The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread - Lounge

HigherThanTheSun

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: UK

secretdad wrote:

I really doubt the general population is reading 14 year old's tumblrs. And I still think it's disingenuous to use examples that don't actually exist in reality.

Haha yeah was about to say. The vast majority of my friends and family (and me tbh) have no idea what goes on on tumblr and meeting a Dr. Who irl is just not going to happen. I think often people get a distorted view of the world when they see it through certain parts of the internet. You can't really take tumblr as a fair sample of anything and it's influence on anything that goes on irl is basically nil also.
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Defago
Your Most Favorite User

Gender: Male
Age: 31
Location: Lima

Yeah I've never watched Doctor Who, assumed you could just use the shortened Dr. My mistake.

My line of thought goes two ways. Firstly, we all agree tumblr crazies are crazy and irrelevant. Most of their stuff doesn't really affect anything. I agree with that, to an extent. However, that mentality is present outside of it as well. I know a person IRL who changes what she identifies with every time I see her. She probably has a tumblr account, but she's 24 years old, and I can guarantee she's negatively affected the perception of LGBTQ for the less informed heterosexual people who are mutual friends. She's been used as an example, by one of my acquaintances, of why we shouldn't vote for gay marriage. So that's a very real, very close example for me. And that's in Peru, which is a third world ultra conservative country. More relevant than this, though, is the anti-cis trend that PR mentioned. I've been badmouthed for being cis. Once again, in a country in which internet access is a privilege. This is definitely, DEFINITELY, not a statement against trans people. I'm all for each person being and letting be, but we must also recognize the bad weeds in an otherwise healthy movement.

On the other hand, what I was going for in my original post was where do we trace the crazy line? This is mostly mental masturbation, so no need to get outraged or anything. If some girl on tumblr were to go ahead and say she's actually a galaxy trapped in the body of a girl, then I'd immediately say "that's insane". If someone would tell me she's actually a guy and to please refer to him as a male, I'd say "that's perfectly understandable". However, both are cases of someone not identifying in a personal level with the body they have. Why is one OK and the other one not OK? Yeah, I'm not going to go around telling people what to identify with, and you can be a tulip for all I care, but what I want to understand is why and where is the difference between both extremes. If someone identifies as asexual, that's reasonable. Aromantic, pansexual, that's OK. Someone who changes genders multiple times in the day is harder to understand. Someone who identifies as a non-existing gender is even harder. If you identify as Zeus and only feel attracted to other god-kin, then I'm going to call bullshit (in my mind, of course, I'm not going to tell people what they should an shouldn't be attracted to.) Where, and why, is the "reasonable" line?

Once again, do not take this as an attack. This is half mental masturbation, half devil's advocate, with a pinch of being pissed at being badmouthed for being cis.

CubaZed

Defago wrote:

with a pinch of being pissed at being badmouthed for being cis.

I'm sure you misheard. Pretty positive they called you a sith. Much more accurate.

sp4cetiger

Defago wrote:

On the other hand, what I was going for in my original post was where do we trace the crazy line?

While "crazy" might be a bit strong, I definitely have a line when it comes to transgender children. It's been popular in the news lately to report cases of very young children (sometimes pre-K) being dressed up and treated in every way as the opposite of their biological sex. My wife and I support the LGBTQ movement, but we've talked about how we would react if our son told us he wanted to be a girl, and right now (he's three) we definitely wouldn't be willing to treat him that way. There will come a time when we'll be okay with him expressing his gender however he chooses to, but I just don't believe that he has a clear enough idea of gender roles and gender identity to understand what the implications of that kind of decision would be.

Not that we hold him to much in the way of gender stereotypes to begin with. He loves trains and trucks, but he also loves playing with kitchen sets, and we're fine with both. I'm pretty sure that he's said that he's a girl on one or two occasions. But then he's also said that he's a cat, a monkey, and just yesterday he said his penis was trying to eat him.

