The philosophy of transgenderism
Here’s a piece in Commentary I found quite intriguing, about the supposed philosophy behind transgenderism. Here’s what I see as one of the article’s main theses:
As the Princeton philosopher Robert George has written, today’s trans activists hold “an understanding of the human being – an anthropology – that sharply divides the material or bodily, on the one hand, and the spiritual or mental, on the other.” And more than that, they posit that the mind is superior to the body – a radical but logical extension of Rene Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” For their part, both George and Anderson characterize the trans anthropology as a contemporary version of Gnosticism, the ancient Christian heresy. But it is also a postmodern anthropology, in that it is on a warpath against traditional sexual categories as well as objectively knowable truth. The trapped mind, the activists say, trumps the Book of Genesis and modern biology. Can it?
That’s not only interesting, but I think it’s a good point and mainly true of the transgender movement, at least its many and vocal activists. However, I don’t think it’s the whole story (not that the author says it is), for two main reasons. The first is that I think one must draw a line between transgenderism as a radical movement—one with political and philosophical aims, roots in the left, and that is “on a warpath against traditional sexual categories as well as objectively knowable truth”—and individuals who are on a much more personal road, with personal histories and motivations, people who are not necessarily political or activist and who just want to live a life with less suffering. Such people mostly see transgenderism as a way out of some personal dilemma (although the political winds deeply affect them, whether they know it or not), and for some transgenderism seems to end up fitting the bill and for some it does not.
My second reason is that I am under the impression that at least some transgender activists believe that trangenderism does not represent a strictly mind/body dichotomy, but can be a misfit between one body system (the chromosomes, genitalia, and hormonal output) and another (the feminization or masculinization of the corporeal brain affecting but not constituting the incorporal mind), and that the brain/mind gender identification should win over the genital/hormonal/chromosomal one.
Whether or not this brain-transgendered idea is a true depiction of the way the body works is not at issue in this post. The author of the linked article discusses the research on it, which is certainly not probative or anywhere near it. But the point is not whether it’s true or not—the point is that some transgendered people believe there is an empirical basis for believing that transgenderism (or gender dysphoria) is physically based in the brain, and not just a triumph of noncorporeal mind over corporeal matter.
[NOTE: Former transgender activist Jamie Shupe—who never had the surgery, lived as a woman (with hormonal assistance) for quite some time, and then won a lawsuit to be designated as “non-binary”—has declared himself a man. It’s quite an article describing one man’s long and winding road, and involving both mind and matter.]
Interesting & timely you should post this…
My daughter just sent me this
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-transgenderism-is-problem/
and I just read Mr Shupe’s story over a PJMedia
Things that make you go hmmm…
John Guilfoyle:
That article certainly is interesting and in line with the philosophy I discuss in this post.
However, that author writes, in a discussion of the brain issue:
That certainly seems true of the stance of some, particularly those who are active in the political transgender movement. But as I understand it, however, there are transgender people who say that makng someone “see the world in a masculine (or feminine) way” is not the whole of what a masculinized or feminized brain does. Rather, they believe it is the very definition of what being a man is or what being a woman is.
In the case of people who believe that, the physical reality in the brain is leading the mental (mind) reality, and it is the combination of both that creates not just “seeing the world” in a masculine or feminine way, but an actual masculine or feminine identity.
The Johns Hopkins clinic for sexual reorientation was the first founded in the USA. The psychiatrist who founded it closed it about 10 years ago because he believed that gender dysphoria was not cured by reassignment,. They had had too many suicides and patients coming back asking to be returned to the original gender.
There Are a few which seem to be OK, like Deirdre McCloskey who seems well adjusted.
Sex is genetic and binary. However, gender is a spectrum and synthesis of physiological and mental (e.g. sexual orientation) gendered attributes, which are correlated with genotype, phenotype, and, assuming original causative capacity, choice. The transgender spectrum (a.k.a. “Rainbow”) includes individuals that exhibit significant, even diametric divergence from their sex’s gender. That said, now what? Normalization, tolerance, rejection, or Pro-Choice? Our liberal society seems to prefer the first and third, when politically congruent (“=”) and incongruent, respectively; and the last otherwise.
When the incorporeal mind states itself to be superior to corporeal reality, dysfunction rules. Incorporeal is what we may wish to be true. Corporeal is what is true.
Those who disagree are free to jump out a 10 story window and decisively demonstrate that the intangible mind rules over gravity.
A society that allows fantasy to override reality is a doomed society.
In giving the vote to all, the liberals turned our republic into a democracy. Noted SciFi author R.A. Heinlein explains the process;
“A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.
…once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
Our national debt just reached 22 TRILLION, which is just a way-point on an upward spiral. The CBO predicts that by 2040 our national debt will consume 107% of the annual economy…
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” John Adams, Letter, April 15, 1814
I’m curious to know what the philosophical rationale for transspeciesism might be. Stalking Cat was a former Navy technician who had the deadname (in more senses than one) of Dennis Avner. Stalking Cat had a vision of himself as a tigress (so there’s transgenderism here as well as a desire to live as a Feline American) in the 1980s and had over 14 body modification surgeries, which included (according to Wikipedia):
“Extensive tattooing, including facial tattooing
Facial subdermal implants to change the shape of his brow, forehead, and the bridge of his nose
Flattening his nose, via septum relocation
Silicone injection in his lips, cheeks, chin, and other parts of his face
Bifurcating (splitting) his upper lip
Filing and capping his teeth
Surgically shaping his ears, making his ears pointed and his earlobes elongated
Surgical hairline modification
Piercing his upper lip and transdermal implants on his forehead, to facilitate wearing whiskers
Wearing green contact lenses with slit irises
Wearing a robotic tail”
Stalking Cat eventually moved to Nevada, where he committed suicide in 2012 at the age of 54. Full article ( + photo) here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking_Cat
Somehow I don’t think my cats are going to ask their vet for body modifications to make them look more like humans; they’re well aware that their species is much healthier in mind than Homo sapiens.
There are interesting issues here, centering on a few weird people. (Sometimes the weirdness is temporary, as in “A Leg to Stand On” by Sacks.) But the politics is partly the extreme left co-opting a new group for some additional membership: Jews, women, gays, trans, etc.
Why are the transgenders always far left? Sexual dysphoria was a mental disorder until the DSM caved in to lefty political pressure.
I’m tired of them all. Bottom line? They’re mostly just a bunch of disaffected weirdos who are basking in their moment in the sun.
If America ever does incorporate Sharia Law, and odds are we’re on the way, all the transgenders will be going the way of the bison.
This is just a tiny data point, and potentially meaningless, but I heard a little commentary about the then upcoming SRS surgery for Caitlyn Jenner from a male-to-female who had the surgery maybe 20 years prior. Don’t recall who.
She said the process for her was great in the early days when she was lavished with attention. (There’s a sentence in the article about Shupe that suggests the same for her.) Then the attention eventually fades and the person is left with their everyday routines, and it suddenly wasn’t so great for this person. She recommended that Jenner not get the surgery.
I think the intersection between attention seeking and ego is one the great defining characteristics for everyone. Little or no attention seeking and you’re probably asocial or anti-social. But more than the Goldilocks level and there’s trouble too.
