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Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Revolution909 — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 19:25:43 GMT

Author: Revolution909

Posted: 06/13/2015 23:25

I think the whole transracial-trangender comparison is a very interesting (and also EXTREMELY flammable) topic to talk out. Discuss with caution guys, to avoid another derailment. 😨 If there is a thread pertaining to race on BEA, perhaps discussion should be moved to there.

I don't think we know enough about the Dolezal story to be fully confident as to her motives and mental state, to be quite frank.

I find her pretending to be black to be rather puzzling. She could have achieved what she has achieved (her NAACP position and academic standing) by being honest. If she said "I'm white but I care deeply for African-American issues, I have been raised with black siblings and my spouse is black and I want to be of assistance, be an advocate and make society as a whole better for everyone", most sane people would fine with that.

The only two motives I see are mental illness, in which case she needs more help and understanding and less criticism, or a yearning for credibility, to feel she can talk more authoritatively about black issues if she portrays herself as black. If this is the case, her actions have backfired spectacularly, her credibility is in tatters. Maybe she was afraid of the "you're a white woman, what do you know?" opinions that would doubtlessly be directed at her.

Little evidence, to my knowledge, would support the idea of a racial dysphoria that is on a par with gender dysphoria. If I may make up an example on the spot, if a child is adopted at a young age from Ukraine and is raised in a Canadian household in Canada and is not told of their heritage, will the child have a deep yearning or affinity for things that are Ukrainian, and to present and adopt customs as such? I don't think so, though I'm will to be corrected on that. Now if you raise a Canadian girl as a Canadian boy, in boy clothes, giving her only boy haircuts and toys and present her to the world as a boy, will she yearn to present as a female. I would imagine that yes, she would.
Could it be that racial/cultural identity is more of an acquired attribute than gender?

Perhaps my Canada-Ukraine example is a poor example because a Ukrainian could "pass" as a Canadian. I don't know, my head hurts.
I'm no expert on race issues though no offence intended, if I have said something inadvertently distasteful (which I would like to know about). This issue shouldn't detract from Baltimore-Ferguson type stories, they're more important.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Revolution909 — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 18:54:38 GMT

Author: Revolution909

Posted: 06/13/2015 22:54

WindowAbove wrote:

Personally I never heard of or thought about the idea of gender identity and being transgender until being on the internet a few years ago. I have always identified as male and did so because that is my sex, and I thought gender was an objective thing that was the same as sex. As for my views on this topic, I fully support transgender rights and I believe that if you identify as a gender opposite of your sex, then you are that gender and have every right to identify as being a gender or not. However, I don't fully understand the concept of identity; as in I don't understand how one could feel male, female, or neither. To me, I don't view male and female qualities as being very separate; I just think that women and men are both people. For those of you whom identify as the gender opposite of your sex, I would be interested in hearing about your history of gender identity and why you identify with your gender. I'm not trying to be insensitive and transphobic at all, I'm just very interested in what makes people transgender or agender and I would like to learn more.

I'm far from the most interesting person regarding this topic, and I probably do not have the "right" answer, if such a thing exists. However, I shall proceed.

I think I am agender because I don't feel that the word "man" describes me on the inside. Phrases like "boy", "young man", "fella", "lad" etc. grate with me slightly when I am referred to with those words. In fact, they probably grate me more than if someone referred to me using corresponding female words, quite frankly. Maybe that just says I like a bit of variety in what I'm referred to as or maybe that signals something more significant and deep-rooted within myself.

I went to an all boys secondary school and I didn't feel like "one of the boys" or whatever. The whole sporty, rough-and-tumble, skirting around feelings/emotions, (mostly jovial) slagging behaviours were all things I experienced and could not relate to at all. To this day, I find it very difficult to strike up conversations with and maintain friendships with guys. Gimme some girls, some tea, a table and some chair and GUURRRRLLL we gonna chat and gossip hun. I don't feel the need to present myself as a strong, athletic, emotionally elusive "man" as many guys I've encountered do.

I don't know does all the above mean I'm agender and different to most people, or whether I'm just like everyone else and everybody feels agender like this. Perhaps I have some internal sexism against males going on that makes me not want to identify with them. I don't know.

I always just think of myself as a person. It's not a huge part of my personality that I share with people, it's just how I feel inside. I don't feel the need to present myself as either male or female, clothes-wise, so I just go for guy clothes. Though last Halloween, I dressed up as a girl. Twas fun. Will do again. 😁

I just don't feel gendered, in a similar way as to how you phrased it above in bold. Perhaps you are agender too?

