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.
