What are the societal roles of men and women? Given the answer to the above, how can a surgery help change one's societal role?
What role would that be in an egalitarian society? And if it's different in every society, how can you be 'born' as a woman, which is a social construct?
If everyone in society treats you as Gender X when you want to be Gender Y, then you're effectively just Gender X still (again, because gender is a social concept).
Especially in the workplace, and especially when working on the internet. It would be wrong to treat someone differently based on sex/gender. Which is why all the gender pronoun insistence is a bit strange.
The only other time is to do with romantic relationships or sexual interest.
An interesting question is what about women interests men, and is it environmental vs innate?
I think its clear that innately men are interested in roughly the same physical characteristics of women.
But for the societal adjectives/behaviours used to describe "femininity"...are these innate to females? Or do women simply fit the stereotypes that were universally desireable for men innately? Or are these feminine stereotypes (or male's female behavioural preferences) a relic passed down from past societies.
As a hetero male, it's interesting to think about why you are interested in women. Your first girlfriend, why were you interested in her. And before you were even old enough to be interested in sex. For me, if I recall it was extremely innate. The shape of their face, the sound of their voice, that kind of thing. Nothing sexual initially. And not really any distinctively feminine behaviour. You do also have societal things like females dressed in a certain way and had long hair, but these don't appear significant to me.
Therefore, I would argue that for most people there is a very strong inate preference for physical characteristics that match the opposite sex - which makes sense evolutionarily.
Most people are strictly interested in the opposite sex. I think there is also a repulsion against sexual interest from the same sex (which probably explains a lot of bigotry too). I don't think a lot of people have experienced this, and I'm not sure if its cultural either, but I do posit that if it exists, then its a big men discriminated against homosexuals, or even the reason why it was entered into religious texts which may have just reflected the instinctual feelings of ancient societies without an understanding of the harm this would cause.
So back to my original line of thought. If someone is asking me to treat a trans-female as a female, nothing in my behaviour will actually change nor should it. And the only time it should as I said earlier, as in a physical altercation, the physically inferior rules no longer apply.
So it begs the question of what this societal recognition actually is?
For sexual interest, humans are extremely sensitive to even minor physical attributes, so that most of the time they will be able to tell the birth sex.
But in the cases where they cannot tell the difference...is this actually the ultimate recognition that trans people persue?
I think it's this scenario that may cause a lot of bigotry too, because I think people may feel they are tricked into a homosexual desire, and if they have an innate repulsion to such feelings, then you could understand it triggering an emotional response. But a big question is whether this is "innate" or whether its societal which I will admit it very much may be - in the sense that being gay was traditionally viewed as a weakeness and not fitting desired masculine characteristics that determine hierarchy and power in male friend groups, and also self-esteem.
In terms of genatalia though, I think humans are even more particular, and so even if a trans female was able to look like a female at a distance, and feel like a female on closer examination, a sexual relationship with a hetero male is probably still very rare. But then you have to appreciate that two heteros matching is still not a given.
In most societies, the differences include:
- clothing/hair/jewelry
- job expectations (easier for men to be truck drivers, easier for women to be babysitters, etc.)
- division of chores in a household
- pronouns
- certain rights, especially related to marriage and parenthood
I know that you know this because you live in a society and can (most of the time) guess someone's gender by their appearance.
None of these divisions are necessarily good. They're just what society enforces.
>None of these divisions are necessarily good
Why do you say that these divisions are "necessarily" good? Are they not downright bad? Either there is a vast, innate emotional difference between men and women, so much so that it makes sense to classify them as different genders, and on the more rare case where one person does not fit into that gender they change it, or there is not a vast difference between genders, and we should work to elliminate "what society enforces" on that sex, rather than try to keep these two arbritary lines and make cleary misleading claims such as that they are really born as men/women ect.
Rather than suppose dozens of genders with a "man" gender dominated by males and a "woman" gender dominated by females, which is itslef on a broad spectrum, some of which is forced and some of which is not, yes, we should not accept this insane idea of gender. Instead of trying to put children on hormone blockers we should just let them exist naturaly instead of like some sort of farm animal, castrated and souped up on hormones to fit in with what some deragned gender anothropologist says.