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:49:28 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/13/2015 19:49

WindowAbove wrote:

Also, what do we think about Rachel Dolezal, the white NAACP member who claimed to be black and identifies as being black? Do you think that being transracial should be treated with the same respect and be held to the same level as being transgender? I think that if she identifies as a race that she was born as then she should have every right to do so.

It's an ahistorical and materially destructive thing to conflate gender and race. This is a key part of intersectionality that gets lost in translation - the intersection of different matrices of oppression is important, but so is their disjunction. To specifically elaborate on this, transgender identification predates Stonewall, Year 0 for the contemporary western LGBTQ movement. Transgender identification is a historical reality and one that has a long, diverse history of acceptance in some cultures and violent subjugation in others. The only way that we know to stand for transgender rights is because of the lived experiences of transgender people that are communicated to us. "Transracial" identification is not a historical reality, and to my knowledge, Ms. Dolezal does not even claim such. Any of this Wrongskin business you see is 4chan parody.

There is another problem that is present in "transracial" identification. Passing for white as a black person was actually a crime (punishment being death IIRC) for many years, and even now, the one-drop rule serves to establish white as "normal" and other races as "variations" and so it is important to note that this identification is only materially safe for white people "identifying down" if you will. This is hugely problematic because it comes off more as an extension of white guilt that is extreme than genuine identification. Compare this to transgender identification, which does not come from identification with the oppression of women and a bleeding heart to free them from patriarchy but rather from a "feeling" of being a different gender identity (again, going off of the expressed experiences of transgender people).

Ms. Dolezal's identification comes across as incredibly opportunistic. She never outrightly claimed black identity, something that would seem necessary and edifying for someone "transitioning" to a different race (via bronzer and a perm), but left it as a perpetual blank space. She made thousands of dollars for paintings of a false African heritage and invented threats against her person to "validate" her presentation. She secured a six-figure NAACP job and the ensuing speaking event invitations and prestige that come with such a position. Most importantly, she went from being a white woman who probably had very good intentions and empathized strongly with black struggle to a white woman taking up space through insinuation and silence when directly asked about her racial identification and pushing out the voices of African-Americans who had actually had these lived experiences. When you talk to transgender people, they don't have complete fictions about others identifying them as the opposite gender early on but rather have stories of their dysphoria in their biological sex. None of these themes come across from Ms. Dolezal.

And I think that's the most important point here -- no one is claiming a transracial identity, and this conversation is becoming incredibly widespread among primarily cisgender white people. It is infuriating, to paraphrase my friends of color on social media who have discussed this issue, to see the real life destruction of black and brown bodies and material oppression of these people get put on the sidelines for a thought experiment. We do not come to new identities through thought experimentation but through hearing the testimony of people who truly "feel" and inhabit new identities.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

WindowAbove — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:25:30 GMT

Author: WindowAbove

Posted: 06/13/2015 19:25

Personally I never heard of or thought about the idea of gender identity and being transgender until being on the internet a few years ago. I have always identified as male and did so because that is my sex, and I thought gender was an objective thing that was the same as sex. As for my views on this topic, I fully support transgender rights and I believe that if you identify as a gender opposite of your sex, then you are that gender and have every right to identify as being a gender or not. However, I don't fully understand the concept of identity; as in I don't understand how one could feel male, female, or neither. To me, I don't view male and female qualities as being very separate; I just think that women and men are both people. For those of you whom identify as the gender opposite of your sex, I would be interested in hearing about your history of gender identity and why you identify with your gender. I'm not trying to be insensitive and transphobic at all, I'm just very interested in what makes people transgender or agender and I would like to learn more.

Also, what do we think about Rachel Dolezal, the white NAACP member who claimed to be black and identifies as being black? Do you think that being transracial should be treated with the same respect and be held to the same level as being transgender? I think that it's a weird situation to compare with gender identity and I think there may be a difference between gender and race in terms of if you can identify as something else.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Skinny — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 18:06:14 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 06/11/2015 22:06

*puts on bongritsu voice* you're all so gay, stop straight-shaming me

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Patman360 — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 18:05:00 GMT

Author: Patman360

Posted: 06/11/2015 22:05

HigherThanTheSun wrote:

This is BEA though :P

Yeah, it really is a site like no other! 🥰

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

HigherThanTheSun — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:46:29 GMT

Author: HigherThanTheSun

Posted: 06/11/2015 20:46

Revolution909 wrote:

This thread has really opened my eyes as to how common gender identity issues are among people. An eye-opener. :)

This is BEA though 😜

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Revolution909 — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:18:26 GMT

Author: Revolution909

Posted: 06/11/2015 20:18

Gowi wrote:

In the past fifteen years, I’ve known five friends online who have come out as transgender or stated their struggle with the psychology of their sex. I’ve been unsure where I’ve stood on the issue on several occasions though I’ve always supported others. Also, as you can tell from the comments here on BEA and the way debate has sprung this should be in the P&R subforum since this is a delicate issue at the front of things and the fact that this is a huge social debate that you could lodge into socio-politics or just extended discussion merits – I’ve always felt AM made the lounge to be less debate-centric and more of a friendly yet casual area. But since no moderator has spoken of this topic’s appropriate nature I will move on as I am not an authority by any means.

