Susan's Place Transgender Resources

 Hi.
  I am seeking wisdom :)

I don't understand gender identity and why people claim to feel like one gender or the other.  I understand that society raises a child differently based on their biological gender. but don't understand why. It seems like society has developed the notion that one 'gender' is associated to one type of behavior and dress code.
I sometimes hear people say, I 'feel' like a girl, or 'feel' like a boy, but that makes no sense to me.. You can't 'feel' like a gender.. a gender is just an assortment of behavior and dress code, from what I can tell. Just on behaving terms, how or why would someone want to behave just in one of those categories(gender)? why is it ,first of all, associated to biological attributes, and why, secondly, do 'transgenders' want to be considered as someone who behaves and dresses like the category that is associated to the other/opposite biological gender ?  If you feel like behaving a certain way... why not just behave or dress any way you want without associating yourself to an invented category(male/female)?

In other words, why would you limit yourself to being one gender or the other? I don't believe humans are bound to a certain set of behavior. Saying you were born with the other set of behavior sounds even weirder to me.

So, let's discuss your opinions, I'm really curious to understand better.

It's hard for someone who's perfectly fine in their bodies to understand what it's like for someone who isn't.  I'm not trans, so I'll try to make this short, I don't want to presume upon anybody.. but the way I understand it is.. for transpeople, it's not just about behaving a certain way.. because you're right, behavior is entirely invented and not based on any 'substantial' difference between the genders... and it's not based on a dress code.. it's body disphoria.  Which means that you feel like your body isn't yours, isn't the way it's supposed to be.  Imagine if you woke up tomorrow in the body of the opposite gender.. wouldn't it bother you?  Wouldn't it feel wrong, somehow?  Or maybe it wouldn't.. but everyone's different, and for many people, that would be bothersome.  And imagine having to grow up like that, always feeling like your body isn't right, that it should look and feel like something else.  Like the other gender.

People get depressed over it, commit suicide over it.. so whatever the cause is, it's obviously real.

If you feel like behaving a certain way... why not just behave or dress any way you want without associating yourself to an invented category(male/female)?

Many do choose this option and feel fine in it and have a good life with that realization.  Others are more prone to try to fit in with what they have been taught.  Still others do feel a disassociation and must correct it.

There are a lot of paths through these woods, no one way is right, or wrong.

It's not just a case of a gender being limited to a set of codes or a certain style of dressing or acting. There's a whole spectrum of experience and desire when it comes to transgendered individuals.

The following is just how I see it, relating to my own thoughts and feelings. :)

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 11:22:38 AM
I sometimes hear people say, I 'feel' like a girl, or 'feel' like a boy, but that makes no sense to me.. You can't 'feel' like a gender.. a gender is just an assortment of behavior and dress code, from what I can tell.

Well not really, on some level it encompasses the physical attributes associated with the biological sex, too. If you're female then you don't just want to act female and dress female... you want to be female, as much as you possibly can. And for a lot of people that process goes from hormone therapy all the way through to Gender Reassignment Surgery in order to attain the physiological attributes they feel they should have been born with from the outset. It's not about looking like a woman or acting like a woman... it's the whole package.

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Just on behaving terms, how or why would someone want to behave just in one of those categories(gender)?

Because that's who a lot of people are. I don't believe transgendered people are above the gender distinction. Speaking personally, I am not a different species of human, or more evolved or something. I don't transcend gender. I still feel like I am one gender, just the opposite one to the one I was born in.

Androgyne people may feel differently to this, however I don't presume to speak for them since I have no direct experience of their mindset with which to comment, so I'll leave that to the people of the forum who identify thus.

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why is it ,first of all, associated to biological attributes, and why, secondly, do 'transgenders' want to be considered as someone who behaves and dresses like the category that is associated to the other/opposite biological gender ?  If you feel like behaving a certain way... why not just behave or dress any way you want without associating yourself to an invented category(male/female)?

Again, I don't believe that's all there is to it. It's not just behaving a certain way or dressing a certain way.

I could put on a squirrel costume and run around in the forest... it wouldn't make me a squirrel.

Likewise, the male body I'm forced to deal with at the moment... I can dress female and act female... but the absolute most that would equate to, in my opinion, would be a female trapped inside a male who's trying to act female. That's not enough. I don't want to act any way. I want to be female... or as close as is physically possible. Because that's who I am.

Quote
In other words, why would you limit yourself to being one gender or the other? I don't believe humans are bound to a certain set of behavior. Saying you were born with the other set of behavior sounds even weirder to me.

So, let's discuss your opinions, I'm really curious to understand better.

As I said before, Transgendered people, at least speaking for myself personally... I don't transcend gender, I'm not in some vacuum looking at the concept from somewhere outside it. I want to limit myself to being one gender because I believe and feel I am one gender. And my mind, heart and soul is also one gender... unfortunately it's the opposite gender to the one I physically exhibit at the moment, but that can be changed. And after that, I will be perfectly happy just being one gender, the right one. :)

Thanks for the replies.
So, the issue is that you have a kind of feeling or notion that you're not in the right body, and the desire to be in the opposite (but still human) kind?  How does that feel like? I'm not able to fathom how that would be...  because I can't detect a hint of feeling 'right' or 'wrong' as I am. I am a consciousness who happens to inhabit a human body, and I couldnt care less whether it was designed one way or another; the reality is that this is the body that I have, and I don't feel it linked to any kind of 'feeling' of being a gender. I look how I look, and I act how I want to act... though it does bring consequences.

eeh, although I think like that, I still don't act out alot since I don't like attracting much attention.

QuoteIf you're female then you don't just want to act female and dress female... you want to be female, as much as you possibly can

How can you 'be' female?  aren't you yourself?  Even though I'm physically human, I don't think like I 'am' human and want to be as human as I can. My consciousness is not a physical being. and it's also my consciousness that desires and wants to do stuff, so, for me anyway, it's like I have to limit my true self if I limit myself to 'female' or 'male' role / behavior or even human behavior... yet I do, since I live in a society that wants everyone to act how they look like.

QuoteSpeaking personally, I am not a different species of human, or more evolved or something. I don't transcend gender. I still feel like I am one gender, just the opposite one to the one I was born in.

I have trouble understanding that. So I'm 'supposed' to 'feel' like my body? ...??dont understand. what link is there between the two? desire? I desire to be alot of things, but that's not what I am...
I dunno. maybe I just think too differently to understand it.. but discussing it is still fun. :)

QuoteI could put on a squirrel costume and run around in the forest... it wouldn't make me a squirrel.

No but it'd be fun :D  I know Ive wanted to be a cat alot :P

I don't claim to speak for the entire transgendered community in all of this, so here's my two cents.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 12:41:44 PM
Thanks for the replies.
So, the issue is that you have a kind of feeling or notion that you're not in the right body, and the desire to be in the opposite (but still human) kind?  How does that feel like? I'm not able to fathom how that would be...  because I can't detect a hint of feeling 'right' or 'wrong' as I am. I am a consciousness who happens to inhabit a human body, and I couldnt care less whether it was designed one way or another; the reality is that this is the body that I have, and I don't feel it linked to any kind of 'feeling' of being a gender. I look how I look, and I act how I want to act... though it does bring consequences.

eeh, although I think like that, I still don't act out alot since I don't like attracting much attention.

I care. I care a lot about my body. Because it's not the way it's supposed to be. I currently "dress male, behave male and respond  to a 'male' name" but that is not enough for me. It does not fix what's wrong with me. I know that beneath my baggy jeans and loose shirts my body is still female in the most biological sense.

So you want to know how it feels?

I started my period thursday night and I nearly cried. I nearly cried because it's too much for me to handle. I don't like that I can dress and behave a certain way and my body will still go on doing things I don't want it to do, that it shouldn't do. It still has a mind of it's own. I nearly cried because menstruation is disgusting, it's painful for me, and it makes me sick to my stomach that my body does it. I nearly cried because up until I saw this month's first red dot, I was a boy. And this was my body's sick way of telling me, "haha no you're not!! remember me?!  I'll be back next month too!"  Why does my body menstruate? I don't want any of the benefits of menstruation. I don't plan on squeezing a baby out of that hole ANY TIME during my life time, and I CERTAINLY don't want anything going in it. So why does my body continue to ovulate, to send eggs down into my uterus in the hopes that one day I will procreate? I'm sorry but it's not happening. So why won't it stop???

Then there's other types of depression. Breast depression. I wear a binder every day because I want my chest to be flat, wish it were flat, wish it were more masculine, but it's not. Two lumps peek out under my clothes everyday, and long have I run from the mirror when naked because I couldn't handle seeing them there. They're not supposed to be there!! At first I felt like a pervert. I'm not a peeping tom, I don't go around looking at naked women stepping out of their showers, and here was one right in my mirror! I respect women to the utmost degree and this was a downright violation of some woman's privacy, and I'd glance away, ashamed, until I realized my head was on that woman's body.

But it only got worse. It went from shame and embarrassment to downright nausea. Those things on my chest make me want to throw up now because they're not mine and someone put them there as a sick joke. I can't wait til the day I can get them surgically altered to like how they are supposed to.

But it doesn't stop there.


Have I answered your question in the slightest? This is just the tip of the iceberg for me so I can always add more later.

I agree with Leiandra too,

Quote from: Leiandra on October 18, 2008, 11:51:42 AM
I don't believe transgendered people are above the gender distinction. Speaking personally, I am not a different species of human, or more evolved or something. I don't transcend gender. I still feel like I am one gender, just the opposite one to the one I was born in.

I don't transcend gender in any way shape or form, and often times I feel like I am stereotyping it because I'm just behaving the way I believe a man should behave, or because I enjoy certain things that are more commonly attributed to the male gender. I in no way shape or form think I am better than anyone in these gender stereotypes, in fact I'm probably worse, but they are part of who I am and what I like doing. (Example: I love yardwork, lawn  mowing, making things with my hands, hate doing dishes, household chores...) But sometimes I do break the mold (I love cooking!!! I love musicals! And I am sensitive enough to understand how hard it is being a woman!) so I'm not as bad as I could have turned out.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 12:41:44 PM
Thanks for the replies.
So, the issue is that you have a kind of feeling or notion that you're not in the right body, and the desire to be in the opposite (but still human) kind?

It's not a notion. It's... a certainty. A knowledge that colours every aspect of your life. It's like... you're wearing a costume 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can't take it off yet you know it's not who you are. Think about going to a fancy dress party and being unable to remove the facade. People see the costume, the anatomy, the stature, and treat you as though that's who you are.

But inside there's your voice screaming "No! This is wrong! You can't see me!" Every time you look in a mirror you try to see behind your eyes, behind the face and the body staring back at you, to try and find the person who you see when you close your eyes and dream, when you visualise yourself in your mind's eye... which looks so different to what you're faced with every day that often you don't even recognise your own reflection; and when faced with the reality of that reflection you feel a crushing sense of despair and of being lost within your own persona, trying to claw your way out.

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  How does that feel like? I'm not able to fathom how that would be...  because I can't detect a hint of feeling 'right' or 'wrong' as I am. I am a consciousness who happens to inhabit a human body, and I couldnt care less whether it was designed one way or another; the reality is that this is the body that I have, and I don't feel it linked to any kind of 'feeling' of being a gender. I look how I look, and I act how I want to act... though it does bring consequences.

Then you are more fortunate than a lot of people who don't have that luxury.

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How can you 'be' female?  aren't you yourself?

By having the right body to match my thought patterns and being able to express myself completely comfortably within my own skin. That's how.

Am I myself? Internally yes, externally... no. It's that simple, in my opinion. And it's taken a lot of soul searching and self analysis to reach that conclusion. And this is only my conclusion, I do not expect it to be anyone else's. I can be female by having female anatomy (or as close an approximation as is possible with current medical technology and procedures). I can be female by being able to look in the mirror and see the person reflected back physcally that is also reflected in the mirror of my subconscious. When that happens, I will be myself internally and externally.

For me, that is my desire. Female genitalia, female body shape (again, as close as possible), the correct anatomy to be able to integrate into the world as a woman and to be able to feel comfortable and complete in doing so.

As things currently stand, I am female but I cannot go about being female until my physiology matches my psychology.

Think of it in terms of a computer. My body is the catalyst for me to integrate and identify with those around me. It's the platform for me to express my psyche and channel my desires, hopes and intent through and provides the hardline connection to the internet of life. At the moment, my external hardware is incompatible with the internal software trying to run on it. It's like trying to run Windows on an Apple Mac PC.

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  Even though I'm physically human, I don't think like I 'am' human and want to be as human as I can. My consciousness is not a physical being. and it's also my consciousness that desires and wants to do stuff, so, for me anyway, it's like I have to limit my true self if I limit myself to 'female' or 'male' role / behavior or even human behavior... yet I do, since I live in a society that wants everyone to act how they look like.

So how do you quantify your consciousness? Such a nebulous abstract must have some basis in physical reality. What's yours?

QuoteI have trouble understanding that. So I'm 'supposed' to 'feel' like my body? ...??dont understand. what link is there between the two? desire? I desire to be alot of things, but that's not what I am...
I dunno. maybe I just think too differently to understand it.. but discussing it is still fun. :)

You're not 'supposed' to feel anything. If you don't then you don't, but that doesn't mean that no one does. Individuals are all different, with different perceptions and different viewpoints.

The link between the two is... that, in my opinion, whilst existing in a 4-dimensional plane of reality, one cannot exist without the other. They are inevitably bound together and one affects the other. Instability and disharmony in one will impact on the other. :)

Quote from: trapthavok on October 18, 2008, 01:40:02 PM

I care. I care a lot about my body. Because it's not the way it's supposed to be. I currently "dress male, behave male and respond  to a 'male' name" but that is not enough for me. It does not fix what's wrong with me. I know that beneath my baggy jeans and loose shirts my body is still female in the most biological sense.

hmm.. Why is it 'supposed' to be that way? I think that's the big part I have trouble with..
but.. seems like alot of heartache. I could see why someone would want to do everything possible to feel more comfortable with themselves.

This might not be a wanted opinion but.. In a similar fashion, I'm sure there's 'normal' girls out there who have 'ugly' bodies and feel they should have a 'beautiful' one and probably cry all the time in front of the mirror wishing they had one, and feeling like it's supposed to be like they wish... But in a way, that seems like it's a form of denial...  if you can't accept what you are, then all it'll bring you is pain. I'm not saying you shouldn't act or dress how you like, but to accept the things that you can't change.
I recall multiple times feeling inadequate by my physical appearance or desiring it to be something else, but I've never thought that it 'should' be the way I want it to be.. because that's being unrealistic.

However, the human mind is quite complex and It's probably possible for it to feel like something is not as it should.
Reading what you wrote, it seems like you really are determined that something is wrong. But I'm wondering..  Do you desire to be what you have in mind so much that you find it's just not fair for things to have turned out otherwise?

Sorry if I'm a bit insensitive, I dont want to sound like im underestimating the issue. I've had alot of depressin problems myself in life but not as much as you regarding the physical body.

Hi, Saraloop. Thanks for writing.

I have always felt like I was frozen at the age of thirteen because I was fourteen when I started really developing noticeably female attributes. I have always felt like a boy who never grew up. A Peter Pan, if you will, but not a willing one.

Living in this female body and being perceived as female by the world has been so painful for me, so wrong, that I have spent a huge portion of my life living in a fantasy world in which I am gay and male. In recent years, I have almost completely shut myself off from other people and spent more and more time inside my head. That's the only way I could survive and stay sane. I'm naturally somewhat hermitish, but I've taken that natural tendency and distorted it out of all proportion. I never even wanted to leave the house. I just felt worse and worse about myself. Now that I'm taking positive steps toward transition, I'm coming out of my shell a bit. I still hate my body, but I'm feeling better about my SELF.

I am well aware that social responses to my gender presentation have a lot to do with why I want to transition and change my body. This phenomenon--my response to other people's responses--sometimes drives me nuts and gives me nagging doubts about who and what I really am. But I do not live in a vacuum. I have to make my way in the world. The only way I know to do that and to stop the wrongness of it all is to transition.

Imagine this. Let's say that you're an American. Everywhere you go, people see you as a Spaniard. All of their responses to you are colored by this perception. Instead of saying "hello," they say "hola" in an attempt to be friendly. They ask about the best flamenco music and want to feed you paella all the time when you just want a hamburger. They're always saying things like, "What do you, as a Spaniard, think of this issue?" and "What do you Spaniards think of the Basque situation?" and "Your king is a cool guy, but we Americans have a president" and even, "Hey, Spaniard, you're in the wrong bathroom!!"

That just might start to drive you crazy. If the Spaniard scenario doesn't work for you and give you a taste for how things are for a lot of transsexual people, try race or color or even occupation.

Others on this thread have done a better job of explaining than I have, but I felt compelled to add my two cents' worth (a buck fifty with inflation).

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 12:41:44 PM
How can you 'be' female?  aren't you yourself?  Even though I'm physically human, I don't think like I 'am' human and want to be as human as I can. My consciousness is not a physical being. and it's also my consciousness that desires and wants to do stuff, so, for me anyway, it's like I have to limit my true self if I limit myself to 'female' or 'male' role / behavior or even human behavior... yet I do, since I live in a society that wants everyone to act how they look like.

I am myself, that self just happens to be female.  Gender identity is a difficult concept to understand or explain, it just exists.  I think that all of humanity experiences it, even if not aware of it on a concious level.  Having it conflict with your external body though, does make you realise that even if you don't understand it, its wrong.  Having said that i can't describe any feeling within me that is "female".  I just am.

I think you can see it in young children.  They know that they are a boy or a girl from a young age without needing it explained.  They know who has is the same gender as them and those who are different.  Part of this is probably down to society, but it still seems to exist the same despite a wide range of upbringings.  Parents can bring up their children the same treating the sexes equally, yet the boys still end up being boys and the girls end up being girls.

And also i don't think we limit ourselves by saying we are female or male.  Gender identity its the same as gender role.  The female/male role comes largely from society and transgender people don't conform to it any more or less than cisgender people. 

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 02:27:33 PM
This might not be a wanted opinion but.. In a similar fashion, I'm sure there's 'normal' girls out there who have 'ugly' bodies and feel they should have a 'beautiful' one and probably cry all the time in front of the mirror wishing they had one, and feeling like it's supposed to be like they wish... But in a way, that seems like it's a form of denial...  if you can't accept what you are, then all it'll bring you is pain. I'm not saying you shouldn't act or dress how you like, but to accept the things that you can't change.
I recall multiple times feeling inadequate by my physical appearance or desiring it to be something else, but I've never thought that it 'should' be the way I want it to be.. because that's being unrealistic.

That's completely different. Those girls don't feel like any less girls because they don't have have the level of subjective beauty they desire, they don't consider themselves to be any less female. And they feel comfortable with the fact that they are female, and just want to be the ultimate embodiment of who they already are.

It's not about being beautiful or ugly. Heck, I will likely end up being the Bride of Frankenstein when I'm done, but I will be female... and that's all I want. I already have accepted who I am, and that's why I, and everyone else here, is doing this... exactly because of that.

And my external physiology can be changed. That's the whole point. What I can't change is who I am inside, and I have no intention of doing so. Nor am I denying anything. :)

Let us not forget that gender differences have been scientifically proven to originate in the brain. Yes, the specific behaviors associated with male and female are by and large taught and invented by society, but without physical and psycological gender differences in the first place, these sociological differences would never have arisen.

Women are wired in the brain differently than men and visa versa. They are two equal entities with different traits. Society is the influence which shows preference for one over the other. But that does not negate the fact that the genders are intrinsically different. Therefore, the feeling of being a woman is born in the brain (and some would say the spirit, or soul, but that is a philosophical discussion for another time) and is expressed using whatever norms are in place in the transgendered person's society.

Love, Sarah

Hello Saraloop and welcome to Susan's! why don't you do us all a huge favor and introduce yourself here (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/board,8.0.html) so that we can get to know you a little bit better?

tink :icon_chick:

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 02:27:33 PM
This might not be a wanted opinion but.. In a similar fashion, I'm sure there's 'normal' girls out there who have 'ugly' bodies and feel they should have a 'beautiful' one and probably cry all the time in front of the mirror wishing they had one, and feeling like it's supposed to be like they wish... But in a way, that seems like it's a form of denial...  if you can't accept what you are, then all it'll bring you is pain. I'm not saying you shouldn't act or dress how you like, but to accept the things that you can't change.
I recall multiple times feeling inadequate by my physical appearance or desiring it to be something else, but I've never thought that it 'should' be the way I want it to be.. because that's being unrealistic.

