Quote from: Nygeel on February 24, 2012, 04:17:00 PM
You keep telling me that man and male are not the same, equal or related, and I agree. However, you keep bringing up my being a man when I've never really mentioned being a man.

OK one last try..

(Gender) Man/Woman. The reason I say you are a man is that is what gender is.  Your gender is clearly that of a man.

(Sex) Male/Female. You were born female, that is your sex. We can modify our bodies to a certain extent but we are limited on what can be done.

(Transgender) In a cisgender world, sex=gender. We know this isn't true because we exist, transgender people exist. So -we- know: That your sex is doesn't define your gender.

(Sexual orientation) Has nothing to do with any of the above.

Trying to believe you are the same as any male or my trying to believe I am the same as any female is falling into the same cisgender trap we bitch at cisgender people for doing.

Trying to force this cisgender system to work for us does NOT work. The whole male=man female=woman is broken, again we are proof that it is. Trying to fit ourselves into this broken model will never work. I have talked to too many stealth post op women who have said things like "I will always be haunted by my being transgendered." They believed once they got their surgery, it would all disappear. Unless you accept this cisgender model is wrong and that it's OK that you don't fit, you will never be at peace with yourself.

I am NOT saying this is all anyone needs to do to be happy either.  What people choose to do about it to make themselves more comfortable is all fine and dandy. I've had some facial surgery, take hormones and likely will get a boob job and maybe more.  I am living as a woman full time (for a few years now), people accept me as a woman, I have pretty much put this trans stuff behind me and am doing other things with my life now. I am not "haunted by this" anymore. I fully believe to do all sorts of body mods and not accept the cisgender model is broken is a recipe for unhappiness.

I also firmly believe the ONLY way the general public will ever accept us is if we deconstruct the cisgender system rather than buying into it ourselves.

Be proud you are as much of a man as any man alive and don't sweat this stuff about -being as male as any other male- that part really just doesn't matter.

I think you have a point, a good argument Stephe...
Yet you must realise your ARE treading on very, VERY thin ice over here...

my 2 cents...
Michélle

I do not hate it at all.I'm actually fine with it.I'm not sure if I'm ever going to have a bottom surgery.When I start T I'll get a small penis and for now I think that will be enough for me.I dislike my breasts more then vagina.I'll probably have top surgery but at the moment I'm thinking just about starting T.

I had to think about this some more about 'never" being able to be fully male and then it hit me.  For me personally I find that untrue.  I will be completely male one day according to my personal view on the afterlife.  In that life I will be a biological cismale.  In this life....well, lets just say that I'm a different type of male. 

Quote from: Stephe on February 28, 2012, 11:41:14 PM
OK one last try..

(Gender) Man/Woman. The reason I say you are a man is that is what gender is.  Your gender is clearly that of a man.

(Sex) Male/Female. You were born female, that is your sex. We can modify our bodies to a certain extent but we are limited on what can be done.

(Transgender) In a cisgender world, sex=gender. We know this isn't true because we exist, transgender people exist. So -we- know: That your sex is doesn't define your gender.

(Sexual orientation) Has nothing to do with any of the above.

Trying to believe you are the same as any male or my trying to believe I am the same as any female is falling into the same cisgender trap we bitch at cisgender people for doing.

Trying to force this cisgender system to work for us does NOT work. The whole male=man female=woman is broken, again we are proof that it is. Trying to fit ourselves into this broken model will never work. I have talked to too many stealth post op women who have said things like "I will always be haunted by my being transgendered." They believed once they got their surgery, it would all disappear. Unless you accept this cisgender model is wrong and that it's OK that you don't fit, you will never be at peace with yourself.

I am NOT saying this is all anyone needs to do to be happy either.  What people choose to do about it to make themselves more comfortable is all fine and dandy. I've had some facial surgery, take hormones and likely will get a boob job and maybe more.  I am living as a woman full time (for a few years now), people accept me as a woman, I have pretty much put this trans stuff behind me and am doing other things with my life now. I am not "haunted by this" anymore. I fully believe to do all sorts of body mods and not accept the cisgender model is broken is a recipe for unhappiness.

I also firmly believe the ONLY way the general public will ever accept us is if we deconstruct the cisgender system rather than buying into it ourselves.

Be proud you are as much of a man as any man alive and don't sweat this stuff about -being as male as any other male- that part really just doesn't matter.

Please stop telling me what I should and should not be. Please stop telling me how to identify. Please stop telling me what does and does not matter. And also, do not tell me what my gender "clearly" is. I define who I am.

You keep saying that I am saying man=male/woman=female, but I'm not. I'm saying that I am a male.

