Split Thread: Different attitudes homosexual and transgender individuals

[The Great Zaganza]

If the environment was causing kids to become homosexual/transsexual, then how come some of those kids have conservative parents? Was Cheney too progressive, which caused his daughter to turn lesbian?

Right -wingers refuse to think about the issue, and instead hope they get to punish someone, anyone, for making them feel uncomfortable.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by Thermal

That's the part I don't get. If being a woman is an internal identification, then fine. That's what you are, regardless of anatomy. But if you want to reconfigure your body, you are pretty much acknowledging that it is a dysphoria gig, not an identification. Its a crossed wire.

Being a woman, however, is not an internal identification. It's something that comes with being born with a female body and living into adulthood. And nobody who hasn't done that has the remotest idea how it "feels", any more than I have an innate idea how it feels to be a hamster.

[Warp12]

Originally Posted by The Great Zaganza

If the environment was causing kids to become homosexual/transsexual, then how come some of those kids have conservative parents? Was Cheney too progressive, which caused his daughter to turn lesbian?

Right -wingers refuse to think about the issue, and instead hope they get to punish someone, anyone, for making them feel uncomfortable.

I think it is a mistake to lump homosexuals and transgenders together.

I mean, one looks at the opposite sex and gets horned up due to biology. The other feels they were born with a natural desire to wear the latest fashion trends of the opposite sex, and to speak in a more shrill or deep voice. And I don't see many homosexuals who are taking hormones or having reconstructive surgery so that they can be more gay-like.

Very different, imo.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Being a woman, however, is not an internal identification. It's something that comes with being born with a female body and living into adulthood. And nobody who hasn't done that has the remotest idea how it "feels", any more than I have an innate idea how it feels to be a hamster.

Yeah, I get that at one level. I'm a bio male. The way I feel is "what a guy" feels like. I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman, a hamster, or an attack helicopter. So far, so good.

But if I look at a comely young lass and pursue the sort of things a guy might peruse, then look down and see all the equipment not matching up to what I instinctively want to do....well, I get that too. This stuff is so far beyond my ability to "get" that I can't even maintain a discussion about it.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by Warp12

Because nothing is more "authentic" than having your genitals fashioned into fake clams and wangs. What an insane society we live in.

Do you really think that sexual identity is determined by cultural programming? In the absence of said programming, would gender identity be essentially random? Had you not personally experienced the social programming that you’ve claimed, do you think the chanced of you identifying as female would have increased in any measure.

[Rolfe]

That's quite the non-sequitur.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by dann

OK, that's different than promoting rights. And it sounds grotesque. Why do they want to persuade them to have surgery? What is the motivation?

I'd like to add that it's not just surgery.

Taking testosterone as a woman results in some irreversible changes, for example. And I don't just mean of the genitals. Most of the unique part of the Y chromosome is just testosterone production, and the rest of the difference between male and female is regulated by just the amount of testosterone in the system. Take too much and the body starts to turn into a male, including such details as that the jaw widens, resulting in spaces between teeth, because those don't really get affected nearly as much. And it's very much irreversible, because the body doesn't have nearly enough "code" to go in the opposite direction when the testosterone disappears.

Even switching to oestrogen won't undo that, since, well, the effect of that in a male body isn't to undo any of the skeletal changes or anything. Just about the only female characteristic you get are boobs. The rest are just effects like erectile dysfunction, shrinking muscle mass, and osteoporosis.

Again, the body has the "code" of how to turn a female template into a male, but not the other way around. There is no female version of the "Y" chromosome, or rather not in humans, so there is no "code" to deal with that kind of effect either.

That's not even speculation. It's a well known effect in female body builders who take anabolic steroids (which are synthetic equivalents of testosterone.) And the fact that it's irreversible is also well known.

So, yeah, personally my advice to anyone would still be to wait until they're an adult and have done a bunch of research. If after that they want to transition in any more permanent way than just wearing a dress and playing with the girls, or viceversa, sure, go for it. Before... eeh, there seem to be enough people who regretted it.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

That's quite the non-sequitur.