TommyJay:
I know people who are very happy with it many decades later.
The variation is wide.
Titan28 said “They’re mostly just a bunch of disaffected weirdos”.
The word “transitioning” is used to describe the process they intend to go through.
Remember “Manhunter” (or “Red Dragon”) where the bad guy was trying to become something else?
Transitioning.
Mental disorder.
titan28:
Nope. Iran is very big on transgender surgery. Read up.
Ed Bonderenka:
Mental disorders are more common in transgender people than in the general population. But they are by no means universal.
Neo, your knowledge exceeds mine considerably.
n.n.,
You mention normalization. That to me is the big issue here. The me, me,me generation wants to deny all of society’s norms. Yet a society cannot function without them. People who fall on the extreme ends of the bell curve shouldn’t set new norms. The blind are certainly at one end, but they profit enormously from a tolerant, functioning normal society that provides them with things they couldn’t have on their own. Gays are the result of a normal heterosexual relationship. The mentally disabled get their food, housing, and any needed care from the normals.
If people suffering from dysphoria could accept that, probably most people would try to accommodate them. But that is not what they are doing. They want everyone to deny that women bear the children, and men have generally supported the women who bore their children. Our society gives a lot of leeway to people with different interests and beliefs. Why are they trying to tear all this down?
Why are the transgenders always far left?
Dierdre McCloskey is not. For example.
Thank you for writing this article…
I have been an avid, long-time reader of your blog (first time posting…) as I find your views (though I disagree on much of which you write, even that I respect fully) refreshingly honest and clear.
I fall into the second category you list, as I am transgender *and NOT far left, or even left… I consider myself a classical liberal), and I think that distinction is extremely important to make. I am disgusted by trans activists, especially as they give people like myself a bad reputation. This movement is doing a lot more damage than good, for myself and my family and friends alike.
“How can a male be a female from birth, or know he is female from birth, when he has no knowledge at birth of what a female is?”
Most recognize ‘different’ from an earlier age (certainly by puberty) even if they can’t articulate or define it till much later when they have the knowledge/language to do so. What I knew/understood at 8 didn’t have a word until 13 for me. We just understand that our worldview tends to be more consistent with our gender rather than our sex. And even that ‘our gender’ is a poor use of language.
The incongruity between our physical/biological self and what goes on in our heads is profound and clearly not shared by our peers. It is difficult to explain because it encompasses far more than sex, sexuality, behaviors, outlooks. It is a deep sense of self that is ‘wrong/not right/off’…
Sexuality – builds (IMO) over our growing years into puberty. Break that ‘patterns’ of parental relationships and peer relationships and you get sexuality changes. It is a part of the internal issue.
Transsexuals tend to welcome the distinction from transgenders. I won’t say one group is exclusively political progressives…but it has a significant imbalance.
I’ve been around for 30 yrs and spent most of the previous years trying to figure it all out for myself. I feel bad for Shupe but he was never TS and the medical community failed him.
Good post.
Neo, my apologies for the broad brush.
Also to Leah and Tracy.
Ed, thanks.
BTW, John Hopkins and Mayo have Gender Clinics that include GRS.
I have had two experiences with transgenders in my life, each representative of opposite ends of a spectrum. One, many years ago, involved a man who was partway through the process of transitioning to being a woman. He – he was still a he at the time – was a friend of a friend so I didn’t know him well, but in a conversation about the topic, he shared that at the age of 5 or 6 he knew that he was really a female in the wrong body. I didn’t push further, but that struck me as odd: when I was 5 or 6, I didn’t think about gender. I could pull down my pants and see that I was a girl, but I didn’t associate any sort of rightness or wrongness with it. I would no sooner have thought that I was “really” a boy than I would have thought that I was “really” a brunette (which I’m not) or tall (which I’m not) or … whatever. In 1970s big city America, no one told me that my girl parts dictated what I was allowed to do or be or wear, so I did what I liked to do, which included both girly and boyish things, and wore whatever stuff was in my closet, which was mainly shorts and T-shirts. My new transgender acquaintance reported being strongly drawn to ultra-feminine attire and girly things – which I couldn’t relate to at all.
Was that person’s experience as a transgender typical? I have no idea. And of us, whose experience as a 5-year-old was more typical of 5-year-olds? No one I knew made much of a big deal about gender until grade school, with its crushing forces toward conforming and fitting in (particularly, IMHO, levied by girls against other girls). But based on my own experience as a little kid, I believe that it’s not typical in our time and place for children of that age to be greatly fixated on gender, and its rightness or wrongness. It would not surprise me that the presence of such a conviction from an early age would go hand-in-hand with high suicide rates. A mind that is certain that it’s in the wrong body, and fixated on this, from early childhood would seem to be a recipe for unresolvable misery.
Contrast that to my other first-hand transgender experience. I know a teen who is a survivor of extraordinary family dysfunction that occurred starting at a delicate age and extended for years. This person dealt with some garden-variety psychiatric issues until a mental health professional decided that the real cause of the trouble was transgenderism. The only friends this person had were some outcasts who seemingly each announced, within a short period of time, that they were gay, transgender or both. (I am informed that if you like traditional sex that involves a penis and a vagina, but have decided that you are transgender, you are gay.) So now the teen I know personally has declared being a gay transgender and has screaming fits and tantrums when people forget to use the correct pronouns – which happens constantly because this person in no way acts like or resembles the chosen gender.
Is it a coping mechanism for the unbelievably fragile? Or just a way to have power over people? I can understand why the current parade of transgenders of this type, full of self-centered, irrational outrage, is giving people like the one I knew years ago a bad name.
Neo,
What you say about gender reassignment surgery in Iran is true. But do you think it’s because the atavistic mullahs are open-minded? Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran. I suspect gender reassignment surgery is in some respects, and for some people, a way out of a dilemma, for both the rulers, and the ruled.
KyndyllG,
If you had no incongruity, there would be nothing to question. It is like the mechanism for walking, but the time you reach a point where you can read the word “walk” you are well beyond even paying attention to the process of doing so…unless you twist/break an ankle, focusing your attention again on the process.
We become aware “something” is wrong. Only later can we put the ‘something’ into words and even then…it is difficult to clearly articulate. Can you tell me what the color blue looks like? (If I were a blind person…)
“I am disgusted by trans activists, especially as they give people like myself a bad reputation. This movement is doing a lot more damage than good, for myself and my family and friends alike.” – Leah
Sadly, you are very correct, and very brave to say to publicly.
* * *
expat on February 13, 2019 at 6:52 pm at 6:52 pm said:
n.n.,
You mention normalization. That to me is the big issue here. The me, me,me generation wants to deny all of society’s norms. Yet a society cannot function without them. People who fall on the extreme ends of the bell curve shouldn’t set new norms…
If people suffering from dysphoria could accept that, probably most people would try to accommodate them. But that is not what they are doing. …Our society gives a lot of leeway to people with different interests and beliefs. Why are they trying to tear all this down?
* * *
For the activists, this is a feature not a bug.
Or, in other words: The issue is never about the issue; it’s about power.