There is also many transgender girls (and boys) who believe that they have ugly bodies, and can hate parts of their bodies in just the same way that cisgender ("normal") girls.  But from my experience it is completely different to gender dysphoria.  The difference is that you can believe and accept your "ugly" bits.  You can learn to love yourself and will feel better about your body, but that can never cure the gender dysphoria. 

There are parts of my body that i hate because i'm gender dysphoric, but others parts i hate as in the situation you describe.  And those parts of my body that i don't like for non-gender dysphoric reasons i have grown to accept and even (sometimes!) like.

The difference is that with gender dysphoria, if you can convince yourself and belief that your physical body is ok, and your feelings of wrongness aren't real, then it does lead to suicide in some people.

Its difficult to understand why it is different, but its just not possible to accept your body if you're transgender, and lead anything resembling a healthy existance.  It eventually comes out

Thank you all for all you opinions. Especially Leiandra because you made me realize just how much I'm on another plane of thought compared to the transgendered.
I think I'm starting to understand it a bit more..  but it really seems like you have to be one to understand correctly huh?

The reason why I can't relate is because I've always felt that male and female identity and role were just classifications made up by society, and not something you 'felt' like, which I still have trouble grasping... but I don't believe that men and women are wired that differently.. the only difference  that I think makes a difference in the way each think is the hormones affecting the brain. 

...

QuoteSo how do you quantify your consciousness? Such a nebulous abstract must have some basis in physical reality. What's yours?

I think I see no link between my consciousness,which is me, and my physical body... like if this body is just a pile of meat that I'm using as a host for my consciousness. I'm controlling this body, but I don't feel it's 'me' in anyway.
Care to explain a bit more the quantifying you're talking about?

QuoteBut inside there's your voice screaming "No! This is wrong! You can't see me!" Every time you look in a mirror you try to see behind your eyes, behind the face and the body staring back at you, to try and find the person who you see when you close your eyes and dream, when you visualise yourself in your mind's eye... which looks so different to what you're faced with every day that often you don't even recognise your own reflection; and when faced with the reality of that reflection you feel a crushing sense of despair and of being lost within your own persona, trying to claw your way out.

This I can relate alot to,  I've discussed something similar with friends alot, though it wasn't associated to gender. The truth is that people will NEVER see you as you truly are.. it's just impossible, ... but I can see how you might want to express yourself for how you truly see yourself to help along other people to see you that way too...  For me Ive stopped caring about what other people see me as... Mostly.
So, your body would be an expression of who you see yourself in your mind then? that makes sense, ... but for me, the way I see myself as inside is impossible to represent... and it has nothing to do with gender... so I dunno, why can't we transcend gender again? :P

this is quite confusing..  but interesting :D

Belief is not involved in scientific fact. it either is or it is not. And multiple experiments have proven that there are physical differences between male and femal brains.

Quotebut I don't believe that men and women are wired that differently.. the only difference  that I think makes a difference in the way each think is the hormones affecting the brain.

Exactly. And the effect hormones play in the womb are to set up the brain's wiring thereby making for physical differences between male and female. The interesting thing is that testosterone plays a major role in wiring a female brain in the womb. After birth, estrogen takes over the role of continuing the changes in the brain. In fact (again, scientific, empirical fact), the brain does not stop maturing and changing until the person is in their mid- to late-twenties, thereby widening the physical gap between the genders.

If you'd like, I can provide you with references to these studies.

Sarahloops, here's my take on it.

In some ways, my views on gender are similar to yours, in that I believe the vast majority of gender-specific behavior to be learned rather than innate. Even given the structural differences between male and female brains, I think that it's likely that these are statistical realities, rather than absolute ones. (Some people on this board will disagree with me here. I'm not looking to get into an argument. To each their own.) There will be some women who identify as women whose brains are not strongly "typed" as female, and some men who identify as men whose brains are not strongly "typed" male, just as there are some women whose skeletal structure is androgynous and some men whose skeletal structure is androgynous. To give a terrible MS Paint version of my views on gender:

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi34.tinypic.com%2F2wda875.jpg&hash=e79ce569d92fd5fec2dcd52f67857d7fd017417f)

There's a bell curve for "feminine" behavior and a bell curve for "masculine" behavior. They overlap substantially, and there are outliers for each at the far ends of the image. I take gender to be relative, rather than absolute. If I read you right, this agrees pretty well with your views.

Having said all that, here's where I'm coming from:

In any social situation, I'm happier being treated as a guy. In any romantic situation, I'm happier being treated as a guy. In my head, I'm happier thinking of myself as a guy. When I look in the mirror, the more I look like a dude, the more I like the way I look. (And, in fact, as others have mentioned, there are days when I can't stand to look down.)

I've tried to compromise. I've been the most radically feminist, tomboy girl you've ever seen. But it still doesn't make me as happy as just being a boy. I don't know if it's a genetic thing, or a brain structure or chemistry thing, or just a purely psychological thing, and to be honest, I don't really care.

I figure, I can either go through the rest of my life cringing when people call me "ma'am," or I can do something about it.

Hi Saraloop, welcome to Susan's!

Take some time to look around and take a look at our site rules and things.

I've had this discussion with others who also could not fathom why I needed to change my gender.

First off, you are right.  You cannot truly understand this condition if you don't have it.  It is like trying to explain the color orange to someone who has been blind all their life.

The SEX in transsexual seems to put people off, so I try to defuse the issue by not referring to sex or gender:

What if you woke up tomorrow and you were an aardvark.  You looked like an aardvark, you smelled like an aardvark, and all the other aardvarks said you were an aardvark!

But you would know differently wouldn't you?  You knew that inside you were a human being, not an aardvark.  You would have an unquenchable need to try and become human again.  Not to be covered in fur, to walk upright, to see things the way a human saw again.  And no matter how you explained it to other aardvarks they would still see you as an aardvark and wonder why in the world you would ever want to be anything else.

That is an inkling of what transsexuals have to endure.   We endure this all our lives.  What follows is depression, sometimes drug and alcohol abuse, and aberrant personality disorders.  In order to get along in society many of use try to act the role our bodys have shackled us with.  Eventually the depression becomes clinical and not unusually, suicidal ideation and  many times suicide attempts occur.  Often times the attempts are successful.  I believe that the condition is fatal without treatment.

The only known treatment for the condition is gender transition.  This treatment is over 95% effective.  Virtually every transsexual (yours truly included) has successfully overcome their depression and suicidal tendencies when they have transitioned.

Unlike crossdressers, this is not about clothing though that is a component.   It is about fulfilling the role of our chosen gender in society.  Of being accepted in that role.  (I really am not saying crossdressers are somehow inferior to transsexuals.  Just that we have different needs.)   And as others have said, most of us believe that it is society that follows the way human brains are wired, not the other way around.  Society does not dictate gender roles.  Rather gender roles in society have evolved from the basic difference in the male and female brains.

I ramble a bit and I apologize if I have beaten the dead horse, but I just wanted to give my point of view on the subject.

-Sandy

kephalopod, I'm not sure I fully understand your illustration, but it's true that everyone has ways they prefer to be treated by society. Seems like the solution most of you came up with is to physically alter yourself to entice others to treat you differently.. completely different from my approach I guess..

Quote from: Kassandra on October 18, 2008, 07:15:14 PM

What if you woke up tomorrow and you were an aardvark.  You looked like an aardvark, you smelled like an aardvark, and all the other aardvarks said you were an aardvark!

But you would know differently wouldn't you?  You knew that inside you were a human being, not an aardvark.  You would have an unquenchable need to try and become human again.  Not to be covered in fur, to walk upright, to see things the way a human saw again.  And no matter how you explained it to other aardvarks they would still see you as an aardvark and wonder why in the world you would ever want to be anything else.

...

 And as others have said, most of us believe that it is society that follows the way human brains are wired, not the other way around.  Society does not dictate gender roles.  Rather gender roles in society have evolved from the basic difference in the male and female brains.

I ramble a bit and I apologize if I have beaten the dead horse, but I just wanted to give my point of view on the subject.

-Sandy

ok. I understand your point about the aardvark, it's similar to another one... I can relate slightly to it but... it's really weird because when you're born you didn't experience a past life as the opposite gender so why would you feel like you're in the wrong end? Then again, if you believe in reincarnation maybe you were the opposite gender in your past life ? :P

Thanks for explaining you're way of seeing the brain wiring. I can see how seeing it that way could affect the matter... but, the problem is, look at history and it will contradict that notion; Culture and gender roles/behavior has changed every generation differently in different nations. The Romans during significant periods had extremely effeminate men, and most of them were bisexual; to them it was natural.
I've noticed first hand how society affects people's minds; I've been a victim of it myself, so there's no way I can fool myself into thinking that society has developed in a way being the product of the way our brains are wired. ..Science studies have proven nothing, only coming out with theories.

Allow me to also rant a bit :P
If I'm in an aardvark body, then so be it if I can't change that. Why worry about that stuff when I can be making the best of whatever I have? If you want to try to shape things to be more like your desires, then do it by all means, but saying that you shouldn't have the body that you have? If you have it then obviously it happened; as far as I know, things that shouldn't happen, don't; if they do, then that means there was the possibility of it happening. To not accept the reality of things is denial..
...eh,  rant over:P

I would be more comfortable in another body, but happiness is not restricted by gender identity..
I dunno, I can definitely relate to desiring to be a certain way, but gender identity is just weird...  :-\

Look up 'two-spirits.'  Even among the Native Americans, there were transsexuals.  Society's treatment of a person has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they feel at home in their body.  And why should one just lay back and try to 'make the most of it' if doing so would lead to misery and deep depression?  Why not physically alter the body?  After all, if it's 'just a body,' then no harm done if you change it to make it fit what you think it should be, right?  No harm done if it makes you far happier, right?

Again, this is not simply about gender roles and how people want to be treated.

This is all pretty subjective stuff, Saraloop.

For me its less the societal role and more the biological place I feel like I should be in. I mean... Some societal things I enjoy but really its cause my body sucks and I despise it.

Like when someone calls me Johnny Depp or Bam Margera, I want nothing less than to light Bam on fire and watch him scream.

Taking the MSPaint deal, many people in here are exactly where those two lines cross.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 12:47:18 AM
I understand your point about the aardvark, it's similar to another one... I can relate slightly to it but... it's really weird because when you're born you didn't experience a past life as the opposite gender so why would you feel like you're in the wrong end? Then again, if you believe in reincarnation maybe you were the opposite gender in your past life ? :P

Allow me to also rant a bit :P
If I'm in an aardvark body, then so be it if I can't change that. Why worry about that stuff when I can be making the best of whatever I have? If you want to try to shape things to be more like your desires, then do it by all means, but saying that you shouldn't have the body that you have? If you have it then obviously it happened; as far as I know, things that shouldn't happen, don't; if they do, then that means there was the possibility of it happening. To not accept the reality of things is denial..
...eh,  rant over:P

That was a great analogy Sandy!  If also on suddenly having an aardvark body, you also had no memory of your past human life, then thats what its like for us.

You might have no memories of your pre-aardvark time, but that doesn't mean who you are isn't human.  Our humanity is more than just a collection of memories.  To want to be human in shape wouldn't so much be a desire, but be wanting to be you.

My desire to transition isn't so much in wanting to make my body "better".  It comes from having to pretend to be something that i'm not with this current body.  I managed to pretend to be "male" for 20 years, but that was 20 years of not being who i am.  Its being forced to deny a part of yourself, and thats something that is not easy to handle.

If making the best of the situation means pretending to be an aardvark, could you honestly say that you could live with that?  Wouldn't it be living in denial to pretend to be an aardvark?  The reality is that you are human.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 12:47:18 AM
kephalopod, I'm not sure I fully understand your illustration, but it's true that everyone has ways they prefer to be treated by society. Seems like the solution most of you came up with is to physically alter yourself to entice others to treat you differently.. completely different from my approach I guess..

Maybe there is something to that, but physical change isn't solely for the benefit of other people. It's more for the benefit of the individual and the need to feel at home in one's own body, regardless of how the rest of the world treats them.

Quoteok. I understand your point about the aardvark, it's similar to another one... I can relate slightly to it but... it's really weird because when you're born you didn't experience a past life as the opposite gender so why would you feel like you're in the wrong end? Then again, if you believe in reincarnation maybe you were the opposite gender in your past life ? :P

Don't be so sure that people haven't experienced a past life as a different gender. I have undergone PLR (Past Life Regression) and, whatever you may think about its validity... I believe I do know how it feels to be female, biologically, based, in part, on the memories of a past life, or memories of... something (I'm not entirely sure how I could experience childbirth with vivid reality, perfect clarity, and pain like you wouldn't believe, unless I have those memories locked up somewhere... but that's a different subject entirely). That reinforces the deep-rooted knowledge that it's who I should be in this life.

Quote
Thanks for explaining you're way of seeing the brain wiring. I can see how seeing it that way could affect the matter... but, the problem is, look at history and it will contradict that notion; Culture and gender roles/behavior has changed every generation differently in different nations. The Romans during significant periods had extremely effeminate men, and most of them were bisexual; to them it was natural.
I've noticed first hand how society affects people's minds; I've been a victim of it myself, so there's no way I can fool myself into thinking that society has developed in a way being the product of the way our brains are wired. ..Science studies have proven nothing, only coming out with theories.

That's a flawed way of looking at things. You can't know how many people would have changed their gender throughout history had the technology been in place to allow them to do so. Historical comparisons say very little, because at no time in history was humanity as tehnologically advanced as it is now, nor did people have the freedom to choose. So saying "Well they never did it in the past, so it must be wrong now" is basing your view on the documents written by people from a time when a lot less was understood about the human condition. Heck, they used to drill holes in people's heads because they believed headaches were caused by 'bad spirits' which had to be expunged.

Quote
Allow me to also rant a bit :P
If I'm in an aardvark body, then so be it if I can't change that. Why worry about that stuff when I can be making the best of whatever I have? If you want to try to shape things to be more like your desires, then do it by all means, but saying that you shouldn't have the body that you have? If you have it then obviously it happened; as far as I know, things that shouldn't happen, don't; if they do, then that means there was the possibility of it happening. To not accept the reality of things is denial..
...eh,  rant over:P

It's difficult trying to explain the feeling of being one gender to someone who doesn't identify with the concept of either gender, at all. It's like trying to explain the difference between lamb and beef to a vegetarian... the argument is "well they're both meat, what's the big deal, why would you prefer one to the other?".

I don't wish to be confrontational, but you seem to be saying that people should just accept their lot in life and 'deal with it', that "Oh, you were born a man/woman, you should act like a man/woman and that's the end of it."

That isn't an option.

And because you feel a certain way about it, that doesn't make everyone else wrong and deluded. If you don't have an identification with gender, that's fine, and you're entitled to your perception of the world. But that doesn't mean that gender identity doesn't exist, nor does it mean that other people don't identify very strongly with one or the other gender, even if it is in conflict with their current physical attributes. That's a very solipsistic attitude to adopt.

There's a difference between saying someone shouldn't have or do something and saying that someone can't have or do something. I shouldn't have stepped in that pile of dog mess the other day, but I did... and rather than going around for the rest of my life with a big, brown, smelly splotch on my shoe because that's what happened so it has to stay that way... I washed it off, cleaned the shoe, and now it's all hunky dory. I am happy with my shoe.

Likewise, I shouldn't have been born with this body. But I was. So, rather than going around with an ugly, wrinkly, smelly lump between my legs and a flat chest, because that's what happened so it has to stay that way, I am going to have the lump removed and take the necessary steps to develop the breast tissue, and the curves I want in order for my physical body image to match my mental body image. Then it will all be hunky dory and I will be happy with my self.

What you have to realise is that, in the world today, there exists the aptitude and technology for human beings to change their gender. So whether people should or should not is largely irrelevant. People have free will and self-determination. And if that's the choice they make then it's their life and their decision. From a humanitarian standpoint, if it causes no harm to you or yours then understanding the motivations of the individual isn't a necessity, respecting the choice of the individual... is.

Predetermination is an outdated stance. You're born how you are. Fine. But that isn't the be all and end all of everything. And if a person doesn't feel like their body matches their psychology/soul/spirit... there exists the capacity to change yourself until you acquire the physical appearance that fits who you are.

The 'reality' of the situation, as you put it, is that physical appearance is fluid. We don't live in the 17th century anymore. If you want something to be changed then you can change it. And that is how we go about 'making the best of it'. :)

 Sorry if I didn't make my stance clear enough. I have nothing against changing your body, at all. What I'm debating/trying to understand, is Gender Identity, for anyone, not just transgenders or transsexuals...

Quote
Maybe there is something to that, but physical change isn't solely for the benefit of other people. It's more for the benefit of the individual and the need to feel at home in one's own body, regardless of how the rest of the world treats them.

I'm all for this... Feeling comfortable with yourself is great. How my stance varies from yours is that I feel changing your physical appearance to feel comfortable is.. a shortcut, I guess. Happiness comes from within. Before changing my body I want to be comfortable with the one I already have.. that way I won't be disappointed if I fail. This is a philosophy that has come to fruition through my own life experience... and feels.. more complete. Then, whatever changes I make are like a bonus, instead of a necessity.
.. but maybe my philosophy is impossible for transgenders? if so, then ok.. let's say it's such a struggle for you that your mind has blocked your happiness unless your body 'matches' ... Is that what body disphoria is?

QuoteThat's a flawed way of looking at things. You can't know how many people would have changed their gender throughout history had the technology been in place to allow them to do so. Historical comparisons say very little, because at no time in history was humanity as tehnologically advanced as it is now, nor did people have the freedom to choose. So saying "Well they never did it in the past, so it must be wrong now" is basing your view on the documents written by people from a time when a lot less was understood about the human condition. Heck, they used to drill holes in people's heads because they believed headaches were caused by 'bad spirits' which had to be expunged.

I think we have a misunderstanding. I was talking about the statement that someone made about society's values on gender having developed from the differences in brain wiring between men and women, rather than society having developed to the point of influencing men and women to having these differences... So I wasn't talking about sex change or transgender at all.

QuoteIt's difficult trying to explain the feeling of being one gender to someone who doesn't identify with the concept of either gender, at all. It's like trying to explain the difference between lamb and beef to a vegetarian... the argument is "well they're both meat, what's the big deal, why would you prefer one to the other?".

It's true, I have a hard time understanding.. as the title says :P but I'm trying to!
I've seen how both genders are, and realized that thinking like I should be one or the other only limits my true self. I can be so much more than a man or a woman. I can take attributes I like from one or the other, or both, but there's more! What about kids? They have attributes that adults don't have... so why should I limit myself to being adult? Let's go deeper, why should I limit myself to being human?!  I like the way certain animals behave or seem to approach things... they have a mentality as well, although it's simpler than humans..  .. hehe, is that so weird? If there's spirits, and our consciousness comes from one, then I can tap into things that aren't human as well.. in theory.. :P
Seems like what I need to understand is that other people's consciousness are not this flexible? it's stuck with a certain category? I don't know, lol, what do I know.

QuoteI don't wish to be confrontational, but you seem to be saying that people should just accept their lot in life and 'deal with it', that "Oh, you were born a man/woman, you should act like a man/woman and that's the end of it."

No no no. Act how you want, change yourself however you want.  But the way certain people were talking about it, it sounds like some just can't accept what they were born as... Just because you're born a man doesn't mean you should act like a man, but you can't change the fact that you were born a man, only what you do from here on out.
Appearance is less meaningful than behavior for me though..I'm still struggling with my behavior. I'm scared of acting how I truly want, because society will judge me and think 'what the hell is that person doing?'...

QuoteThere's a difference between saying someone shouldn't have or do something and saying that someone can't have or do something. I shouldn't have stepped in that pile of dog mess the other day, but I did... and rather than going around for the rest of my life with a big, brown, smelly splotch on my shoe because that's what happened so it has to stay that way... I washed it off, cleaned the shoe, and now it's all hunky dory. I am happy with my shoe.

K, I think I understand what the problem is;  we interpret 'should' differently. If I step in dog poo I'm not going to say I shouldn't have stepped in it.. I'll think, Hmm I stepped in dog poo, Can I undo that? no, but I can try to clean it and hope it doesn't smell anymore, that'd be cool.
... Don't know if you understand my point of view? Maybe I put too much importance in the word 'should' :S

QuoteLikewise, I shouldn't have been born with this body. But I was. So, rather than going around with an ugly, wrinkly, smelly lump between my legs and a flat chest, because that's what happened so it has to stay that way, I am going to have the lump removed and take the necessary steps to develop the breast tissue, and the curves I want in order for my physical body image to match my mental body image. Then it will all be hunky dory and I will be happy with my self.

I can show you again how I think :P
... I was born in this body, how weird... eww what's this lump? this body is kinda ugly I find, oh well. Can I undo this? no. I could probably get this lump removed though, it'll already look better.. Maybe I can change the rest to my tastes too! that'd be cool.

