Well, I am sure you will admit it is a little difficult to keep track of what sex every whacked-out teen-ager in America has decided she is this week.
If she dresses up to try to convince people she is something else, let’s not get all pissy when it works.
First you say this -
Then you say this -
So which is it? Is gender identity physical, or not?
People like Eddie Araujo and Brandon Teena are deliberately mis-communicating, and their defenders are blaming others for not understanding what they were at pains to conceal.
They do not present themselves as members of a gender, but as members of a sex. They are not saying, “I am a member of the gender of guys who dress up as a girl, or the gender of girls who want to date other girls.” They are saying, “I am a girl” or “I am a guy”. They are going by the same definitions of sexual identity (genitals and genes, male and female) as everyone else.
So, unfortunately, did the people who murdered them both.
It is no good at all asking people to ignore what is objectively true (genes and genitals) in favor of what is going on inside someone’s head (“I am really a girl, despite the testicles”). Especially if the subject is doing everything in his/her power to make the task impossible.
Or do I? Strangers sometimes mistook me for a boy as an adolescent. But everyone who knew me always knew that I was a girl, and it wasn’t because I went around singing “I Enjoy Being a Girl” or anything.
As an adult I’ve done a bit of drag performing (see here for photos), and have even won prizes in competitions. And I can tell you this – looking like a man and speaking with a low voice are easy compared to acting and talking like a man (or even a parody of a man, which is what drag is really about). I think it is barely possible that I could convince a new acquaintance that I was a man if I were in costume when we met, but I would have to work very hard. Even then I doubt I could engage someone in a lengthy conversation without eventually giving myself away. The fact that transgendered people can keep up their “act” so much better than I can indicates to me that what they are doing is not an act.
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Usually. Not always. And it’s the “not always” folks who are our concern here.
I think it should be obvious that many gender traits have nothing to do with biology at all. “Only women wear dresses” is a purely social convention. It is conceivable that some gender traits might be in some way influenced by biological characteristics, but I am sure that none of these have anything to do with a person’s genitals and that few, if any, have to do with a person’s chromosomal pattern. It seems to me that a likely explanation would be something like “People with brain structure A are likely to display behavioral characteristic B. Brain structure A is more common in females than males, so behavioral characteristic B is socially considered to be a feminine trait”.
The point is, “I am a girl” != “I have such and such genitals.” As you say, genitals are objective, but womanhood is a matter that combines physical facts, identity, and social convention in such a way that there are lots of different ways one can be a woman. It is simply not as simple as you are making it out (wanting it?) to be.
WRT your last sentence, just because you fail to understand it doesn’t mean people are out to make it difficult for you. God knows trans people would find it easier to live if they could explain it in a way everyone could understand, but just because everyone doesn’t understand mean that they are deliberately obfuscating. I learned long ago that you can’t explain everything to everybody.
No I will not admit that, because it is false both literally and in all its implications.
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Brandon Teena never “dressed up to try to convince people” that he was a biological male who identified as a woman, so if that was the impression you got you were simply wrong and it had nothing to do with anything Brandon Teena ever did or how well he did it. You were wrong. You’ve been wrong about a lot of things here. Maybe you need a little practice in admitting that.
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I think I said very clearly that there is a possibility that gender identity may in some way be influenced by biological factors. This should be perfectly understandable to anyone who does not foolishly insist upon reducing everything in life to a binary system.
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Wrong again, unless you have some proof that Brandon Teena ever said at any point in his tragically short life “I am a biological male with a normal set of male genitalia and an XY set of chromosomes”, or that Gwen/Lida Araujo ever said at any point in her tragically short life “I am a biological female with a normal set of female genitalia and an XX set of chromosomes”. I bet you don’t. In the case of Brandon Teena I’m sure you don’t.
Guin, Brandon Teena’s legal name was Teena Brandon. He never actually used “Teena” as his surname during his life, but he did often use “Brandon” as his first name and has been commonly known as “Brandon Teena” since his death.