From Shupe’s story on PJM:
The Trans-Activist frenzy, abetted by people who should know better (as Shupe says), leads directly to this:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/12/udges-caving-to-transgender-activists-parents-rights/
“Transgender activists are lobbying the courts to achieve their goal of removing children from the homes of parents who refuse to affirm their child’s new, self-proclaimed gender identity.”
And this (it was mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee!):
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/12/tangerine-review-trans-drama
“Shot on an iPhone, Sean Baker’s indie comedy about the explosive friendship of two transgender sex workers has an anarchic looseness
(could have used the edit function a couple of times, had it existed…)
There Are a few which seem to be OK, like Deirdre McCloskey who seems well adjusted.
See Steve Sailer on Donald McCloskey. He’s a highly aggressive individual and had a long-running campaign to ruin the career of J. Michael Bailey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhagzSEXzic
Col. Potter nails it on the transgender industry.
A few more articles that I’ve read since Trans-Activism started having such massive effects on the country (and world), despite the statistically minute number of people actually identifying as Trans. (Yes, I know that a fraction of a percent is still a lot of people, but that is still not a number that ought to drive vast social and governmental disruptions of the lives of the much, much, much larger majority.)
“A different survey in 2016, from the Williams Institute, estimated that 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. Studies from several nations, including the U.S., conducted at varying time periods, have produced a statistical range of 1.2 to 6.8 percent of the adult population identifying as LGBT.” – Wikipedia
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/12/11/san-francisco-creates-worlds-first-official-government-supported-transgender-district/#!/back
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/transgender-politics-sympathy-cannot-trump-reality/
http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-transgender-medical-complex.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8BRdwgPChQ&feature=youtu.be
[Lesson from History: Transgender Mania is Sign of Cultural Collapse – Camille Paglia]
Bottom line:
Geoffrey Britain on February 13, 2019 at 5:54 pm at 5:54 pm said:
A society that allows fantasy to override reality is a doomed society.
Thanks, Ed, for the apology. It was unnecessary, but thoughtful.
Aesop, I appreciate that compliment. You might be surprised about how many of my trans-friends (and my family) agree on this subject. For context, I am the only “conservative” (scare quotes intended, as I am politically conservative, albeit socially liberal. If you’d like my reasoning, I’ll extrapolate further…) in my circle. I strongly believe in small government, fiscal conservativism, capitalism and the first amendment. This isn’t terribly popular in my age group, as socialism is all the rage these days… I think those who support it are willfully ignorant of the damage it causes and the short sightedness of giving more power to a corrupt government that doesn’t do anything efficiently. I am 35, for the record.
As far as my trans-friends go, we are all pretty similar in our disgust for the TransIndustry.
To me, this tiny minority has long ago had their 15 minutes in the spotlight. They are confused people who deserve our sympathy, but not our affirmation. They need mental health support, not surgery. Yes, there is a even more tiny minority that actually benefits from ‘transitioning’. They are as rare as proverbial hen’s teeth.
No offense intended to any here.
Parker,
More of us that you think, but yes, far fewer than the progressive assault team likes to suggest.
Leah,
Those of us that have been around a LONG time, and there are more than Parker thinks! generally run to ‘classical liberal’ and are astonished, not in a good way, at the gender trenders, the TG activists, that are destroying far more lives than they are helping.
This is a pretty public forum, but glad it is happening.
neo,
Re: “titan28: Nope. Iran is very big on transgender surgery. Read up.”
I did read it and I noticed several points that raise suspicions that the Iranians are not telling us the whole truth, which if so is of course no surprise.
So, if their sexual organs appear normal, regardless of their feelings, Islam does forbid corrective surgery for individuals whose sense of self is at odds with their biological reality… and given that Khomieni was a fundamentalist and literalist, his reading of the Qur’an and Haddiths wouldn’t change.
What about a biological woman that feels she’s a man? Not one word on that. That’s a rather large ‘oversight’ is it not? And given Islam’s view that men are infinitely superior to women, I strongly suspect that there are far, far less approved ‘transitions’ from a woman to a man. That is, if there are any at all.
I think that what’s really at the heart of this in theocratic Iran is that in Islam; a man that’s ‘really’ a woman… should in Islam’s view, become a woman, since identifying as a woman makes ‘her’ unworthy of being seen and treated as a male. From Islam’s pov, she’s literally living a lie and in transitioning into a ‘woman’ she’s finally acknowledging her unworthiness. Yes, it’s sick but that’s a given.
Finally and separate from Iran’s transgender surgery rates, until DNA and chromosomes can be ‘transitioned’, transgender ‘surgery’ is literally a facade. As changing the ‘wrapping paper’ doesn’t change what’s inside. Leading to the conclusion that they’re sick and the sick always deserve our compassion but not agreement that their condition is perfectly normal.
Geoffrey Britain,
I’ll speak only for myself. I don’t think my ‘condition’ is perfectly normal. It is an extremely rare (1/10 of 1/10 of a percent) outcome of a multi-billion step process in an ever changing environment that didn’t go according to plan.
I understand you consider a facade…it isn’t. I am congruent now. My internal ‘self’ and external ‘self’ match. It isn’t perfect, but no one is. I look forward to the day I can ‘biologically transition via genetic change’ – I’m a big fan of Sci-Fi! But if it doesn’t happen I’m still happy. To the vast outside world, they see and interact with a woman.
“Gender dysphoria” is a mental condition and it’s about time we treat it as such instead of humoring these maniacs. I know a certain slice of them get a sexual frisson by forcing people to treat them like a “girl” and recognize that they are, indeed a girl. I’m done playing along with their sexual fetishes and being part of their little sexual fantasies. I don’t care if Bruce Jenner wants to put on makeup and make a clown of himself in high heels and a skirt. But get out of my face about it and don’t expect me to act like it’s normal or acceptable. Further, transfreakism is destroying women’s sports. In time, there will be no more born women in sports and all real women’s records will have been eclipsed, no actual girl will be able to get a scholarship or play any professional sport (except perhaps figure skating or gymnastics, although fake women might dominate those as well.) As father of 2 daughters and brother of a stand-out Girls’ Softball star (who, against all odds, is not a lesbian) I find it offensive that a boy who came in 14th last year in state wrestling against other boys has so dominated girls’ wrestling many won’t even bother to wrestle him anymore,. and he’s borken many legit records with his charade, backed by the asinine state authorities who are desperate not to offend the trans lobby. Why are the rest of us being held hostage by a tiny percentage of mentally disturbed griefers? I find them no different than body dysphoria types who can’t rest until their foot or their arm is severed from their body. They should be pitied and treated in mental homes, not celebrated and catered to. Enough is enough.
That describes a really interesting logical issue – a kind of immediate inference/implication which is sometimes exemplified by the ‘gender-as-a-social category’ crew.
Grant for the sake of argument, the proposition that gender incongruity is for a biological male, manifest and then revealed as an attraction to, say, “girly things”.
“Ok”, you say, “What is it that this character really wants? Is that sufficient? Or does it include attention from the kind of males who wish to impregnate good looking females? What good can that do him? None. And certainly nothing at all for the normal male.
