Poor form.
And, honestly, why should they be any different?
We all define and present ourselves as much to our wishes as some measurable factor. We all con ourselves and others about who we are.
I, too, do not “get” re-assignment.
I would explore my attitude in greater depth, but, really, does it matter? What strange little quirk I might have about the nice woman with two different chromosomes?
Do I think trans are “real” men and women? Well, I’m not imaging them, am I?
Do I care that their genotypes might not align with their phenotypes? No, because most genes are not simple one gene to one characteristic, simple dominant or recessive.
I don’t think Mr Kobiyashi is a bigot. He needs to be informed. He knows he needs to be informed. He wants to be informed. Good for him. So in the interest of informing him-
You use the words “were born men”. I think it would be more correct to say “were
born XY and with a penis and testes”.
Transwoman and writer Rachel Pollack once wrote
“But you used to be a man, right?”
“No, Cliff. I was never a man.”
Rachel Pollack is also a useful cite against ‘all transwomen are obsessed with gender stereotypes.’. She’s a lesbian who writes comics books and science fiction. Last time I checked, Una was a transwoman who had a degree in engineering and was an expert on the generation of electrical power.
I’ll come back to this thread but, the Simpsons is starting.
What really stood out to me here is that you are wrong. There are many trans people who pass completely as their gender of choice, and you have seen them and not known they we’re born male instead of female. This gets more true every year as transgender people transitioning continues to gain social acceptance, and more young people - even pre-pubertal children - are beginning the process before they develop the secondary sexual characteristics of the sex they were born as.
Mr Kobiyashi, I had lots of relevant, useful information to give on the subject, but coming out of a suspension on this subject it would’ve all gotten me banned.
So, just be polite to everyone who’s civil to you and think whatever you want about their life choices, however strange or wrong they may be.
Hope y’all forgive my lack of reply, haven’t been ignoring you - just digesting the replies and hashing out the holes in my logic.
After dwelling on the topic a while I think I’ve realised why I think this way; stemming from a kind of lazy solipsism born of ignorance. As a straight male it’s easy for me to Ctrl C + Ctrl V those two things onto other males - since the majority are both straight and male. When I was younger this kind of thinking caused a similar kind of short-circuit when it came to homosexuality - it wasn’t that I was disgusted or anything, it just caused the same kind of reaction as looking at at impossible shape or something. Now I’m beginning to realise that just as ‘straight’ is not right for everyone of my gender, now neither is ‘male’.
However now of course I have no trouble accepting homosexuality as something that ‘just happens’ and thinking ‘it’s not my bag, but it’s not hurting anyone so fill your boots’. So just as I was able to nullify copy pasting my ‘straight’ viewpoint onto other fellas and stop extrapolating the golden rule onto them - since I wouldn’t want to kiss a bloke, why would anyone else want to.
I’ll be honest, I’m not 100% there and it does still give me a bit of a mental runaround to divorce the idea that since I’m male, think of myself of male and have zero desire to stop being male others don’t - just like since I don’t fancy men, but divorced this from my view of men at large (the inverse is true with women, of course).
TL;DR: So it seems not everyone thinks like me. You’d think I’d have learnt this earlier, but every day’s a learning experience, right? Thanks to women like Kiyoshi and other posters for enlightening me on a mindset that I had no ability to empathise with and incorrectly rejected as somehow invalid.
Threads, and specifically - posts like that make me glad to share the Dope with this community.
I hope your “rewiring” doesn’t cause you too much trouble, and I have to say, it’s a brave and intellectually honest person who looks at his own basic thought processes and subjects them to critical review.
Mr. K, don’t feel too bad about your hangups. Everyone has some, and most of the time, we don’t even realize we do. You’ve realized it, and even better, instead of getting defensive and doubling down, you’re examining it. And most importantly, you’re doing your best to be decent to other people regardless of your inner conflicts.
Anyway, you said something in your OP that struck me as being actually very close to “getting it”:
So, if we had the technology to transplant a brain born in a male body into a female body, you’d still think of that person as “male”. In other words, you’d think of them as a “male brain in a female body”, and therefore, still essentially male. That implies to me that you think (as most people do) that the brain, the mind, is where true “personhood” resides, and that there is something about our brains that defines our gender, something that is independent of the physical characteristics of our body.
