Depending on method of administration, changes occur sooner or later. A common one is "monotherapy" with only estrogen injections in oils which get released over time.
Do you see any possible downsides at the individual or societal level?
I don’t see any downsides to more people doing this.
The idea that there are no downsides doesn't mesh with reality.
People who seek medical help to transition have to go through serious and prolonged psychological analysis and discussion before even being considered for starting hormone replacement therapy.
Which "similar stories" exist for trans men (not "transmen" -- they are men, and trans is a descriptor), as you claim? Please back up your statements with evidence.
I presume GP is saying there aren't downsides for those who seriously desire to do this, rather than checks notes pretending to socially transition for the purposed of getting a book deal.
There are risks and a chance of regret with most major medical or societal changes, but the risks for legitimate trans people who don't transition, are significantly, significantly higher than any claim of regret.
The fact that you liken HRT to "picking your poison" is ignorant and disingenuous.
That's what I said. "Women going incognito".
>Please back up your statements with evidence.
Spend a few days in online circles reading experiences of transmen, then do yourself another solid and spend another few days wading through online circles for men specifically. It's not too hard to see a few transitioners go "well X kinda sucked as a woman but Y definitely sucks now that I am a man".
>The fact that you liken HRT to "picking your poison" is ignorant and disingenuous
What's disingenuous is your extremely uncharitable interpretation, and I would urge you to take a step back and read with a little more favor towards the writer.
Think for a moment by bringing it back to its basis. As a woman with gender dysphoria, you have to pick between undergoing HRT and potentially having disastrous effects on your psyche, or suffering harsher consequences from your dysphoria for living as a woman.
To claim there are 'no downsides' when even the people for who the procedure exists have to pick between the lesser of two evils rather than a straight up boost, is completely off the mark. Vincent's example at least suggests women without dysphoria can't just 'live as a man for a bit' without it having downsides. Transitioners experiencing the same despite a net gain due to their unique circumstances would confirm it, more than deny it.
You fail to see that the laser focus on trans people is exactly why GP's comment doesn't mesh for the average person, as 'people who seriously desire to do this' are not necessarily people who feel uncomfortable or less comfortable with their own gender.
So please, stop making this seem like an attack on trans people. It isn't. It is merely a rebuttal against the idea that men living as women and women living as men, no further qualifiers given, only out of some 'desire to try it', has no downsides.
That aside, the implant was supposed to be removed after his sentence, but wasn't, causing longer-term effects that initially sentenced/intended.
Ignoring that he would likely not feel "better" from being trapped in prison, there is a massive difference between being forced to undergo medical treatments as part of a cruel and unusual (in hindsight, but not in law at the time) punishment, and electing to take HRT as part of a transition pathway in the modern day.
Throwaway account, ignorant bigoted comment, and /s after a shitty clueless remark. Troll harder next time.
Secondly, you don't know whether GP has gametes in storage.
Thirdly, that claimed "downside" both depends very much on the desires of the individual in question, and is discussed at length during the substantial psychological analysis and investigation prior to HRT being prescribed.
Where's your what-about-ism for alcohol causing fertility issues, out of curiosity?
These drugs you are taking are no joking matter and your fortuitous lived experience doesn't make your claim less preposterous
It's a bit sci-fi, but the way you described it is so beautiful, I'd love to better under the complete richness and beauty of the human experience from both sides, even if only temporarily.
I'm sure the world would be a better place if all had the chance to experience both sides and then chose.
Anyway either way you’re right I think it’s a pretty neat experience!
It’s also helping me understand women more.
I disagree. I think you're understanding your own experience more, but then you've trying to fit that to what you see or hear about from women based on a lot of assumptions that probably aren't valid.
Since we have no direct access to the internal mental state of others (and scarcely that of ourselves sometimes!) we can never be sure that we're experiencing what others are. There's a millennia-old thought experiment about imaging how we each experience the color red. How can I know that what you experience when you see an apple or a fire engine is anything like what I experience? If we could stimulate the same neurons in the optic nerve or in the various brain structures, would we each understand the stimulus as "red"? And I think that modern observations of phenomenon like synesthesia suggest that our internal qualia really do differ a lot.
That leads me to believe that it's wrong to think that hormones have changed you to experiencing things "the way a woman would", and more strongly, I'm skeptical that there's any set of qualia that can be placed in a bucket as how a woman experiences the world - I think it's absolutely individual.
