Occasionally, people will argue that transgenders/transsexuals are just conforming to society's rules.  That it's a waste of time worrying about such a thing and that they should just get rid of the social boundaries in their minds.  That gender is only in the brain and you can make yourself happy as a regular male/female if you choose to not follow the stereotypes.
And you know, even with that clever argument, I still get upset when people address me as a girl or I see myself naked.  I suppose it's easier for most people to say that when they aren't in the same position?

But what do you say against that?  It's a clever argument, but from what I've heard, gender is set in from the first moment.  Somewhere there is a book about it, and it had the example of a lady who had a pair of twins who tried her hardest to separate them (like have the boy wear dresses and play with dolls, and the girl in jeans and playing with action figures) and yet as they grew up they switched into the boy doing typical boy things and the girl doing typical girl things.  So...this example leads me to believe that the concept of gender is a mix of what we socially learned and our natural knowledge (like how men are stronger physically, that's just a fact).  But that's kinda long-winded and hard to explain, and I might be completely wrong. 


So what would you say if somebody said that to you?  (I hope this is the right section too, I don't consider this argument harassment, I find it fascinating. But I wasn't quite sure where it went otherwise.)

I'm not trying to follow a stereotype, i don't want to be a "real man", highly masculine, vomiting testosterone. I'm just trying to be what i am in fact... Or at least, trying to do not be what i'm not: a girl "XD
Removing my breasts will make me feel better with my body, i don't want to change anything else.
It's like a unhappy fat person who wants to be more skinny. You can say that the fat person want to be skinny because the society says he must be skinny to look better. But saying that won't change a thing. That person will continue to be sad. Being skinny will make that fat person a happy person! So, why not start a diet?  ;3

I have to second Flam on this.

I'm not trying to be what our society views as a "man"--in fact, I'm probably the farthest thing from that view (just ask my friend on here).  I'll be one of the most feminine men you will ever meet, but I am still going to get top surgery because the whole body makes me unhappy and I haven't been able to live up until now.  I want to live, so the breasts are going and T is entering this body. 

I also think people who come up with that argument don't really understand the problems that often seem to come with people who are trans. 

(I had more to say, but my muddled mind lost it. xD)

This isn't the main argument against such thinking, but for one thing - a person can behave however they want. That only influences other people's treatment of him or her to a certain extent. A female can do all the stereotypical 'male things' and behaviors all she wants; she may be 'one of the guys' but is still treated and responded to vastly different than a male. An effeminate male is still not treated like a female. It's a different flavor of treatment, response, 'being' in the world.

It's one thing to be male. It's quite another to experience being male. The experience requires physicality - body, the world outside of you. Until transition, we are stuck in the conceptual world. We know our gender as a concept, but we cannot experience it. This is not something one can experience being a tomboy or effeminate guy.

I used to think that gender was something that should be ignored, that it should be transcended. I considered myself weak for not being able to ignore gender altogether and put my internal conflicts aside. Then I realized that that we (or at least me) were gendered creatures, and denying that would be dismissing an important part of being human. As a transgender person, I'm not conforming to what society thinks I should be, but what I feel that I should be. Asking me to conform to another person's idealistic dogma of gender non-existence wouldn't make me any truer to myself.

On top of that, not every trans-person expresses their gender in a way that conforms to society.

There's a really good article related to this topic, the intellectualization of our situation by outsiders
http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=3175

Interesting article, I'll fully read it when I'm done doing homework.

I have heard that of "Oh, well just don't have a gender!" and that kinda...well...wat?  I don't understand it.  I know some people identify as genderless and, meh, whatever floats their boat.  And I love how the answers so far have been pretty simple.  I guess I over-think things, haha. 

Quote from: NightWing on October 18, 2010, 08:29:23 PM
Occasionally, people will argue that transgenders/transsexuals are just conforming to society's rules.  That it's a waste of time worrying about such a thing and that they should just get rid of the social boundaries in their minds.  That gender is only in the brain and you can make yourself happy as a regular male/female if you choose to not follow the stereotypes.
And you know, even with that clever argument, I still get upset when people address me as a girl or I see myself naked.  I suppose it's easier for most people to say that when they aren't in the same position?

But what do you say against that?  It's a clever argument, but from what I've heard, gender is set in from the first moment.  Somewhere there is a book about it, and it had the example of a lady who had a pair of twins who tried her hardest to separate them (like have the boy wear dresses and play with dolls, and the girl in jeans and playing with action figures) and yet as they grew up they switched into the boy doing typical boy things and the girl doing typical girl things.  So...this example leads me to believe that the concept of gender is a mix of what we socially learned and our natural knowledge (like how men are stronger physically, that's just a fact).  But that's kinda long-winded and hard to explain, and I might be completely wrong. 