Okay, so now: imagine a person who is a “male brain in a female body” (or vice versa), not because of a transplant, but because of an accident of biology at birth. After all, people are born with all kinds of non-standard bodies: limbs or digits or organs that are malformed or misplaced, or missing, or surplus. Some people can even have two entirely different and complete sets of chromosomes in different parts of their body. So if a brain can have a gender independent of that of the body (and it seems it certainly can), then it’s possible for someone to be born with a mismatch of brain gender and body gender.
So, if we have this brain of one gender born into a body with a different gender, what gender are is that person really? That of the body they were born with? Or that of their brain?
Two things I would like to offer, both are sort-of thought experiments.
-
Everyone you meet “used to be” an infant, then they were a small child, etc. Does what they “used to be” inform your thoughts about them now? If not, why not? If the answer is that no you don’t even give that a thought, then you have a model of removing what someone “used to be” from your concerns.
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This one might be a little tougher to wrap your thoughts around - By your thinking ‘it’s not my bag, but it’s not hurting anyone so fill your boots.’ you are somewhat placing yourself in a position of judgement over those you are categorizing, whatever the case. Try to move to the place where you are not even playing that logic loop in your mind. Instead of, “Hey, they’re gay, OK!” or “Hey, they’re trans-something, OK!” try to get to the place of, “Hi, nice to meet you!”.
Shodan, your problem is that you think people are just “playing along” when they express a gender that they weren’t born with. Your issue is that your standard of gender determination is by birth, as in you consider the criteria in which gender is created to be how they were born. This is wrong in the same way that mankind used to think humours dictated health and a sick person’s wounds need to be lanced to removed corrupted blood.
The currently understood and correct way of understanding gender is that its not what equipment you were born with but how gender is expressed through the brain. After all, you wouldn’t object if someone says that your personality, your desires, needs, and wants, and everything you think of yourself all comes from the brain, right? Gender is the similar because its not only about what you do sexually, but about desires, how you express yourself, how you carry yourself, how you think about yourself, etc. Its more than the parts you have and more about how all of that makes you a person.
For you to refer to acknowledging them as how they want to be acknowledged as “playing around” shows that you are too fixated on only the outer portion that you can see. And you are also too hooked on the traditional definition of gender and refuse to consider that you might be wrong. Once you let go of that, your mind will become more fluid in accepting other criteria for gender construct.
I know that you’re an old guy and probably feel that all this change is threatening, but as a member of this board, do you not value evidence and facts? Do you not value fighting ignorance? Why then would you refuse to accept that what goes on in the brain is much more important than what goes on between your legs?
And before you say it, people are not going to get their jollies pretending to be one gender or the other on a whim. Just as you probably define yourself as straight and male, these kinds of gender identifications are at the core of what most of us see ourselves. We don’t change it for shits and giggles, most of us would even be pretty horrified if someone tries to force that change on us. So yes, there are crazy people out there who may try to use this as some weird sexual thing, but they are few and far between, and there are many laws to safeguard these kinds of things.
If you consider yourself smart, then you can consider other constructs of gender that goes against the traditional definition. Things evolve, societies change, and while immutability is comforting, it is often wrong and harmful. Consider that your beliefs about gender are wrong and the world is all kinds of grey that you don’t see now, but you can. And in return, you get to be a better person, a less ignorant person, and someone who considers the facts instead of denies them
On the first point, that’s not a problem for me since like everyone I have direct experience of reaching emotional maturity (relatively speaking, I am still a bloke), if someone my age was saying they think of themselves as a child that would cause the same confusion. Although I can get where you’re coming from.
On the second, that was just my initial transition from abject bafflement into not caring about it at all - don’t get me wrong, the first thing I say to a gay fella isn’t “Well, whatever floats your boat”.
Interesting links; thanks. On your last paragraph, the way I’m thinking about it at the moment so I can better relate is if I lost my meat and veg in an unfortunate smelting accident while someone injected me with a load of female hormones and gave us a nice pair of dumplings, outwardly I might resemble a woman but as far as I’m concerned I think I’m male, no matter what anyone else thinks. So I’m conceptualising it as this but in reverse, with human biology initially going wrong (the whole reason the field of medicine exists) instead of that of an unfortunate smelting accident.
Again, it’s a thought experiment - the example of infant was just an example of something that someone “used to be”, it could just as easily have been that someone “used to be” a redhead and now they are blonde.
First, the answer to “Am I a bigot” is always “yes”. The more important question is “In what ways am I a bigot and what should I do about it?” That one’s a lot harder to answer.
Good for you for asking. Most of us bigots are dead certain in our bigotry.
Second, all definitions are invented. There are no absolute definitions, created by reality and totally enforced on us.