QuoteWhat you have to realise is that, in the world today, there exists the aptitude and technology for human beings to change their gender. So whether people should or should not is largely irrelevant. People have free will and self-determination. And if that's the choice they make then it's their life and their decision. From a humanitarian standpoint, if it causes no harm to you or yours then understanding the motivations of the individual isn't a necessity, respecting the choice of the individual... is.

True, maybe it's irrelevant for me to try to understand...  but how can I respect something I don't understand? Should I just be accepting of everything that I think doesn't apply to me?
In the end though I find it does apply to me.. we are all on a quest to reach happiness, and we can help each other, even by just trying to understand each others' reasoning. :)

If it's ok to discuss some more, I'm still curious :D
Here's something I'm really trying to understand... I've asked a few people I know but they can't explain it to me because they don't think about gender as much as transgenders...

How does it 'feel' to be a woman?
How does it 'feel' to be a man?
In other words, how do you Identify as one or the other, apart from your body?

ps; sorry for the long post. :-\

Saraloop,
I have been reading and posting on this site for a very short time and was quite discouraged with what I have found, until TODAY!! You have asked the questions that I wanted to ask. You have shown an intelligent take on this very complicated subject. I am so moved and inspired by what you have written!!! I hope that you continue to post on this site as I have nowhere to go for this kind of outlook. I am so tired of being told that being trans is just being born in the "wrong" body" How can you know you were born in the wrong body if you were never "born" before? There are many "conditions" where people think that something is "not right" and the medical community does not condone the removal of these parts through surgical intervention. I am so lost and confused and don't want to go on in this trans hell that my child is putting me through. I don't want to accept the mutilation of her physical body in order to accomadate her mental one.
Thanks for your input.

Sasha2

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 12:08:07 PM
I'm all for this... Feeling comfortable with yourself is great. How my stance varies from yours is that I feel changing your physical appearance to feel comfortable is.. a shortcut, I guess. Happiness comes from within. Before changing my body I want to be comfortable with the one I already have.. that way I won't be disappointed if I fail. This is a philosophy that has come to fruition through my own life experience... and feels.. more complete. Then, whatever changes I make are like a bonus, instead of a necessity.
.. but maybe my philosophy is impossible for transgenders? if so, then ok.. let's say it's such a struggle for you that your mind has blocked your happiness unless your body 'matches' ... Is that what body disphoria is?

The thing is that a transgendered person will never be comfortable with the body they have. So the idea of not being disappointed if you fail because any change is a 'bonus'... it just doesn't work. The need to change the body is a necessity in order to feel comfortable with it. Part of the happiness is based on physical alteration, and without that... happiness is vastly stunted, if not supressed entirely. Happiness may come from within, but when a condition of that happiness it the correct identity... staying with the body you have and just adding bits or taking bits away on a whim... it's not possible, in my opinion. Because the body you have isn't part of that identity and is a big part of the reason that happiness doesn't occur.

QuoteI think we have a misunderstanding. I was talking about the statement that someone made about society's values on gender having developed from the differences in brain wiring between men and women, rather than society having developed to the point of influencing men and women to having these differences... So I wasn't talking about sex change or transgender at all.

My apologies, I did misunderstand what you said. I think both arguments on that issue have some merit and a case can be made either way.

QuoteIt's true, I have a hard time understanding.. as the title says :P but I'm trying to!
I've seen how both genders are, and realized that thinking like I should be one or the other only limits my true self. I can be so much more than a man or a woman. I can take attributes I like from one or the other, or both, but there's more! What about kids? They have attributes that adults don't have... so why should I limit myself to being adult? Let's go deeper, why should I limit myself to being human?!  I like the way certain animals behave or seem to approach things... they have a mentality as well, although it's simpler than humans..  .. hehe, is that so weird? If there's spirits, and our consciousness comes from one, then I can tap into things that aren't human as well.. in theory.. :P
Seems like what I need to understand is that other people's consciousness are not this flexible? it's stuck with a certain category? I don't know, lol, what do I know.

I fail to see how being one gender is 'limiting'. Being either gender is no barrier to person achieving what they want in life through dedication and commitment. The way you feel is no better or worse than the way anyone else feels, it's just different. Unless of course we are in the presence of an omnipresent being, or some form of deity. ;) I am curious to know what 'more' you can be than a man or a woman. And how you see men and women as somehow 'less' than who you are. That strikes me as slightly arrogant.

QuoteNo no no. Act how you want, change yourself however you want.  But the way certain people were talking about it, it sounds like some just can't accept what they were born as... Just because you're born a man doesn't mean you should act like a man, but you can't change the fact that you were born a man, only what you do from here on out.
Appearance is less meaningful than behavior for me though..I'm still struggling with my behavior. I'm scared of acting how I truly want, because society will judge me and think 'what the hell is that person doing?'...

Have you considered that people may have been born female with a male body, or male with a female body? In that instance, people are very clearly accepting who they were born as, and are merely rectifying the physical discrepancies that don't fit with them as male or female. They aren't changing into someone different, they're changing back into themselves.

You are right, you can't change who you're born as... but you can change the fact that you have a male or female body if that isn't who you were born as.

Quote
I can show you again how I think :P
... I was born in this body, how weird... eww what's this lump? this body is kinda ugly I find, oh well. Can I undo this? no. I could probably get this lump removed though, it'll already look better.. Maybe I can change the rest to my tastes too! that'd be cool.

But it's... *sigh* it's not a case of fulfilling some self-defined criteria of beauty or ugliness, as I said in a previous post. At the risk of sounding concieted, my male body isn't ugly, it just isn't mine. And changing it to be the way I want it isn't undertaken to make it look better, it's in order for it to look right.

When everything's complete, I don't intend to sit around thinking "OH MY GOD! I am a stunningly beautiful woman! Wow! Look at all these bits... right, that's it, I'm never leaving the house again! I'm going to sit around all day playing with my gorgeous, feminine body!" If I want to admire a stunningly beautiful woman, I just have to look at my girlfriend.

It's more a case of "Good, that's fixed, now I can get on with my life and stop being so hung up on my body image because it's me and it feels right." Part of me is doing it so that I don't have to think about my body, not because I want to think about it more.

QuoteTrue, maybe it's irrelevant for me to try to understand...  but how can I respect something I don't understand? Should I just accept everything that I think doesn't apply to me?
But it does apply to me.. we are all on a quest to reach happiness, and we can help each other, even by just trying to understand each other's reasoning. :)

No, maybe you shouldn't... but you should respect the fact that the person in question understands, even if you don't. And that should be good enough. If you don't understand someone's motivation... that doesn't make them wrong for having it.

Quote
If it's ok to discuss some more, I'm still curious :D
Here's something I'm really trying to understand... I've asked a few people I know but they can't explain it to me because they don't think about gender as much as transgenders...

How does it 'feel' to be a woman?
How does it 'feel' to be a man?
In other words, how do you Identify as one or the other, apart from your body?

ps; sorry for the long post. :-\

That's a highly subjective thing, and you'll likely get a lot of different answers. It's not something that can be 'explained' to you in one distilled "This is how it is" type way.

It feels like... being me. :)

Quote from: Sasha2 on October 19, 2008, 12:30:01 PM
How can you know you were born in the wrong body if you were never "born" before?

The same way you know you were born in the right one. ;)

Have you (generic you, those who are not trans) ever looked in the mirror and thought "hmm I'm not a bad looking gal (or guy)".... or felt good about some aspect of your physique, or had a social situation that made you think "I'm so glad I'm [whichever gender]"? When your body was changing did you wish for the changes/development to come quicker, did you welcome them when they came? For us who are trans, our bodies and the changes they go through are opposite what we hope for or expect. We don't get to feel good about about our bodies until/unless we transition.

For me I watched as I became (in my mind) uglier. I saw things happen to me that were horrifying because they were in sharp contrast to what I wanted to see happen. I heard my voice start to turn into something that sounded very bad to me, and I resisted that. I've always had an image in my head of what "I" (my essence, spirit, whatever - that which makes me me) look like; my thoughts have a definite pitch and timbre that I know is mine. None of these changes were anything like that; they weren't me, and worse they were repulsive to me. That is what's meant by "should", I think we all have that innate vision of ourselves and any mismatch with the exterior translates to emotional hardship. For some reason this phenomenon seems to be particularly intense as it pertains to gender.

Socially, we feel that our society and upbringing has pigeonholed us into a group of people we don't identify with and can't relate to. We feel more at home socializing amongst the other side of our species, but we're usually denied that and denied acceptance there. So we're taught to express ourselves in a way that is completely unnatural, and it makes us self conscious every moment of every day because deep down we know we can't keep up the act.

Quote from: Sasha2 on October 19, 2008, 12:30:01 PMI am so lost and confused and don't want to go on in this trans hell that my child is putting me through. I don't want to accept the mutilation of her physical body in order to accomadate her mental one.

Hi Sasha,

Your child needs to do this. There is a powerful inborn drive that moves transpeople towards transition and it cannot be changed. It cannot be suppressed successfully; the person will always feel this way until allowed to be themself. To say that you're going through "hell" because of it sounds so selfish; don't you want your child to have a happy life? Denial and repression are literal hell for us. Not accepting what this person must do will only drive a wedge between you both.

Quoteit's not a case of fulfilling some self-defined criteria of beauty or ugliness, as I said in a previous post. At the risk of sounding concieted, my male body isn't ugly, it just isn't mine. And changing it to be the way I want it isn't undertaken to make it look better, it's in order for it to look right.

...

It's more a case of "Good, that's fixed, now I can get on with my life and stop being so hung up on my body image because it's me and it feels right." Part of me is doing it so that I don't have to think about my body, not because I want to think about it more.

Aah, that helps a lot. Seriously.
I used to think the human mind had incredible adaptive ability.. but maybe not..

I'm still curious as to why your mind feels it needs to match its perceived gender to the physical body's. Why is it so important?

This brings us back about 'feeling' like a man or woman..How can a mind be a gender in the first place?

QuoteThat's a highly subjective thing, and you'll likely get a lot of different answers. It's not something that can be 'explained' to you in one distilled "This is how it is" type way.

It feels like... being me. Smiley

...

The same way you know you were born in the right one.

I feel like me too, but I can't attach that feeling to a gender... how is that even possible..
When I asked a few of my friends something similar; they couldn't detect a gender to the way they feel about themselves either... so, is it just transgenders that feel this?
I don't feel like I'm in the 'right' body, there's no way I could see it that way... but it's not 'wrong' either.

QuoteI fail to see how being one gender is 'limiting'. Being either gender is no barrier to person achieving what they want in life through dedication and commitment. The way you feel is no better or worse than the way anyone else feels, it's just different. Unless of course we are in the presence of an omnipresent being, or some form of deity. Wink I am curious to know what 'more' you can be than a man or a woman. And how you see men and women as somehow 'less' than who you are. That strikes me as slightly arrogant.

K. Say your gender is male but on some days you feel like wearing a dress or behaving a way that would be considered 'girly', you won't do it because you'll feel that it doesn't 'match' your gender.. right?
..If you say that someone's not entirely male because he gets these desires, then I'd say that nobody is just 1 gender, because people get all kinds of desires or urges but then suppress those they feel doesn't 'match' with their perceived gender or fear judgment from others that would feel it doesn't match, ..but they still get them. This is what I call 'limiting'.  I for one suppress a lot of things not because I feel it doesn't match with me, but because I fear I'll be judged for not 'matching' with my biological gender.
..
I don't think I'm more of anything than anyone else. I just don't want to suppress my true desires and feelings, whether some of them are considered to be in the realm of one gender and some to be part of the opposite.
Are you saying you've never felt or desired anything that you considered to be part of the gender that you're not?

..Maybe I'm a bit arrogant, who knows. :P

Saraloop, when I read your first post, I had a momentary glimmering, a brief understanding of your not understanding.

Here's the thing: I've never really understood how cisgender women could possibly be comfortable as women. Especially before I found out that transsexuals--particularly FTM transsexuals--do exist, I have always wondered how it was possible to live happily in a female body.

I first found out about MTFs and didn't know that there was such a thing as an FTM. I could relate somewhat to MTFs because their pain was parallel to mine, although a part of me was always thinking, "But why become a woman? Why would you want to inflict that on yourself? Why go through the same hell that I'm going through?"

Then I found out about FTMs and started to see clearer parallels in the experiences and feelings of many MTFs.

But still I struggled with the concept that a woman could be comfortable as a woman. What a concept. She might not be happy with her lot in life, she might be angry that there is still gender discrimination; but she could still feel that she was the right sex and the right gender and the right body.

For much of my life, I've imagined what it is like to feel that my sex, gender, and physical presentation are all in synch with each other, so I think I have an inkling of what that's like. And of course I've been around cisgender people all my life. But a part of me still finds femaleness foreign and strange because I'm not female, even though I've lived decades being read as a woman by nearly everybody. So as a pre-transitional transsexual, I do possess a degree of ignorance about what it's like to feel right about my total self.

Sometimes I wish someone could explain THAT stuff to me, because sometimes I think that I still do not QUITE get it.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 02:45:18 PM
Aah, that helps a lot. Seriously.
I used to think the human mind had incredible adaptive ability.. but maybe not..

I'm still curious as to why your mind feels it needs to match its perceived gender to the physical body's. Why is it so important?

I have a counter-question for you - why do you need to know? What is it about trans experiences that you cannot accept as valid without tirelessly interrogating trans people about how we experience sex and gender?

QuoteThis brings us back about 'feeling' like a man or woman..How can a mind be a gender in the first place?

Aren't you generalizing from your own experience here? I see from earlier comments that you believe in the mind/body duality, or even dichotomy, that the mind is separate from the body - but not everyone has that experience. In fact, I'd go so far as to ask you how it's possible to be a mind with no particular relationship to your body? I mean, does it matter to you what your body looks like? Does it bother you when your hair's a mess? When you're covered in dirt? When you haven't had a shower in two days? Do you ever find your body's sex disturbing or shocking, or familiar? Are you bothered by the idea of someone constantly using the wrong pronouns when referring to you, or do you think it's just fine?

Why do you believe a mind can't be associated with a gender? I think that there's billions of people who unequivocally identify themselves as men or women (and whatever that means in their particular cultures) who never have to take hormones or seek surgery for confirmation of that gender. Why are you holding trans people to a different standard in this regard? Do you, say, go to lesbian forums and ask how they can see themselves as women - let alone how they can know they're attracted to women - if, as you seem to feel, gender can't exist in the mind?

But I want to turn that around - gender can only exist in the mind. As you point out, gender roles are social constructs. Being a "man" or "woman" is defined by the society you're in, not simply by having the right anatomy for the job. How can ideas of what being a man or a woman constitute anything outside the mind? Please explain?

And can we distinguish between man and male and woman and female? Male and female are physical realities people live with, and the idea that having a male or female body is a social construct sort of elides that reality. While I would be among the first to argue that sex is in many ways socially constructed, that social construction comes through by way of genital surgery on intersex infants, and the portrayal of white, blonde, thin, supermodels as the ideal of western beauty, and not the existence of people who are male or female.

And if being male or female is a physical reality (with appropriate brain structures, nervous systems, hormonal systems - including receptors for estrogens and androgens that exist in most people, regardless of sex) then I wonder why it's difficult to understand the possibly physical reality of living with a body that's one sex and a brain that expects said body to be the other sex? A sort of "subconscious sex"? I mean, we're not even strictly talking about the mind here, but about how the brain is wired. Why is this complex or confusing or difficult to understand?

And why are trans people considered exceptional for having a strong sense of being one sex or the other? Consider this - take a woman, assigned female at birth, with ovaries, uterus and vagina, who grows up with a strong sense of being a girl, and then a woman. No one will ever tell her otherwise, right? She won't have to prove her womanhood to her family, her friends, her partners, her career, her doctors, the police, the law, no one. She'll never have to take estrogen pills to develop breasts or reshape her body. She would never have the need to assert her womanhood, would she? She may not even consider that she has a strong sense of being female or a woman, because being female and a woman is her unquestioned, daily reality.

Now take a woman, assigned male at birth, who grows up with a strong sense of being a girl, and then a woman. Everyone tells her otherwise, right? To the whole world, she's a boy, and maybe a man if she gets past 18 without transitioning. When she transitions, she has to prove her womanhood to her family, her friends, her partners, her career, her doctors, the police, the law, everyone. Further, she risks losing her family, friends, partners, jobs. She risks doctors who won't even treat her because they're not comfortable with her and try to couch it in medical speak (who else here has been refused treatment just for being on estrogen? I have). She risks, if she's arrested, being placed in confinement with men, and if convicted of a felony and sent to prison, being housed with the male population. Imagine being the only (or one of a few) women placed in a prison filled with men. What's the most frequent trope in jokes about prison? Oh, yes, rape.

Now please explain to me why, even though both women may have the same sense of being female and of being women, the second woman's vocal insistence is considered exceptional given her circumstances? Don't question whether she can really be a woman at all, that's not the point of this example. Imagine that both women exist, and try to conceive of what circumstances would put the first woman in a position to defend her femaleness and womanhood, and what circumstances would allow the second woman to live without having to defend her femaleness and womanhood.

QuoteI feel like me too, but I can't attach that feeling to a gender... how is that even possible..
When I asked a few of my friends something similar; they couldn't detect a gender to the way they feel about themselves either... so, is it just transgenders that feel this?
I don't feel like I'm in the 'right' body, there's no way I could see it that way... but it's not 'wrong' either.

This is because people who aren't trans don't have to defend their identities the way trans people do. Frankly, I don't believe non-trans people who insist that they can't detect their own gender any more than I believe white people who say they're colorblind. Did you ask any of those people who said they couldn't detect their own gender whether they were men or women and note the answers? Do you interrogate anyone who identifies hirself as a man or woman about how they could possibly identify themselves as such, or is this solely for trans people?

Here's a silly analogy - imagine gender and sex as a river, and people as fish. Imagine non-trans people as happily swimming in the water. Do you think they notice it? Now imagine trans people as being on the riverbank, desperately trying to get back in. Do you think they notice the water?

And how does your body feel wrong to you? You've asked multiple trans people in this thread to feel how their bodies feel wrong to them, so I do not believe this question is out of line in the least.

Quote
K. Say your gender is male but on some days you feel like wearing a dress or behaving a way that would be considered 'girly', you won't do it because you'll feel that it doesn't 'match' your gender.. right?
..If you say that someone's not entirely male because he gets these desires, then I'd say that nobody is just 1 gender, because people get all kinds of desires or urges but then suppress those they feel doesn't 'match' with their perceived gender or fear judgment from others that would feel it doesn't match, ..but they still get them. This is what I call 'limiting'.  I for one suppress a lot of things not because I feel it doesn't match with me, but because I fear I'll be judged for not 'matching' with my biological gender.

What's a biological gender? Weren't you saying earlier that gender is socially constructed?

Why are you collapsing trans existence into the idea that anyone transitions because we like to do things that don't strictly fit into our sex assigned at birth? Or, do you think that transitioning restricts trans people to behaviors from just one gender? I mean, it sounds like you think that trans women, for example, transition strictly because we want to wear dresses and makeup and do girly things, and after we transition, we give up everything deemed masculine, like guns, or sports, or fixing cars, or video games, or whatever else. Is this what you're saying?

QuoteI don't think I'm more of anything than anyone else. I just don't want to suppress my true desires and feelings, whether some of them are considered to be in the realm of one gender and some to be part of the opposite.
Are you saying you've never felt or desired anything that you considered to be part of the gender that you're not?

You know, I don't think I'm more of anything than anyone else. I especially don't think I'm more of a woman or feel like more of a woman than any other woman. I don't suppress my true desires and feelings, whether some of them are considered to be in the realm of either gender. I have a lot of interests that are traditionally deemed masculine, and I'm not interested in everything traditionally deemed feminine, and yet these interests don't define my sense of myself as female, or as a woman.

this is how ive tried to explain it before... with mixed results. the feelings i have with gender dysphoria are similar but not as intense as having a job that you cant stand. like say... every day you look at architecture you can see the lines and shapes. how they work with each other, how they define a space. how all this creates a sense of style and grandeur. lets say that you spend every free moment reading magazines and books about architecture and you have sketch books filled with designs and studies... it is your passion... why? who knows. people just really get into things.   lets say that you were stuck cleaning fish. your not sure why you are stuck doing this... but every attempt to change this has ended up with you still cleaning guts from fish. first it started with small fish about  eight hours a day... but as you got older you found your self cleaning bigger and bigger fish for longer periods.... till now you live inside a whale as you have to clean it with a spoon. all the while your mind is on buildings and creating beautiful architecture.

eventually you come to the conclusion that you will either become an architect or die trying... whats so wrong with cleaning fish. it pays the bills and puts food on the plate. even put the kids through college.  why change?

that is like gender dysphoria.... only not as bad.