No, it just relates to a previous posting by Warp12. I’ve asked the question a few times now, and I’m curious to see if he simply doesn’t want to answer the question that logically follows from his claim.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Do you really think that sexual identity is determined by cultural programming? In the absence of said programming, would gender identity be essentially random? Had you not personally experienced the social programming that you’ve claimed, do you think the chanced of you identifying as female would have increased in any measure.

Is it that independent of programming? As I may have mentioned before, I actually had the most extreme form of it, in that I actually grew up as a "girl" (most of the time; and flip to being a "boy" in a second when that was needed) since as early as I could walk. Mom wanted a boy, and technically got her wish at conception, but grandma wanted a girl, and guess who got to dress me up in a pink outfit, buy me dolls, and take me outside to play with the girls and stuff? Yeah, mom was at work.

(And gradually I'm starting to also wonder if mom would have actually needed a laxative to give a crap about it. I mean, there's using perception as your dump stat, and then there's literally not noticing ever that her son has a 1:1 scale baby doll and candy pink clothes)

Is my later being confused about exactly how much I want to be a girl REALLY that independent of that? Sometimes I wonder.

Plus, honestly, it would be the only thing that is all nature and no nurture, if that were the case.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Yeah, I get that at one level. I'm a bio male. The way I feel is "what a guy" feels like. I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman, a hamster, or an attack helicopter. So far, so good.

To be honest, forget about what a woman feels like; I still have no idea even what is characteristic that a guy would think or feel like. You'd think I'd figure it out after some decades of first hand experience, but I'm still as clueless as it gets.

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

I'd like to add that it's not just surgery.

Taking testosterone as a woman results in some irreversible changes, for example. And I don't just mean of the genitals. Most of the unique part of the Y chromosome is just testosterone production, and the rest is regulated by just its amount in the system. Take too much and the body starts to turn into a male, including such details as that the jaw widens, resulting in spaces between teeth, because those don't really get affected nearly as much. And it's very much irreversible, because the body doesn't have nearly enough "code" to go in the opposite direction when the testosterone disappears.

Even switching to oestrogen won't undo that, since, well, the effect of that in a male body isn't to undo any of the skeletal changes or anything. Just about the only female characteristic you get are boobs. The rest are just effects like erectile dysfunction, shrinking muscle mass, and osteoporosis.

Again, the body has the "code" of how to turn a female template into a male, but not the other way around. There is no female version of the "Y" chromosome, or rather not in humans, so there is no "code" to deal with that kind of effect either.

That's not even speculation. It's a well known effect in female body builders who take anabolic steroids (which are synthetic equivalents of testosterone.) And the fact that it's irreversible is also well known.

So, yeah, personally my advice to anyone would still be to wait until they're an adult and have done a bunch of research. If after that they want to transition in any more permanent way than just wearing a dress and playing with the girls, or viceversa, sure, go for it. Before... eeh, there seem to be enough people who regretted it.

That, of course. But there's a further issue. The human body (and brain) is designed to experience puberty. There is a myth around the "trans kids" narrative that stopping puberty and then administering wrong-sex hormones produces the puberty of the opposite sex. It doesn't. If you have a male body you do not have the potential to undergo female puberty and vice versa. What you end up as is someone who has never gone through puberty and is taking wrong-sex hormones.

The enormous (40-fold I believe) increase in girls identifying as trans has been described as them "escaping womanhood like a house fire". The increase in boys identifying as trans is less, maybe only 10-fold, but you hear similar stories of young lads repulsed by the thought of what their bodies are about to become.

But we all have to go through it. We all did, in the days before this trans craze, and most of us turned out fine. Puberty itself sorts out a lot of things, and studies from before puberty blockers were handed out like Smarties demonstrate that a sizeable majority of trans-identifying children become reconciled to their true sex and the bodies they have once they have gone through puberty.