I’ve never been particularly diagnosed, but my psychology is a mess that lends itself towards several things of which I’ve “self-diagnosed” myself with including but not limited to: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Seasonal Depression, Neurotic personality issues, and GID.

That last one took some time to be able to say, though I feel especially certain about my own mind there is always room for error – but given thoughts and struggles throughout childhood and my adult life, I do truly believe I have a degree of gender dysphoria.

Which is why a lot of what went down in this thread refrained me from speaking; myself being uncomfortable and not sure. I’ve only told three people about this before and I know them both locally.

…not sure how I feel about that. But what is done is done. Sure there is plenty more to address in the thread, but there you go.

Okay well firstly, I'm saying well done for sharing this. I think it's wonderful that you are able to talk about what you describe as your experience with gender dysphoria. It's hard coming out, as I'm still in the looooong process of doing IRL (in my case as gay (and now asexual but I digress, it's a similar principle). It takes significant courage, so a pat on the back to you. �'� 🕺 �'�

Be sure to drop in and post on the new LGBTQ thread also, I'm sure others would be very interested in your story and I'm positive that the response will be overwhelmingly positive (can't guarantee there won't be the crazies and the close-minded but c'est la vie).

This thread has really opened my eyes as to how common gender identity issues are among people. An eye-opener. 😄

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

mickilennial — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:44:11 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 06/11/2015 17:44

Revolution909 wrote:

I didn't/don't think that gender identity is a political or religious topic. 😄

I would be delighted to here hear some of your thoughts though.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Revolution909 — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 12:40:02 GMT

Author: Revolution909

Posted: 06/10/2015 16:40

Talking about potentially trans children: I wonder how many children repeatedly and consistently say "I want to be " and then, when puberty comes round, they do a 180 and decide "Nope, I was born in the right body after all".

I pose this question because such arguments are used by those opposed to hormone blocking children and I wonder how prevalent it is, compared to the number of "trans children" who are indeed just that, trans and who are not just going through a "phase".

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Tue, 9 Jun 2015 21:02:10 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/10/2015 01:02

I think sp4cetiger is sort of right. Although perhaps not putting enough faith in the younger people.

In the end it's just people can do what they do. 🤔 Most of the countries with the highest standard of life are all about freedom. The topic doesn't need lots of text really. There wouldn't be much to talk about if there was no context of the past.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

HigherThanTheSun — Tue, 9 Jun 2015 16:59:14 GMT

Author: HigherThanTheSun

Posted: 06/09/2015 20:59

sp4cetiger wrote:

HigherThanTheSun wrote:

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).

Yeah, I'd say you'd have to be a very irresponsible parent not to. Hormonal treatment wouldn't start until puberty though but yeah you'd have to be pretty sure at this stage since you're getting close to the point of no return here. Up until puberty you're still right in that there's still a lot of harm you could do to a child by letting them present as opp gender when really they're not, just from potential social exclusion and stuff like that.

I guess that the chances of you facing this situation are pretty slim but there's no harm thinking about it in case!

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Tue, 9 Jun 2015 14:58:15 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/09/2015 18:58

HigherThanTheSun wrote:

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

HigherThanTheSun — Tue, 9 Jun 2015 14:39:01 GMT

Author: HigherThanTheSun

Posted: 06/09/2015 18:39

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 😕

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?

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

SquishypuffDave — Tue, 9 Jun 2015 02:58:05 GMT

Author: SquishypuffDave

Posted: 06/09/2015 06:58

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?

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Mon, 8 Jun 2015 22:05:13 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/09/2015 02:05

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.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Applerill — Mon, 8 Jun 2015 21:50:24 GMT

Author: Applerill

Posted: 06/09/2015 01:50

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.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Tap — Mon, 8 Jun 2015 21:15:44 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 06/09/2015 01:15

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).

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Mon, 8 Jun 2015 20:00:51 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/09/2015 00:00

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.

Re: The Gender Identity and Transgender Thread

Anonymous — Mon, 8 Jun 2015 19:40:27 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 06/08/2015 23:40

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.