(this also, by the way, makes me question how anyone can believe that their internal experience more closely matches "being a man" or "being a woman")
"Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you. It is therefore a quintessential expression of femaleness." -- Andrea Long Chu
"Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is." -- Andrea Long Chu
"There is something about being treated like shit by men that feels like affirmation itself, like a cry of delight from the deepest cavern of my breast ... to be a victim of honest, undisguised sexism possesses an exhilarating vitality." -- Grace Lavery
"While I never really believed the cliché about women being good for one thing, I found that that sentiment kept creeping into my fantasies. I would imagine myself being sold into sex slavery and having strange men take advantage of me. It's called forced feminization, and it's not really about sex. It is about turning the humiliation you feel into pleasure, transforming the loss of male privilege into the best fuck ever." -- Julia Serano
To me they just sound like horny men parading their misogyny.
You certain that this is a good faith comment? Not trying to push a false narrative?
Do you agree with what was said in these quotations, and do you think that these three famous transwomen who said these things are actually women - or just pornsick, sexist men?
In trans circles, these guys are celebrated.
You've selected a short list composed by someone else of inflammatory quotations to use in a casual display of the spotlight fallacy, it's not at all compelling.
Hope you're not a white man, because boy do I have some inflammatory/trolly/silly/whatever remarks said by THOSE guys for ya! :)
The biggest thing that helped me understand women was when I changed my hormone dose and added progesterone two months ago. The subsequent few weeks were a roller coaster for me. I had a short temper, was irritable, and couldn’t control my emotional responses. My therapist said “you sound like a pregnant woman”. (I’m not saying it’s the same, just pointing out that this is something my therapist said.)
I have a partner who is non-binary but AFAB, has had two kids, and is going through perimenopause. They have strong monthly cycles, which have increased in intensity in the last two years due to perimenopause. We met this year so it’s all I’ve known.
Once a month they get really irritable, have a short fuse, and a harder time controlling their emotions. (I’m not putting this on them, they’ve been telling me about it as we have to plan our dates properly during this time.) Their emotional response to their period is more pronounced than anyone I’ve dated, probably because they’re in perimenopause.
I never fully understood the extent to which emotional regulation became difficult until I suddenly added progesterone to my body. Then I experienced a similar moodiness due to a change in hormones.
What I came to understand was how strong these changes can be in women. I now realize that for some women their period can be really intense, and they really can have a genuinely hard time with certain things. Exactly like I would if I was going through that.
So one thing I understand better is how hormonal fluctuations can change your body and your mind. When I first met my partner I didn’t understand the extent to which things would get difficult for them during their cycle. Then I started taking progesterone and I experienced strong emotional swings. It “clicked” for me how bad it can get for my partner.
The other thing is that women just make more sense to me, just in conversation. It’s hard to describe but things click more than they used to. You can never fully understand another person, but the point of conversation is to communicate complex ideas and mental states to others. I find that easier now than it was. Sorry that’s subjective but it’s funny actually it seems like women are more likely to believe someone’s subjective experience without interrogating it and demanding it get resolved to some factual kernel hah.
I have a partner who is non-binary but AFAB, has had two kids, and is going through perimenopause. They have strong monthly cycles
At first I thought you were saying that all three of them - mom and kids - have strong cycles. That makes sense, since it's known that women living in close company can synchronize their cycles, but your later discussion makes that sound really weird.
After a few re-reads, I realize that it's a pronoun problem. Your use of the plural pronoun made your comments rather more difficult for me to read.
My wife has lower then normal for women testosterone levels, but she always have been a bit less girly then other females (in behavior, not looks). She felt for example that she had little to no maternal instincts after giving birth to our child.
However testosterone and estrogen (and progesterone) pretty seriously affect the mind. There are very real effects beyond just placebo.
Higher levels of estrogen do generally make emotions feel more intense and lower levels of testosterone generally would make someone less likely to engage in a conflict.
Hormones don't really change your core personality though. I dbout someone would become less interested in something like tech because of a change in hormone levels. However, you might be more likely to pursue emotionally fulfilling careers and hobbies in the future, and I think in arrogate this could be what accounts for some of the sex differences we see in male / female career paths. As you mentioned, estrogen make emotions more intense and it seems likely to me that this might in part explain why women seem to enjoy social careers more - perhaps because they provide more emotional stimulus.