If there are still problems after puberty that's another matter. But this current craze to "affirm" every child or adolescent who goes through a phase of thinking that turning into the opposite sex is the escape hatch they need from what their bodies are going to do naturally is hugely harmful. It's putting the majority who would "grow out of it" and never mutilate their bodies with surgery or hormones on to a path to do exactly that, without an off ramp.

And yet some governments are making it illegal to offer these children counselling and psychotherapy with a view to reconciling themselves with their bodies and not wanting mutilation, labelling it "conversion therapy". Apparently the view that it's a better outcome if a young person can avoid becoming a permanent medical patient and shortening their lives with bone-destroying hormones, is "transphobic".

[HansMustermann]

To flip both sides of the aisle, though, I'm also not sure the Republican approach is any better, since it basically boils down to "sssshhh! nobody talk about it, so the kids don't hear about it, and I don't have to talk to them about it." See how one constant since the early days of LGB was the "but then how do I explain it to my kids?!?" argument. The rather obvious implication being that that guy or gal really doesn't want to talk to their kids at all about <insert topic> and would rather just pretend that said kids will never hear about it, and all is well. And I don't think that ever worked. Well, not in a positive sense. If you want your kid to keep the weirdest ideas, yeah, not talking to them about it might just work

[Rolfe]

Well, not being American I don't see this in terms of Democrats or Republicans.

[Cheetah]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Yeah, I get that at one level. I'm a bio male. The way I feel is "what a guy" feels like. I have no idea what it feels like to be a woman, a hamster, or an attack helicopter. So far, so good.

But if I look at a comely young lass and pursue the sort of things a guy might peruse, then look down and see all the equipment not matching up to what I instinctively want to do....well, I get that too. This stuff is so far beyond my ability to "get" that I can't even maintain a discussion about it.

Yeah. I can totally imagine that there might be people who feel a lot like we feel, but were born with the wrong body.
Male and female brains are structured differently and can be distinguished from each other with high accuracy using MRI.
I wonder what trans people’s brain scans will show. That would settle it once and for all.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by Cheetah

Yeah. I can totally imagine that there might be people who feel a lot like we feel, but were born with the wrong body.
Male and female brains are structured differently and can be distinguished from each other with high accuracy using MRI.
I wonder what trans people’s brain scans will show. That would settle it once and for all.

Aww its so nice that you think such evidence would matter.

"The mean neuroanatomical volume for the amygdala, putamen, and corpus callosum differed between transgender women and natal women but not between transgender women and natal men. Differences between transgender men and natal men were found in several brain structures, including the medial temporal lobe structures and cerebellum. Differences between transgender men and natal women were found in the medial temporal lobe, nucleus accumbens, and 3rd ventricle. Sexual dimorphism between nontransgender men and women included larger cerebellar volumes and a smaller anterior corpus callosum in natal men than in natal women. The results remained stable after correcting for additional factors including age, total intracranial volume, anxiety, and depressive symptoms."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27490457/

[Rolfe]

Quote:

I wonder what trans people’s brain scans will show. That would settle it once and for all.

It doesn't though. As I said earlier, brains are plastic. Anything seen on brain scans of someone who has identified as trans for some time is more likely to be an effect than a cause.

Also, if it is indeed possible to distinguish male and female brains by MRI "with high accuracy", that is a new thing since I last looked at the subject.

Obviously this has been tried, but it has solved nothing.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

It is all about being accepted for who you are. I've been in an LGBT community band for two decades now. (I just got my 20th anniversary pin. Yay me!)

If you think trans is about fitting into someone else's category and not being who you are, you have never talked with a trans person. A trans person presenting as cis is not being who they are inside and fitting into someone else's category, not their own.

Regardless of how trans people talk about their inner self image, being trans is all about fitting into somebody else's category.

The whole point of being a transwoman is to fit into society's category of women, and to be accepted as such by others regardless of the degree of the fit. That's the whole point of publishing your preferred pronouns: To help other people fit you into their category.