The definition you choose to use for “gender role” makes a big difference to transgender people. Does it make a big difference to you?
The folks who argue that transgender people are simply “wrong” are those who choose particular definitions for “gender role”. By “gender role,” I mean which set of pronouns to use. The proper set of pronouns to use is more a matter of etiquette than of science. Furthermore, those who insist it’s a matter of science tend to be ignoring a lot of the science.
Those who insist it’s a matter of XY vs XX are simply choosing an arbitrary (though usually useful) definition.
Take your pick. Words mean what we agree that they mean. They have no lives of their own. They are not dictated by God or by the laws of physics, or biology.
That’s a very reasonable attitude. Good for you.
This is astonishingly unlikely
This, on the other hand, is probably true.
Hi there.
I think it’s probably just a matter of the intellectual versus the actual, which was mentioned by at least a couple other posters upthread.
If Mr. Kobayashi came to my community, I’d take him to see and meet transsexual women like myself, and talk to them and hear some of their stories.
He would hear about a persistent and overwhelming gender dysphoria which grabbed them when they were very young.
He would hear how even the most incredible attempts at punishment from parents, peers, siblings, and even strangers did not shake their gender dysphoria as children.
He would hear about the agony of the hard walls of high school.
He could speak to the doctors and psychologists I work with and hear first-hand how transgenderism is so highly resistant to psychotherapy, drugs, negative or positive reinforcement. They can make improvements, but there is no cure. We would point him to the research papers and references which show being transgender is a physical birth defect, not something we thought would be cool to try on like a new outfit.
I would have several of my friends tell him about how they were driven to suicide attempts after their families kicked them out in the street, how their own kids disown them, how they lost 6-figure careers to work at McDonalds or the street turning tricks to get food.
I’d have them tell him how in addition to the soul-crushing despair that is gender dysphoria, how NO ONE chooses to potentially throw away their family, friends, career, home, children and spouse to become the one of the most discriminated against and hated minorities in the country.
And I’d have them tell him in their own words how after just days to weeks on the hormones, how they were reborn. How suddenly their lives became clear, and they felt mostly right for the first time in their lives. I’d have him talk to my friends who flew across the world to have surgery, and how happy they are, and how full their lives are. I’d show him the ones who made it. I’d have them tell him that even though some still have so many problems and struggles that Job would say “whoa, that’s harsh,” they still are happier than they have ever been.
I’d show him real post-transition transsexual women like myself who are just trying to live and love and be part of the American dream. We’re not trying to game the system. We’re not trying to offend you or make a political statement. No one paid us to do it. We’re not social justice warriors except by dire necessity. Almost all of us want to blend in, submerge, do right by others and have them do right by us.
I would introduce him to post-transition women - beautiful women, who you would never in a million years pick out as trans. Friendly, happy, intelligent, talented women - who have not dated in 10 years. They would tell him how they fear dying alone, because no one will date them - because they’re not considered real in the eyes of most, or even monsters in the eyes of some.
I’d have him look across the table into their eyes, and hopefully he would see what I see when I look in the eyes of transsexual women - a mixture of incredible strength and unbearable sadness.
Although my life is awesome right now, I still see it in my eyes, sometimes, in the mirror. Maybe he would see it in my eyes?
If after all that he didn’t understand, then I really don’t know what I could do.
You spend time with us. That is how you change your mind set. I’m a Transgender woman. My hands are small.
You spend time with us, Love. Us, because I am a Transgender woman with small hands.
Hi, Canadian Brown Sugar. I’m not sure you realize it, but you bumped a vintage-2014 thread. Trans folk are always welcome here on the board, both as general participants and specifically as people who wish to post more about the experience of being transgender, but re-engaging folks on a thread that old can be an exercise in futility.
Or maybe not, since Mr. Kobayashi is still around and still actively posting.
Even so, it might make more sense to engage with what people are posting currently instead of things they said 2 years ago.
Still here, you’ll hopefully be happy to know that I’ve devoted a fair bit of internal processing power to untangling the knot as it were. Like I said the concept to me was like thinking about an impossible shape or something, my brain just 404’d, concept not found. It was just easier, certainly lazier to assume biological gender = gender identity when now it’s now clear to me that all the facts point to this not always being the case.
As many posters inferred I don’t know any transgendered men or women which was probably the reason I thought this, in other words every biological male I know identifies as a male. But yeah, turns out just because I’ve not personally experienced something firsthand doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, who’da thunk?
Sure, but Canadians?
We’ve got standards here! 