Is it then a desire for frilly things per se that define a woman? Like what, lace? Is lace fabric intrinsically “female”? Or is it just associated socially with women and with the panoply adopted by females in our traditional cultural and technological system? How is our “misgendered” person going to find gender satisfaction among the Bushmen? By digging roots?
Suppose you told a biological male transgender that he was free to traipse around in the woods by himself in a dress carrying a plastic baby around, as long as he didn’t trespass. How far would that go to satisfy him?
Suppose on the other hand you told a normal boy, he could have a rifle and traipse around the woods as long as he didn’t trespass?
Suppose you told a biologically female transgender that now she could take a rifle into the woods, dress in flannels and traipse around as long as she didn’t trespass. How far would that go in satisfying her “need”?
Because, the answer as to what the “transgendered” person really “wants” is found in these kinds of questions. Is it is inappropriate interpersonal attention or enabling from a member of the same biological sex, or is it an unjustified appropriation of the status of sexual peer by someone of the other sex? OR is it instead the transgender’s desire that others indulge his craving to engage in sexual mimicry and his mistaking of the typical cultural accouterments of a sex for the gender itself?
I have no doubt that the “transgendered” person imagines that it knows what it is considering when it says it thinks it is the sex it is not. But wanting to dress up in boots and a flannel shirt and ride around on a motorcycle, doesn’t make you a male. That’s just what it looks like from the outside.
Ok it’s late and I’m not going to reread this and make corrections or add provisos. But the the distinctions need to be developed.
titan28:
Of course I don’t think it’s because the mullahs are open-minded.
I’m not daft.
It’s the mullahs’ hatred of homosexuality that causes them to prefer transgender surgery. Not that gay people and transgendered people are the same. But the mullahs prefer the latter.
“Philosophy….”?
Hmmm. Hamlet had a few words to say about that….
To quote another philosopher of sorts (though more of an empirical one): “curiouser and curiouser”….:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6702845/Judge-calls-review-fertility-laws-transgender-man-gives-birth-using-sperm-donor.html
(Or maybe we should all just “check [our] parking meters”….)
Alan in Wonderland and Humpty Dumpty indeed.
Tracy Coyle at 11:53 pm,
Thank you for the courteous and thoughtful reply.
That you don’t think your ‘condition’ is perfectly normal speaks well of your objectivity. That you recognize and acknowledge it to be “an extremely rare (1/10 of 1/10 of a percent) outcome of a multi-billion step process in an ever changing environment that didn’t go according to plan”… is an admission that it is in fact an abnormal ‘condition’. And not “what nature and nature’s God” ‘planned’, though biological variation is intrinsic to reality. Which includes dysfunctional variation.
Re: “I understand you consider a facade…it isn’t. I am congruent now. My internal ‘self’ and external ‘self’ match. It isn’t perfect, but no one is. I look forward to the day I can ‘biologically transition via genetic change’”
But it is a facade and in your own words you imply recognition but not acceptance of what you wish to be true. Your ‘congruence’ is between your inner ‘self’ and your external ‘self’s outward appearance i.e. your outer self’s facade.
BTW, all of us wear a facade composed of our bone structure muscle/fat ratio and our skin and eye color and hair color/composition. That ‘facade’ is determined by our DNA which in turn determines our chromosomal makeup.
True congruence consists of our inner self and our DNA, chromosomal makeup and outward appearance being in harmony. Sadly, even tragically, those who suffer from gender dysphoria are composed of a mismatch, one nature never ‘intended’ but nature itself is imperfect.
That you “look forward to the day I can ‘biologically transition via genetic change’” indicates that you recognize that a ‘deeper, complete congruence’ would result from that technological breakthrough. But a ‘deeper congruence’ also indicates that your current congruence is incomplete. Obviously it’s enough to bring you contentment but regardless of your outward appearance, your deeper biological reality remains male. Which makes your outward appearance a ‘facade’.
I know this must be hard to read and I say this not to hurt your feelings but because acknowledging the truth of an issue must supersede our feelings or even greater dysfunction results.
“Gender dysphoria” is a mental condition and it’s about time we treat it as such instead of humoring these maniacs.
I agree it is a mental condition although I consider few, aside from “activists,” as “maniacs.” Sexual deviations are many and some are quite dangerous. I just finished reading an account of Ted Bundy’s life as a serial killer. It is clear that Bundy, and most if not all serial killers are driven by sexual deviations. Bundy would return to the bodies of his victims and have sex with their corpses. He assisted in the hunt for the Green River Killer by suggesting the police stake out the bodies of victims, as he was likely to return to them.
Pedophiles are also driven by deviant sexual urges. Some have requested castration and a few cases suggest it is effective.
Homosexuality is so common that it should no longer be classified as a disease but gender dysphoria is probably a variant of homosexuality and is rare. The fact that there is political support for it is dangerous but we are in an age of peculiar variations of sanity. Cross dressing was not that rare in the past, my parents knew someone who dressed as a woman at home, and there are a number of public figures who did so. It probably is related to gender dysphoria.
My only experience was over 25 years ago when I worked with a woman, kind of big an mean, she married her girlfriend who had a six year old daughter who live with them until she got mad, beat up her bride and kicked them out of her house. She was a bit of a predator, making moves on vulnerable women including a friend of mine who told me that she was just a messed up as any man she had ever dated. That woman later decided to change genders and become a man, that was after I no longer worked there however (his) behavior did not change, predatory taking advantage of vulnerable women. Some years later I was talking to a woman who worked there and (he) had become so successful as man this woman was unaware of the transition until I told her about my experience in the past and then her reply was that information filled in some blanks and made since because (he) was a protected person getting away with behavior that was questionable for a man.
My take on things was that a jerk is a jerk and changing genders might not really change the base person.
“To the vast outside world, they see and interact with a woman.”
I think this is a particularly important comment. This goes along with a significant percent of what I am reading in my attempts to research and better understand the trans teen in my life. What this implies is the importance of interaction with other people as a part of gender identity.
I don’t want to blather on about me, but I think this really underlines the difference between me – a person who is an extremely unfeminine female – and the trans individuals who are kindly taking part in this exchange. I do not relate to you. My belief set about gender is not grounded in anything to do with other people. To expand on an earlier comment addressed back at me, whence the incongruity? The only inviolable reality about gender is whether, assuming physical maturity and normal function, without the intervention of future-tech, you can be a father or mother. The only thing that being a female means to me is that I cannot be a biological father of a human being; since I did not have any beliefs or feelings that I was or wanted to be a father, there was no incongruity. Nothing else* about gender is a universal fact; merely, a relic of a culture of a time and place. (* I mean this rhetorically: I am referencing behaviors, roles, appearance, etc.)
On any given Tuesday, I expend exactly zero effort ensuring that people “see and interact with a woman” because who the F cares? I don’t care what you think; it doesn’t affect how I see myself or feel about myself. One of the most important lessons that life gives is to teach you to give no f#cks what other people think.