The whole point of transwomen gaining access to women's spaces isn't about them just quietly thinking of themselves as women. It's about getting other women, and society in general, and public policy in the form of laws and regulations, to see them as women and accept them as women.

A homosexual in sports can be as gay as they want, without anyone else having to do anything except perhaps consent to some gay sex in the privacy of their bedroom*.

A transwoman in sports requires that other people fit her into their category of women. Lia Thomas doesn't get to compete in NCAA women's swimming events just by being who she is inside, without imposing a requirement that the NCAA and her teammates all fit her into their category of women.

---
*Aside from gay marriage, which I won't get into in this post, but might get into in a later post if anyone else raises any interesting points about it.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

It doesn't though. As I said earlier, brains are plastic. Anything seen on brain scans of someone who has identified as trans for some time is more likely to be an effect than a cause.

Also, if it is indeed possible to distinguish male and female brains by MRI "with high accuracy", that is a new thing since I last looked at the subject.

Obviously this has been tried, but it has solved nothing.

Yeah, cause or effect. Also, it might say that a subject's brain fires off more like the gender they identify with, but I'm not sure that clears anything up, other than demonstrating a correlation.

Does a cis-het tomboy's brain activity look more like a man's or a woman's? Would it clarify anything to know that or confuse it more?

[p0lka]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

It is all about being accepted for who you are. I've been in an LGBT community band for two decades now. (I just got my 20th anniversary pin. Yay me!)

If you think trans is about fitting into someone else's category and not being who you are, you have never talked with a trans person. A trans person presenting as cis is not being who they are inside and fitting into someone else's category, not their own.

Transpeople seem to want to conform to a particular gender role but their bodies don't represent the role they want to conform to.

The LGB letters though, are shouting 'This is me, I aint changing for your stupid roles, Get used to it!'.

LGB seem to have a view of 'I don't accept your gender roles' whereas T seems to want to become those gender roles.

It seems to be quite a different focus.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

And it really isn't up to you to tell others what they can and can't do with their own bodies. If that's what Florida's legislation really comes down to - self-righteous posturing about things that are none of their ******* business - then I'm definitely on the side of anyone who speaks up and says that laws intended to to restrict the rights of self-determination of others are wrong.

Is there an age below which you think a person should NOT be allowed to self-determination, when that self-determination involves long-term side effects and material health risks?

Should, for example, a 12 year old have the right of self-determination to have a surgeon cut their left arm off?

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Authoritarians have a real problem understanding the concept of protecting someone's right to do something they themselves don't want to do. I'm disgusted, personally, by the idea of people getting off by peeing on each other. But I don't think that it then follows that it's something that should be legally proscribed, even among people who consensually agree to it.

Is there a limit to what people should be allowed to do in public? If a person likes being peed on, should they then have the right to be peed on in public? Should the fact that some people like being peed on be taught to 2nd graders as normal sexual behavior, or is there perhaps a limit to what you consider age and venue appropriate?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Thermal

Great. One more damn thing to worry about.

For the grins...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDiILrNbM4

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Sorry to keep you waiting, but after all it is Sunday and I was terribly busy not bettering myself or the world around me.

I'm not one for false dichotomies. I'm not going to equate getting an arm tattoo with amputation. There's obviously a spectrum to self modification practices ranging from harmless to harmful. But I think it would have to get pretty extreme before it falls into the range of obvious self-harm. And as a man, I've never felt that being a woman fell into the same category as being an amputee, so if someone really wants gender reassignment surgery, and is well aware of what they're doing, I hardly think that it is comparable to lopping one's own healthy leg off.

Why do you think they aren't comparable?

Also... What are your thought on gender nullification, with respect to harmful/non-harmful?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I know the thread didn't really have a true topic when it was created, but I feel it necessary to point out this post from earlier in the thread:


Same as the quoted link, but in imbedded form

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

tl;dr: One's biological sex or gender is not limited to one or two physical traits.

True, it isn't limited to one or two physical traits. It is, however, defined by the arrangement of a specific system of organs.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I mean, on the one hand we have the word of a Stanford professor and neuroscience researcher. On the other hand, we have an anonymous forum poster’s appeal to personal incredulity.

