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?
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).