Quote from: Sasha2 on October 19, 2008, 12:30:01 PM
Saraloop,
I have been reading and posting on this site for a very short time and was quite discouraged with what I have found, until TODAY!! You have asked the questions that I wanted to ask. You have shown an intelligent take on this very complicated subject. I am so moved and inspired by what you have written!!! I hope that you continue to post on this site as I have nowhere to go for this kind of outlook. I am so tired of being told that being trans is just being born in the "wrong" body" How can you know you were born in the wrong body if you were never "born" before? There are many "conditions" where people think that something is "not right" and the medical community does not condone the removal of these parts through surgical intervention. I am so lost and confused and don't want to go on in this trans hell that my child is putting me through. I don't want to accept the mutilation of her physical body in order to accomadate her mental one.
Thanks for your input.

Sasha2

It's interesting that you talk about your child putting you through a trans hell, but what about what your child's going through? Most  trans children go through hellish lives and a lot of that hell comes from the people around them enforcing the perception that they're the wrong sex, refusing to acknowledge the reality they live with and instead imposing the idea that if you're different from the majority (that is, different form people who are not trans), that there's something wrong with you for existing. So, your child:

* Has to deal with being trans
* Has to deal with being told that being trans is wrong
* Has to deal with you making this about you (trans hell) rather than about your child's needs.

I'll also add that if the amount of surgery is your concern, starting with children, and putting them on puberty blockers until they can start HRT to go through puberty as a member of the right sex, reduces the number of necessary surgeries and procedures that someone who transitions at adulthood undergoes.

Will you really feel better about things if your child transitions after reaching adulthood? Will that make you feel like a better parent, that at least you forced your child to live a life that you approved of?

Also, would you prefer if you had a curable-with-surgery, chronic medical condition that:

a) Your personality be altered against your will so that you're okay with that condition

b) Your body be altered via surgery so that you no longer have that condition?

Do you really feel that the mental is not at least as important as the physical?

And I also want to point out that quite a few people on this forum have had surgery, and don't you think it's insensitive to refer to the surgery they've undergone, to healthy parts of their body as they exist now, as mutilation? That's pretty offensive.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 02:45:18 PM
Aah, that helps a lot. Seriously.
I used to think the human mind had incredible adaptive ability.. but maybe not..

I'm still curious as to why your mind feels it needs to match its perceived gender to the physical body's. Why is it so important?

This brings us back about 'feeling' like a man or woman..How can a mind be a gender in the first place?

Honestly, i'm also curious as to why my mind feels it needs to match its perceived gender to the physical body's.  I don't understand it at all.  and I don't really have any understanding of what a gender identity is either, or how it can be different to biological sex.  And i don't think any transgender could explain it all any better than how we've attempted to.  Because it is a weird thing, seemingly completely illogical.  Yet we know its real.  We know that gender identity exists even if we can't get a physical grasp of what it is.  We know its real, because we have experienced from the day we were born, its always been there, an undeniable truth.  Its a reality not because we understand it, its a reality because we exist.

You can ask us how it feels.  You can ask us how profound an affect its had on our lifes while living in denial or shame or acceptance.  You can ask how we feel about our physical bodies.

But, as far as i am aware, no scientist, no transgender person, no philosopher or anybody else has ever been able to understand or even define what a gender identity is, or why we feel the way we do.  All we know is what we experience, and in that lies the proof that we exist.

Quote from: bethzerosix on October 19, 2008, 04:09:02 PM
this is how ive tried to explain it before... with mixed results. the feelings i have with gender dysphoria are similar but not as intense as having a job that you cant stand. like say... every day you look at architecture you can see the lines and shapes. how they work with each other, how they define a space. how all this creates a sense of style and grandeur. lets say that you spend every free moment reading magazines and books about architecture and you have sketch books filled with designs and studies... it is your passion... why? who knows. people just really get into things.   lets say that you were stuck cleaning fish. your not sure why you are stuck doing this... but every attempt to change this has ended up with you still cleaning guts from fish. first it started with small fish about  eight hours a day... but as you got older you found your self cleaning bigger and bigger fish for longer periods.... till now you live inside a whale as you have to clean it with a spoon. all the while your mind is on buildings and creating beautiful architecture.

eventually you come to the conclusion that you will either become an architect or die trying... whats so wrong with cleaning fish. it pays the bills and puts food on the plate. even put the kids through college.  why change?

that is like gender dysphoria.... only not as bad.

Thats a really good quote... Someone record that.

hmmm, yay, questions! :D

Quote from: nerdychick on October 19, 2008, 01:54:46 PM
Have you (generic you, those who are not trans) ever looked in the mirror and thought "hmm I'm not a bad looking gal (or guy)".... or felt good about some aspect of your physique, or had a social situation that made you think "I'm so glad I'm [whichever gender]"? When your body was changing did you wish for the changes/development to come quicker, did you welcome them when they came? For us who are trans, our bodies and the changes they go through are opposite what we hope for or expect.
...
I think we all have that innate vision of ourselves and any mismatch with the exterior translates to emotional hardship. For some reason this phenomenon seems to be particularly intense as it pertains to gender.

Aah, I understand that.
Actually, I've never liked my body's changes, due to the fact that I wanted to remain a kid :P In fact, I thought I wasn't going to survive past the age of 17... for some reason I 'expected' do die before then because I couldn't picture myself as an adult.
It's all about expectations isn't it? Sort of makes sense but... Why did I expect to remain a kid? Why did you expect to be the opposite gender? Is it because we desired it so much? possibly.. and maybe desiring it so much can make some people think that it's 'wrong!' when it doesn't happen the way they want.  I may be fine with my body but there's not a day that goes by that I don't desire what I had before:S.

I guess it's possible for the issue to be more potent when it comes to gender... seeing it that way makes more sense to me..


bethzerosix, I like your analogy; my first career was a disaster, I couldn't stand working there and although I managed get less annoyed with it to a certain extent, I still felt bad working there so I quit. To me, that was a failure on my part.. I failed to be comfortable working there; I felt like I was running away from the issue..  maybe that's not a good way of perceiving it..

Quote from: Lisa Harney on October 19, 2008, 03:59:17 PM
why do you need to know? What is it about trans experiences that you cannot accept as valid without tirelessly interrogating trans people about how we experience sex and gender?

I don't 'need' to know. I want to. it's my thirst for understanding, and also because of I'm trying to transition in another way..  and other stuff ..
... so, not valid? gender, maybe? But it's not just about trans... the reason why I'm asking here is because trans have thought about it more than non-trans, like you mentioned later. Gender is so abstract...

QuoteI'd go so far as to ask you how it's possible to be a mind with no particular relationship to your body? I mean, does it matter to you what your body looks like? Does it bother you when your hair's a mess? When you're covered in dirt? When you haven't had a shower in two days? Do you ever find your body's sex disturbing or shocking, or familiar? Are you bothered by the idea of someone constantly using the wrong pronouns when referring to you, or do you think it's just fine?

I do find my body quite weird, not just because of its sex. I care if I'm a mess or ugly if I want other people to not find me ugly...which is rare.. because like I said, behavior is a bigger issue for me than appearance.
There IS a relationship between your consciousness and your body. But what are you? You're not your body, your body can't decide things, it just responds to your decisions, you are your consciousness, that is what is aware and thinks, it's the only part of you that guarantees that you are yourself and not somebody else.

QuoteWhy do you believe a mind can't be associated with a gender? I think that there's billions of people who unequivocally identify themselves as men or women (and whatever that means in their particular cultures) who never have to take hormones or seek surgery for confirmation of that gender. Why are you holding trans people to a different standard in this regard? Do you, say, go to lesbian forums and ask how they can see themselves as women - let alone how they can know they're attracted to women - if, as you seem to feel, gender can't exist in the mind?

It's not that I believe it can't, It's just,.. I don't understand how it can :P
And yes, I ask anyone who's willing to discuss with me. I understand attraction better than gender identity so I don't discuss too much about that. You seem to think I have a bias against trans or something, but I don't. not just trans identify as a gender, but they do think and talk about it alot more.

QuoteBut I want to turn that around - gender can only exist in the mind. As you point out, gender roles are social constructs. Being a "man" or "woman" is defined by the society you're in, not simply by having the right anatomy for the job. How can ideas of what being a man or a woman constitute anything outside the mind? Please explain?

Not sure what you mean.
Psychological traits develop in the mind, and so do thoughts... but they're not considered 'male' traits or 'female' traits on their own, someone has to go and say, hey most women have that trait, so I guess it's a female trait... it's just classifying stuff.

QuoteAnd if being male or female is a physical reality (with appropriate brain structures, nervous systems, hormonal systems - including receptors for estrogens and androgens that exist in most people, regardless of sex) then I wonder why it's difficult to understand the possibly physical reality of living with a body that's one sex and a brain that expects said body to be the other sex? A sort of "subconscious sex"? I mean, we're not even strictly talking about the mind here, but about how the brain is wired. Why is this complex or confusing or difficult to understand?

lol. we're talking about the brain and you ask why it's complex?
But I agree that it's possible for the brain to make miscalculations .. like when it expects there to be 4 limbs and then a baby is born with 5, it doesn't know how to control the fifth one. But that doesn't have to do with your thought process and feelings... so feeling or associating a gender to your thoughts or ideas of what you are is completely different and kinda seems illogical.

QuoteAnd how does your body feel wrong to you? You've asked multiple trans people in this thread to feel how their bodies feel wrong to them, so I do not believe this question is out of line in the least.

?
It doesn't. I don't feel like it's right or wrong, just like I don't feel it right or wrong for us to be humans... though I find both really weird.

QuoteWhat's a biological gender? Weren't you saying earlier that gender is socially constructed?

biological gender as in sex. I'll just use sex if that makes more sense.

QuoteWhy are you collapsing trans existence into the idea that anyone transitions because we like to do things that don't strictly fit into our sex assigned at birth? Or, do you think that transitioning restricts trans people to behaviors from just one gender? I mean, it sounds like you think that trans women, for example, transition strictly because we want to wear dresses and makeup and do girly things, and after we transition, we give up everything deemed masculine, like guns, or sports, or fixing cars, or video games, or whatever else. Is this what you're saying?

nope. :P u missed my point.

QuoteYou know, I don't think I'm more of anything than anyone else. I especially don't think I'm more of a woman or feel like more of a woman than any other woman. I don't suppress my true desires and feelings, whether some of them are considered to be in the realm of either gender. I have a lot of interests that are traditionally deemed masculine, and I'm not interested in everything traditionally deemed feminine, and yet these interests don't define my sense of myself as female, or as a woman.

K. then you agree that nothing stops someone from tapping into traits or thoughts deemed from one gender or the other. Then what does define it? What's the difference from seeing yourself as a woman compared to a man besides your sex?

..

Jenny I read your post..If it's impossible to explain then all I can do is take your word for it and see it as that there's people out there who are incapable of feeling comfortable with the body they were born in.

But if no one understands Gender Identity, it's hard to see how it's even part of the equation.

(edit)
It really does matter if somebody is incapable of being comfortable in their body.. it sucks.. and if it's really impossible to be comfortable with it without transition(and only you know that), then I'd consider transition to be justified...

Quotedue to the fact that I wanted to remain a kid  In fact, I thought I wasn't going to survive past the age of 17... for some reason I 'expected' do die before then because I couldn't picture myself as an adult.

Yes. I understand. I coined a term for this just now - Transageism - a child trapped in an adult body. I am that too.  ::)

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 06:17:48 PM
If it's impossible to explain then all I can do is take your word for it and see is as that there's people out there who are incapable of feeling comfortable with the body they were born in.

But if no one understands Gender Identity, it's hard to see how it's even part of the equation.

The way i see it is that i am female, but was born with a male body.  But since theres nothing about my body that says i'm female, that femaleness must come from somewhere else - some people say soul, mind, or spirit, etc.  Its that question of where it comes from, and why its there that is so hard to understand.  But still it has to be part of the equation because without it, our existence (which we know to be true) makes even less sense.

The difficulty is that since our gender identity, who we feel to be isn't physical in nature, it is very hard to say what it is precisely, which i think is what you're asking.  Its kinda like the idea of a god, since a god has no physical basis, humans can't agree or truely comprehend what precisely god is.  But i think i'd offend a lot of people if i was to draw the conclusion that god doesn't exist because of that!

Hi Saraloop, 

So imagine if you will a person that is a girl but she looks like a boy and has male dangly bits and others precieve her to be a boy.  But this girl is teased in gym all the time because she runs like a girl, is not good a sports as the other boys are, etc,etc.. Got in trouble for taking the next door girls dolls, because Her parents thought she was a boy and would not let her play with dolls. That was me growing up.

For me it was not a choice, it is who I am and I am far far happier with who I am now.  Everything matches and there is no disparity between the inward actions/ behaviours and exterior appearance

I was never really a guy.  I looked like one but what was on the inside was a girl.  There is an idenity that we all carry inside us as to who we are, for most that idenity matches who and what gender they are.  This has be observed with intersexed children IE children born with portions of both male and female bits.  After their sex is adjusted via surgery, they are raised as their exterior sex.  However in about 1/2 the cases, the person preceves themselfs as the other sex. 

Take Care

Beni

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 06:17:48 PM
I don't 'need' to know. I want to. it's my thirst for understanding, and also because of I'm trying to transition in another way..  and other stuff ..
... so, not valid? gender, maybe? But it's not just about trans... the reason why I'm asking here is because trans have thought about it more than non-trans, like you mentioned later. Gender is so abstract...

Thank you for that distinction.

QuoteI do find my body quite weird, not just because of its sex. I care if I'm a mess or ugly if I want other people to not find me ugly...which is rare.. because like I said, behavior is a bigger issue for me than appearance.
There IS a relationship between your consciousness and your body. But what are you? You're not your body, your body can't decide things, it just responds to your decisions, you are your consciousness, that is what is aware and thinks, it's the only part of you that guarantees that you are yourself and not somebody else.

I'm not sure how one's consciousness can be separated from one's body as two different, discrete things. I mean, what happens to my body affects my mind, and what happens to my mind can often affect my body. And to take it a step further - the brain is the seat of consciousness. It's where thought occurs. The brain is a part of the body. It's an organ, flesh and blood and nervous tissue. Hormones and neurotransmitters and even states of being like being injured and in pain or simply hungry have a direct impact on how you think and what you think about. I have been so hungry I could only think of food, and in so much pain that I was simply not able to focus on anything but that pain. I'm not seeing how my body is separate from my consciousness.

Quote
It's not that I believe it can't, It's just,.. I don't understand how it can :P
And yes, I ask anyone who's willing to discuss with me. I understand attraction better than gender identity so I don't discuss too much about that. You seem to think I have a bias against trans or something, but I don't. not just trans identify as a gender, but they do think and talk about it alot more.

Lots of people, trans people, non-trans people, don't understand how the one's brain can expect one's body to be a different sex than it appears to be, but it happens to millions of people, worldwide.

And yes, trans people do talk and think about it a lot more because we're in a position where we have to talk and think about it a lot more. Even before talking about it, I had to think about stuff like how gender's socially constructed at like 10 years old - like how what boys are supposed to do and what girls are supposed to do was based on arbitrary borders and not always on natural inclinations. Of course, these borders cut right across my body and mind, given that one thing those seen as boys are really truly honestly never supposed to do is see herself as a girl.

I think that every time I've had this conversation, it's been with someone who is biased against trans people, and often undertaken in a bad faith attempt to convince trans people that our lives aren't lived legitimately. I hope you can forgive me being a bit cautious about your motivations with that kind of experience.

Quote

QuoteBut I want to turn that around - gender can only exist in the mind. As you point out, gender roles are social constructs. Being a "man" or "woman" is defined by the society you're in, not simply by having the right anatomy for the job. How can ideas of what being a man or a woman constitute anything outside the mind? Please explain?

Not sure what you mean.
Psychological traits develop in the mind, and so do thoughts... but they're not considered 'male' traits or 'female' traits on their own, someone has to go and say, hey most women have that trait, so I guess it's a female trait... it's just classifying stuff.

Okay, but the act of classifying traits as masculine or feminine is itself a mental exercise. It's something the mind does. Gendering actions as masculine or feminine is not something that exists in the physical world, but something that happens in the mind of the beholder. That there is social consensus as to what constitutes masculine and feminine traits simply means that these classifications permeate society from the media all the way to the individual level. But they're still happening in the mind.

Quote

QuoteAnd if being male or female is a physical reality (with appropriate brain structures, nervous systems, hormonal systems - including receptors for estrogens and androgens that exist in most people, regardless of sex) then I wonder why it's difficult to understand the possibly physical reality of living with a body that's one sex and a brain that expects said body to be the other sex? A sort of "subconscious sex"? I mean, we're not even strictly talking about the mind here, but about how the brain is wired. Why is this complex or confusing or difficult to understand?

lol. we're talking about the brain and you ask why it's complex?

The brain is complex, but the concept I'm describing is simple. You don't have to understand the mechanisms underlying the process to realize that the process occurs. For example - everyone understands that people get tired, right? How many people expect anyone to be able to explain the biological, chemical, neurological causes and effects of fatigue in order to justify getting tired? Getting tired is a simple concept, but explaining how tiredness occurs is complex.

Similarly, explaining how the brain may expect a different sex is a complex topic, and no one's really covered it yet. But the fact that it happens? It's pretty simple.

QuoteBut I agree that it's possible for the brain to make miscalculations .. like when it expects there to be 4 limbs and then a baby is born with 5, it doesn't know how to control the fifth one. But that doesn't have to do with your thought process and feelings... so feeling or associating a gender to your thoughts or ideas of what you are is completely different and kinda seems illogical.

No it doesn't at all - this seems like the bit above where you separated having traits from classifying them as masculine or feminine.

I disagree that trans people's brains are making miscalculations. We happen, it's who we are, it's natural, and normal, and we've existed in every human culture.

I also question how you came to the decision that having a subconscious sex that differs from your sex assigned at birth wouldn't have any effect on your thought processes. Like being tired or hungry or in pain, the state of your body has a direct impact on your thought processes. If my brain insists that my body should be female, why wouldn't I identify with girls and women instead of boys and men? Why wouldn't I see myself as a girl? Why would I reject this sensation and just think "Oh, I'm really a boy" without that also having psychological repercussions as denial typically has. And if I do consciously reject this sensation, this is still having an effect on my mind, yes?

Why are you invoking logic? Could you elaborate further on how human feelings and emotions and experiences are supposed to fit strictly into logical molds based on limited information?

By "limited information" I mean you don't have the experience of being trans, but you're willing to claim there's a lack of logic in how we react to who and what we are? I do see you're trying to position the idea that we react to our bodies as exceptional and different from the norm, but I also believe that's inaccurate for the majority of the human race. I would expect that the majority of humanity identifies with and relates to their own bodies as who they are, whether they consciously say so.

Quote
?
It doesn't. I don't feel like it's right or wrong, just like I don't feel it right or wrong for us to be humans... though I find both really weird.

I misread your comment, then. Why do you find both really weird?

Quotebiological gender as in sex. I'll just use sex if that makes more sense.

Thank you.

Quote

QuoteWhy are you collapsing trans existence into the idea that anyone transitions because we like to do things that don't strictly fit into our sex assigned at birth? Or, do you think that transitioning restricts trans people to behaviors from just one gender? I mean, it sounds like you think that trans women, for example, transition strictly because we want to wear dresses and makeup and do girly things, and after we transition, we give up everything deemed masculine, like guns, or sports, or fixing cars, or video games, or whatever else. Is this what you're saying?

nope. :P u missed my point.

Then what was your point?

Quote

QuoteYou know, I don't think I'm more of anything than anyone else. I especially don't think I'm more of a woman or feel like more of a woman than any other woman. I don't suppress my true desires and feelings, whether some of them are considered to be in the realm of either gender. I have a lot of interests that are traditionally deemed masculine, and I'm not interested in everything traditionally deemed feminine, and yet these interests don't define my sense of myself as female, or as a woman.

K. then you agree that nothing stops someone from tapping into traits or thoughts deemed from one gender or the other. Then what does define it? What's the difference from seeing yourself as a woman compared to a man besides your sex?

That's a good question, but I don't think it actually has any relationship to being trans. (http://"http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2007/11/08/what-is-woman-what-is-man/") Having a "gender identity" as a man or a woman is simply axiomatic.

QuoteJenny I read your post..If it's impossible to explain then all I can do is take your word for it and see it as that there's people out there who are incapable of feeling comfortable with the body they were born in.