How about a different neuroscientist with a more recent study?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...804?via%3Dihub

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by dann

OK, that's different than promoting rights. And it sounds grotesque. Why do they want to persuade them to have surgery? What is the motivation?

What they wish had been available to them when they were younger... but without a full understanding (or care) for the actual consequences.

Many late-aged transwomen lament that they are very masculine in appearance. They hypothesize that if they hadn't been "forced" to go through "the wrong puberty", they would have ended up looking more feminine. Which isn't exactly incorrect - if a male doesn't experience puberty they frequently don't develop male-typical secondary sex characteristics. Their faces stay more child-like, and don't develop the jaw, chin, and eye-socket skull characteristics of an adult male. Their voices don't drop, and hence their adam's apple doesn't materially enlarge. They don't acquire male=typical muscle density. All in all, they would be less masculine in appearance, and more child-like.

The drawback is that there are down-sides. Without that puberty, their testicles don't extend and their penises don't elongate, and they don't develop the ability to produce sperm. Which leaves them sterile and without the ability to experience sexual pleasure.

That lack of puberty also prevents them from accreting bone mineralization, leaving them with osteopenia or osteopathy. It also hinders full cognitive development, and increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, and a host of other things.

Of course, the argument frequently goes that the child who is identifying as transgender should be given the sex hormones of the opposite sex, so they can have "the right puberty". Which is also fraught with misinformation. Giving a pubertal male child high levels of estrogen can help with bone density... but they won't actually grow female breast tissue. They'll develop fat-deposits in their breasts, but they don't develop mature milk producing glands. Their hips won't widen and shift, they won't have periods, etc. They won't actually become females.

Puberty blockers plus cross-sex hormones tend to lock a child into a child-like state permanently.

For some fully adult males who are dissatisfied with their physical appearance, that might seem like a good trade-off. But these are adult males with fully functional genitals, capable of experiencing sexual pleasure, and without the long-term cognitive and physical health side effects who are opining that children should be allowed (even encouraged) to do something they were denied. And they're supporting this without a care for the damage being done to those children - even to children who actually genuinely have persistent dysphoria. There's even less care given to the children who do NOT genuinely have dysphoria, who will regret the permanent medicalization of their other-wise healthy bodies.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by The Great Zaganza

If the environment was causing kids to become homosexual/transsexual

Please don't lump the two together. Sexual orientation and expressed gender identity are two extremely different things.

It's tantamount to asserting that "the environment" is causing kids to become taller/goths. Not at all the same things. Not even a little bit.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Do you really think that sexual identity is determined by cultural programming?

What is "sexual identity"?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Is it that independent of programming? As I may have mentioned before, I actually had the most extreme form of it, in that I actually grew up as a "girl" (most of the time; and flip to being a "boy" in a second when that was needed) since as early as I could walk. Mom wanted a boy, and technically got her wish at conception, but grandma wanted a girl, and guess who got to dress me up in a pink outfit, buy me dolls, and take me outside to play with the girls and stuff? Yeah, mom was at work.

(And gradually I'm starting to also wonder if mom would have actually needed a laxative to give a crap about it. I mean, there's using perception as your dump stat, and then there's literally not noticing ever that her son has a 1:1 scale baby doll and candy pink clothes)

Is my later being confused about exactly how much I want to be a girl REALLY that independent of that? Sometimes I wonder.

Plus, honestly, it would be the only thing that is all nature and no nurture, if that were the case.

Have you considered that your mom might have simply been a feminist who didn't think there was any value in forcing children to do "male things" or "female things", and that if you liked pink and dolls, that was perfectly fine, since young male children should be allowed to like pink and dolls.

She may not have been aware that you weren't voluntarily choosing those, but were being given them from your grandmother.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

To be honest, forget about what a woman feels like; I still have no idea even what is characteristic that a guy would think or feel like. You'd think I'd figure it out after some decades of first hand experience, but I'm still as clueless as it gets.