Quote from: Malachite on February 29, 2012, 04:12:48 AM
I had to think about this some more about 'never" being able to be fully male and then it hit me.  For me personally I find that untrue.  I will be completely male one day according to my personal view on the afterlife.  In that life I will be a biological cismale.  In this life....well, lets just say that I'm a different type of male. 

Ha glad I'm not alone here, I think like this too. I think "okay that's it, in the next life time I'm coming back as a cismale".

Quote from: Nygeel on February 29, 2012, 01:03:14 PM
Please stop telling me what I should and should not be. Please stop telling me how to identify. Please stop telling me what does and does not matter. And also, do not tell me what my gender "clearly" is. I define who I am.

You keep saying that I am saying man=male/woman=female, but I'm not. I'm saying that I am a male.

  Actually I'm just trying to explain the semantics of what gender vs sex are and apologize if you feel I have singled you out. Seriously, go do some gender research yourself. Man is a definition of gender, male is a definition of a sex, when you deconstruct the cisgender model. There is a reason these two words exist rather than just one.

Using these terms interchangeably is buying into the cisgender model we exist in spite of. A transgender person will very likely never be at peace with themselves trying to make the cisgender model work for them by trying to use these terms interchangeably.

I really fail to understand how you would be offended when I say your gender is clearly that of a man. I'm recognizing you for what you are inside without judging you by what type of body configuration you outwardly may have. What body you got handed at birth doesn't define your gender. Whether someone is male or female should only matter to a sex partner. I honestly don't care what sex other people are nor is it any of my business.

Feel free to call yourself whatever terms you choose but I also have a right to see you as a man and ignore whatever your sex may or may not be. Our sex has no part in defining our gender or we wouldn't exist. To insist on gendering someone by their sex (including yourself) is as misguided IMHO as what every bigoted cisgender people who attacks us does. To -unbind- sex from gender gives us the freedom to choose what path we need to take to find happiness. To buy into this cisgender nonsense on the other hand, limits us to one single path that may never be "enough", depending on how strongly you buy into the cisgender model. I've seen too many people who after a dozen surgeries still saying "But if only I could _____"....

Again I'm not saying I don't accept your saying "I am male". I'm saying: I don't care what your sex is, I see you as a man.

Stephe, if I say I identify as a man then I clearly am a man, but I don't think I've said that in this thread.

As I said in my last post, I haven't said man=male, woman=female. I do a lot of social justice work and along with other friends I've helped create a way to think about sex and gender in ways that are not cissexist. Some of the things you've said are cissexist. You have the right to see me as a man but you should also recognize that you might be wrong by seeing me that way.

QuoteAs in my example, there are many things we can't change ever, bone structure, hand size and shape etc.

This is false.  I may not be able to, and you may not be able to, but there are already young trans folk out there who are growing up with skeletal structures that they are not going to hate, thanks to the wisdom of their parents and doctors who have allowed them access to the treatments they require to avoid the unwanted effects of endogenous hormones.  Some such individuals could be reading this thread right now.

Hand (and foot) size and shape are also things that many, though not all, trans guys report a change in once starting testosterone.  Even height can be affected with an early enough start.

QuoteAll are sex markers of a body type that will go with us to our graves.

And there are other non-hormonal, biological sex markers that would be read the way we would prefer, after spending enough time under the influence of exogenous sex hormones.

QuoteI will never be able to get preggers or have a period, you will never be able to get a woman preggers

You may never be able to get pregnant, but there is every chance that I will be able to get a woman pregnant, given the desire to do so and the financial means to achieve it.  The science is nearly there.  Do you mean I will never be able to impregnate anyone using the same method through which I was conceived? probably not, but there are plenty of people born with testicles who will also never be able to get anyone pregnant that way, either.

Further, it happens very rarely, but it is also possible for someone with two X chromosomes to have the SRY gene translocated onto one of them.  These individuals have testicles and are assigned male at birth, but if a simple chromosome test was run, they would be told that they are female, despite the bulk of physical evidence to the contrary.

Biology doesn't care about the binary.  And the idea that "you can't be ZZZ because society doesn't agree with you" doesn't carry a lot of weight with me, either.  For one, society is not monolithic.  Two, I am part of society, and I am a greater authority on who I am than any other member of it.  And three, appealing to popularity is indulging in fallacy.