That brings me back to the current transgender fad. It annoys me – not because I’m intolerant (that would imply that other people’s personal business matters to me, which it doesn’t) but because what it has brought out is an unhealthy obsession about what other people think and the reviving of stale, old gender stereotypes. People like me have fought for generations to stomp gender stereotypes into the ground, so that we can be treated like people, purely on the merits of our ideas and accomplishments, with no regard to gender. But in order to be gender-nonconforming, there have to be stereotypes to which you don’t conform. Stupid kids don’t even get that.
That said, neither of the people involved in this thread identify as, or seem like, the remarkably immature teens and 20-somethings of the present time, so it tempts me to dig deeper. Do you expect different treatment being a female vs being a male? If not, then why would you care what someone is thinking while interacting with you?
I appreciate the insights from Leah and Tracy; most of the comments here track with the discussion points made in other blogs and news stories. As always, there are multiple viewpoints and serious factors that interweave the complications that arise from conflicting needs.
I myself have a nephew who used to be a niece, and I love both of them, but there’s no question that things in the family have been awkward because of her transition to him.
This set of comments came up yesterday elsewhere, in a different context but related to the consequences of feminist activism (such as in the debate over what will happen in women’s sports), which also give some more insights into the complexities that arise in the current climate of hostility to men.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/02/13/political-animals/#comment-585451
I’d like to add in an appreciative compliment to Tracy Coyle for being willing to discuss this highly personal issue in what is very often an extremely challenging, if not outright hostile, environment. Your courtesy and courage are welcomed.
“I myself have a nephew who used to be a niece” Aesopfan
Is your ‘niece’ now able to give birth? If not, your nephew is a male pretending to themselves that they are now a female. While hoping/expecting/demanding that other people pretend as well.
“The only inviolable reality about gender is whether, assuming physical maturity and normal function, without the intervention of future-tech, you can be a father or mother.” KyndyllG
I keep coming back to biology as the primary metric for deciding gender because it is the only objective “inviolable reality”. Anything in opposition to reality is pretense.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Philip K. Dick
Societies simply cannot afford a pretense that demands that reality be denied. As denial of fundamental, objective realities is unsustainable. It inescapably leads to societal collapse.
Tough to believe transgenders are not mentally ill.
Are we to believe anorexics who believe themselves to be obese when in fact they are near-skeletons? And what is really amazing is that despite looking in the mirror – an objective look at reality – they are convinced they are obese.
Their minds are so twisted, they deny objective reality.
And what about folks who claim to hear voices or see spirits or other-worldly beings? Are we to believe that they are in fact talking to beings that exist in their own private ether? After all, the really do believe and hear voices. Is society to accept that, yea, what they are experiencing is OK?
This entire transgender issue reminds me of the daycare / child sexual assault witch hunts of a few years back. All the “experts” agreed that very young children “can not lie,” and they did not have the ability to conjure up, out of thin air, the insane sex acts to which they were sure they suffered.
Yea right.
Yep, that too turned out to be a giant hoax, with the full approval of the “experts.”
Because of the political forces involved in the LGBT movement, radical politics has caused common sense to be tossed into the rubbish bin and the mental health community has folded like a cheap suit under the pressure of this leftist organization.
One of these days , hopefully, the biological sciences will be able to explain what causes an individual to be homosexual or to believe they are reside within the body of the wrong gender.
While it imperative to treat all folks like you yourself wish to be treated – with courtesy and provided equal opportunity just like everybody else – that does not mean society must stick it’s head in the ground and pretend transgender-ism is normal.
It is not.
I have absolutely no idea why some folks desire to be of the opposite sex, but clearly something is just not working properly within their brains.
A modern SF fictional treatment of low-tech (non-medical) transgenderism is Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment.”
It covers a lot of the bases in the discussions.
Note to GB – your question is a little skewed, as I meant to say that my formerly girl-niece has transitioned to a currently boy-nephew. No surgical mods yet so far as I know, just the hormonal injections. The outward physique is definitely male (beard and no breasts), but the inward one is presumable still female (hence the relevance of the link above on the conundrums of transgender parenthood).
FWIW, she is still female in my opinion, but her/his opinion is being accepted by the family as governing personal interactions.
Only about half of us really believe it.
Tracy,
I am, as you are, astonished, surprised, anguished and frightened that such an intensely personal and intimate process that we are going through is being weaponized in the way it has been. I won’t speak about “transtrenders”, but I know what you mean. It angers me that I have to, as many of my coworkers and friends only have me as their token trans, continue explaining away the garbage that those and trans-activists keep spouting, forcing our tiny minority (and even smaller for some of us, like me as a Jew, and on top of that, a non-democrat voting, Zionist and proud Jew at that! I’m a heavy minority…) to be on the defensive.
Trans is a fashion. Like Vitamin D was the fashion. And high carb diets. And global warming. Etc. etc.
Don’t worry: It’s done with only good intentions.
And speaking of fashion, actual fashion has nowhere to go but trans, having exhausted all other outrageous options. If fashion is about scaring the squares rather than dressing people. Well, almost all … don’t want to give them any ideas!
I’m still trying to understand “how they know”, and although there are many other social questions in play, for my part I’d like to try focus narrowly.
A transgendered person says:
The first question is why this person would wish to change his genetic sex, rather than align his psychological identification with his actual biological sex. How does he establish priority, as per George’s implication.
Next: What is it he expects out of womanhood? Having doors opened for him? Being able to bake cookies without being mocked? Being sexually mounted by a hairy chested he-man?
How much of this is a desire to be treated in a certain way, rather than some mysterious insight into an brain/body mismatch?
A real biological woman usefully observes
In fact it is noteworthy here that although butch type lesbians seem obviously unbalanced, there is also a longstanding social theme wherein a heterosexual woman who spends all her time trying to exaggerate and emphasize her ostensible femininity, is viewed as psychologically disordered as well.
The real woman then succinctly characterizes an apparent logical determinant issue which many of us have alluded to:
Would the transgendered person deny that? Also, what if anything does a psychological orientation toward “transgression” per se (we’ve seen that word often enough in recent decades) have in this phenomenon?
And although a critic mentions motivations that may not be universal, he notes along the same lines:
I don’t think anyone has established what exactly, is being sought by those who claim they suffer a mismatch. It sounds for all the world as if they have a deep wish to be treated in a certain way and to move in a developed social niche which provides certain perceived benefits, rather than a desire to actually and physically be what they can neither truly understand nor appreciate from their present perspective.
Getting a bit intense….
…and I’m having another “There but for the grace of God go I” moment.
(Seems to be happening more and more these days….)
I do like that bit about “…imperative to treat all folks like you yourself wish to be treated – with courtesy and provided equal opportunity just like everybody else…”
Very much so, in fact.
But no, it’s not so easy. Especially not wrapping one’s head around some of this stuff. (Which not infrequently prompts my “other” self—or one of them—to ask me/him/us why I(?) have to, in fact, “wrap my head around it” in the first place….)
And so, I’ll wish you all the best of all possible luck!…with the hope that we can all deal with this sanely (as much as possible)…along with a Happy Valentine’s Day (for those who care)…and leave you, hopefully, to unwind with one of all my all-time favorites….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LemG0cvc4oU
John Tyler:
Actually, I don’t think it’s so very tough not to think of all transgendered people as mentally ill. It’s pretty simple, if you know a couple of them who clearly are not mentally ill.