Neonatal levels of hormones probably have a larger role in shaping our core personalities though. One example of this would autism spectrum disorders which tends to make people more interested in "things". There is now some evidence that autism is a product of irregular hormones levels during development.
It seems rather unscientific to make such baseless claims about a very specialised area most people don't have knowledge of, and mentioning anecdotes about your wife is totally irrelevant...
They are not the same.
The other is an assumption that someone's observed characteristics are caused by one particular hormone level, with no evidence to support that.
You could attribute her height and preference for fatty fish to her T levels too, if you strained hard enough.
But this is subject to placebo effect, as the OP said, so you can't directly infer a casual influence on behaviour.
> The other is an assumption that someone's observed characteristics are caused by one particular hormone level, with no evidence to support that.
The OP did not say the lack of maternal instincts was caused by lower than normal testosterone, they simply noted that she had both characteristics.
Do “maternal instincts” exist in the first place, and how do they differ from just parental instincts?
Explaining a failure to bond with your child through gender seems very questionable to me.
In some mammals, fathers have literally no contact with their offspring while mothers care for them for years (eg, bears). In others, the mother and father both remain as part of a pack, but the mother does all of the direct care and the father is doing hunting or protection. In some, the father may have a minimal role in early life but then become more involved later as their offspring learn to hunt or fight.
The social construct of both parents having equal and identical roles in parenting at all stages of child development is very new and very culturally unique to Western, industrialized and affluent societies. Across all primates and all evidence of pre-industrial humans, maternal and paternal roles were very different.
So, it is simply not true “across all” anything. I will forego badly parroting what actual experts say, so instead I recommend Robert Sapolsky’s lectures on this in his biology courses at Stanford. They’re available on YouTube.
I also notice you just vaguely referred to various animals in instead of humans, which is curious.
My position here, to be clear, is that there are gender differences in personality and phenotype, but they are mostly inconsequential for child rearing in a resource-rich society, ie, both genders are equally competent parents. Individual variation outweighs gender differences.
Intentionally so, because humans are animals and that's an imaginary distinction. Modern western society likes to pretend like we're these abstract minds that are attached to bodies. We're not, we're primates, only a tiny bit different than our ape cousins.
If you want to stick to humans, for about 99.9999% of the 315,000 years humans have been around, no mother was pumping breastmilk and sticking it in the refrigerator so that the father could do the 4am feeding.
Your comment is essentially putting a causal arrow backwards. Biology and nature would have us behaving in far more strongly differentiated gender roles. Contemporary western social norms and modern technology allow us to go against that nature. "Maternal instincts" are as real and fundamental as any other survival instinct humans or any other animal experience.
But please don’t let “human is just smart monke” turn into some naturalist fallacy wherein men must be manly because we were made so. We weren’t, but given a stressful environment, we CAN turn out that way.
This sounds like wishful thinking to me. In women, the periodic mood changes happen during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, and coincide with the rise in progesterone that is triggered by ovulation.
Males don't have ovaries, so do not ovulate, and thus cannot experience the menstrual process that causes such periodic symptoms.
I think you're seeing this pattern because you want to, not because it has any underlying periodic hormonal cause.
The "monthly cycle" thing is not usually reported.
Not that I'm saying that isn't truly your experience :)
Certainly I do not doubt that they have recently started enjoying romantic comedies, human interest stories, sewing, cooking and not getting into arguments about racism, but I am skeptical that these are caused by externally-induced hormonal changes, rather than correlating as part of a broader set of intentional gender-transitional changes.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19789167/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17117339/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25505380/
Also the first paper is written in Croatian and the second in Spanish, so it seems odd to link these on an English language forum. The odds of finding someone who understands all three languages well enough to discuss these researchers' work with you is, most likely, extremely low.
You are dismissing articles that contradict your beliefs on the basis of lacking the capacity to read them, not of their content.
No comment on the other 3 references, thus that response does not contribute to the discussion, except for showing that you do not care about reaching some truth. But then again that account is only a few minutes old.
If you would like to make a point about why you believe that enjoying romantic comedies, sewing, cooking, etc. are driven by hormonal changes rather than some other factor, please lay out your case.
Citing a random selection of papers that you haven't read does not help to achieve this. It just gives the impression that your viewpoint is not a seriously considered one.
Changes in activation patterns affect our perceptions, our senses, and literally the medium by which we experience the world. They may not affect our personality instantaneously, but our personality is malleable, and depending on feedback, it changes.