So yeah, I definitely have a line there.

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Gender: Female
Age: 38

Defago, if you or anyone believes that a single annoying person justifies preventing equal rights to a class of people (the one real world example you used), I'd say that's not a very considerate move. How are you being kept up to date on this person's life? If they're telling you this in a coversational format, are you telling this person "hey, we're not even friends, why are you telling me this, I have no investment in any of it". Are you hearing it through gossip? I don't know, there's details here that are missing. But I think the solution would be to either talk to the person, or stop talking about the person depending on the situation.

Draw the line wherever you want as far as I'm concerned. Just so long as that isn't used as a weapon to beat on people. Lots of people are ridiculous, who cares.

And then as far as very young transgender children go, I have no idea what would be right. From personal experience it wasn't even a thing I had really thought about until puberty. I don't know the circumstances of these children though. I know from what experience I have with younger siblings and cousins, you can't just give in to their every whim. But if a child was for a sustained period of time super committed and insisting that they were the other gender, I would say accommodate them but more importantly, talk to them and be like "hey, what's up." But I don't have any expertise so this is a subject I would want to listen to people on more before saying "it must be this."

And as far as the violent rhetoric against cis people, I think that sort of stuff is messed up. But I think music that says that sort of stuff about women, homosexuals and transgender people is messed up too, and that's still a thing. People just say a lot of violent stuff. It probably won't stop until it all stops (and it's not like the sort of language is new or anything, check the scum manifesto).

Applerill
Autistic Princess <3

Gender: Female
Age: 30
Location: Chicago

When cisgendered people are stoned to death, beaten up on school playgrounds, ostracized from churches and forced to commit suicide for their sexual orientation, then maybe I'll consider it. But even if someone claimed it did happen, it would be hard for me not to wonder if he was treated this way just because he was a douchebag.

sp4cetiger

secretdad wrote:

.
And then as far as very young transgender children go, I have no idea what would be right. From personal experience it wasn't even a thing I had really thought about until puberty.

Thanks for sharing that. I was thinking of asking, but didn't want to get too personal. That's more or less what I would expect, but it's useful to hear it from someone with first-hand experience.

Of course, you're also right about keeping open the lines of communication and I personally think there are few clear right and wrong answers when it comes to raising children. Perhaps it's more art than science... it certainly seems that way in the few years of experience I've already had.

SquishypuffDave

Gender: Male
Age: 33

Not sure if this adds much to the discussion, but I still can't wrap my head around what gender is and how it's supposed to relate to a person's sex. If I woke up with a female body one morning, I wouldn't think of myself as a man in a woman's body, just a person with a female body.

This isn't meant as a backhanded insult or anything, I just struggle to identify with people that are into having genders.

Questions because I'm not very informed on the subject:

What is the general motivation for someone having a sex change? Is it personal and unrelated to other people, or is it related to how they want others to treat/view them? Is it an end or a means to an end? Would there be a version of society in which they'd be comfortable not changing their body?

Is there a difference between a male person that wants to have a female body and a male person that identifies with the "female gender"? Do male people that want to have a female body ever identify with the "male gender"?

Are trans men and trans women internalizing gender stereotypes the same way cisgendered people have historically done (i.e. arbitrarily lumping qualities into "masculine" and "feminine" categories) or is there any merit to the idea of "masculine" and "feminine" qualities?

HigherThanTheSun

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: UK

sp4cetiger wrote:

I'm pretty sure that he's said that he's a girl on one or two occasions. But then he's also said that he's a cat, a monkey, and just yesterday he said his penis was trying to eat him.

So yeah, I definitely have a line there.

Yeah but that's not the same as consistently and for a long period of time behaving as if he were the opposite gender and because of that receiving some sort of diagnosis from a psychiatrist/ medical professional. I mean certainly there's potential harm from dressing your boy up in a dress and sending him off to school. But there's also potential harm in forcing your child to present as the wrong gender if they're not happy doing it. I'm confident (at least I hope) that any parent who would allow their child to present as opposite gender would't be doing it just to prove to the world how liberal and accepting they are but because of a sincere belief that it is what is best for their child, and that the decision has been informed by the advice of qualified professionals.

