibly with homosexuality.  At one point it was considered totally deviant and you could get locked in a mental hospital for it.  Now it's practically a mainstay of pop culture.  It's not fully integrated yet, but it's a process, and gay people are much less likely to be considered deviant than 30 years ago.

It's a bit trickier for transsexuality though, because I think most of us (but not all of us), don't really like the 'trans' part, and would be happier to get through transition and then mostly ignore the fact that anything has ever been different.  Which I think is totally fine and probably want myself.  But it does make the process of not being considered deviant by society a lot slower than it otherwise would be.

This is my exact point, I never once told anyone to think differently. It's like some of you have been waiting for me to express an odd opinion so you can all jump on me and hate on me for it. It's funny how it's only on this website that you get such crap like this.. you can all go f&$k yourself as far as I'm concerned I've had enough of this bull->-bleeped-<-.
*over it*.

I'm not saying anything like that, and I certainly don't hate you.

[Nicky]

Topic locked,

I think enough has been said, we have heard both sides of the argument and things are just getting a bit tense here.

I think it was a good debate though. Well done for those that managed to keep it civil.