But if no one understands Gender Identity, it's hard to see how it's even part of the equation.
For now, I think what matters is that you are not comfortable in your body.. which sucks.. and if it's really impossible to be comfortable with it without transition(and only you know that), then I'd consider transition to be justified...

Gender identity was the name given for a person's sense of hirself as a man or a woman (or both, or neither, or other) to describe how trans people have a sense of themselves that differs from what their body appears to be, under the assumption that the majority of humanity have gender identities consistent with their physical sex. This was defined years before discussion of gender as a social construct, and so talking about "gender identity" while using more recent definitions of gender does in fact confuse things, and is why Julia Serano suggested talking about "subconscious sex." That is, "The sex your brain expects your body to be" and is also something everyone has.

Also, it's tied up in how people confuse "man" with "male" and "masculine" or "woman" with "female" and "feminine." Hence not distinguishing the fact that trans people experience distress because our brains expect our bodies to be a different sex from the false idea that trans people transition because of masculine or feminine behaviors.

I'll make this post a bit shorter since I'm pretty tired, time to go to bed.

Lisa,
I guess the talk about consciousness and body is too much of a perception to bring up as an argument...
It's true that the body is much more than just a host to your mind. It sends signals back to the mind which we interpret... but I don't view it as such that our body makes us feel, but rather, is interpreted in such a way that influences our minds to feel. This is a philosophical topic of its own however. :P

The mind is weird, so I guess for many it does associate a gender to their perceived image; it doesn't for many other people though. So it's not something that happens with everyone.. gender identity I mean. But I'm sure there's as many non-trans that do associate themselves to gender even if they don't really think about it. What I'm trying to say is that gender is only meaningful to people who associate to it.  It's not an association that 'needs' to happen or that happens naturally for everyone.
I guess it's more potent in some people than others though...

I don't think it's the mind's miscalculation to be trans, I think the miscalculation is putting so much value into gender association.. for anyone. Anything that has been directed too much value will become a struggle when it doesn't work out the way it's been expected. :(

Forget what I said about logic or illogic, it wasn't a good way to talk about things since we're already dwelling into abstract concepts.. :-\

Associating gender to feelings, thoughts or your own perception  may be simple for you but to me it's not, because I don't and can't do it..

if you say "i am female, but was born with a male body." I don't know how to interpret that. I can only see it in a simplified logical way for now; that you have a male body but you like to do things that typically the average females who are 'considered' 'normal' usually do. :S

Quote from: Saraloop on October 19, 2008, 08:12:57 PM
I'll make this post a bit shorter since I'm pretty tired.

Lisa,
I guess the talk about consciousness and body is too much of a perception to bring up as an argument...
It's true that the body is much more than just a host to your mind. It sends signals back to the mind which we interpret... but I don't view it as such that our body makes us feel, but rather, is interpreted in such a way that influences our minds to feel. This is a philosophical topic of its own however. :P

Well, if it's used as a linchpin for delegitimizing how a group of people experience the world, it's already problematic, simply because it's asserting something as reality that many people may not experience.

QuoteThe mind is weird, so I guess for many it does associate a gender to their perceived image; it doesn't for many other people though. So it's not something that happens with everyone.. gender identity I mean. But I'm sure there's as many non-trans that do associate themselves to gender even if they don't really think about it. What I'm trying to say is that gender is only meaningful to people who associate to it.  It's not an association that 'needs' to happen or that happens naturally for everyone.
I guess it's more potent in some people than others though...

I do not agree with this point - I don't believe that gender is unimportant to anyone. It's such a pervasive part of society and social conditioning that it is simply impossible for anyone to ignore it or divest it of all importance. Some of the people I've seen who claim to place the least amount of value on gender spend the most amount of time trying to argue about it - or specifically, about how a certain group of people (like trans people) either value gender too much or relate to it incorrectly. The idea that trans people are unique in identifying with gender is a fairly privileged assertion to make - that is, someone who doesn't have to live with being trans (both personally and with how society treats trans people) have an easy time claiming gender is unimportant. But to trans people, it tends to be very important because we can't forget about it. For many (less so now than in the past) our ability to present ourselves within strict gender normativity was the determining factor for receiving treatment (hormones and surgery). This wasn't necessarily how we wanted to present, but how we were required to present. This still happens with some doctors.

Considering how frequently I've been lectured about gender by people who aren't trans, I suspect that I consider gender to be much less important than most cis (non-trans) people.

QuoteI don't think it's the mind's miscalculation to be trans, I think the miscalculation is putting so much value into gender association.. for anyone. Anything that has been directed too much value will become a struggle when it doesn't work out the way it's been expected. :(

Say what? No, it's not a miscalculation. You keep trying to shift transition to be primarily about gender, and while I will not argue that it's not about gender at all, I will point out that you're putting the cart before the horse. Transition is about one's body. Transition is about one's social position in society in relation to that body. Transition is about body and mind being coherent and consistent.

It's just downright offensive to claim that trans people, in trying to make our own skins livable, is about a "miscalculation" in "putting so much value into gender." It's yet another judgement about who we are and what we do based on assumption. I'm not even sure you're reading what anyone here is saying that carefully, because you say:

QuoteAssociating gender to feelings, thoughts or your own perception  may be simple for you but to me it's not, because I don't and can't do it..

if you say "i am female, but was born with a male body." I don't know how to interpret that. I can only see it in a purely logical way; that you have a male body but you like to do things that typically the average females who are 'considered' 'normal' usually do. :S

That's not purely logical at all. That's biased. Your bias - your assumptions - are that trans people transition because of what we like to do and not because of who we are. If it even qualifies as logic, it's based on limited information - strictly speaking, your assumptions.

In my first response to you, I explained that transitioning has nothing to do with what trans people like to do, and I pointed out that I like doing things that are traditionally gendered as feminine as well as masculine. We're well past me saying that I'm female and a woman, but was assigned male at birth - I'm also saying "but what I do has nothing to do with who I am." If I just wanted to wear dresses, I could've done that without transitioning. If it was really about "behaving like a woman" (whatever that's even supposed to mean) and I was trying to divest myself of all masculine gendered activities, I wouldn't even be on the internet.

You're saying it doesn't make sense, but that's only because you're refusing to listen, at this point. In the above quote, you make it clear that you're substituting what trans people are saying for your own assumptions.

Why do you think that a trans woman who says she's a woman has anything at all to do with "things that typically the average females who are 'considered' 'normal' usually do." It seems like you have a pretty sexist perception of what trans women are like, if this is what you think we mean, like we're all June Cleaver or something. You're basically denying that trans women have as much diversity in gender expression as cis women do.

The first assumption you really need to abandon to talk about this in a way that makes sense is: "Transsexual people are not more attached or strongly identified with gender than cissexual people." What this means is that if you meet a transsexual woman, her gender is not different from a cissexual woman's. She's a woman. She's not a woman because she played with dolls as a child or because she likes to wear dresses or makeup or own frilly pink curtains (and she may not like or do any of these things). She's not a woman because she holds a stereotypical view of what women are like and believes she must fit that role. She's a woman because the identity of "woman" is axiomatic in society, and that's where she places herself.

Trans people's genders are equal to and identical to cis people's genders. That's it. Once you get past that hurdle, this should be easy:

The second assumption you need to abandon is the idea that subconscious sex is gender. It's not. It influences gender (which is why trans women frequently identify as woman and trans men frequently identify as men), but it influences gender for cissexual men and women (which is why they identify as men or women). If your brain insists your body must be female, and your body appears to be male, this will have a massive effect on your self-image. You may presume to claim (on the basis of your Cartesian duality) that this body image shouldn't have any effect on trans people, or very little effect, but you have not lived with the experience of being trans. You're making a judgement about how people who experience something you do not should relate to their bodies.

You should also read up on bodily alienation - how people with facial scars relate to that, or even how some people have reacted to having hands or other appendages transplanted from cadavers. One man had a penis transplant after he lost his own, and had it removed because it was just not his. Another dealt with a similar problem from a hand transplant. There's real, intense psychological effects if your body doesn't fit your brain's expectations.

And really, the most important thing is to stop confusing male for man for masculine and female for woman for feminine. These are different concepts:

Male and female are sexes.
Man and woman are gender roles.
Feminine and masculine are how actions and objects are gendered.

Transsexual people want to transition from male to female or female to male. This is a visceral need.
It is important for many transsexual people to be seen as women or men. This is because of the fact that female is tied to the social role of woman and male is tied to the social role of man.
Many transsexual women are feminine, but we don't transition because we're feminine, we're feminine because we identify as women. Not all transsexual women are feminine, either. Some are masculine.
Many transsexual men are masculine, but they don't transition because they're masculine. They're masculine because they identify as men. Not all transsexual men are masculine, either. Some are feminine.

Not all transsexual people identify as men or women. Many are genderqueer.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 11:22:38 AM
Hi.
  I am seeking wisdom :)

really? well, you've already gotten some of the most brilliant posts, wouldn't cha think? i apologize if i'm mistaken but there are some 'trollish' overtones to this thread that i can't seem to ignore.  i hope it's just a figment of my imagination. tsk tsk tsk.

Actually, the problem I have with most of these posts, from her and her replies, is its so damn monolithic.  You know, there is not one way, there is no SOCIETY that dictates any of this to anyone.  Sure its there, but just as many people blow all that out their ass, as who swallow it whole cloth. 

Their are legions of people, living all sorts of lives, who don't worry about this, pay no attention to it, and just get on with their lives and do what they think they should do.  They find work that means something to them, people who like them, and if they want, a person who loves them. 

In all sorts of states, not just in Berkeley.  In all sorts of jobs, not just some fringe deal.  In all sorts of communities.

For all the people on these boards who bow down and worship at the feet of modern psychology I know just as many people who have transitioned - or found their life path - far removed from the world of head games, and found it in real relationships, in real values, in real work, with real people.

There are all sorts of ways to live in the modern world where one does not feel the need to kowtow to the notions of SOCIETY, or any of that crap.

Was I monolithic? Apologies if so - it's easy to get into an argument and spend energy trying to refute something and only end up supporting something pointless.

I was trying to get past the monolithic viewpoint she was presenting as well as not refer to psychiatry. I'm not a big fan.

I only just wish to leave a couple of thoughts here about genders and gender identity. This is only a theory and nothing more. I do believe that there is a spiritual connection to all living things and in the case of the human spark of life it is also connected to the spirit energy or soul if you may. The body is controlled by the mind all of our nervous system is governed by the mind. The body can feel the environment all around it that it resides in, but the body has no consciousness beyond it's extremities. It is the mind which not only sees, feels, smells, hears, but is also aware and conscious of it's environment surrounding it.

When does awareness awaken within the mind of the fetus? When does consciousness become aware of the host that it is contained in, *the fetus?* Nobody knows with any certainty. I beleive it is at a certain stage of the development that fetus's consciousness begins to collect data and information from it's environment inwards and outwards, this is also at this stage that the brain is hard wired to develop into the personality and characteristics that will grow and form into it's adult host's individuality. By the time it is born with all of it's brain circuitry and DNA strands fully developed and active holding all the data from it's most primitive times to the most recent in it's evolutionary state of modern day man.

I am gifted with the ability to recall in part from back at the age of two and have full recollection by the time I was three years old. I am going to call this *instinctive recall* for lack of a better term. From the age of three I clearly remember being more comfortable sharing and doing things with my sister and play dress up with her then any interests I had in doing boys stuff. I followed the same pattern through out my childhood and I had no knowledge of the difference in the genders. My sister and I were just two kids having fun playing games. I also played well with the girl next door and her friends.

It wasn't until when I got into my teens I continued to play pretend at being a girl when ever I could in hiding. I looked endrogenous and I had long hair, Hippie era, at times I would go out and about town dressed in my best friend's Helen's clothes, no one knew the difference.  I was always drawn to doing girls things, it held more interest then any thing else. I did play with some boys stuff but then I played equally well with my sisters dolls and what other toys she had, We shared toys.

So is this 

Quotebecause we have experienced from the day we were born,
jenny

I would agree with that fully. That instinct of knowing what gender we are lies within the grey mater within our own craniums. It is not learned or adopted from the outside, it is within us. It is inside of us and there is no way of changing it or fighting it, it's instinctive. Yeas I beleive it would be near to impossible for a cisgender or androgyne to understand, bu ti is an inside job. The inner spark of consciousness, where does thought come from? Not the process of the thought through the grey mater but the birth of that thought. Is it born from the spark of life, the soul?

You are welcome to visit my blog, Cindy's Ramblings Blog.

Cindy 

He. Sorry about that. Reading back what I wrote I find I was extremely insensitive. I was pushing and pushing a bit more with every post.  I think I was trying to see how far I could go getting away with what I was debating:P

I'm against alot of things in society for sure. I'd say it's well justified but I don't feel like arguing about that. I think we agree that intolerance is the bigger problem.

Quotebody and mind being coherent and consistent.

it really seems like this is the big thing right? the big struggle.
I may have debated against it, but really, it's a part of what I want to understand.
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..  but that doesn't mean it's less of a struggle for you.. and I never meant to make it sound that way.
But I still want people to consider the possibility that "body and mind being coherent and consistent." is not as important for everyone else; whatever struggles we have lie elsewhere.  And I feel that any struggle, of any kind, is a miscalculation by the mind. I see it as any negative feeling is a miscalculation, and any reason, in our mind, for experiencing these negative feelings, is unjustified as well. What use do we have of negative feelings?? - none.. but that's also something that someone could debate with me.. but anyway that's where my statement takes its direction, which Lisa again interpreted as if I was directing it only towards transgendered.. sorry if it came out like that.

I am listening. I've read every post I and understand more and more.. it's just that some of it I can't relate to...

QuoteYou make it clear that you're substituting what trans people are saying for your own assumptions.

Maybe I misworded what I meant to say. Because I didn't mean to substitute anything; I was merely trying to explain that I couldn't relate to 'being' like a particular gender and put it in a statement that I considered to make sense,and yes, used my own assumptions to debate.. and I guess I used the word 'logical' again which put the wrong point across.

QuoteYou're basically denying that trans women have as much diversity in gender expression as cis women do.

So. expressing your true self can come in different forms. I always put more value in expressing my true self through behavior... because expressing myself through body appearance means so little.. for me.. but I guess it does a lot for some.
Here's sort of a viewpoint from a form of my understanding up till now..
... if you associate your true self to a gender, then you'd want to express it with a "gender" as well... and since behavior by itself is not technically gendered, one could only express gender through their body which is clearly either male or female...  does that make sense?

but then,

QuoteThe second assumption you need to abandon is the idea that subconscious sex is gender. It's not. It influences gender (which is why trans women frequently identify as woman and trans men frequently identify as men), but it influences gender for cissexual men and women (which is why they identify as men or women).

I'm sure there's a lot of cissexual people around me, but since I started looking into gender identity, I have not been able to personally find someone who "identifies" with their genderm, or at least, anyone who knew they were. I dunno much about it. That's why I started this topic :)
So, What's subcounscious sex ?

QuoteMale and female are sexes.
Man and woman are gender roles.
Feminine and masculine are how actions and objects are gendered.

I've seen this used in other combinations too... is this what's official for this community?
Still a bit confused.

So anyway, I'm starting to feel a bit too serious again.. I'll let you guys share your opinions and I'll shut up for now. hopefully I've cleared up where I come from, not that it should matter..

oh, and cindybc's first paragraph sortof reflects my own view on consciousness.. which I'm sure many others share.

;)

hey Sarahloop,

Just a question, no judgement.

Are you a feminist of the 'no difference between the sexes except the physical' (not up on the terms) persuasion?

Basically the thinking that there are no innate differences between male and female other than sex organs?

A lot of times feminists who hold this belief are the ones who have the hardest time understanding transpeople.

Just to answer Nero. I don't know, I haven't looked into feminism. 
I also don't really trust modern psychology so everything I assume comes from my own life experience, discussions with those around me and sometimes on the internet like now. I don't watch TV so I also don't have a firm grasp on what the general population thinks.

Quoteno difference between the sexes except the physical

sounds close to how I see it... but it's probably not the same. 
But I'm not someone who has firm beliefs, I make assumptions. I retract them when I have significant proof. I try to hold no bias, and if I notice that I project one I usually try to take it back.

I'm starting to come around and understand that perhaps there's something more to male and female than just the body.. and that maybe I just happen to be genderless...

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
I'm sure there's a lot of cissexual people around me, but since I started looking into gender identity, I have not been able to personally find someone who "identifies" with their genderm, or at least, anyone who knew they were.

Your male friends wouldn't be upset if they lost their penis?

Your female friends wouldn't be horrified if they grew a penis?

Your male friends wouldn't be upset if they developed gynomastecia (breasts)?

Your female friends don't mind developing facial hair?

Your male friends wouldn't mind being called "miss?"

Your female friends wouldn't mind being called "sir?"

~Kate~

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 02:27:33 PM
Do you desire to be what you have in mind so much that you find it's just not fair for things to have turned out otherwise?

It's not a matter of being "not fair"......it is a certainty that it is not right.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 18, 2008, 02:27:33 PM

This might not be a wanted opinion but.. In a similar fashion, I'm sure there's 'normal' girls out there who have 'ugly' bodies and feel they should have a 'beautiful' one and probably cry all the time in front of the mirror wishing they had one, and feeling like it's supposed to be like they wish... But in a way, that seems like it's a form of denial...  if you can't accept what you are, then all it'll bring you is pain. I'm not saying you shouldn't act or dress how you like, but to accept the things that you can't change.
I recall multiple times feeling inadequate by my physical appearance or desiring it to be something else, but I've never thought that it 'should' be the way I want it to be.. because that's being unrealistic.

Here's a little perspective for you: 
If in the beginning of my transition, if I was assured that I would develop a female body, but with certainty, an ugly female body......AND, that were the ONLY certainty I could experience, I would today be sitting here in an ugly female body.  I would rather be an ugly female, than a handsome man.  Make sense?  The imperative?
Also, being lesbian, why in the world would I transition to female if I could "legitimately" have as many females as partners without the "hassle" (one of my very favorite bubba questions)


Bev

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
So, What's subcounscious sex ?

I believe that Julia Serano came up with this term, for a complete understanding read her book Whipping Girl or check out her website. Paraphrasing briefly, she believes that it is a better term than gender identity to describe how we perceive our internal sense of gender.

Zythyra

I've read just about all of the posts on this thread; neglected to respond to many of them.  There's a little guy in my life......one of my grandsons.  At the age of three, he declared with a note of panic, that there was something wrong....something really wrong.  "what's wrong, honey?", Mom asked.  "I want to be a girl.  I hate my penis.  I'm not.....'posed to have it.  Mom.....why was I born a boy?  Can I have girl clothes?"

Okay, before you attach this thought to his "Papa's" (mine) transition, I'll say that my transition was not known to him, and started a year later.  He declares that he is a girl, and has wrong parts.

There is a biological aspect to this part of the diversity spectrum.  The fact is, we are continually evolving, and that evolution demands genetic change, good or bad.....random change.

And so, my daughter lets him or her dress as he or she wishes at home, call himself/herself what  she wants at home, and loves him or her the same, regardless.

Maybe it's luck that *he is living with me, and has lived with me through my own transition.  Has this impacted his desires?  No......*he's still undecided where *he wants to go, but *he can go whereever *he wants, with total family acceptance.

All of this "trying to understand" is easy for her.
To quote Michael Valentine, *he can "grok" it

Many people can't "grok" it, and that's okay with me.  I have no personal need to have anyone do so.
Have fun folks, play nice.



Nanna Bev

might as well respond..

Kate, I don't think growing stuff suddenly would be like being born with it... but I did ask about 5 or 6 of my friends some similar things and from what I understand, those of them that would mind, it'd be because of aesthetic reasons, and not because it contradicts their 'gender'. Personally, I find penises, breasts, and hair appalling/cumbersome . I have one friend who likes all of it though.. :S. I never asked about calling miss or mister however - I'd predict 2 of them would correct me for calling them the opposite of their sex for the sake of being correct (biologically).

QuoteIt's not a matter of being "not fair"......it is a certainty that it is not right.

a certainty... do you know what element made you know without a doupt?
I think I want to ask a series of stuff and then anybody can just answer anything they know..

How do you know for certain? an instinct like somebody said? or growing knowledge / contrast? .. at what point did you realize or know for certain that the body you had was not 'right'? was it when you were born? Or was it growing up and looking at your body and realizing you had expectations that differed from what actually formed? Or was it realized by comparing your attitude to those of others around you? Or is it something completely different? Am I asking too many questions?
???
...   :D

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 10:34:31 AM
Kate, I don't think growing stuff suddenly would be like being born with it... but I did ask some similar things and from what I understand, those of them that would mind, it'd be because of aesthetic reasons, and not because it contradicts their 'gender'.