To the original question, I dislike the degree to which my genitals were feminized prior to birth.  While they are not and never will be all they had the potential to be, they are masculinized.  They are not feminine.  I want what I have to be manipulated into a different configuration, and plan to make surgical adjustments when I can afford it.

most of us are 100% male/female. then there's the rare few who are ambiguous in one respect or another. i accept that i am sexually ambiguous. i know the word is "transgender," which i have no problem calling myself, but technically, we're all like hermaphrodites here, and it doesn't matter that biology or society doesn't consider the brain as a sex organ, because you could use reason and common sense to know that it is, which is why it's something we don't "choose." so, a transgender persons body can't be all that male/female if the brain is something different. i know i don't fit the perfect binary model for male/female, but i accept myself as female, and i identify as female, so what i see is, my mind has more power than my body, so my mind wins in the end. i won't try to say that my penis is female genitalia, but i believe it's all about graduating to the point where you can see it as not male/female, and just the way my body was made as nature intended it to be.

Sure, I would love to have been born with a dick--but my 'parts' have been good to me LOL and I've experienced growth / changes since starting T.

If someone handed me the $$ and lower surgery for FTMs yielded amazing results I'd give it some thought but really, I don't know if I'd do it even then.

For me, it was my chest: INSANE dysphoria. INSANE.

I don't hate anything.*

It may be weird to say that... but it's horrible only when others identify me as a "woman" by my genitalia.
When my ex-girlfriend told me that - "You have a female body, your female genitalia works like a charm when I tickle it, you must be a true woman - also in mind." - was really bad.
Masturbation is okay, I wouldn't have any problems with penetration - if my partner doesn't bother with my female body, and sees me as male or neutral (nothing), everything is OK. (I don't take T so no clue what would happen if... But recently, Buck Angel's message got me. )


*Okay, it feels so strange to see my chest - but I flat it with my palms in front of the mirror, then have a T-shirt and... here it goes, I can't see them for a while. But that's not called genitalia, eh.

Okay, I replied here once before - can't remember what I said then, but it bears answering again:

When I first started transition, I was all set on getting the meta, getting the hole closed up, everything. I associated that hole with bad memories of previous relationships and how I ignored how screwed up I was. Then I had a hysterectomy. Big cause of bad memories (pregnancy and stillbirth) was gone. After some months on T my female parts became masculinised in appearance - they looked sufficiently like a miniature version of male parts to make me feel a lot more comfortable with them.

After over a year on T, my overall appearance had changed quite dramatically. I learned that it was okay to need a physically male body but remain floating somewhere around the middle of the gender spectrum. I felt miles more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been. I began to experiment with solo play, and discovered the extra orifice down there wasn't so bad after all. I've since become sexually active with someone again, and it felt so different from when I was living as female.

The only thing that bothers me now is the lack of functioning phallus (sexually and being able to pee standing), so I still want a meta. But until that happens there are ways round it; my chest is a far more pressing problem.. literally XP

well I'm MTF and I'm not very dsphoric with my penis. I do plan on having srs asap though.

Quote from: Nygeel on November 12, 2011, 02:46:15 AM
I identify as male, thus my genitalia are male.

Yeap, this.

Quote from: Liam Erik on April 08, 2012, 04:21:04 PM
Must we dredge this up again?

Yessss!

Quote from: Liam Erik on April 08, 2012, 04:21:04 PM
Must we dredge this up again?

This.  We beat it to death the first time.  We are going to have to agree to disagree as far as the semantics go.

Quote from: Andy8715 on April 08, 2012, 05:02:53 PM
This.  We beat it to death the first time.  We are going to have to agree to disagree as far as the semantics go.

True but it's nice to get newer people's opinions on things that may not have gotten the chance to give it when it was originally posted.  A lot of the questions I typed in in google that lead to here came from years ago and I think "if only I were there back then to answer it."

I've avoided this thread for months, even just the thread title pisses me off. But it looks like that's been discussed already.

I once had female genitalia. I've not had bottom surgery but T has made my junk significantly larger/visible and when erect, capable of penetrative sex. I'm not going into more detail than that, but my genitalia is NOT female. I know some of you think that if we haven't had bottom surgery, we still have female genitalia and that believing otherwise means we are delusional. I get where the mtf crowd is coming from on this... for them, it's there or it's not. Yeah, it can change in size and function but HRT does not significantly affect the outward appearance of their genitalia like it does ours. So please don't impose that all or nothing mentality on us here because it's just not that cut and dried. If anything, my genitalia is ambiguous now but to me it feels and appears distinctly male (especially when I'm sexually aroused).

As for the question heh... I've come to enjoy my penis a lot. My dysphoria surrounding masturbation and sex has gone down significantly too which has been great.

I can definitely see your point that after a time on T our genitalia are no longing female in appearance and show more ambiguous appearance even perform more like  a male.  I want to get started on T ASAP so I can have the great results I see and hear about.  I still read all I can on bottom surgery to see what else can be done.