Early on, I met some quite well-adjusted people who are transgendered. So I am especially sensitive to people who assert that by definition such people are mentally ill.
Some are, some aren’t. The incidence of emotional problems is higher in transgender people. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. But plenty of transgender people are unremarkable emotionally except for the transgenderism.
Geoffrey Britain:
Personally, I don’t think that transgendered people are the same as people who keep the gender they’re born with. On the cellular level, there is a difference.
However, your definition of a female as a person who can give birth is incorrect. Quite a few females (born as females) can’t. Not only is infertility not all that uncommon, but some females are born without a uterus, for example.
Oh Ok. What is that cellular difference, and how does function?
Of course if “essentialism” is wrong as many progressives assert it to be, then there is nothing really to be “corrected”. Just “adapted” as they said in psychology class.
On the other hand if there is something to really be corrected, that presumes a standard … unless “get-by” and “pass-for” is your adaptive standard of success.
And likewise if no essential nature, then no absolute shared identity grounds mandating tolerance or accommodation either. This leads to all sorts of fun implications.
[Still doesn’t get to the specific difference desired by transgenders as the sine qua non of their fulfillment; but that is a matter that can be resolved in parallel]
DNW:
I’ve written longer posts on what I think might be going on with transgendered people. See this, this, this, and in particular please see this on the subject of XX vs. XY and gender.
Neo and others, I am not “mentally ill”, though I understand the idea behind thinking as such. Because my life choices challenge others’ understanding of fundamental aspects of life, I think many are afraid to question that view…
In essence, men and women are not opposites, gender and sex are not the same thing and variance of expression, birth circumstances and internal thought processes should make you question all sorts of assumptions you and everyone else (including me!) make every day.
I read your posts and am not sure I saw the information I was looking for.
However, if I had read the Commentary article which you linked to first, I could have saved myself the trouble of trying to cut through the fog and formulate, or repeat other’s formulations of, the critical questions.
The Commentary article does it all.
Geoffrey,
You’re welcome.
Many people have ‘abnormal conditions’ and function quite well in society without much ado about it except to them personally. I am not normal. On several different fronts. So suggesting I am abnormal has no negative impact on me. My brother had muscular dystrophy and a learning disorder – I am sure that was either God’s plan if you believe He makes no mistakes, or it wasn’t because of sin. Either way I am unwilling to attribute to God one way or the other those things I can’t explain fully.
As you point out, we all wear facades. The question is do we internally understand it or do we believe what we present is real? Is your façade a facsimile or an actual true representation of your full self? If it is, then is it really a façade? My ‘presentation’/façade represents a true full self – what you see is what you get. Our DNA is just a brick in the foundation, it is not the entirety of it.
I don’t externalize my DNA in a conscious way: I don’t notice my blue eyes or (formally) brown hair, strong bones, 5’9” height so those things are not fundamental to my feelings of congruency – and obviously they haven’t changed due to hormones, surgery or transition.
If my genetic change occurred the sole beneficiary would be me and the (I believe) full awareness of it would be internal. My current congruency can never be complete (absent the genetic change BUT ALSO) because I spent 29 years of my life living as a male. I didn’t get to grow up as a girl and experience the world In that way. My outward appearance is only part of the change – the hormonal changes within me have had an impact also – though less so than it does to others. My mother told me about 4-5 years post-surgery that I was more ‘male now’ than I had ever been before. It stunned me, till I realized I was more the real me, not the pretend male that I tried to effect.
Not hard to read. After 50 years of dealing with all the various internal and external issues, nothing said is new or surprising. I spent years trying to deny, understand, cope, accept all the various aspects of my ‘condition’ and despite overwhelming odds, I believe (as did my therapist), I have come out the other side WHOLE.
Thanks again.
KyndyIIG,
I think you are conflating to very different points.
My congruency is fully an internal process. I did this for me. The outside world accepts or doesn’t based on what it sees, not on what I care about.
I spent 20 years wearing pants, gym shoes and t-shirt tops with no makeup. YOU don’t worry about what you look like or care about appearance because you never gave it a thought.
I had spinal surgery 5 yrs ago and as a result of the damage I feel every step I take: when my heel hits I feel it up my spine, when my toes hit it feels like a wave going up my front. EVERY STEP…every day. From the first to the last. It gets annoying over the course of the day (fortunately no pain). I had to relearn how to walk. YOU don’t notice your walking. It happens. Same with your hands (till you sprain a finger or thumb, or ankle). You don’t think of your ‘appearance’ because it has always been congruent with your internal. And we both don’t give a f*k what other people think.
My outward is a function of WHO I am, not what I am. I have worked with the trades and the tech community (I was a geek before the word was invented) and have had to prove my bonafides to those groups….so I understand your desire to crush old stereotypes.
To your last questions:
Society treats men and women differently and without my effort to demand (another current sore spot) some particular ‘gender’ treatment, I notice the difference. That is one thing that almost every glosses over – I grew up in those guy lockerrooms. Then I was perfectly at home in women’s lockerrooms post transition. I was on a sports team in school. I was one of the girls in college (I went back after 10 yrs). I’ve seen BOTH sides of the gender world. I can honestly say I was not discriminated against in the last 30 years over my ‘sex’. Men hit on me at the club. I flirt with the best. Do I expect it? No. Does it occur? Absolutely.
I don’t CARE what other’s think about me. But I can surmise it based on how I am treated and can analyze why they are doing what they are doing. It was, is, unnecessary. I am generally treated the same way as other women around me. It wasn’t a requirement of my transition but a consequence of it.
Final point to all: surgery for me was ‘anti-climatic’. I spent 5 yrs in transition, was stable with job, school, friends, family. I dated but not seriously. I had a large circle of friends. Surgery had no impact on my day-to-day life. That is how the process SHOULD work…it tends to be less common than hoped.
Stephen J.
Thank you.
Leah,
We have to educated the medical profession. We have to educate our friends/family. We have to fight against the ‘men in drag’ stereotypes. The HATE that flows from some people (on the Right and from nominal Christians) is astounding. Yet. As shown here, people are willing to discuss and engage respectfully. That has been my experience. But I don’t go out of my way to be an ‘activist’. Which is part of the problem – most of us ‘reasonable’ ones just want to live our lives and disappear into the woodwork while the obnoxious progressive activists are out and loud…
I was grabbed in the crotch by a woman on a train at rush hour as she screamed at me “YOU’RE NOT REAL!! YOU’RE NOT REAL!!” I was rescued by some guys that pulled her off and got between us. They didn’t understand what she was screaming about, BUT I DID! Puts the Trump comment into perspective for me….
If you’re not a woman, I don’t understand how you can “feel like a woman”. I am a woman and I haven’t a clue what it feels like to be Dolly Parton nor do I have a clue what it feels like to be Camille Paglia. Surely there’s room on that spectrum for any biological female without an operation. And how do you argue that gender is a social construct and at the same time say you “feel” that you are in the wrong body thereby linking the social construct back to biology? I really don’t understand. Honestly.