I don't understand... do you only deal with androgynes in your circle of friends then?

The men I know would sooner die than lose their "manhood." Notice the millions of Viagra ads in the world? The billions of advertising dollars spent exploiting everyone's insecurities about being "real men" or "real women?" Men can't be real men without huge and responsive genitals... women can't be real women without being stick-thin with DD breasts.

It's not "aesthetic" to them, it's part of WHO THEY ARE, who they feel they need to be. They're manliness.. or femaleness... is an *extremely* important part of their identity, IMHO. Right or wrong, men with less than impressive genitals say they feel like "less of a man." Women who lose their breast(s) often say they feel like "less of of a woman."

I get that gender isn't important to you, but in my experience in the world out there, it's a HUGE part of nearly everyone else's identity and context in this world.

~Kate~

Quote from: Kate on October 20, 2008, 10:48:41 AM
I don't understand... do you only deal with androgynes in your circle of friends then?

...

I get that gender isn't important to you, but in my experience in the world out there, it's a HUGE part of nearly everyone else's identity and context in this world.

You're right. Maybe the friends I currently have are actually androgynous, but is it just a big coincidence? I think there's alot of people that don't super value their gender, unlike teen movie folks with the viagra and whatnot... life is not like TV.  Then again, it's not unusual for people to attract the same type as them, so maybe I just got lucky with that? I dunno. I definitely need to discuss androgynism with them more. Don't get me wrong though, I have 'manly' and 'girly' friends, but they wouldn't discuss stuff like this .. or never answer seriously.
:-\

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..

Skepticism isn't being open minded, skepticism is approaching a subject from an inherent stance of disbelief. If you're skeptical then you start out with the idea that the thing you're skeptical of is entirely wrong, and try to prove that's the case.

Which is, I suspect, where the incessant barrage of infinitely more detailed questions come from (how long until we start discussing gender on the quantum level?). People go to therapy in order to try and understand themselves better. Trained professionals may be able to answer your questions to a level that you'll be satisfied with... although I'm starting to doubt such a thing is possible since you keep re-wording the same questions over and over with scant regard to the answers people give you.

The vast majority of people here don't have decades of psychological, biochemical and neuroscientific experience or qualification in order to understand and express why we feel the way we do, and the vast amount of subtle processes that contribute to it. If we knew that with the level of detail you require, we'd all write books on the subject and be very wealthy. :P

I'm beginning to wonder if you're waiting for people to start saying "I don't know, I can't answer your question so you must be right and I'm fooling myself." Which will validate your theories.

Except the inner knowledge and feelings of the individual far surpasses the ability to express it. But that's all I'm going to say about that because I believe this 'debate' is starting to serve very little purpose other than to try and back people into a corner.

However, on the subject of other people saying it wouldn't be a big deal to be the other gender... it's very easy for someone to hypothesise from a position of being happy in their own skin and secure in their gender. It's like someone saying they'd easily be able to starve for a week while tucking into hamburgers and fries.

Aside from the fact that they would already have the experience and knowledge of what it feels like to be in the right body, and would have done so for some years, so it's not the same thing as being born with the wrong body... hypothetical is all those discussions will ever be, and unless you are in that position, you can't speak with any degree of authority.

Leiandra,

you make good points.
Skepticism doesn't mean someone isn't open though, it just means they enter the topic with some doubt (I can still be convinced out of it). I'd say mine is a very 'light' skepticism which I bring with me everywhere I go :P
And, I think maybe subconsciously a part of me was trying to not so much corner, but rather, pushing to conclude an assumption.. if that makes any sense.. sorry about that.

I'm sure it's hard to express something that's hard to understand, especially to someone who has trouble relating, but that doesn't mean you can't discuss, be it hypothetical or not. Speculation, debating, communicating, expressing! is fun!

Good point about "hypothesise from a position of being happy in their own skin" ... but I don't think it only goes one way. I would even argue that positions from being unhappy are much less good.. negativity never brings out good answers... let's not stoop to that level though.

Anyway, I'll drop the whole subject for now if it starts bringing out any hate. To me, even when I detect that someone's trying to corner me in a debate I still enjoy it.. but if I see anything more about my motives behind this, it's over. I don't toy around with discrediting a whole someone or their motives - that's baloney.

Here's my two cents Saraloop.

We know that birth defects do happen. We know that the mind does adapt to two bodies joined with shared organs or limbs, three arms, no hands, a penis and a vagina, a penis and ovaries or any of the other birth defects that occur.

My point is that not only is the body affected by these birth defects but so is the mind since it controls the body and everthing about us. Therefore, the mind is altered from the norm to support the birth defect. Also, these birth defects range from severe to minimal such as a female having a beard or a man having little body hair. Now, if one accepts that there are many degrees of birth defects, then wouldn't it be logical that a birth defect could just occur with the mind and that mind could be in conflict with the body?

Currently there is a highly accepted scientific study showing that in a large majority of M to F transsexuals their Y chromosome is misshaped or irregular and the banding is structured differently than non-trans males.

Now a little personal perspective to try and give you an example of how transsexulism is not a choice that can be made or controlled.

I am considered a handsome athletic man with a beautiful wife, three wonderful children, an enviable life and where money is no concern for me or my children. But for what ever reason I cannot find peace and contentment with my mind and body. Therefore, I am willing to give up my enviable life to find internal happiness. Even in the realization that my transition will hurt the people I love and be difficult as I am older than most and over 6 feet tall. But this is a better solution for me and my family than to kill myself and scaring them worse.

You see I was born in the early 1950's so there was very little available about GID or transsexualism. My early life was hell as my Father could not take my feminine ways and tried to verbally and physically beat them out of me. The result was that I pushed those feelings inside as much as I could to survive. I didn't want to change from a feminine boy. It didn't bother me at all. But the definitions of being a male were forced on me.

So from that point forward I had no idea why I didn't get along with the boy's and preffered to be with girl's. I had no idea why songs like Lola, pictures of men cross dressed or movies with cross dressing or gender changing made me sad and uncomfortable. I didn't know why looking at pictures of naked women didn't sexually excite me but made me sad that I wasn't one of them. Or why watching porno's with the boy's didn't do anything but make me sad for the women. Or why when I finally was able to cross dress in my twenties that I immediately found peace and tranquilty.

All of my life I was not comfortable with who I was and didn't understand or know why until I finally did gender therapy 2 years ago. This is not a choice for me. Everyday of my life has been an internal battle just to stay alive.

So after 20 years of therapy and all the other stuff I did to deny my GID I am emotionally and mentally exhausted. Then this year I became seriously depressed to point of planning my suicide and writing the goodbye letters. Why? Because my mind and body do not match and this will not let me be at peace and relax in life. Therefore, I will never be at peace until I change my body to match my brain.

Do I want to do this? Yes, because if I don't I will not survive much longer. Would I have chosen this path for me. Absolutely not.

Here's hoping that I have added some perspective for you and not just ran on about a lot of nothing.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..  but that doesn't mean it's less of a struggle for you.. and I never meant to make it sound that way.

That is total BS.  Its one thing to say you would be fine in a conversation and entirely another to actually "BE" fine if it happened.  Also keep in mind that if you were "talking" like you are here then you were most definately "leading" them to say what you wanted.  It would actually be harder to phrase it to get a "real" answer to this question than to phrase it such that "oh it wouldn't matter" is the only acceptable answer (even unintentionally).

Kate has already given quite a few good examples of how this is simply not true in any real sense with respect to the general population.

No CC, You have not "ran on about a lot of nothing." ... more than 20 years of emotional torment is.. A Lot
I barely survived a couple of years of something I couldn't cope with, I couldn't imagine so long, and that wasn't even the same kind of thing. I thought I just wasn't good enough to change my mentality about it.. since we do have a certain extent of control over our feelings.. but, I've probably overestimated the human mind's capacity to adapt and be at peace.
This makes things annoying.. :-\ viewing it like it's so deeply programmed into the mind that it can't be changed through will..

.. and, hiddenflame, think what you want, I wasn't leading anyone but I agree that they could be wrong about their answer due to a different experience.. but everyone passes through different experiences and different reasons for what they know / believe, feel free to judge them but I know their background so I'm giving some of them the benefit of the doupt. I'm open to the possibility that their minds would suddenly reject their new body... but .. this is getting a bit to theoretical again..

It is possible what we call gender identity is many different things.

Now you only have to look around you and see how prevalent gendering is. Why would people do this on a whim? It makes no sense. Logically there has to be something driving it inside of each of us. Certainly society creates certain rules for behaviour but you have to remember that we made society, why do we do we create these rules? When you look at males and females I don't think the behaviour itself is that important but the very fact that we as a people create gendered spaces for ourselves. We also seem to deisre to fit into these spaces based on internal drivers. There is something about it that must be important to us as a species otherwise it would not happen. Makes sense no?

I think the body thing is another, but related, issue. As an androgyne I suffer dysphoria. This is probably a simplistic view but I believe that our brains are wired for a certain body and when the body and wireing don't match it is very distressing. Perhaps your wiring matches your body so you don't know what it is like? 

Now I'm an androgyne too, but unlike you it causes me distress. Gender matters to me. Why doesn't it matter to you? That must be liberating but frustrating all at once. Do you feel like you are missing something?

Do you think this is something that can be understood by someone without gender identity Saraloop? I think the trap you have fallen into, the same one most of us fall into, is believing that deep down everyone is the same as us. I believe that in reality everyone is different. You might have to get over it that you will never understand, but you can certainly learn to accept. You can't argue that what someone is feeling is not valid.

Quote from: hiddenflame on October 20, 2008, 02:08:01 PM

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..  but that doesn't mean it's less of a struggle for you.. and I never meant to make it sound that way.

That is total BS.  Its one thing to say you would be fine in a conversation and entirely another to actually "BE" fine if it happened.  Also keep in mind that if you were "talking" like you are here then you were most definately "leading" them to say what you wanted.  It would actually be harder to phrase it to get a "real" answer to this question than to phrase it such that "oh it wouldn't matter" is the only acceptable answer (even unintentionally).

Kate has already given quite a few good examples of how this is simply not true in any real sense with respect to the general population.

Yes, I simply do not believe anyone who says that sie would be okay with suddenly changing sex. I think that such claims are trivializing toward trans people and are based in really big, really wrong assumptions about how human beings relate to our bodies. Since people who believe such things tend have no frame of reference for this, and since it's possible to point to people who experience alienation from their own bodies because of injuries and scarring (especially to the face), I think that the people making such claims are just not admitting that they don't know how they'd react if they found themselves in that position.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 02:39:05 PM
.. but, I've probably overestimated the human mind's capacity to adapt and be at peace.
This makes things annoying.. :-\ viewing it like it's so deeply programmed into the mind that it can't be changed through will..

Sorry to make things annoying dear. But the fact of the matter is that the human brain is deeply programmed and some things can't be changed through will or anything else. The part about deeply programed I have learned from three doctors I really respect. But I denied it for the longest time and thought it was ..... I have tried everyhting. Alcohol, all recreational drugs, risk taking, meds, will power, denial and nothing ever worked. All I can do is to make myself whole and not two differrent parts.

Have you ever talked to a qualified gender therapist? I am lucky to have one of the most experienced doctor's close to me. She has helped me to see and understand all that I am and to finally accept myself. I owe her my life.

Quote from: Nicky on October 20, 2008, 03:24:52 PM
It is possible what we call gender identity is many different things.

Now you only have to look around you and see how prevalent gendering is. Why would people do this on a whim? It makes no sense. Logically there has to be something driving it inside of each of us. Certainly society creates certain rules for behaviour but you have to remember that we made society, why do we do we create these rules? When you look at males and females I don't think the behaviour itself is that important but the very fact that we as a people create gendered spaces for ourselves. We also seem to deisre to fit into these spaces based on internal drivers. There is something about it that must be important to us as a species otherwise it would not happen. Makes sense no?

I think the body thing is another, but related, issue. As an androgyne I suffer dysphoria. This is probably a simplistic view but I believe that our brains are wired for a certain body and when the body and wireing don't match it is very distressing. Perhaps your wiring matches your body so you don't know what it is like? 

Now I'm an androgyne too, but unlike you it causes me distress. Gender matters to me. Why doesn't it matter to you? That must be liberating but frustrating all at once. Do you feel like you are missing something?

Do you think this is something that can be understood by someone without gender identity Saraloop? I think the trap you have fallen into, the same one most of us fall into, is believing that deep down everyone is the same as us. I believe that in reality everyone is different. You might have to get over it that you will never understand, but you can certainly learn to accept. You can't argue that what someone is feeling is not valid.

ooooooo... you totally burst my bubble there :D
I'm decently confused right now :o I probably need to re-evaluate some stuff.

I'm still divided about society for now. But the rest;
I agree that I've fallen into the trap to a certain extent, and if you put gender and dysphoria into that trap... well it puts into question some of my notions on this subject. I've assumed to be Androgynous only a while ago, ..., it doesn't matter too much since it's only a label.. but I have actually been considering removing my sexual organs for quite some time, and if I do so, to think that it could shake my very foundation and end up with me developing dysphoria of some kind? ..scary.
I'm not sure what to think about it right now..

QuoteNow I'm an androgyne too, but unlike you it causes me distress. Gender matters to me. Why doesn't it matter to you? That must be liberating but frustrating all at once. Do you feel like you are missing something?

I wish I knew. It matters in a different way. I guess I can try to explain my situation...
When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see myself, I see a human body, one that I'm able to control. But somehow knowing that it's not me I'm seeing is ok since I feel that my true self has no visual appearance. My 'thoughts, desires, my will, feelings, etc.' are what compose my true self and I find myself unable to attach myself to any kind of image... at all. Liberating in some ways yes, knowing that my true self is intact regardless of my body is ugly or whatever.. but yes, It does feel at times like something is missing, like I'm not able to grasp who I truly am... as well as feeling uncomfortable by my limits at times... like if I'm not able to reach my full potential.. as well as not knowing the extent of it.
But the most frustrating is being unable to behave the way I truly want >:(, in fear that I'll be judged by everyone for not abiding by the 'gender' rules along with other rules like 'adult' rules. I can not relate to sex in any way besides knowing what kind of body I have.. I do not like or care for any sexual organs or body hair and find those cumbersome. I can relate to traits of different people from both genders but it doesn't seem like I can associate any of the traits to a gender without being told what trait is considered what gender or making a generalization by observing.
Most of the time I'm not unhappy though. I do get depressed when I feel like I'm obligated to do stuff... well other stuff too...
... and that is alot of info that I usually don't share... If that helps you understand more how I think.

...sooo...  ??? what do you make of that.  ???

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM

Quotebody and mind being coherent and consistent.

it really seems like this is the big thing right? the big struggle.
I may have debated against it, but really, it's a part of what I want to understand.
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..  but that doesn't mean it's less of a struggle for you.. and I never meant to make it sound that way.

I don't believe this. I don't believe people are telling the truth when they say this. I do not believe that many people are capable of telling the truth about this. I just don't think that people have the frame of reference necessary to be able to say that they'd be fine with having the body of the other sex because they've never had to live with having a body of the other sex. So, no, they're not magically immune to this. They're magically privileged in not having to ever deal with it, and this gives them a perspective primarily influenced by that privilege.

It's like... I read somewhere that white people would accept $10,000 to turn black, but would require over a million dollars to experience the effects of racism. That is, that people don't really grasp their privilege until it's actually gone.

Anyway, yeah, it's extremely trivializing to claim that one wouldn't actually mind changing sex, that this would cause no problems, that anyone would be happy to switch and wouldn't experience any alienation or dissociation from hir own body. It implies - yet again - that trans people are dysfunctional while cissexual people somehow function "normally" in comparison.

QuoteBut I still want people to consider the possibility that "body and mind being coherent and consistent." is not as important for everyone else; whatever struggles we have lie elsewhere.  And I feel that any struggle, of any kind, is a miscalculation by the mind. I see it as any negative feeling is a miscalculation, and any reason, in our mind, for experiencing these negative feelings, is unjustified as well. What use do we have of negative feelings?? - none.. but that's also something that someone could debate with me.. but anyway that's where my statement takes its direction, which Lisa again interpreted as if I was directing it only towards transgendered.. sorry if it came out like that.

This, too is trivializing. I want you to consider the possibility that "body and mind being coherent and consistent" is not as important for everyone else because "everyone else" doesn't have to live with an inconsistent body and mind. I also want you to consider that since trans people are forced to grow up in a society and culture that favors the cissexual viewpoint over the transsexual viewpoint, that we have to be keenly aware of how cissexual people are not only comfortable in their skins in a way that we are not, that they are also frequently unaware of this comfort because they've never experienced its lack. And that they assume that their unawareness of their own comfort in their own skins is something that should be equally experienced by trans people.

I think, by calling what trans people experience a "miscalculation" and "negative feelings," you're making a judgement you shouldn't be about how trans people experience our own lives and bodies. What I did with my body was right and not a miscalculation. My negativity comes from a society that not only favors cissexual viewpoints over transsexual viewpoints, but from a society that considers transsexual lives to be worth significantly less than cissexual lives. That is, the negativity I experience comes directly from society. So, if you want to talk a miscalculation related to transsexual people, I suggest that transphobia - anti-trans hatred and bigotry - is where you should look. Not to how transsexual people relate to our own bodies.

QuoteI am listening. I've read every post I and understand more and more.. it's just that some of it I can't relate to...

The belief that you have to relate to it is highly privileged, though. There's a lot of experiences I personally can't relate to, but that doesn't mean I feel entitled to question their validity. I don't feel entitled to claim that if I were in a position to experience something I don't relate to now, that I would experience it in some "better, magically immune way" that implies that the people who do experience it on a daily basis are somehow wrong or "making miscalculations."

Why are you entitled to be able to relate to everything trans people experience?

Quote

QuoteYou make it clear that you're substituting what trans people are saying for your own assumptions.

Maybe I misworded what I meant to say. Because I didn't mean to substitute anything; I was merely trying to explain that I couldn't relate to 'being' like a particular gender and put it in a statement that I considered to make sense,and yes, used my own assumptions to debate.. and I guess I used the word 'logical' again which put the wrong point across.

But you did substitute something and that something is a common fallacy and prejudice many cissexual people hold about transsexual people - that why we transition is specifically about being free to act in certain ways.

Also: In day-to-day life, do people see you as the gender associated with your assigned sex? If they do, does this bother you?

Quote

QuoteYou're basically denying that trans women have as much diversity in gender expression as cis women do.

So. expressing your true self can come in different forms. I always put more value in expressing my true self through behavior... because expressing myself through body appearance means so little.. for me.. but I guess it does a lot for some.
Here's sort of a viewpoint from a form of my understanding up till now..

... if you associate your true self to a gender, then you'd want to express it with a "gender" as well... and since behavior by itself is not technically gendered, one could only express gender through their body which is clearly either male or female...  does that make sense?

You seem to think that a body being a particular sex doesn't involve any action. I want you to consider this: That transsexual people choose our sex by choosing to transition, choosing to take hormones, choosing to seek electrolysis (women, anyway), choosing surgery. That cissexual people choose their sex by choosing not to undergo any of those procedures. That by simply having a body with an identifiable sex, that a choice has been made. An action has been taken. For a comparable idea (choosing to live every day by not killing yourself), check out Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus").

Also, "that behavior itself is not technically gendered" is false. Behavior is gendered in at least two ways - one is that much behavior is gendered stereotypically - liking sports, or working on cars, or guns, or hunting, or fishing, is stereotypically gendered masculine. That this is ingrained in social consciousness. That no human being who has grown up in Western society can realistically claim that sie has not internalized these assumptions about those activities - and the same is true about stereotypically feminine activities. The second way behavior is gendered is who you see doing it. People react differently to women doing something than they do to men doing something. While none of these activities are inherently gendered as masculine or feminine, we're socialized to gender them. It's just not plausible to discuss behavior without also discussing how behavior is gendered by the participant or any observer.

I would also argue that the assumption that people do not generally associate their true self with a gender is false. While many people may claim it is so, those people typically do not live with the experience of people telling them that their gender is false or invalid. They don't live with people telling them - society telling them - that they're really not who they think they are. I think you need to question whether people who claim this explicitly identify as men or women. I think you need to question how they see men and women as relating to each other, what marriage means, just how much their expectations of gender are shaped socially and how harshly they judge people who fall outside those socially shaped expectations. Even for those who claim to be attached to a particular gender - how do they feel about being assumed to be a member of the other sex? If a female-bodied person claims to not identify strongly with being a woman, how would this person react to being referred to as a man all the time? Would she actually be okay with that? How would she even know without experiencing it?