If our brain's activation patterns change s.t. certain things are more enjoyable, then these new patterns integrate in our personality.
If you're correct, then it's quite possible that all the other subjective feelings experienced by the poster are similar ... psychosomatic, maybe?
The placebo effect is a real thing.
So far as I'm aware, there's zero evidence that women's emotions are stronger (what would that even mean?), and certainly not that while the other emotions are stronger, anger is excepted. I'm pretty certain that women experience anger just as strongly as men.
As mentioned down-thread, this could be placebo. But there are also lots of other potential explanations, ranging from the simple passage of time, maturation, and aging, to immense relief at having achieved their transition, and so on.
For my part, I had a sharp change two months ago when my estrogen dosage increased and we added progesterone to my routine. (One effect of these meds was to reduce my testosterone levels.) So that was not an aging or maturation related change because it happened in a month. I found it easier to cry and harder to get angry.
Well, there’s now a conflict of rights between sex-based and gender-based identities.
When you say “It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this,” you’re expressing a kind of euphoria [1] over becoming more feminine, but to many female people being feminine isn’t particularly what they want to be or to them what makes someone a woman - a woman is just an individual who happens to be female.
[1] “the experience of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness”.
I’ve no problem with people who wish to live in what’s called ‘a gender non-conforming way’ but I do have issue with the view that (for example) “To be identified as woman one must conform to one of a subset of appropriate genders”.
Here’s a thought experiment - if typical female people started behaving more like your father, brother, uncle etc now act - if as a social change the ‘gender’ associated with females became masculine - would you still identify as a woman?
Nothing in your post supports, or is even suggestive of, any such “conflict of rights”.
So I apologize but your questions don’t really fit with what I meant. I don’t personally like the idea of rigid gender roles.
The issue which people react so allergic to is the complete lack of tolerance by the transgender community.
If someone points out that a man who really wants to be a women is in principle still a man then they get instantly labelled a bigot. It completely misrepresents the definition of tolerance. Tolerance can only exist in a state of disagreement. If we all agree on something then we have nothing to tolerate. Tolerance is really the act of people accepting that some men want to live their lives like women without actually believing themselves that these men are women. That is tolerance and therefore anyone should be allowed to hold the opinion that trans women are not women but that’s okay because we’re still cool in calling you a female name and complimenting you if you wear a nice dress.
It’s like with religion. It’s perfectly fine to tell a hardcore christian person that you think god doesn’t exist. It doesn’t make you a bigot, just a human being with an opinion. As long as we still let people live their own experiences without fear or discrimination then we don’t all have to believe in the same god. It’s the same about gender ideology. The trans community needs to accept that only because they feel they are something that it doesn’t mean everyone feels that way about them. The vast majority of people have no issue with transgender individuals. They just know that a man with a mental health condition is in principle still a man and we shouldn’t be ostracised to state truths like this.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.
Being transgender alone does not constitute a mental health condition. Dysphoria is the culprit. If people could transition at will The Culture style there would be zero confusion on this point.
The problem is that a lack of genuine acceptance of trans identities (i.e. that trans men are men, and trans women are women) inevitably leads to trans people _not_ being treated the way they want to be treated.
The classic examples of these are bathrooms and athletics. Trans people want to use the bathrooms and compete on athletics teams corresponding to their identity. It sure feels like intolerance when this choice is denied from trans people.
I don’t know your own personal views, but it’s certainly not the case that “the vast majority of people” are aligned with trans people on the above issues.
I know I'm not the first person ever one to bring this up, but it's unclear to me how letting someone with (largely) the physique of a man compete against women is acceptable.
There's a reason why (competitive) sports are usually divided by male/female, and that reason still overall holds for someone who is trans. There's a lot of gray area here depending on if and when they undertook HRT, sure, but labelling this as "intolerance" is not right in my book.
This division is arbitrary. The reason for this is the premise of fair competition that identical people should compete. Yet white males dominate male swimming whereas black males dominate male sprinting. There have been physiological explanations. Knowing that, why don't we split the competitions accordingly? It's easy to see that the whole premise of fair competition is very naïve: where do you stop? What are the criteria for determining if competitors are "identical enough"? Choosing these criteria will be a political choice. Transgender people in sports are disturbing the status quo, but they just made apparent the inherent instability of the thing.