I think OC left out sexual preference too. All you have to do is imagine that if you like women now and think its completely normal, then suddenly the entire world thinks this is strange and rare, and not natural.
Cis-females already do tons of plastic surgery to modify their body to fit an idealized image even though they have the actual chromosomes and hormones. So your beef is with the female plastic surgery industry as well.
The tricky part is that if early intervention ends up having been the right choice, then it's good. If there is regret later in life...then its absolutely terrible. But if early intervention was avoided, and it was the wrong choice, then it's not optimal.
Would be good to see some research on this. But I think taking action and it being the wrong choice is far worse than any other negative scenario.
So we should call that sex dysphoria, gender would be a misnomer here (see above). And that may be the case, but it is hard to imagine that it is innate as transgender (another misnomer) proponents claim. And even if it is, it's hard to say that a surgery is the right solution. As you say it is like the leg amputee, clearly that is not the right course of action. Same with plastic surgery and steroids. But even there at least there one can say they now are strong or pretty (still debateable) but what can a male that removes his genitals say? I am female? Clearly not. I am a woman? A "woman" gender taken as the emotional state of a female is already a problematic idea, as I explained above. So we are left with nothing.
All this to say that feeling that you want to remove your genitals should not imply that you want to wear a dress. If it does then we must say that there is some innate difference between men and women beyond sex. Especially if we describe the "woman" social construct to be the result of a domestication process. If this were true, feeling that you are a woman would certainly not imply any domestication, as the person was raised as a man.
The last atempt would be to say that wanting to be a woman is a second order effect of sex dysphoria (in a male) caused by society. But then we have already given up on him being a woman to now wanting to be a woman as a sscond order effect of sex dysphoria. And it is of course counter to the claim that the surgery is gender conforming, as the surgery first order (ie. sex dysphoria) and gender is second order. Rather the gender change is sex conforming in this line of thought.
Now I agree that more research needs to be done on sex dysphoria, but unfortunately I don't think any unapproved conclusion will be allowed to be published or if it is we be labled transphibic and ignored.
Agree.
> As you say it is like the leg amputee, clearly that is not the right course of action
When you talk about the "right course of action", this is subjective. How do you evaluate that? Surely it is personal long-term day-to-day happiness, and with some consideration for the happiness of family members and then society.
I think there are cases where people actually live a happier life from this amputation. It's a really strange thing. Like they are happier even though they now are disabled. I think normal people simply cannot grasp this because they don't have any analogous situations. Perhaps it could be simulated in virtual reality. It's really interesting to read interviews with these guys. https://www.thecut.com/2015/01/what-its-like-to-crave-amputa... They seem like normal people.
Regarding surgery, you could also imagine that one day you grew breasts and large female nipples/areolas. Would you be embarrassed to be at the beach with a top off? Would you want them removed if you could? Absolutely yes for me. And this is very different from manboobs. I just googled that and yeh it looks very weird and its a thing.
> Rather the gender change is sex conforming in this line of thought.
Hmm, interesting to think about. An interesting thought experiment is to imagine having lived a life as a male, and then waking up as a female. What would you do? How would you modify your life? Would you look at surgery?
I think its different with male to female and female to male. I always view the "female gender" as kind of a "male+". In that men are kind of like a default gender and then women have all these extra societal expectations. Like females can easily be males by just doing less female stuff - makeup, clothing, etc. Women dress in men's clothing all the time, but not the other way around.
What's interesting is when you ask the question to trans people: "why don't you just go along with the sex you were assigned", they always talk of a very strong inner feeling that they simply can't. I haven't been able to find someone to present it in a way that is understandable for a cis person...which does make me skeptical of the need to be seen as a societal woman, vs it being related to other issues (general depression and homosexuality).
But I think you are right in that a sex change shouldn't really require a gender change.
Obviously.
But what if this doesn't work?