I'd imagine "feeling like a guy" has something to do with sweaty balls, night-time emissions, morning wood, getting knuckle-hairs caught in stuff, being able to reach the tall shelves, and being allowed to take your shirt off if it's hot outside.

I can't really experience any of that, I don't even have a starting place to imagine it.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Cheetah

Yeah. I can totally imagine that there might be people who feel a lot like we feel, but were born with the wrong body.
Male and female brains are structured differently and can be distinguished from each other with high accuracy using MRI.
I wonder what trans people’s brain scans will show. That would settle it once and for all.

They aren't though.

[Robin]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

I mean, on the one hand we have the word of a Stanford professor and neuroscience researcher. On the other hand, we have an anonymous forum poster’s appeal to personal incredulity.

Who’s right? Tough call.

When I was younger the psychology profession officially classified homosexuality as a disorder.

The medical profession can be wrong.

It think that the "brain wired for gender" thing is probably partly true but a rather complicated story.

I think there is no doubt that some of us are hard wired for social interactions that are not normally associated with our biological sex.

I have often wondered if that is what people mean when they say that they are trans.

[Robin]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

What is "sexual identity"?

For example it is what the people who say "bring back manly men" mean. Or the ones who say that there is a plot to feminise masculinity intended to bring down western civilization.

Or the fact that at 7 years old I was forced to choose between continuing ballet lessons and having friends.

Or that in all the places I have worked I have never been invited to a man's night out although I was always invited to mixed social events and often on women's nights out. There were some men who would go out of their way to make sure I knew about mixed social events who did not even think of inviting me to a men's night out.

Sexual identity is also being on the recieving end of that and taking it at face value.

Whether it is something to do with hard wiring or social structures I don't know, I suspect that it is a little of both.

But those who pretend that "woman" has hitherto meant "adult female" or that "man" had meant "adult male" n our society are kidding themselves.

[Robin]

Originally Posted by Upchurch

If you think trans is about fitting into someone else's category and not being who you are, you have never talked with a trans person. A trans person presenting as cis is not being who they are inside and fitting into someone else's category, not their own.

I have talked with many trans people over the years from the early eighties back when there was no BT in the movement and barely an L, back when bisexuals were shunned and called liars by the gay community.

There can be no doubt that they were being who they genuinely were and I still have no doubts

But I can't see how the labels "man" or "woman" would make them less or more who they were.

And I think that the very idea that there is such a thing as "presenting as cis" is, in itself, accepting societal categories.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Have you considered that your mom might have simply been a feminist who didn't think there was any value in forcing children to do "male things" or "female things", and that if you liked pink and dolls, that was perfectly fine, since young male children should be allowed to like pink and dolls.

She may not have been aware that you weren't voluntarily choosing those, but were being given them from your grandmother.

Well, that's probably waay off topic. Let's leave that for another time and place. In the meantime, feel free to think any flattering things you wish about mom

But my point wasn't to complain about my parents. My point was that, regardless of who footed the bill for the girl clothes and dolls, I'm pretty sure I was being "programmed" to be a girl, long before I even had any opinion on that, or the knowledge on which to base. I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm just saying it would be one HELL of a coincidence if that's, as some people tell me, it's ALL nature (as in, born that way, brain structure, etc) AND independent of that (since it was way before I could even know what I'm choosing) grandma also decided to do that. Not impossible, mind you. Just, you know, kinda unbelievable as coincidences go.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Robin

For example it is what the people who say "bring back manly men" mean. Or the ones who say that there is a plot to feminise masculinity intended to bring down western civilization.

Or the fact that at 7 years old I was forced to choose between continuing ballet lessons and having friends.

Or that in all the places I have worked I have never been invited to a man's night out although I was always invited to mixed social events and often on women's nights out. There were some men who would go out of their way to make sure I knew about mixed social events who did not even think of inviting me to a men's night out.

Sexual identity is also being on the recieving end of that and taking it at face value.