Now i don't know about you, but when i personally do sports, for one i'm not good enough that physiological characteristics make the greatest differences: this problem mostly appears when we reach the limits, by "optimal training". Second, i'm usually playing for entertainment which means that i will mostly play to be part of a good game, show off and see nice skill displays, and share this experience with other people, some of them with different levels of training and physical capabilities.
I just wanted to say that this thread is imho unrelated to the issue of transgender and more to the fact that competitive sports is broken and the political struggle between professional and amateur sport.
what the hell, how is Men's and Women's sports categorization arbitrary? its clearly defined who plays in which category.
No, actually the reason is that it makes both watching and competing more interesting. A competition where women never got anywhere near first place would mean women would simply stop showing up (or vice versa). A boxing championship with no weight classes would mean no lightweight boxers would sign up.
On the other hand, with enough subcategories you can get to the point where some competitors win by default, or where you have championships of one or two matches.
So no, it's not arbitrary to separate competitors by some physical characteristics and not others. There are practical reasons to do so that are unrelated to the whims of organizers.
If we remove the gender division from, say, javelin throwing (random choice; current difference in world records there is currently 30% for reference). Now there won't be any (cis) women competing at the top level any more.
So somebody goes ahead and creates a women's division (or whatever you want to call it). Should we somehow forbid this? Or would it be required that they accept any transgender individual in any state of transition? And either case is just "back to square 1" - no cis women have a chance. I don't see how "let's remove the 'women' category in this competition in the interest of fairness to trans people" is improving things for anyone...
This is an interesting one.
I definitely find being told I have to accept that "trans women are women" off putting and like the Aesop's fable with the wind and the sun, it feels like the wind blowing and makes me want to hold on to that jacket tighter.
The way I see it, trans women are trans women, and trans men are trans men. They occupy a different category in my mind than either.
I'm trying to imagine how I would feel going to either bathroom as a trans person, and the only answer I can come up with is "riddled with anxiety".
It's a dangerous path you appear to be on - asking women, almost exclusively, to share their traditionally safe spaces with people they consider to be men.
Attacking people on these two points will be an attack that is almost exclusively on women, and society doesn't tolerate that.
Men, on the whole, aren't going to get bent out of shape if women come into their bathrooms or want to compete with them on the field. It's women who want the separate bathrooms, and women who want to compete athletically with other women.
Given the prevalence of sexual violence in our society and the difficulty of getting an appropriate response, I find this statement incredibly ironic. (Out of context, I admit, but it's hard to reconcile the two views.)
#MeToo is one source of evidence that society absolutely tolerates attacks on women.
[1] No citations - live your own life, do your own reading, make your own conclusions.
>
> #MeToo is one source of evidence that society absolutely tolerates attacks on women.
Isn't that evidence that society doesn't tolerate these things? Once it was out in the open, society rushed to condemn it. Everywhere. Everyone.
It could only happen when society did not know about it. When it was kept secret.
Society absolutely does not tolerate attacks on women, as the #MeToo movement showed.
Who says so? What has been your personal experience with "the transgender community"? If you're seeing it through the polarized lens of online (specifically big platforms) interaction, then for sure you are seeing it as intolerant. But the same could be said about almost every pov online: most of what we get to see widely is vocal, shallow, unsubstantiated takes. Because that's what get viral.
So for one, there is no such thing as a "transgender community". There are most surely publicized simplified canons of what a transgender person is like, just like there is for "the average white dude", "the academic leftist", "the trump fan" or "the new age craftsy person". The thing is, there are very few person actually like that and the one that are, are usually like that because of tremendous influence of online platforms on their views.
All in all, with all respect, i think you are fighting a strawman. Personally, my course of action in this matter (shallowness, simplifications and argumentative intolerance getting more widespread) is not to fight against it for people you disagree with, because they for sure won't listen to you, but to fight against it for people you actually agree with. This is the thing: in every of these "communities" you describe (transgender, religious, could be anything) there is actually little internal cohesion and there are different political ideals interacting. I prefer to put my own house in order. In fact that's the only thing i can meaningfully impact.
I am a lesbian woman and in a gay dating app I have been receiving dozens of death threats and I was even banned after I got reported by a group of people because I put this sentence in those exact words in my profile:
“I support LGBTQ+ rights and I am a proud member of this wonderfully vibrant community. I welcome all transgender people and count many as my friends. However, without causing anyone upset I would like to state that I am only interested in dating female bodied women and I would kindly ask everyone to respect my sexual preferences.”