Personality is an overlapping but poorly fitting term to describe identity.
Transitioning gender is not so much about changing how you perceive your personal identity in a self reflective way so much as a term for publicizing it so that others have a frame of reference for understanding where you’re coming from because it’s uncommon and non obvious and helpful to them if they’re open to accommodating your own identity, imo.
The types are not important, imo. But a simple thing may be that you feel very uncomfortable being seen as a thing of sexual or romantic interest from heterosexual men (or anything) and you want to make it clear that this is not a social role you want to play. Can you stop dudes from feeling that way? No. But perhaps you can create a social norm that such feelings are not brought up much as it’s generally not cool for gay men to openly hit on openly straight men in public.
> The types are not important, imo.
It’s useful to have a high level archetype, but the clusters are always fuzzy and we don’t gain much by carving out new names for things along the periphery.
Identity politics get screwy due to in groups trying to maintain order and rigid rules while some are inflexible. How many times do you try to see a conversation about an idea get lost in a debate about whether the idea falls under a particular ideology rather than the merits of the idea itself? What’s socialism? What’s feminism? What’s a conservative? What’s queer?
We make up buckets and get flustered when people define buckets differently or when some examples cross the boundaries. Then some people begin to believe that the definitions hold objective authority and place great significance on minor differences. Then people who feel they don’t fit exactly a definition declare they must be something new. Then two niche subgroups fight because they share a similar space and want the other to be made illegitimate. Then another body wants to maintain unity across the broader community so they declare all things are legit. Then the community looks stupid and confusing because it’s got so many niche classifications.
Gender identity, Christianity, political ideologies, etc. take your pick. People trying to define things that are not actually discrete is just an invitation for nonsense.
It’s fine to be “like Group X but different with respect to some qualities” and not make that a whole new taxonomical sub group.
It really does sound like people are just taking the concept of personality and tryin to overlay it on something where it doesn't fit, only leading to increased confusion. Ultimately, what is the point? What is the goal?
But believing this to be the case isn’t incompatible with respecting that they feel different from the “normal” archetype or just generally acknowledging their preferred identity as it’s the closest thing they’ve got to describe themselves.
Most people aligned with a given label are pretty reasonable and won’t demand you do anything too out of your way. Yes there are many exceptions but such is the case for every dimension of identity. This one is just a dimension that many people are eager to assert doesn’t exist.; Sometimes asserting that if you can’t cleanly identify as something easily defined that you’re just making up your differences which is of course also incorrect reasoning.
People suck at such types of thinking and most cultures encourage against it to empower in group unity.
You’re not a bigot for doing this. You are being an asshole nonetheless. And you don’t come off as more intelligent, just more clueless; even if you are in fact more intelligent.
Would you also suggest we pretend the voices that a schizophrenic hears are actually there and real? If not, why not? It's real to them..
It's a way of legitimizing the whole thing, so e.g. rather than men saying "I want to be a woman", they can lean on this idea of gender identity and say "I am a woman", where "woman" has been redefined as "anyone with a female gender identity". And per the definition of gender identity, a man can be said to have a "female gender identity" if he wants to be a woman. Naturally, this redefinition has turned out to be quite controversial.
Nobody seems prepared to answer that question, yet it is a requirement to define this. Unless the argument really just boil down to "we make shit up as we go and you need to accept it or you're a bigot".
Someone may simply feel non binary as a high level and honestly descriptor of their gender. Which is to say that they feel the gender implied by their sex is a bad fit.
The existence of some people that take this to extreme labels that seem unlikely to be distinct and noteworthy classifications does not invalidate others who take more moderate steps that are probably genuinely more accurate assessments.
A woman gender identity is someone who feels like a woman. A man’s gender identity is someone who feels like a man. A non binary identity is one that does not feel like either.
This really is not difficult to understand.
>A woman gender identity is someone who feels like a woman. A man’s gender identity is someone who feels like a man.
Wow, thanks for answering the question.
>This really is not difficult to understand
"A tefrad gender idenity is someone who feels like a tefrad, what's difficult to understand?"