So what would you say if somebody said that to you?  (I hope this is the right section too, I don't consider this argument harassment, I find it fascinating. But I wasn't quite sure where it went otherwise.)

I've heard arguments like these.

On a more blunt level, you could tell someone with bone cancer that pain is all relative. It's just a bunch of neurons firing in an automatic manner.

Anyone who claims that the differences between males and females is stereotypes is lying. There is no other word for it.

Seting aside the interpersonal relationships between people, based upon sex, there are enormous differences in physique and emotions.

I could say that boys are competitve and play rough games. Someone could reply that lots of girls are competitve and play rough games. But that response is simply a contradiction. The claim that boys are competitive and play rough games is based upon a norm. A norm of boys in general.

The problem with these sorts of arguments is not that they are clever. They aren't clever. They are confrontational. The only counter is more confrontation. Anyone intersted in discussion, reason, argument and intelect, avoids confrontation. Quite simply because it leads no-where. It's only purpose, it's only outcome, is social repositioning. Squaring off. Dismissal. Conflict and fighting.

I haven't heard of that study, personally. I will be most interested. If the book was published before the mid 80s I am somewhat sad and surprised that i did miss it. However, the outcome, as outlined by you, may have occured. Though the variables in such an experiment are too numerous. Unless all of these were catered for, and to cater for a number would have necessarily meant isolating the children from peers, otherwise the outcome will be effectively meaningless.

There are essential differences in the way mothers relate to newborn babies, depending upon their sex. This was the subject of a number of experiements in the US, in the 70s.

When I worked in obstetrics, I noticed that almost all the mothers behaved exactly as expected, depending upon the sex of their baby.

I would say to such a person that they clearly do not understand my motives at all if they imagine that this has anything to do with gender roles in society. If they think that they haven't even begun to understand the basic alphabet that I am using let alone any of the concepts.

Such a thought is so far off beam that it is literally on another planet entirely and they clearly the need to go back to first base and discard everything they think they know because they have started off in entirely wrong direction to ever understand!

I DO NOT give a flying ferret how someone perceives me in terms of gender roles, clearly I see myself as a woman, but it really isn't that big a deal for me if others want to view me differently.

What was a big deal was having the right bits physically (or as close as medical science would allow) so I was not constantly distressed by alien feelings, and seeing a stranger in mirrors. That is what this was all about. My body. My physical sex. My reproductive organs. End.

Those who talk such claptrap clearly haven't the faintest idea how distressing it feels like to have a body with sexual attributes to which you can not relate. Happily since my SRS several decades ago, neither do I, but prior to it almost my every waking moment was taken with a feeling of alienation against the PHYSICAL aspects of my sex.

This simply isn't about gender role even to the tiniest degree. I don't care about that even one iota. It's honestly so low down my list of priorities that watching slow drying paint dry comes several thousand percent higher on my list of importance!

This was about the physical sex of my body first and foremost and anyone who doesn't understand that simply is not talking about the same condition as me.

IDK.  I knew at an early age that I would fit into the world better as a girl, so I suppose that could be considered a social construct.  I struggled with this for much of my life.  Am I a woman?  Or do I just want to be treated as a woman?

Well, when I finally got my androgens blocked and added estrogen, I felt right for the first time in my life.  It had little to do with how I was treated by others because I was still presenting male.  When I got my privates rearranged it affected me to my core – deep in my soul – not just physically or socially.  If this is all a social construct, why do I feel so 'right' now?

I think that kind of argument is made by people who are happy in their own sex/gender combination and can't understand anyone in a different situation.  I put it down to lack of compassion or empathy.

My answer would be: "No, it's much more complicated than that.  I will be glad to try to explain if you are willing to listen."

- Kate

I suspect that experientially there is little difference between what is genetically hardwired and that which is an ingrained societal construct. One way or another we are social animals and cannot divorce ourselves from society without losing an aspect of our humanity.

Perhaps

Just a thought

Love

Laura

Quote from: Nero on October 18, 2010, 09:59:34 PM
This isn't the main argument against such thinking, but for one thing - a person can behave however they want. That only influences other people's treatment of him or her to a certain extent. A female can do all the stereotypical 'male things' and behaviors all she wants; she may be 'one of the guys' but is still treated and responded to vastly different than a male. An effeminate male is still not treated like a female. It's a different flavor of treatment, response, 'being' in the world.