I’ve been a lesbian for 39 years and I never felt this hated and attacked by any other group of people. I am not saying that transgender people attack me, but it’s transgender activists (often men who identify as men) who say the most vile and nasty things to me because of my sexual preference which I tried to express in the most respectful way.
I doubt that is the main reason. Society has been pretty clear for a long time that certain people found trans people too strange to accept them. Gay people have been treated the same way. I think most people that don’t like trans people are probably also uncomfortable with gay people even if they are more likely to say it’s okay to be gay.
> If someone points out that a man who really wants to be a women is in principle still a man then they get instantly labelled a bigot.
You can avoid being called a bigot by understanding the following basic concepts.
Sex and gender are two distinct ideas. Gender as described by Judith Butler is a kind of performance that you do. It starts in childhood where we give boys the color blue and toy trucks and we give girls the color pink and dolls. Men wear pants and never wear dresses and women wear dresses and skits and use a purse. A man never wears a purse and if he has anything close it’s called a bag, definitely not a purse.
The above are made up concepts. Clothes and bags and pink and blue are not biological reality, they’re just made up by society. They’re part of a performance of gender. You can change your gender just by changing your performance.
Sex is a biological concept that relates to what secondary sex characteristics your body presents. Hormone levels, genitals, etc. this is still don’t a binary concept as intersex people exist and are something like 1% of the population. It’s also unclear if someone completely changes their hormones and has surgery to change their genitals, what is the point of saying “you’re still a man”? Such a statement is likely to bring up feelings of pain and misery the person has had from people who have been intolerant towards them. It also is unclear if you’re referring to biological sex or gender, and trans people are often terrified that they’re not performing their gender properly.
It’s like going up to a fat person and saying “wow you’re fat” and then walking around saying “fat people are intolerant because they get upset when I call them fat”. Maybe on some level you’re right, but you’re being an asshole if you insist on saying that. And again, if a trans person has severely changed their sex hormones, the concept of “sex never changes” is shaky anyway.
So stop trying to tell trans women they’re really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.
You don't actually believe this is what defines men and women do you? If so, wow. That is incredibly, regressively sexist.
> And again, if a trans person has severely changed their sex hormones, the concept of "sex never changes" is shaky anyway.
A male taking medication to increase his estrogen and reduce his testosterone level, for example, is just a male taking medication. He hasn't converted himself to female. There is no change of sex, this is nonsense.
> So stop trying to tell trans women they're really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.
Of course they're men: transwomen are by definition men who want to be women. The purpose of keeping this in mind is when they try to demand access to female-only spaces, instead of pretending they are women, we can tell them NO.
> A male taking medication to increase his estrogen and reduce his testosterone level, for example, is just a male taking medication. He hasn't converted himself to female. There is no change of sex, this is nonsense.
The complete lack of self-awareness here is comical.
> > So stop trying to tell trans women they're really men. Such a statement completely misses all the subtle realities of such a statement, serves no productive purpose, and is rude as hell.
> Of course they're men: transwomen are by definition men who want to be women. The purpose of keeping this in mind is when they try to demand access to female-only spaces, instead of pretending they are women, we can tell them NO.
I think you'll find it's a little bit more complicated than that.
How? A man doesn't become a woman by wearing dresses and skirts and using a purse, and he doesn't become female by messing around with his hormone levels.
He's still a man, still male, whatever his desires to the contrary. Anything else is simply a fiction that the rest of us are being told to participate in.
Come on! You can do better! I believe in you!
Look, if a man wants to wear dresses or take estrogen or call himself a woman, that's fine, he can do what he likes. But whatever he does, he's not and will never be a woman, because he is male. Women are female, not some idea in a man's head.
Let's not ignore millions of years of evolutionary history just to spare the feelings of a few cross-dressers.
But you're not even trying to argue this or convince anyone of anything. You're just saying "nuh huh. What I believe in true and applies to everyone whether they like it or not".
I'm guessing there's nothing out there that'll change your mind. You've taken a fundamentalist position, which begs the question why are you here?
> You're just saying "nuh huh. What I believe in true and applies to everyone whether they like it or not".
Kind of ironic considering that's what the trans activists are insisting women must submit to, regarding all the men invading their spaces.
Replace "men" and "women" with "black" and "white" and read your stuff again.
Why is that different?
