Quote from: rmaddy on January 25, 2018, 08:48:37 PMQuote from: SophiaIf we want to be automatically gendered correctly, we have to resemble one prototype much more than the other.
And stick to it.
In 2018, agreed, and yet I am personally uncomfortable with an approach which says "This is the way it works and we must accept it." Well, yes...or else we must change the world.
When it comes to how our brains create and maintain basic-level categories, which happens subconsciously at the neurological level, I think we're dealing with a process that's akin to physics. To suggest that we can "change the world" on this matter is like saying we can reverse gravity.
Not to say that we can't fly. Of course we can. Using aerodynamics, though, not reversing gravity.
Here's the rub, and why this position isn't very popular. This is not an all-inclusive proposition, not in 2018. We don't have the sort of economy where everyone can afford to make such corrections to their bodies, and we don't have the technology in 2018 to make
all the corrections that binary transitioners seek. Not everyone can fly today -- not everyone can buy a ticket, and not everyone can withstand the change in cabin pressure. That's what I consider the real tragedy.
Quote from: rmaddyQuote from: SophiaOur community is populated by a lot of people who are terrified to be misgendered, as opposed to being recognized as transgender, because that is what's at the source of so many suffering from dysphoria.
It would be easier for me to accept this if there were not a discussion ongoing in another forum where a substantial cohort are explicitly saying that they would rather be misgendered than have their transgender identity implied by an honest question. It would be easier for me to accept this if I did not read every day on this site some sort of lament that being transgender is horrible. It would be easier for me to accept this if we didn't have a few post-ops regularly writing that there is no difference between them and cis women.
There's a lot to unpack here.
First, there are gender-based reasons why transitioners early in the process would rather be straight-up misgendered than identified as trans -- namely because being identified as trans out in the cis world is still a form of being misgendered! So which form of misgendering does one take, the predictable "normal" version or the exoticised one with all kinds of unspoken and incorrect assumptions that can even jeopardize one's transition? And for those who plan to practice non-disclosure in the future, limiting the spread of information about transition makes a lot of sense.
Why do transitioners lament their fate? Because dysphoria sucks. Because the material process of making that go away (medical transition) is long, painful, and expensive, and often not completely adequate. Because most of the people who've known you from before transition will likely never see you as your true gender. There are a lot of
costs to this experience and a lot of horror. You'll also see on this site, every day, someone expressing how happy they are at how things are going for them. Because there are also a lot of wonderful experiences that can be had on this path. What we never hear is someone lamenting that they've been properly gendered.
Finally, a lot of us who transitioned long ago have discovered that it's possible to "transsex", to go all the way and grab the brass ring of a woman's life. We've discovered that there's no more dysphoria, and that even our memories of long ago have changed. We've found this to be immensely satisfying. Our
cure. We identify as cis now, and consider the concepts of "cis" and "trans" to be mutable social categories (not "basic-level" categories like "man" and "woman") rather than some kind of fixed "essence." I don't believe in essences, I believe in material reality and my lived experience of it.
People like me return to the Oasis on occasion to pass on what we've learned, to provide other transitioners with another choice for how to get what they want... assuming they want to be gendered correctly on the binary.