Finally, not all transsexual people identify with "man" or "woman" despite still needing to transition from male to female or female to male. For a lot of people, gender identification is a strong part of transition, for a lot of other people, it's not. The need to physically transition is still there.

You keep asserting things about cissexual people on the thinnest threads of justification, and then you give them greater weight than detailed explanations from transsexual people. Why is that?

Quotebut then,

QuoteThe second assumption you need to abandon is the idea that subconscious sex is gender. It's not. It influences gender (which is why trans women frequently identify as woman and trans men frequently identify as men), but it influences gender for cissexual men and women (which is why they identify as men or women).

I'm sure there's a lot of cissexual people around me, but since I started looking into gender identity, I have not been able to personally find someone who "identifies" with their genderm, or at least, anyone who knew they were. I dunno much about it. That's why I started this topic :)
So, What's subcounscious sex ?

Cissexual = a person who feels no need to alter hir physical sex. You're conflating sex and gender again.

Subconscious sex = The sex your brain expects your body to be. Everyone has a subconscious sex, whether it matches their assigned sex or not. If your body is female and you're fine with that, then your subconscious sex is female. If your body is assigned male and you know it should be female, then your subconscious sex is still female. Julia Serano coined the term.

You, for example, misuse gender identity horribly, which is why I would really like for you to dissociate the need to transition physically from the idea of gender roles. "Gender" is a loaded term thanks to feminist and queer theory, leading to all kinds of assumptions about what the word really means when the word "gender" as used in "gender identity" and "gender dysphoria" actually refers to subconscious sex (and thus the need or lack of need to transition).

As I explained above, I don't believe your standards for determining whether cissexual people are actually up to the same standard that you're trying to apply to transsexual people here. It sounds like, basically, they told you that they don't identify with their gender, and you took them at their word. I think that it would take something a bit more intensive and comprehensive to determine whether people identify with any given gender. Especially when talking to people who haven't ever had to deal with challenges to their gender identification as false, deceptive, wrong, or even immoral.

I'm still trying to figure out why it's necessary to identify with something in order to accept its truth.

QuoteMale and female are sexes.
Man and woman are gender roles.
Feminine and masculine are how actions and objects are gendered.

I've seen this used in other combinations too... is this what's official for this community?
Still a bit confused.[/quote]

I've been lurking here for approximately a year, and I never saw any official word. Of course, I'm not a moderator and I only started posting yesterday. I'm speaking for myself, but I do think you really need to make these distinctions if you want to talk about subconscious sex and gender identity and transitioning or not transitioning, or even try to make points about how people do or do not identify with their gender.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:34:07 AM
I wonder how it is that everyone I discuss this to around me, including my mom, seem to be magically immune to this; they'd all be fine with having a body of another gender...  it would get some getting used to, but it would not be a big struggle. Is it just this community?? I find that improbable. So you can see where my skepticism comes from..  but that doesn't mean it's less of a struggle for you.. and I never meant to make it sound that way.

I can see where your skepticism comes from, but i'm also very sceptical that any cisgender person would be fine with suddenly changing sex.  I have a friend who had testicular cancer, and he certainly wasn't fine after they were removed.  In fact he had to be sectioned for a few months afterwards.

Anyway, besides the issue of whether or not such a cisgender person would still have the identity with their former gender, the practical implications of suddenly being the other sex are huge.  The way society relates to you, whats "proper" behaviour, etc.  I'd be shocked if it wouldn't be a struggle for you or anybody you've spoken to.  Its a struggle to adjust to living as the real us in practical terms, even with this intrinsic knowledge that we're living our true gender.

I agree with you that i think its highly improbable that cisgender people are that much different from transgender people in terms of being gendered.  Though i notice that your skeptism seems to be towards our community, as opposed to cisgender friends and family who are just imagining what it'd be like.  Doesn't experience provide more evidence that supposition?

Posted on: October 20, 2008, 10:48:07 pm

---

Quote from: Lisa Harney on October 20, 2008, 04:43:46 PM

QuoteMale and female are sexes.
Man and woman are gender roles.
Feminine and masculine are how actions and objects are gendered.

I've seen this used in other combinations too... is this what's official for this community?
Still a bit confused.

To my knowledge, there isn't anything official (somebody please correct me if i'm wrong!).  But all of us on this forum recognise that biological sex, gender identity, gender role, femininity/masculinity are all different.  Though not everyone will use the same labels.

In general
sex = biological/anatomy
gender = identity
gender role/behaviour/stereotypes/most other stuff = society

cisgender = not transgender              (gender cos its not related to physical biology)

Hi Saraloop,
Define to me what your idea of what the difference is in a cisgender woman and a cisgender man and just what constitute the psychologically of one and the other. I am not talking about the stereotypes I am talking about what comes from their instinctive thoughts and feelings, what is the difference in the pattern of their thoughts and feelings?  If you can answer this, then possibly you will better understand the deviations between genders that are members of the growing transgender family, which by the way androgyne is also a member of that family. From what I have learned about the androgyne they also have a swing psychologically between genders. Forgive me if the word psychological is not the right word to identify the thoughts and feelings that swing between the two genders. Sometimes I can do pretty good with he $100.00 words but today they seem to elude me.

Quotewomen can't be real women without being stick-thin with DD breasts.
Kate

Secondly--- Fore the last five years before I began transition I was totally possessed by the thoughts and desire to be a woman to the point I went anorexic in my attempt to emulate what I thought was a more feminine body. I was slowly starving myself to death and may very well have if my love Wing Walker hadn't intervened.

Cindy   

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 04:42:57 PM
I wish I knew. It matters in a different way. I guess I can try to explain my situation...
When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see myself, I see a human body, one that I'm able to control. But somehow knowing that it's not me I'm seeing is ok since I feel that my true self has no visual appearance. My 'thoughts, desires, my will, feelings, etc.' are what compose my true self and I find myself unable to attach myself to any kind of image... at all. Liberating in some ways yes, knowing that my true self is intact regardless of my body is ugly or whatever.. but yes, It does feel at times like something is missing, like I'm not able to grasp who I truly am... as well as feeling uncomfortable by my limits at times... like if I'm not able to reach my full potential.. as well as not knowing the extent of it.
But the most frustrating is being unable to behave the way I truly want >:(, in fear that I'll be judged by everyone for not abiding by the 'gender' rules along with other rules like 'adult' rules. I can not relate to sex in any way besides knowing what kind of body I have.. I do not like or care for any sexual organs or body hair and find those cumbersome. I can relate to traits of different people from both genders but it doesn't seem like I can associate any of the traits to a gender without being told what trait is considered what gender or making a generalization by observing.
Most of the time I'm not unhappy though. I do get depressed when I feel like I'm obligated to do stuff... well other stuff too...
... and that is alot of info that I usually don't share... If that helps you understand more how I think.

...sooo...  ??? what do you make of that.  ???

I think we are getting somewhere.

Sounds like you actually feel very similar of what others feel too. You said your body is not really you. I feel the same and I think many non-transitioned transsexuals feel the same too. You're ok with that and that's really cool. But I get an inkling from what you said that if you actually thought about it and delved a bit deeper you might find that actually that bothers you just a little - feeling uncomfortable at your limits, not knowing who you are. What you are inside is indistinct and it is hard to translate this into a body. I think this is one of the hard things about being an androgyne, knowing something is a bit out of sorts but not having a clear idea of a direction.

You mentioned not being able to behave the way your truly want. I would hazard a guess that your identity as a person says you should be able to do certain things that society says you can't. This is similar to what people mean when they talk about their gender identity "I am this, so I should be able to do that and be recognised as this".

Now I'm not saying you should feel worse, or compelled to do something about it. It is great if you are comfortable enough in your own skin that you can get by in the world without radical change. But you should realise that for other transgendered people these feelings are hugely debilitating. Take your feelings about your behaviour restrictions and magnify it 1000 times so that every gender limitation becomes agony. Life soon becomes unbearable unless you did something about it.

I'm guessing all your questions are really an attempt to answer your own internal questions, the feeling of missing something, seeking out and trying to find your place. I suggest that you will learn more by talking and exploring your own perception of self as you did in the above quote than trying to make the world fit your current perceptions.

Quote from: cindybc on October 20, 2008, 06:05:20 PM
Hi Saraloop,
Define to me what your idea of what the difference is in a cisgender woman and a cisgender man and just what constitute the psychologically of one and the other. I am not talking about the stereotypes I am talking about what comes from their instinctive thoughts and feelings, what is the difference in the pattern of their thoughts and feelings?  If you can answer this, then possibly you will better understand the deviations between genders that are members of the growing transgender family, which by the way androgyne is also a member of that family.

mmm... everyone has different patterns for thoughts and feelings, so the only way I can think of answering that is by generalizing... If the cisgender man and woman adjust their attitude and thought pattern to their perceived gender role(ie from society), then I guess the woman would tend to be more passive, nurturing and men more aggressive, less caring.. etc.  but that's stereotypes... so I don't know what you mean. To think that each would have different "instinctive thoughts and feelings" is theoretical if you remove the factor of hormones...
..I feel like I may be sliding across your point .. maybe because of the way I preceive or classify things which is probably leading to all the misunderstandings we're having. But I have to admit I don't quite see the whole picture yet.
I was trying to formulate a question regarding the transgender's self image compared to the perceived gender role but I don't think that's actually what I'm looking for..


eh..well anyway,

QuoteI suggest that you will learn more by talking and exploring your own perception of self as you did in the above quote than trying to make the world fit your current perceptions.

Nikky thanks for your answers. weird how this turned around to become about me.. but I do have alot of unanswered questions about myself too.. maybe I need alot more soul searching..

QuoteTake your feelings about your behaviour restrictions and magnify it 1000 times so that every gender limitation becomes agony. Life soon becomes unbearable unless you did something about it.

urrh, 1000 ... that'd kill me of heartattack for sure...  :-X :P
Actually, When I'm in public I feel many times worse .. but I think we were talking about all the time, not just in public, right?. Because I don't feel judged when I'm alone, just when im in society's eye.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 10:34:31 AM
might as well respond..

How do you know for certain? an instinct like somebody said? or growing knowledge / contrast? .. at what point did you realize or know for certain that the body you had was not 'right'? was it when you were born? Or was it growing up and looking at your body and realizing you had expectations that differed from what actually formed? Or was it realized by comparing your attitude to those of others around you? Or is it something completely different?


Am I asking too many questions?
???
...   :D

Yes, you are asking too many questions.  You are playing with people in a forum that is primarily for support, and when trolls or others show up to have a good time, it is very tiresome.  Your questions are for your debate (or, debatable) "fun".  Your "grilling"  is competitive, mildly combative in nature, and reminds me of a young person who needs their immature ego stroked.  All in all, it's a tiresome waste of time. You are in effect demanding that the people here justify what they do, and frankly, they should not have to.


Bev

Quote from: Miss Bev on October 20, 2008, 07:57:39 PM
Yes, you are asking too many questions.  You are playing with people in a forum that is primarily for support, and when trolls or others show up to have a good time, it is very tiresome.  Your questions are for your debate (or, debatable) "fun".  Your "grilling"  is competitive, mildly combative in nature, and reminds me of a young person who needs their immature ego stroked.  All in all, it's a tiresome waste of time. You are in effect demanding that the people here justify what they do, and frankly, they should not have to.
Bev

I didn't know asking alot of questions was "trolling" or "grilling".
Asking and demanding are completely different.
While I find debate fun, it is primaly used as my tool for understanding. When you do something, like exercise, to reach your goal, don't you prefer doing it in a fun way? 
Plus receiving lots of answers helps me beat it into my head and make links clearer.. I'm just like that.
If you didn't like the way I ask, then just don't answer or don't bother with me, it's that simple. By saying what you just did without knowing how I think and process stuff, you're attacking my very nature, saying it's a 'troll'.

I think this topic has served well enough. We can close it, if there's any moderator willing to.

Thank you all those who shared

But the fact of the matter is that the human brain is deeply programmed and some things can't be changed through will or anything else.

I'm not sure about that.  I'm sure its hard.  Perhaps even almost impossible.  But....  but, but, but, the only thing more powerful than the way the brain can be condishioned, is the brain itself.  And - and I would not say this if I had not seen it happen in several ways in many people in front of my eyes - I have seen people overcome it.  Surpass it, or regress from it too.  The Marine Corps (just to use one example, I'm sure I could track them back to Rome) can take any clean-cut, church going kid and make a stone cold killer out of him.  In a matter of months.  Perhaps that is good.  For sure, I would not be writing this, in this kind of atmosphere of freedom, had they not done it, several different times at least.  But I've known several on the other end too.  The 'after' that happens.  It's not pretty.

But I've also seen people who were conditioned to poverty, terminal under- achivement, crime, vice and general crap fix their minds to get out of it.  It also occurs to me from time to time, both in real life and in reading these boards (and others) that a lot of kids who were loved and raised right wound up on skid row, drinking themselves to death as they lay in a puddle of puke and their own urine.  Or just on a slab in the city morgue with the spike still in their arm.  Happens every day, every night.

All sorts of people can change their mind.  For good or ill.

So too with gender.  Some people know this from day one.  Others come to the conclusion later.  All sorts of different paths to get there.  All sorts of ways to go once you know.

No single answer.  No one way. 

No one story.

Identity is personal.  It is unique as best as I can tell.  And, its not permanent in all cases. 

I've known some people who were always the same throughout their life.

Others, have changed so many times, it blows my mind.

Well my dear I'm afraid that you may want to rethink that. I had a close friend who was in the Nam war. When he came back I moved in with him on the res. He hit the bottle and never breathed a sober breath again until he died of serosis of the liver in my arms 10 years later. Yea he had been brain washed and trained to be a killing machine but towards the end on many nights I found myself holding a little boy in my arms, a little boy frightened of the dark and crying. They can't brain wash you into forgetting who you were.

As for what ever it is that is in our brain that makes us what we are, no mater what gender whether trans or cis doesn't mater, we all have feelings emotions and consciousness of the world around us, what is the driving force behind this mechanism called the grey matter? We all may perceive the same thing differently but who is to say who is perceiving it wrong and who is perceiving it correctly? This GID thing and transsexualism I didn't know anything about until only just ten years ago, but yet it drove me and forced me to go in a direction that truly terrified me. I was driven to the point I was suicidal, until I learned what it was and that reduced the fear greatly, I knew the name of the critter that bit me.

I beleive you will find that psychologically any sentient thinking human beings will fear more what the possible symptoms of a disease might be then to actually know what the name of that beast is. Once you know the beast you know what you are confronted with and you arm yourself with the proper weapons to do battle. Same with GID. Someone in this thread earlier said that it is not a choice, "may I kiss your feet my dear madam!" and may I say "A LA LOUYA!" amen to that. who in their right minds would willingly choose to go our rout if they had another alternative. GID pushed me relentlessly out of the closet, then out unto the street and tantalised and haunted me until I went full time then relentlessly continued until I surrendered and said "yes, I will fight this beast no more!"

If I didn't want to die and I didn't have the stamina left to fight anymore, so I finished the journey by finding myself on the operating table with a nice surgeon looking down at me and when I came to I was as complete a woman as medical science could make me. You know, I've heard it said on different occasions on these forums, "it takes a lot of balls to be a woman." But I think that should be the other way around, are you willing to part with your male appendages to be a woman? But it does take lots of guts to get through this journey, It could be likened to a battle, and the battle field is in the mind. The one who comes out of this battle is the victor, and this victor is  just as much a heroic lady, as the warrior princes standing high on a mountain holding up her light saber. She put her life on the line to save another, in this case, her own life. I am proud to be a woman and I am proud to be who I am. A little woman with a big heart.

Cindy

     

 I Haven't personally been witness to any army organization influencing someone that much.. but
It's not just the marine corps, we've been brainwashing our own selves since the day we were born. And many things have had a hand in this, including society. Have you ever snapped out of your routine and ask yourself : "..why the ->-bleeped-<- am I doing this?" or try to figure out why you've associated certain feelings to certain events or thought patterns?  We've been programming our processes subconsciously for as long as we've been human, but not everyone has noticed just to what extent.. and it's possible to deprogram yourself as well, it's just hard, really hard, to the point where you think you don't have the choice or the will power to do so.

Things are Never like they seem, they are only how you yourself perceive them.

...I can't read anyone's mind so there's no way of me knowing for sure, but I highly doubt that there's any case where someone has 'no choice', though thinking so may help isolate any 'believed' solution.. but that 'solution' will work, as long as you believe it will. Most don't realize just how powerful the power of belief is... I've seen it do so many 'miraculous' things, things I thought couldn't be done without serious conditioning or brainwashing like you guys talked about.
If you believe, you can deprogram or program, create new conditions for your own mind's processes instantly. I've seen it done, I've experienced it myself, and am still under its mercy. I become better at conditioning my mind everyday though, and believe it's possible for me to condition myself to being perfectly fine without transitioning whatsoever. Though I've struggled doing this..I do think I've been neglecting the speeding up of this process through other means, and I think I've come up with new ideas thanks some of the ways of this community.
Struggling with something can become so painful though.. I think any way you can find to stop it is fine as long as you're ok with the consequences.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 21, 2008, 10:33:39 AM
If you believe, you can deprogram or program, create new conditions for your own mind's processes instantly. I've seen it done, I've experienced it myself, and am still under its mercy. I become better at conditioning my mind everyday though, and believe it's possible for me to condition myself to being perfectly fine without transitioning whatsoever...

Oh, my mind is a playground for my self. I believe in things by choice, not from so-called evidence. Because of that though, my beliefs are totally my responsibility. What they are, how they work, what they look like and what they "make" me... is a product of my choices.

So I TRY to choose well. I TRY to choose beliefs for their beauty and poetry. In fact, I'm somewhat compelled to. If there's anything I DON'T seem to have a choice about, it's in my method of choosing. And that method revolves around a sense of destiny or Fate, of trying to sense, find and walk through the story chapters of my life that I've already written for myself. I'm following bread crumbs ;)

So could I have chosen to accept and deal with NOT transitioning? Knowing myself, yes... quite possibly. But in my quirky personal system of ethics, that would have been an "ugly" choice. There's no poetry in it, no sense of destiny or Fate. And I've been at this so long, I'm "conditioned" to choose this way. I crossed a threshold somewhere, and now I HAVE to choose this way.

And sure, maybe even that is just justifying my choice to do it. But I don't care anymore, lol... as it WORKS for me. Not transitioning = a blah, meaningless and bland life off my "bliss," as Joe Campbell might have said. Transitioning = the whole world throwing roses at my feet, resonating with meaning and beauty (tragic or otherwise).

What more could I ask for?

~Kate~

Quote from: Saraloop on October 20, 2008, 07:12:55 PM
weird how this turned around to become about me.. but I do have alot of unanswered questions about myself too.. maybe I need alot more soul searching.

It's been "about you" since you began the thread and others have made it about them as well.

That is normal human response. It's always about ourselves whether we know it or not. Just as Lisa intimated in her discussion of how cissexuals "naturally" perceive their sex without any disturbing dealings with incongruity.

How often do you contemplate the air you breathe or why the sun is just so to allow life on the planet? When you're struggling to work or feed yourself you just do it, beathe and live, and go about the struggle. Arcane thoughts don't ripple through the fabric of your brain.

Yes, perhaps the questioning of the self rather than of the other is exactly the way to go.

Nichole

Brilliant! I love the way Kate put it. But of course we all have our own trail of bread crumbs to follow, just be sure to side step the logs and the gopher holes. I think that those are things our minds become trained to be watchful fore after barking ones shins on them often enough.

Mommy bird can only show you the concept of how to fly but when she pushes you out of the nest you better start flapping those wings and hope you can get the hang of flying before you hit the ground below. Such is life if this is what is meant by programing or brainwashing our own minds. So we replace one concept for another as we go while trying to avoid all those logs and gopher holes in ones life.

Cindy

Sarahloop -

You exhibit a number of Aspie traits, and it appears that you've decided to expound a solipsist theory of the universe today.

Are you playing, or are you honestly seeking to understand?

Understand, I am an Aspie, so I'm not saying it as a negative, and that has complicated my GID more then a bit, because I don't really see Gender when I look at other people. I evaluate people on an individual basis, but when it came to my own body..... I just know on some intrinsic level that it's not right. I can't explain it.

Solipsism might be a bit unfair, but you are preaching the genderqueer manifesto to some extent. Everyone's gender experience is different, just like everyones sexual experience is different. As has been said by others, I agree with the Genderqueers on the belief that much of Gender is a social construct, but this goes deeper then then the social aspects of gender, it is about having a birth defect that gave me a female brain (albeit an aspie one) in a male body. Some people are able to quell the dissonance this creates with crossdressing, or possibly drag performance, some people feel it more profoundly, and need to transition their bodies in order to feel comfortable in them and go on existing in society.