"What, you want me to explain what that is in a non-recursive manner, as we would do for any other word? That is… really sad dude. Why do you hate tefrads?"
That aside, I can't think of anything that would retain my "male" gender. I see women wear the same sneakers as men, I see men with long hair, unisex clothes, ect.
That itself aside, by asking this question you are already assuming a man and woman gender. You just became even more tautological with this answer to my question which was "what is the difference between a man and a woman?" Worse, "what I want people to assume I am" is a human being, not some made up class of human that decides my identiy. A person is male or female, we use the word "sex" not as an identiy but a definate observation. "Gender" as it means anything beyond sex is a useless or even harmful term. Especially when it is used by people playing word games to trick children into getting irrevocable surgeries.
You’ve largely just avoided answering the question too. If you were magically transformed into a woman… what, you would just roll with it? You have no particular identification with being a dude? If you had the ability to transform back you wouldn’t do so because you’re a woman now and women aren’t men?
Which is... ?
>If you were magically transformed into a woman [...] You have no particular identification with being a dude?
But with my memories still intact? To answer this question I need to give some background. I believe the "gender" concept of "man" and "women" are drawn from the sex differences between male and female in humans. The most important aspect of which is hormonal differences, but also the physical weakness of the female compared to the male. Then, on top of this, there is a second order cultural effect that will dictate how this difference is expressed. But those societal differences would go away in one generation if the sex differences went away. And the societal differences are varried across cultures. But these societal differences (what one might call gender) are the result of already being a male or female. That is, the societal differences are taught and learned, not deduced. So "gender" is not a choice. For example, if a group of children were to be raised away from society and the people raising them treated the children exactly equally none of the children would have any gender. That is, there will be no additional enforcement of the already natural sex differences, which are already large. In fact, the females would be more feminine than liberal-raised females who are explicitlty nudged against their natural tendencies.
All this is to say that your question is difficult to answer because you are asking what would a female do with male memories? Would the hormonal differences win out over these memories? You're asking a question that can't be answered. As for me myself, I wouldn't be myself, because the neural architecture is different between sexes. (At least to some extent. Compare the rate of autism between males and females, for example). If we assume no neural change and no hormonal change, that is, I get to keep my testosterone, I'd probably become a female athlete of some sort. But the case you gave wasn't clear about how much "male" is left after I become female. At face value it means I only keep memories. If that's the case, there is a chance I would just ignore the aspects of the memories that would tell me to stay male.
I should note that the opposite case - a boy[0] who's parrents where convinved by John Money,[1] the originator of "gender," to raise him as a girl after a botched circumcision, eventualy committed suicide. So I don't think this will be an exactly pleasant situation either way I choose.
>If you had the ability to transform back you wouldn’t do so because you’re a woman now and women aren’t men?
I probably would, because of the memories, but you didn't give that option. Perhaps if the option was given after lets say 5 years then "I" wouldn't but I don't know, because I wouldn't be me. This was a really complex (and rather useless) case to answer "what is the difference between a man and a woman." Even given the difference between a man and a woman this is still a hard question to answer at all and one that is impossible to answer absolutely.
So you recognize it is conceivable for someone in a female body to desire to be a man. Great.
For YOU, you think only your memories would drive this and you can’t fathom people coming to such a conclusion otherwise. You assert that hormones might lead you to accept being a woman.
Well some people have naturally different levels hormones. So by your reasoning it stands that some people may have naturally varying identification with their gender.
I think most of your thinking here is dumb and willfully ignorant of the explanations of people who feel they are not the correct gender despite being in a body of that sex. But sure, glad we can agree that this concept is fathomable.
>You just became even more tautological with this answer to my question which was "what is the difference between a man and a woman?"
>>We have a good approximate idea of male and female gender in our society.
>Which is... ?
Such a simple question yet still no answer. At least now you're done deflecting with hypotheticals and admit by your silence that you simply cannot answer it.