Whether it is something to do with hard wiring or social structures I don't know, I suspect that it is a little of both.

But those who pretend that "woman" has hitherto meant "adult female" or that "man" had meant "adult male" n our society are kidding themselves.

The only problem with that is that the supposed cause and effect aren't even in the same person. I have trouble believing that YOU were wired so that OTHER people don't invite you to an all guys night out. Or that YOU being wired any other way would have made any difference. Like, do you think if you secretly identified another way (which is supposed to be how it works for trans before deciding to come out as such) -- hell, even if we transplanted a man's brain in your body -- someone would automatically know you're on the list for an all guys night out?

It's like saying that the wiring in my car is what caused an SUV to ram it in the parking lot.

Plus, some of that might not even have to do with how (they think) you identify, but such stuff as that if you go, then Jack's girlfriend Jill will go on another jealousy episode. Or that Tom's girlfriend might want to come too, if it's not strictly absolutely guys only, and in turn that might cause Dick to stop inviting Tom too, since he finds Tom's girlfriend annoying. Or that Harry might find it annoying to have women around too on the night out, for example because the last time he told a risque joke at such a gathering, he got reported to HR. And not even by one of the women within earshot, but by some guy trying to play knight in shining armour, defender of the damsels in distress. Etc.

Thinking that any of that has anything to do with how you identify inside your head is... somewhat off the mark.


But basically what you talk about there isn't identity, it's gender roles. ESPECIALLY if your example is "bring back manly men", that's a request for other men to conform to a prescribed gender role. Related concept, but by far not the same. And gender roles are definitely all culture.

[p0lka]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I'd imagine "feeling like a guy" has something to do with sweaty balls, night-time emissions, morning wood, getting knuckle-hairs caught in stuff, being able to reach the tall shelves, and being allowed to take your shirt off if it's hot outside.

I can't really experience any of that, I don't even have a starting place to imagine it.

I have balls, but I only score 3 out of 6 on your scoreboard, bah.

[Warp12]

I'm a man. But I couldn't quantify exactly what that feeling is. Like, I never say to myself, "I am going to do manly stuff, today". I might even have some tendencies that many people consider "feminine", I suppose. As I say, these are societal constructs.

What I can say is that whatever I want to do, I pretty much do it. Wearing flannel shirts and growing facial hair would not make me feel more manly. And wearing a pink shirt while cooking or decorating does not make me feel less manly.

I just don't get this "feeling" like you were born the opposite gender thing. I don't believe you are born with a natural desire to play with either Barbies or GI Joe's. And the surgery stuff makes even less sense.

[Rolfe]

Most of the time it's autogynaephilia. If you don't have that, you're not going to know how these people feel, or how they interpret it.

[p0lka]

Gender roles are a scourge on modern society, If people were left to just be themselves without pressure, the world would be a better place.

What would trans be in that context though? that's an interesting thing.

I imagine Banks culture novels but in present day where you get up and decide you're gonna play a role, what role you will be today, that would be amazing.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Warp12

I'm a man. But I couldn't quantify exactly what that feeling is. Like, I never say to myself, "I am going to do manly stuff, today". I might even have some tendencies that many people consider "feminine", I suppose. As I say, these are societal constructs.

What I can say is that whatever I want to do, I pretty much do it. Wearing flannel shirts and growing facial hair would not make me feel more manly. And wearing a pink shirt while cooking or decorating does not make me feel less manly.

I just don't get this "feeling" like you were born the opposite gender thing. I don't believe you are born with a natural desire to play with either Barbies or GI Joe's. And the surgery stuff makes even less sense.

Picture doing all the kind of things you like to do. Then top it off with getting ready to throw a bone in your significant other to cap the fun day off. Then you look down and notice you have to look around a pair of breasts to see that you have an innie instead of an outie. That's the most blunt way to see it, I think. Then you get into the subtler social things. But seriously, just try to picture that moment. Feel good? Skunds like it really sucks to me, and I'd have no qualms in being sympathetic to someone going through that.