Really there isn't a general prescription you could give to parents in this situation it's so circumstantial. Definitely I believe it is possible that a child is better off being allowed to present as opposite gender at a young age in certain situations though. Again I'd recommend Louis Theroux's Transgender Kids which focuses on families in exactly this situation and the difficult decisions they have to make.

Defago wrote:

On the other hand, what I was going for in my original post was where do we trace the crazy line? This is mostly mental masturbation, so no need to get outraged or anything. If some girl on tumblr were to go ahead and say she's actually a galaxy trapped in the body of a girl, then I'd immediately say "that's insane". If someone would tell me she's actually a guy and to please refer to him as a male, I'd say "that's perfectly understandable". However, both are cases of someone not identifying in a personal level with the body they have. Why is one OK and the other one not OK? Yeah, I'm not going to go around telling people what to identify with, and you can be a tulip for all I care, but what I want to understand is why and where is the difference between both extremes.

I suppose because one of those situations is something which is observed in many thousands (millions?) of people across the world whilst the other isn't. I imagine that if there was only one person in the world who reported the phenomena of being transgender they would be faced with very little understanding too. Also because being 'a guy' is already the existing identity of approx half the people on the planet whereas being a galaxy isn't, which makes it much easier to understand/ much more likely to be how that person actually feels.

So maybe some people adopt more crazy and crazy labels to describe themselves which aren't really accurate. Maybe they do it to make themselves more interesting or whatever I don't know, still haven't encountered anyone like this irl though, in a much more liberal part of the world than yours, so I'm still not convinced that they exist in great numbers outside of tumblr. I can agree that they're idiots though if that helps, even if I do still feel like they're basically an irrelevance.

SquishypuffDave wrote:

Not sure if this adds much to the discussion, but I still can't wrap my head around what gender is and how it's supposed to relate to a person's sex. If I woke up with a female body one morning, I wouldn't think of myself as a man in a woman's body, just a person with a female body.

This isn't meant as a backhanded insult or anything, I just struggle to identify with people that are into having genders.

There is a sort of fundamental conflict between the idea of gender equality, and transgenderism. Like if genders aren't important then why do some people desperately wish to be the one opposite to their sex Confused

Males who act like girls undermine the idea of (our concept of) gender being intrinsically linked to biological sex, but males who want to actually become female because they feel like a girl reinforce it.

Honestly I can't say that I understand how someone who is transgender feels and what it is that motivates them. I suppose I can understand that I might be uncomfortable if I were to wake up in a girl's body, possibly very, but I dont know. I know the lengths some people go to to be able to be the gender they want to be though ie rejection from friends/family, discrimination at work and wherever and just generally being treated like shit, and for some the actual medical procedures. I don't think people put themselves through all that just on a whim and I guess I'd be pretty mad if someone told me after all of it that I'm just being daft and don't I know I'm reinforcing gender stereotypes?
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sp4cetiger

HigherThanTheSun wrote:

Yeah but that's not the same as consistently and for a long period of time behaving as if he were the opposite gender and because of that receiving some sort of diagnosis from a psychiatrist/ medical professional. I mean certainly there's potential harm from dressing your boy up in a dress and sending him off to school. But there's also potential harm in forcing your child to present as the wrong gender if they're not happy doing it.

That's true. I suppose it's a really unlikely scenario, but I have been thinking about how I would respond to that situation. I definitely wouldn't try to forcibly change their behavior, but then I would have to be very, very confident about their desires, both short and long term, before I started going out of my way to dress them as the opposite gender for school or giving them hormones. It's just hard to see ever being that confident about the gender of a pre-K child... and the potential for psychological scarring is just too great (e.g., the famous John/Joan case).