It's one thing to be male. It's quite another to experience being male. The experience requires physicality - body, the world outside of you. Until transition, we are stuck in the conceptual world. We know our gender as a concept, but we cannot experience it. This is not something one can experience being a tomboy or effeminate guy.

This.

I was raised to be myself, masculine traits and all. My dad did the best he could to make sure that I never felt restricted by being a girl - that every opportunity, every mode of behaviour, every door was open to me and that I knew it. And I did know it (for the most part, save the occasional institutionalized discrimination like the submarines and Special forces bans in the military).

And I took full advantage. As a "woman," I was a baseball player, a science/engineering student, a firefighter, an aircraft mechanic, a military servicemember, and more. I had male friends, wore a lot of men's clothes, had sex freely and without shame.

But none of that took away what was really bothering me - which is that I was seen as female. No amount of macho posturing makes people stop saying "Goodnight, guys...and gal." No amount of women's liberation makes guys stop apologizing for the sexual innunendo/joking they were engaged in when I entered the room (and in fact, feminism and sexual harassment training seem to make that more common). No amount of men's clothing makes my friends' wives more comfortable knowing that I, an ostensibly "straight woman," am hanging out alone with their husbands.

And nothing but T ever stopped the hormones that were poisoning my thoughts and driving me to suicide.

A series of studies in the 70s, I can't quite remember exactly where but I seem to recall it was at a university in Calafornia, were made on how people relate to babies, especially focusing on similar situation with babies of apparently different sexes.

When I worked in Obstetrics, I noticed that mothers, when they cuddled their daughters, while they were lying next to them, often tended to put their elbows over the genital area, but with boys this was less apparent.

One of the results of the 70s study indicated that women, generally, tended to cuddle girl babies closer than boy babies.

This may seem, on the face of it, to be social conditioning. But I suggest the way a mother behaves in this regard is instinctive. The effect on the baby, which is, at that stage, so dependant as to be part of the mother, is, I suggest, equal.

From my own perspective, to suggest that any effect on the baby is conditioning is moving into the realms of social reconstruction along the lines of 1984 or even the sifi Borg.

Mothers, whether we like it or not, are designed to care for their babies and give them the best start in life. In the same way that we are each designed to care for ourselves. Self preservation, for a mother, extends to her baby, because her baby is, effectively, still a part of her.

How a mother manages her baby is, and must be sacrosanct. Interference in this most basic function is unacceptable.

I tried this one on myself a lot; I still try it sometimes. "I can be happy, I just have to stop letting social rules bother me"- but I still feel extraordinarily... I guess dysphoric will let you guys and gals know what I mean... when someone draws attention to the presence of female features on my person.

And to put it bluntly if I were a natal male but still the same person with the same experiences- being trans; I'd be downright sissylike despite all my outdoorsy activities and gym attendance. I have what some call refined tastes and others call ambient homosexuality. 

Quote from: Aegir on October 21, 2010, 02:59:25 AM
I have what some call refined tastes and others call ambient homosexuality. 

  I think I know what you mean.  For years I thought I was a gay man, or at least wished I was.  I could really do that.  But being attracted to women instead of men made it all very confusing.

- Kate

Great thread and great replies, everyone. 

Spacial, especially, is right on the mark, I believe.

Generally speaking, there most certainly are physical and psychological differences between genetic guys and genetic gals.  Of coure, you all know that.  Medical science documents this very well.  There is much that is yet unknown, but that there are differences and that they are significant is well established.

Yes, there are social constructs too.  You all know about those, probably better than I do by far.  I'm basically a loner, so I cannot say much about social constructs.  Don't know that much about them first-hand.

"The Real World" most of us experience the world over is actually the world of, by and for men.  It's WAY out of balance.  It's WAY out of hand.  It's WAY insane.  We sorely need the feminine balance, and the sooner we get it, the better.

All your posts are just great.  I really can't anything to what you've already said.  I ALWAYS had feminine tastes and behaviors as well as preferences.  Gay?  Not really.  Not sure what to make of this, but the "Dominate and Rule" trip always repelled and astonished me.  It's insanity.  Just my opinion. 

Apply the blow torch to their feet, figuratively speaking . 

Are they going to vary their gender expression from that which they have followed all their life? 

If not, why not?  And, if not maybe they should pull their heads in and mind their own business!!