I reached a breaking point. I had completely withdrawn from society, I worked from home on-call attached to a pager - I never left the house, and if I wasn't working, I was playing World of Warcraft. I got 0 exercise, I ate horribly, and my sleeping pattern was erratic and problematic. (I gave myself sleep apnea through the massive weight gain.) I had made a subconscious decision to withdraw from a world that didn't see me as who I am, and instead choose to live entirely in a fantasy world. I decided to quit smoking simply because of the cheaper health insurance, and I tried Chantix. To say I had a nervous breakdown is putting it mildly. I became depressed, had suicidal ideation constantly, and tried to convince my family to let me go. Even after I stopped the Chantix, this depression persisted, and my work sent me to a counselor. I started slowly peeling back the layers of walls that I had built, and came back to the point where I'd stopped growing emotionally and mentally - sitting on my parent's bed talking to my Mom at 12 and telling her I needed to be a girl.... the horrible reaction of my Father, and the beginning of all my walls being built. 

I realized that I had been killing myself slowly the entire time. Deliberately neglecting my body so that it would eventually stop functioning and I could stop this dissonance. I resented being alive if it meant I had to live as a man. At that point, I weighed 380 pounds, had high blood pressure, horribly low vitamin D levels from getting no sun, and could barely make it around the block without wheezing. It came to a decision at that point - to get it over with now instead of this slow painful slide into death, or to go through with it and have a chance to actually live. I chose life, that was about 6 months ago.

I now walk 2 miles every morning, 4 on weekends, I do a morning regimen of situps, pushups and a couple yoga poses. I want to get up in the morning knowing that today is one day closer to my goal of being a woman. I've started Laser treatments to remove the hair, I'm on low doses of estrogen under the care of an endo, slowly working my way up, and I've lost 40 pounds, with the eventual goal of making it down to 220 so I can get the surgery.

My gender meant everything to me. It defines who I am in my own mind. It defines how I think, and being told constantly by the world around me that I was the opposite of who and what I knew I was caused me to completely withdraw.

Does that mean that I wear make up and dresses? No. I own one skirt and it makes me feel too vulnerable. I was before, and will be post transition, a bit gender-neutral in my mannerisms and dress.... but I'll know I have the right hormones inside me, and a close approximation of the right body parts, and I will know that I'm a woman.

Just because your gendered experience hasn't been strong, doesn't mean that other people don't experience it. Whether it be heavily in line with the gender you were assigned at birth, or just completely out of sync with it, enough people have a strong gendered experience and a strong gender identity that drives their interactions with and understanding of the world.

I like where the topic's gone. I also liked the way Kate put it as well.

I may have been fixated a bit too much on certain aspects of the topic while discussing with you guys for the last few days and I think I do have an unorthodox view on things compared to others, .. but I definitely don't have AS, flutter, though I may share a few characteristics. As for my slight Solipsism views, I think they've developed throughout the last years... but it's not something I really believe... it's sortof just in the back of my mind as a logical possibility for many things.
As for your story, I can relate a bit, I went through depression on and off for the last 3 or 4 years and have been pretty socially withdrawn. Things have changed now though.

I understand that most people have some sort of gendered experience, which is why I'm left in the dark in many situations and want to make sense out of it. If I can't then fine.. I'll just be clueless alot of times is all.

If I look it from a purely neutral way, staying away from feelings or emotions, what am I left with when thinking about gender? ... not much.  I know that many things are 'classified' as one or the other, that some people associate themselves to those classifications, and that expectations are built upon those classifications.. but apart from that, what's the purpose behind it?  Some people have certain characteristics, traits, tendencies.. but everyone is different.. there is no use for those classifications or expectations.
Then, If I take my feelings into account, I notice that I have feelings or desires for behaving or acting certain ways, ways that do not follow the mentioned expectations, and brings about consequences, which in turn instills fear, as well as other negative feelings. I can either change my body, transition, to demand a different set of expectations, or change my mind, eliminate my fear of the consequences, and live free from either set of expectations :). The logical choice seems to be the latter... but also the harder one.

So not only is the whole concept causing great torment, but to me, seems to have no purpose as well. The expectations are what cause so much torment, it's something to fight against.. and I'm sure most of you agree. What you maybe wouldn't agree with is destroying the concept of 'gender roles' which seems to be at the root of these expectations.
And actually now that I think about it,.. I probably have quite a bit of hate built up for the concept of gender roles. :-\


ps - sorry if some of my posts sound like a repeat; I like to re-word my thoughts sometimes.

You're basically espousing queer theory.

I suggest you look into the Genderqueer movement.

However, saying that *ALL* gendered expression is created by society is a gross misunderstanding and mistake.

Now that I've taken the time to go back and read this entire thread (which I admit I should have done before posting) I'm going to re-recommend you get Julia Serrano's Whipping Girl, and additionally recommend Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaws.

I think Serrano's work is the most relevant here, because a couple of sections of her book address directly how the queer agenda and "Gender as Social Construct" model is damaging to transsexuals and denies the validity of our experience.

Let me ask you this -

If you could choose today to live the rest of your life in your current body, or in the other gender - which would you do?

Have you ever snapped out of your routine and ask yourself : "..why the ->-bleeped-<- am I doing this?"

As David Byrne once wrote:
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Well, I'm sure that there was some Roman solider up on the frontier of Germanica in the middle of winter asking himself that same question.

Who knows?  I've met a lot of people who thought they knew, but they didn't.

Some questions are never answered.  Perhaps there are no answers for them.

Back in 1979, in San Diego, a 16 year old girl opened fire from her living room on an elementary school.  She wounded nine and killed two.  When she was caught, and asked "WHY" her response was, "I don't like Mondays."

Later, Bob Geldolf of the Boomtown Rats would write a song about it where he said:
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die?

And perhaps that's it.  This is no reason.  There are no reasons.  It's just part of life and death.  Everyone has things they have to work out or work through, all this just might be yours.

Quote from: Saraloop on October 21, 2008, 10:33:39 AM
...I can't read anyone's mind so there's no way of me knowing for sure, but I highly doubt that there's any case where someone has 'no choice', though thinking so may help isolate any 'believed' solution.. but that 'solution' will work, as long as you believe it will. Most don't realize just how powerful the power of belief is... I've seen it do so many 'miraculous' things, things I thought couldn't be done without serious conditioning or brainwashing like you guys talked about.
If you believe, you can deprogram or program, create new conditions for your own mind's processes instantly. I've seen it done, I've experienced it myself, and am still under its mercy. I become better at conditioning my mind everyday though, and believe it's possible for me to condition myself to being perfectly fine without transitioning whatsoever. Though I've struggled doing this..I do think I've been neglecting the speeding up of this process through other means, and I think I've come up with new ideas thanks some of the ways of this community.
Struggling with something can become so painful though.. I think any way you can find to stop it is fine as long as you're ok with the consequences.

I think it should be clear that when people say they have no choice, what they mean is that the other options are either untenable or impossible for them. I would say I had no choice but to transition, but that's because I was spending all my energy dealing with my dysphoria for the year before I started hormones, and the number of times I attempted suicide when I thought transition might not ever be possible. I could have chosen to not transition, but odds are that if I hadn't, I'd now be dead or at least extremely depressed and unhappy.

Also, I don't think it's possible to will away the dysphoria. I don't think it's possible to program it away. Everything's been tried on trans people from therapy to outright torture, and it just doesn't work.

 Not seriously, What we would need is to have alot of children raised individually by some robots or something on some distant island, untouched by society, and see what characteristics and behavior they each sex tend to have most of.. that's one of the only ways we could truly get a feel for the differences between each gender :P
Would girls really become nesting and caring without raising babies, or passive without men around to control them? Would men not seek to control or oppress when unaware of physical superiority by comparison ? It'd be really interesting to know.. but unfortunately would be unethical.

Quote from: flutter on October 21, 2008, 05:33:26 PM
You're basically espousing queer theory.

I suggest you look into the Genderqueer movement.

I just checked the definition for Genderqueer : "Genderqueer and intergender are catchall terms for gender identities other than man and woman. People who identify as genderqueer may think of themselves as being both male and female, as being neither male nor female, or as falling completely outside the gender binary. Some wish to have certain features of the opposite sex and not all characteristics; others want it all. The term may apply to appearance, social behavior or a combination of the two"

..That's pretty cool :D Definitely something I should look into.

QuoteIf you could choose today to live the rest of your life in your current body, or in the other gender - which would you do?

Well, although I guess I am indeed genderqueer. If I only had those 2 choices, I would definitely change my body's sex... it would make things a lot easier.
But in reality, I don't know what would be my true ideal..  it would have no sexual organs and no body hair for sure.. and other stuff..

QuoteAlso, I don't think it's possible to will away the dysphoria. I don't think it's possible to program it away. Everything's been tried on trans people from therapy to outright torture, and it just doesn't work.

It depends on how strong the dysphoria is I guess... and perhaps it IS close to impossible, but I'd like to think that there's always a possibility, be it so small that it most likely can't even come close..


..

and tekla, looks like you like philosophy as well :)

Quote from: Saraloop on October 21, 2008, 06:17:06 PM
It depends on how strong the dysphoria is I guess... and perhaps it IS close to impossible, but I'd like to think that there's always a possibility, be it so small that it most likely can't even come close..

Why is it important that there be a possibility? I mean, would you tell a person with diabetes that there's a chance she could will away her diabetes?

Kenneth Zucker believes he can use reparative/conversion therapy on trans children to convince them to not transition. Every story I've heard about these kids (and into adulthood in some cases) shows that this therapy has had a traumatic effect on their lives. One person abhors the idea of transitioning, but is alcholic and cuts hirself regularly, for example.

In what way would transitioning gender make your life easier if you wish to have no genitals?

May I ask what your birth gender is?

And before you dive completely into the Genderqueer movement, read Julia Serrano, you need a touch more skepticism of gender as social construct before you expose yourself to them. ;)

QuoteWhy is it important that there be a possibility?

Some people are able to control their heartbeat. Some Chinese aura masters are able to augment their body heat at will, and not just slightly. What if someone could tap into their mind so deeply that they could control their body on a cellular level? Pretty far fetched but doesn't mean it's impossible, ..and doesn't mean it's the way to go either, but it's still a possibility.

QuoteIn what way would transitioning gender make your life easier if you wish to have no genitals?

May I ask what your birth gender is?

Easier as in I wouldn't be expected to act within a gender role.

I was sort of keeping it a mystery,  but fine, here's a big hint; If I had to choose between 1 sex or the other, the one I would choose over my current one is bound by fewer expectations from society regarding both gender and age. ;)

Well that's enough about me.

I'll definitely try to see if I can find that book you're recommending me. Not sure where to find it though.

http://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224644107&sr=8-1 (http://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224644107&sr=8-1)

http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaw-Men-Women-Rest/dp/0679757015/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c (http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaw-Men-Women-Rest/dp/0679757015/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c)

;)

I fervently pray that Mr Tin god Kenneth Zucker and followers would wake up in the morning with a good case of GID. Wayyyyyy, better karma than a bad case of crotch crickets.

Cindy

In the rush to have all of this worked out via therapy and psychology, and demanding it be paid for by others (insurance) you pretty much built this monster.  So rather than pray to some invisible pal in the sky, try working to discount his research and findings based on scientific results rather than name calling, which only plays into his hands. 

The better solution is to get rid of GID and drop it from the DSM once and for all.

Quote from: tekla on October 21, 2008, 11:51:15 PM
In the rush to have all of this worked out via therapy and psychology, and demanding it be paid for by others (insurance) you pretty much built this monster.  So rather than pray to some invisible pal in the sky, try working to discount his research and findings based on scientific results rather than name calling, which only plays into his hands. 

The better solution is to get rid of GID and drop it from the DSM once and for all.

If it's dropped off the DSM, will it *ever* be covered by insurance?

That's my primary concern with that debate.

Quote from: tekla on October 21, 2008, 11:51:15 PM
In the rush to have all of this worked out via therapy and psychology, and demanding it be paid for by others (insurance) you pretty much built this monster.  So rather than pray to some invisible pal in the sky, try working to discount his research and findings based on scientific results rather than name calling, which only plays into his hands. 

The better solution is to get rid of GID and drop it from the DSM once and for all.

Er, what?

I think you're confusing actions taken by the psychiatric community with actions taken by the trans community. Were trans people agitating to be labeled with a mental disability for being trans back in the 70s?

And all else considered, given how bad being trans can be pre-transition, it should be covered by insurance.

That doesn't mean that Zucker's science isn't demonstrably bad. That doesn't mean that most of the gender specialists at CAMH don't suck. Trans people are not responsible for the fact that some members of the psychiatric profession choose to misrepresent who we are and abuse us as a group.

That's the coin statement right there, **psychiatric profession choose to misrepresent who we are and abuse us as a group.** I am not a professional psychiatrist, I am just one of the former TS patients. .0001 of the members of the nut cases society of world's population against the psychiatric profession? Ya I may as well go pee pee on one of those psychiatrists pant leg too for all that would acomplish. 

Cindy

If it's dropped off the DSM, will it *ever* be covered by insurance?

No.  But then again, no one will ever have to cart a check to some psychologist to get a letter, and the mental health community would no longer have a veto in the deal. 

People who need such help, should seek it.  But I don't think that many do.  And its put the community in a bad place.  The gays got it dropped, so should we.  Transition should be a matter of informed consent, not medical or psychological pathology.

Great lot of good that would acomplish. Without health care insurance I would never have got as far as the first rung of the leader of transitioning on my own financial resources. What is it with you anyway Tekla, I don't like sounding aggressive or confrontational but just what is your stake in this matter? Do you intend to transition or not?

Cindy

Quote from: tekla on October 22, 2008, 01:16:58 AM
If it's dropped off the DSM, will it *ever* be covered by insurance?

No.  But then again, no one will ever have to cart a check to some psychologist to get a letter, and the mental health community would no longer have a veto in the deal. 

People who need such help, should seek it.  But I don't think that many do.  And its put the community in a bad place.  The gays got it dropped, so should we.  Transition should be a matter of informed consent, not medical or psychological pathology.

See, I've got a problem with that.

I don't see this as elective surgery. I see this as a medical necessity.

And I did have issues to work out before I was ready for it - stripping away the layers of cultural conditioning that had kept me in the closet for so long, and dealing with overcoming the negative reactions of my family.

What you are essentially saying is transitioning should be reserved for those who can afford it, which is what we have right now, the problem is transsexuality doesn't limit itself to the wealthy. Yes, right now, we have to jump through hoops for the psychiatric community, and *THEN* pay for the process. One of them should go - but the one you're championing eliminating is the one that places a financial impetus in the way of a group that is already marginalized by society.

I think having this covered as a necessary medical procedure is *much* more important then removing the stigma of being listed in the DSM. Once transition is over, you no longer have gender dysphoria, and it should be removed from whatever list of ailments you have.

Just my $.02

Quote from: tekla on October 22, 2008, 01:16:58 AM
If it's dropped off the DSM, will it *ever* be covered by insurance?

No.  But then again, no one will ever have to cart a check to some psychologist to get a letter, and the mental health community would no longer have a veto in the deal. 

People who need such help, should seek it.  But I don't think that many do.  And its put the community in a bad place.  The gays got it dropped, so should we.  Transition should be a matter of informed consent, not medical or psychological pathology.

And this will help the many many thousands of trans people who can't afford the costs associated with transition? That it will somehow improve things for us if medical transition becomes a completely elective luxury, and not a medical necessity as it is for many of us?

The difference between being gay and being trans is that being gay doesn't require medical intervention. Being trans <em>does</em>, and lack of access to that medical intervention is probably one of the major reasons for suicide attempts among trans people. The lack of treatment itself creates comorbidities such as depression, and for that reason alone, transition-related treatments need to be recognized as medically necessary and covered by insurance.

Not that this means I agree in the least with the standards of care, and how they're designed to convince people that they don't really want to transition, or to protect doctors and surgeons from malpractice suits. Standards of care should be oriented toward patients, not gatekeepers.

Posted on: October 22, 2008, 05:34:32 pm

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Quote from: Saraloop on October 21, 2008, 09:52:37 PM

QuoteWhy is it important that there be a possibility?

Some people are able to control their heartbeat. Some Chinese aura masters are able to augment their body heat at will, and not just slightly. What if someone could tap into their mind so deeply that they could control their body on a cellular level? Pretty far fetched but doesn't mean it's impossible, ..and doesn't mean it's the way to go either, but it's still a possibility.

If I could tap into my mind so deeply that I could control my body on a cellular level, it wouldn't be to will myself into not being trans... I mean, my trans history is a part of who I am, and is directly responsible for my identification as a woman. Why would I want to change that?

Or rather, why would trans people want to change their gender identification, but not cis people?

I also think there's a difference between altering autonomic function either consciously or because of your mental state (anxiety, for example, can affect your heartbeat, your body temperature, and other bodily functions (http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_types_symptoms_treatment.htm)) and explicitly removing or altering what may be fundamental aspects of your personality, or even defined to some degree by neurological structures in your brain. Does it really seem advisable to attempt psychic brain surgery?

It is possible to resist the dissonance between your subconscious sex and anatomical sex, but it is not necessarily healthy, psychologically. The psychological cost of trying to wage war against yourself in the way you describe strikes me as profoundly unhealthy.

Quote from: Lisa Harney on October 22, 2008, 05:44:26 PM
The difference between being gay and being trans is that being gay doesn't require medical intervention. Being trans <em>does</em>, and lack of access to that medical intervention is probably one of the major reasons for suicide attempts among trans people. The lack of treatment itself creates comorbidities such as depression, and for that reason alone, transition-related treatments need to be recognized as medically necessary and covered by insurance.

And a part of the issue here is that the DSM IV mixes two separate but related conditions. The first of these is the discrepancy between the physical and subconscious sex, sometimes called gender dissonance; this and the social aspects of gender identity are the main diagnostic criteria in ICD-10. In addition to these, the DSM criteria also include the resulting discomfort, or gender dysphoria.

Now, one possible view is that for someone who can deal with their gender dissonance SRS is an elective surgery, and it is only the presence of gender dysphoria that makes surgery an absolutely necessary procedure. Still, this does not mean that we need a psychiatric disorder to justify surgery -- the way I see it, it's rather similar to how some purely physical birth defects are treated: in some mild cases the person can live with the defect, but more serious ones must be corrected with surgery.

  Nfr

Quote from: Seshatneferw on October 23, 2008, 04:09:03 AM
And a part of the issue here is that the DSM IV mixes two separate but related conditions. The first of these is the discrepancy between the physical and subconscious sex, sometimes called gender dissonance; this and the social aspects of gender identity are the main diagnostic criteria in ICD-10. In addition to these, the DSM criteria also include the resulting discomfort, or gender dysphoria.

Now, one possible view is that for someone who can deal with their gender dissonance SRS is an elective surgery, and it is only the presence of gender dysphoria that makes surgery an absolutely necessary procedure. Still, this does not mean that we need a psychiatric disorder to justify surgery -- the way I see it, it's rather similar to how some purely physical birth defects are treated: in some mild cases the person can live with the defect, but more serious ones must be corrected with surgery.

A lot of stuff is listed in the DSM-IV that aren't psychiatric disorders, I think. I'd rather that being transsexual not be included in the DSM at all - but I don't think that's likely to happen after the hack job we're likely to see in the DSM-V.

My main argument is that it needs to be covered by insurance, period. People who seek SRS need it (whether they can live without it or not).

My gender identity is mostly a body identity. See, if I didn't want a male body, I'd just be a militant, somewhat masculine girl. But I identify with the male form, and honestly I can't really stand being in the female form. To feel "socially" male or female, in my opinion, is total bull->-bleeped-<--- an excuse people use to try to make their gender identity look more valid.

Now, that's my OPINION. Is that the truth? Probably not. I can be pretty closed-minded sometimes. I think that masculinity and femininity haven't got a damn thing to do with gender (butch dykes who are identified as women, femme gay men who are identified as men). So when someone says, "I like trucks and beer and sex" that doesn't necessarily make them a man. I know women who like that stuff too. Gender is more than just "feeling" that way.

I don't think I just "feel" male. I've been projecting it for a long time. Gender dysphoria is my brain's/body's way of saying something isn't right. That's more than just a feeling-- it has manifested into a sensation, a symptom. This is what makes transgender people different than a girl who says, "I want to be a boy because penises are cool and I hate my period."

Gender expression is ENTIRELY nurture. I do not believe it is nature. I think it is completely nurture. But nurture doesn't mean someone else told us to do it. We could have come to these conclusions on our own. No one told me to like masculine things. I just did. But I don't feel it was "genetic." I don't think boys genetically like boy things.