DNW,
Re: “how they know”
Initially? We just don’t seem to mesh with our peers. Boys act out in ways that confuse us or don’t make sense. (I will speak only to MtF, but conversations with FtM suggest similarities). We don’t seem to fit in with the girls because they don’t seem to treat us the same as other girls. We don’t FIT…something’s wrong but we are way to young to understand.
About the time kids begin to learn that girls are actually not just different boys (and vice versa), that we are DIFFERENT….we start wishing, praying, hoping that tomorrow we will walk up like the rest of the girls. And when we start ACTING like the girls…usually, all hell breaks loose with teachers and parents and we quickly learn to bury that shit deep.
But as most will tell you, repression is impossible long term….it comes out, usually inappropriately in the teens and the repercussions are even worse. Lots turn to drugs, alcohol…
As to the ‘why change the genetic’ vs the psychological, because it is easier to modify the body than to rewire the brain.
My expectations had to do with me being me. I expected to be treated like anyone else: with respect. Sexual activity was way, way down the list of things I was oriented towards. I expected it would happen when it happened and it would be ‘natural’ when it did. And it was.
I do not spend time trying to exaggerate or emphasize ‘me’ except when you might consider it ‘normal’. I get nicely dressed for going out on dates or to social events. I wear a bra because I NEED to! I have longer hair!
I can’t speak to the transgendered that identify as ‘non-binary’ or ‘non-conforming’. I have no frame of reference to understand them. BTW, Jenner is a TERRIBLE role model….
What is being sought is congruity. Of mind and body. This is a battle going on INTERNALLY, not played out externally (until transition – then for us the battle is done, we’ve made our choice of winning side).
Tracy Cole:
Thanks for being so patient in answering questions. I assume you can only speak for yourself (and perhaps some unknown percentage of transgendered people), but I have some questions for you, too, if you don’t mind answering.
When I grew up (which was a long time ago, long before transgender was a household word), I felt different from just about everyone. I seemed (at least in my introspective self) to have different interests, a different sensibility, than just about everyone surrounding me. Whether this was true or not, it was my perception, even as a fairly young child.
But I felt like a girl, always. It was just a basic thing that I felt. But that didn’t mean I fit in with any group of girls, although I had friends and we were in groups. I felt on a different wavelength, is the best way to put it.
But I certainly didn’t feel on the wavelength of boys, either. Nor did I ever feel that I wanted to be a boy or should have been a boy or anything of the sort. And later on, my sexual interests were in boys (and some of them were interested in me), but no one would ever call me a girly girl either, although I did like fashion and makeup and all that traditionally girly stuff. But some girls didn’t, and they still were girls.
It’s a bit difficult to describe.
The way you describe your initial feeling of being different, of not fitting in, seems somewhat similar and generic, at first. You write:
But then your feelings segued into something much different than anything that happened to me. You write:
That’s where I get confused, as though there’s something I don’t understand. Why would that sense of difference—which a great many people share—turn into the idea that gender was the source of the misfit? And then why would a person (even a child) feel that the solution would be to act differently (like the girls, or like the boys) in order to fit in?
I remember, as a girl who always felt like a girl, being told to act more compliant around boys—laugh at their jokes even if they weren’t funny, praise them and fawn over them even if I was being insincere—in order to get them to go out with me. I just didn’t want to do that, because (a) I wasn’t a good actress; and (b) if I started pretending I’d have to continue it in order to sustain the relationship.
So my question is: when you started acting like a girl, did that feel like the real you rather than an act? And why couldn’t a boy just act like an effeminate boy instead?
My guess is that there’s some other factor, something that has to do with basic gender identity, very deep. I’m not sure how that works, though.
I am not unsympathetic to the pain of transgender people. On a lesser scale my feeling in college that something was wrong with me made me hope I was a lesbian and I would I would at least have an answer. There are a zillion painful ways to feel different, excluded, alienated, defective . . . My problem is with the theory of a non-binary spectrum of genders unrelated to biological sex which, it seems to me, contradicts the transgender experience and transgender theory which seems to be insistently binary.
“…But I felt like a girl, always. It was just a basic thing that I felt. But that didn’t mean I fit in with any group of girls, although I had friends and we were in groups. I felt on a different wavelength, is the best way to put it.” — Neo
* * *
This, very much so.
When I write my biography, the title will be “Female is Not My Native Language.”
It wasn’t until I started studying psychology and statistics that I realized I was just in the long tail on a lot of personality trait distributions.
As I got older, I consciously modified my behavior and speech to work with different groups (male and female) so as to use their assumptions about stereotypes in my favor, rather than fighting the current.
Sometimes (especially now), I just don’t bother.
That’s one of the great advantages of the anonymous internet. 😉
Leah & Tracy: thank you again so much for your comments and insights from the “front lines,” so to speak, and affirming for us that not everyone is on-board with the activists’ extreme demands.
Several groups that I used to have great sympathy for have squandered that good-will by going from “don’t persecute and demean me” (which I totally agree with) to “don’t get in my way while I destroy the things you cherish” (which I emphatically do not support).
I personally don’t care much what people choose to do in their private lives; I only object when they start telling me what I MUST believe and do because of THEIR choices.
neo…
Context. I am trying explain, AFTER, years after, a set of emotions and feelings of wrong in ways that seem to make sense in the CONTEXT of what was going on internally.
When you walk into a room sometimes you can ‘feel’ the atmosphere is unexpected. You don’t know why so you try to look around and figure out what is going on. Context will matter but you also ‘feel’ something. Explaining what that ‘feeling’ is will rely on concepts you have learned over the entirety of your life. But at age 7 or 8, you’d barely even notice because your inwardly oriented, but the experiences begin building understanding.
In your day to day, you catch a momentary glimpse of someone from behind and you instantly know ‘boy/girl’, even if the physical cues are ambiguous at best. THAT recognition, even in the rare occasion it is wrong, develops early in childhood as we learn to recognize those cues and what they mean.
I, and we for those I have discussed it with over the years, still try to put a really poorly understood emotion/recognition process into some words and concepts that others at least can grasp. How do you know a friend had a REALLY GOOD time the previous weekend just by looking at them? Or how does someone ‘recognize’ another woman is pregnant without being told (early in pregnancy)?
My daughter often asks how I know something, she wants the evidence. How do I explain it is based on decades of reading, understanding and experiences? How do you obtain wisdom? BY EXPERIENCE! Sure…but the process?
My descriptions are poor examples of science but are based on the combination of everything I’ve learned and experienced. None of those explanations of childhood emotions were contemporaneous. They are an attempt to explain, sometimes decades later, what was going on then.
Last point. I tried to understand what changed between the years of 5-8 that provoked my deep need to wake up a girl…to PRAY for such a miracle. No events occurred in my family life – a stable environment without the abuse or drama many others dealt with. What ‘understanding’ or concepts do kids gain in that time frame? Certainly we start attending school and a greater knowledge of the greater community we lived in. It is the one internal awareness that I can point to that seems to be common, but certainly not universal I THINK.