>So you recognize it is conceivable for someone in a female body to desire to be a man. Great
actualy you are conflating sex and gender here (again). I said I would like to go back to being male, not back to being a man. And this like I said is only somewhat certain in the begining; afterwords how could I know? And my claim is that I would go back because my raised gender is stonger than sex hormones (again, only certain in the first moments of the event). My response relies on the fact that _raised gender cannot be easily be changed_. If that is true then it reflects even worse on people who claim that their "true" gender is different from how they were raised. A moticum of serious thought could have told you this, but you are clearly being willfuly ignorant by this point, evading my question for the fourth time using hypotheticals you clearly can't understand yourself.
>For YOU, you think only your memories would drive this and you can’t fathom people coming to such a conclusion otherwise.
Yes, and this is because that is the logical outcome follwing the reasoning that brought me to that conclusion in the first place.
>You assert that hormones might lead you to accept being a woman.
As well as literaly being a woman, yes, and that is only in the case that it already happened, not before those two things happen. And even then like I said I would probably be misserable at best so "accept" means "to endure without protest or reaction"[0] in this case, not "to make a favorable response to" or "to give admittance or approval to" but I can see plainly that your are trying to twist words here.
>Well some people have naturally different levels hormones.
I beleive Estrogen-like endocrine disrupting chemicals, for example as found in plastics[1], have some effect on estogen levels in men. However given the unfathomably high suicide attempted rate of transgenders, I beleive that the solution to this problem is not more estrogen but less of it (for example not using plastics clothes, cups ect). It is also important to note that I beleive that the high rate of transgenderism can only be fully explained by societies applause and celebration of it. EEDCs only alllw people to fall into this trap, more or less.
>So by your reasoning it stands that some people may have naturally varying identification with their gender.
Not exactly. Gender as I am explaining it is something taught and learned (for example, wearing a dress has no biological meaning, and men used to wear dresses). Feminimity, which makes up most of what causes the development of gender in the first case, on the other hand in fact is caused in part by hormones. But that does not mean that it is reasonable for what I have explained to be gender to change. For example, tomboys, who do not display the hormonal effects given by mean sex differences, still identify as girls. And you are overstating the extent to which people's hormones deviate from their expected levels for their sex if you think that incites a gender change. No more proof is needed than the fact that males take estrogen to transition. If their estrogen levels were already high enough that they were already women, they would not need more. And inversely they would not need hormone blockers. Taking your statement at face value, however, that "people may have naturally varying identification with their gender," I have never disagreed. In fact part of my claim that gender, in any form but especially as an "identity" doesn't exist is that gender is useless is in part because of this reason, and note that sex covers 99% of the cases of what we would describe as gender without being an identity. And I don't beleive that a person of a given sex ever naturaly crosses from one gender to another (or perhaps in 0.00001% of cases or similar). And that is because hormone levels are never so out of whack, and the strength factor is still relevant, and raised gender (as I explain it, and for lack of a better word) reinforces sex deifferences.
>I think most of your thinking here is dumb and willfully ignorant of the explanations of people who feel they are not the correct gender despite being in a body of that sex.
They have other mental issues that make them think that (for example autism) coupled with proding fron other transexuals online.
>But sure, glad we can agree that this concept is fathomable.
We don't agree, in part because of what I have already written above, and in part because you barely have anything to say in a concreate way to begin with.
> The term “gender identity” first appeared in the 1960s. It referred to a person’s inner sense of belonging to the category of male or female.
If you made a list of all the traditional characteristics of male vs female, then it's all the combinations of these characteristics.
In reality, it could be unlimited.
When you say "just another word for personality", personality could be broken down into 100s of different traits, then gendered based on culture, then mixed.
One could argue that if a gender is unrelated from traditional gender roles, and the group population is minor, then it starts to become rather useless.
Read about the difference between sex and gender.
Gender is a societal role. There were societies with 3+ distinct genders in the past, even though most have two now.
Transitioning to a new gender (whether binary or in between) is usually as simple as just presenting yourself as that gender, although some people choose to have medical intervention (hormones, surgeries, etc.) to help.