What clothes you wear are part of a performance where the entirety of the performance represents your gender. But not your sex! Changing one thing doesn’t change your gender. But if you change the whole performance, that’s changing your gender. And I don’t really like these concepts of gender, but it’s more of a description of how society views a person. I never got called “ma'am” or “miss” until I started wearing dresses. I’m not really saying that wearing a dress makes you a woman, but I’m saying that wearing a dress and doing the other things makes other people read you as a woman.
Until you’re able to separate the two concepts of sex and gender in your mind you’re going to continue to run in to this issue.
When someone says “trans women are women, not men” they’re talking about gender, not sex. And gender as theorized by Judith Butler is something that we can easily change. Whether we can change sex is a different question and one I’m less qualified to discuss, but it’s irrelevant to the question of changing gender.
Also I'm not convinced that a man being called "ma'am" or "miss" necessarily means that the speaker thinks he's a woman, especially these days. They might be saying it because that's how you're expected to politely address men in dresses these days. Or perhaps, they are being quietly sarcastic about the whole thing.
In summary, I don't accept this Butlerian redefinition of woman, as it's incoherent with reality and relies on guessing what's going on in people's minds. The existing definition of adult human female is fine and there's no need to change it.
This is the same stance that I have on various religions. If this is bigoted, so be it.
All you're saying is, you don't want non-passing people allowed in the wrong restrooms. Which, is... it's just a strange thing to want, really.
Surely you meant people who desire to transition? If I could have that experience in a completely temporary way without messing up my hormones, I might. But I like being a man and don’t want to mess up my health just to experience that. It’s not the same as recommending more people try meditation or volunteering with disabled children. Those things can change your worldview without totally altering your body chemistry.
It’s great that you want to do this and are able to. But I think most people don’t want to.
Personally, I don't think that taking HRT will actually make a man understand women any better, so perhaps my response to GP should have been that.
Edit: fix op/gp monikers
In my experience, the best way to understand how women experience the world is just as you said: spend time with them, talk to them, and - most importantly - listen to them. I think many men could benefit from having more female friends (and I mean truly friends, not secretly trying to get in their pants).
I've learned so much about how differently women experience the world just from befriending many women over the years. It's really opened my eyes to how differently women might experience the same situation. It's amazing how different society treats women and it can be totally invisible to men unless you're willing to look for it. I think it's made me a better husband and father as well.
Edit: sorry, I sorted writing this a while ago while making tea, none of the other responses were there, and now that I've posted it I see a whole bunch of people making similar points. Sorry.
It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act tough, which before seemed silly but now seems annoying. I’ve also found that I have less interest in action movies and recently I’ve been more interested in romantic comedies and stories of people.
At Christmas dinner my dad got really racist and previously I would have gotten very angry and probably tried to set him straight, but instead I just felt sad and upset and I calmly got up from the table and walked away to calm down.
I’ve also started experiencing monthly cycles where for about one week a month I feel more tired and weepy like I could cry very easily. I have WAY more sympathy for women who have difficult periods now, because I never actually understood the extent to which it affects them. I think now it’s unfair that we expect women to show up and work every day and perform the same, because for some women their period can be physically disabling.
I’ve felt like my emotions have gotten stronger except for anger. My other emotions like love and empathy and sadness have gotten stronger, and I also find more variation in them throughout the monthly cycle. Before, my emotions were pretty much the same every day. I mean I had ups and downs, good days and bad days, but it always sort of stayed within a certain range. Now I feel like I’m a certain way for three weeks, and then for the fourth week I have that aforementioned weepyness and stronger feelings.
It’s a real shame that people get so bent out of shape about trans people. I think it’s beautiful that we can do this. It’s helping me understand so much about a world I never quite realized was there. I remember male comedians in the 1990’s complaining about women. It was always a punchline to a cheap joke. But now through hormone therapy individuals can actually cross that line, and experience the other side. I hope that more people do this and share the experience. Everyone needs to hear this story.
Also contrary to what some people would think, I’m no less interested in engineering. I’m still designing and building an open source solar powered farming robot (see my profile) and designing circuit boards and setting up servers for fun. But I’ve also realized that stuff isn’t the only thing I want to do, and I’ve been spending more time sewing and cooking too. I think I’m developing an appreciation for more of the world and becoming a more well rounded person. I wouldn’t say everyone should do this, but it’s definitely the right thing for me. And everyone should have the right to make the same choice if they’d like.