I, and people like me, have the large repositories of observations and understanding of the situation and VERY LITTLE is scientific. I can’t even imagine how to usefully test the hypothesis’. But explaining the color blue to a blind person is a real pain….
neo,
One point about the ‘acting like a girl/boy’. We learn lots by mimicking others. A ‘fake it til you make it’ type of socialization that makes breaking into new social groups a hit or miss affair that early in life. We make friends and want to be ‘like them’ or have them like to be like us. Tons of learning by doing and failing and trying again. I don’t know what it is like to ‘feel like a girl/woman’ any more than they understand what it is like to ‘feel like a boy/man’. Did I feel like other boys? Sometimes…? I apparently fit in, sometimes. I very much did in mixed boy/girl groups where the dynamics were less divided. What does it feel like to be a male/female? Context matters – we don’t have clear explanations of it so we are left with approximations that have enough ‘exceptions’ to drive an aircraft carrier through..
I must be a really bigoted, mean person. There is XX, XY, or in rare cases XXY. That’s it period. Confusion over gender is complicared, I grok that. But in the final analysis it is simply confusion. Something wrong in the wiring no one (so far) can address. If I identify as a 6‘6″ black eskimo lesbian I hope no one upon first person obseseration would confirm my claimed identity. But that absurdity is what I am demanded to accept. So sorry, I can not. XX or XY. And I don’t care what you do under the sheets.
Those commentors who are the “others”, I acknowledge you have a tough row to hoe. You have a long row to hoe to gain acceptance. It won’t be easy, nor should it be.
Parker,
How do you KNOW if someone is XX or XY? Walking down the street in NY or Chicago…how do you KNOW?
If I might paraphrase (I don’t think disingenuously) MLK:
Judge me on who I am not on my genes.
Like Dale, I remain stuck at “feel like a woman.” What does that even mean? My identity as a person does not include a gender. I don’t feel like a woman when I put on sweats, which are usually a guy’s size small (fits best and cheaper than women’s) and walk my dog. I don’t feel like a woman when I take care of my clients. I don’t feel like a woman I put gas in my car, or go to the dentist. I didn’t feel like a woman when I did algebra homework as a teenager. To my knowledge, I don’t spend one second of any random day “feeling like a woman.” While I treat anyone who does not mistreat me or others with kindness, respect and decency, that single point has made it impossible for me to empathize with transgenders. No morality or judgment from me … I just don’t get it. And I’m starting to suspect that you don’t get the idea of not having this experience. Perhaps the presence of that sensation alone, whether or not it’s congruent with one’s physical exterior, is really the underlying driving force for various feelings and behavior, causing particular pain and chaos if it happens not to match up with what’s on the outside.
Oh, sure, I’m a female person who is physically attracted to men: that started right on schedule, without my conscious involvement, at around 13. But sex has nothing to do with who I am as a person. That’s a point we all seem to agree on.
I wanted to address one of Tracy’s comments in particular: “We just don’t seem to mesh with our peers. Boys act out in ways that confuse us or don’t make sense.” You can’t even imagine how I didn’t “mesh with my peers.” If you were a boy, you didn’t even begin to experience what it’s like to try to “fit in” with girls if you are a girl. Here’s the truth they don’t tell you. Girls – in a group – are vicious little animals who treat their friends worse than they treat their enemies. A group of girls is basically a flock of chickens, whose every act is orchestrated by pecking order. Just like chickens, most girls, most of the time, know their place and stay in it but there is constant pushing around as individuals rise and fall in the group. As soon as weakness shows – a bunch of feathers lost, blood drawn, a flock of chickens may peck that exposed, weaker member to severe injury or death. And this is exactly what girls do to each other, except they use words and threats about social status as weapons. Do you not see that from the outside, when you say that you desperately wanted to be a part of that sh1tshow?
It’s interesting that many women on this forum also report not being at home with girls in general. Speaking for myself, I usually had one female friend – one other person who was enough like me that we could be friends with each other without the stupid, pointless girl drama – but as late as college, I remember losing such a friend as soon as a third girl came on the scene. We’re all 20-somethings and as soon as there were three of us, one started playing one of us against the other, with nothing – not a job, or a guy, or anything else – at stake. I said FU and walked away; I don’t have time for that BS. I was that girl who always had guy friends. At no point did I think that I should be a guy. Nor did my guy friends think I was a guy. 30 years later, I work in a STEM field on an all-male team.
Echoing the thanks by others for everyone making this interesting, thoughtful and respectful conversation* possible. (* “conversation” with apologies to neo.)
KyndyllG,
I refer you back to my previous comments in this thread: I don’t know what it feels like to be a female, or male. Just ‘me’ There were lots of times when my ‘outcastedness’ was based on normal boy things: I didn’t go to the Catholic School nearby, I was short, my family was amongst the poorer in the neighborhood, I liked to read….lots of normal peer group issues that were not related to the internal issues. It wasn’t something that occupied every waking moment. We had girls in our neighborhood that beat the crap out of the boys, were better at sports….
The phrases ‘feel like a woman/man’ or ‘a female/male trapped in a man’s/woman’s body’ are useful to convey a notion in general conversation, but fail utterly to explain the range and depth of “wrongness” that was going on at very early age when there were no words to convey the emotions THEN and trying to explain them years later necessarily lacks the nuance and finer grained details.
We can’t imagine what is like to be another person though we understand that attempting to do so ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ is a common mental process in order to feel sympathy/empathy/concern for another person. Ask a 3 yr old boy to put on his sister’s dress and you likely get simply compliance. Ask a 6 yr old boy to do the same and watch him run like crazy. Get a man to wear a dress and he will be hugely uncomfortable, even in private. Is it because of a LEARNED behavior, cultural taboo? Or something else?
I knew a couple back in the early 80s that raised their children ‘gender neutral’ (obviously long before it was ‘a thing’) and were astonished that the boy and girls were stereotypical boy and girls by their teens. Culture? Genetics?
You own you without thought. I don’t know if you ever questioned WHO you are – most people don’t. When did you learn to be heterosexual? It was inherent and you probably never even questioned it. It goes back to not noticing the mechanics of walking until something happens to gum up the works.
I’ve never looked back, never questioned my choice. I am the whole, correct me.
Over the next century we might learn more about the process that created us, we might develop the language and be able to articulate better the emotional/psychological turmoil/wrongness that drove/drives us. Until then, don’t get caught up on a phrase or trying to understand an emotion/feeling you’ve never experienced. I don’t wish this on anyone, even people I really don’t like. It utterly sucked. And it is tearing parts of the community and us individually when we KNOW it would have been better to have never had to experience the ‘wrong puberty’ and yet CONDEMN the next generation to having to do the same because we don’t know how to ‘prove’ to anyone what is/was going on in the head of a 8-15 year old to say it is ‘ok to dose this kid, but not this kid’ with hormones different than their what genes say is appropriate. F8king sucks.
Thanks to all that participated in this discussion. It was respectful and I very much appreciated it.
See this right on target commentary by Camille Paglia on transgenderism as an indicator of the late stages of a civilization, of cultural collapse–citing the examples of Greece, Rome, and Weimar Germany.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8BRdwgPChQ&t=25s