Interesting backpeddaling you are doing there. On the previous page you agreed that you would be a man even regardless of the presence or absence of testicles and a penis.
What the? Am I the only one completely floored by this claim? So in 14th century Britain, if someone had grown up as a boy, was big, strong, had no breasts, had a penis, but had no beard, he was considered to be a woman? And vice versa? So at some point in their teens, when it was clear that young John was growing no beard, they started referring to him as Jane and made him wear a dress?
I can’t help but think that you’re somehow overstating this situation.
Not that it doesn’t make an interesting hypothetical, but I just can not believe that you’re accurately describing Britain seven hundred years ago…
A few other thoughts:
(1) This shouldn’t need restating, but it seems that it does… to those of you who are members of groups who are misunderstood and victimized with some frequency, please don’t assume that SDMB posters who disagree with you, argue with you, question you, or even say things that you find deeply insulting, are people who would either perpetrate acts of violence against you for who you are, or sit by idly while such acts are perpetrated. There’s a repeated pattern of conversation that goes something like this:
A: I am someone who gets sexual gratification from getting my hair cut.
B: I have never met someone of that sort. I am basically open minded and curious, but perhaps I don’t express that perfectly and let some stereotypical anti-barbersexual lingo slip into my post.
A: It’s close minded bigots like you who killed martyr-to-the-barbersexual-cause
As a basically liberal and open minded person myself who has led a relatively sheltered life, nothing makes me less eager to have my horizons expanded than being yelled at and called a bigot. Not that it’s your responsibiltity to open my mind. On the other hand, if your’e not going to open the minds of the liberal-open-minded-but-as-of-yet-ignorant segments of middle America, who is?
Similarly…
A: If I had sex with a person and then found out they were not the biological sex I thought they were, I would be very upset. I’m not quite sure how I would react… I certainly wouldn’t kill that person, but might get somewhat violent.
B: *&^%$#@! MURDERING THUG! YOU SHOULD BE LOCKED UP.
is hardly fair or productive either. Person A certainly isn’t saying that violence would be right or justified, or that they’re happy or comfortable that that would be their reaction. Nor, for that matter, are they even certain that their reaction would be violence. And how many people are so perfect that they would never, in any situation, use violence and then regret it?
(Note: I’m not trying to be an apologist for Shodan who, while raising some interesting points, has done so with some horrificly, inexcusably insensitive choice of words…)
(2) If nothing else, the moral of this thread seems to be the inadequacy of the English language, and the world-image that it leads to, for describing complex situations of race and gender, leading to seeming paradoxes in which KellyM says that KellyM is a woman, and Shodan says that KellyM is not a woman, and I don’t think that either one of them is wrong. The problem is that the word “woman” does not have a precise and unambiguous definition. That said, I absolutely respect KellyM’s right to identify and live her life as she sees fit. (I’m sure transsexuals everywhere will sleep safer tonight knowing that they have my approbation )
I think this is the kind of thing most of us (okay, at least I) have a problem with. Shodan, it’s not so much your arguing about how to define male and female, but more about your absolute lack of respect for transsexuals and transgendered people (I have to admit, I didn’t entirely understand the explanation of the difference).
I think you need to recognize that these are real issues that real people deal with, and not just “mind-games”. They are not games. It is reality.
It is also important to note when one wants to discredit the entire phenomenon of transsexuality that, as far as I remember, it has been going on pretty much since the dawn of mankind. This is an established phenomenon, and I think it would help the debate a lot if you recognized that.
Re-“This Week”
As the gay and lesbian Dopers can attest, realization of sexual orientation is not usually a sudden revelation. Admitting and acting on these feelings also tends to be a gradual process. At least one gay Doper(sorry, I’m terrible with names) got married and had a son before realizing that he was gay. Gwen’s clothing and actions are inconsistent because she was learning who she was and how to live as that person.
Shodan, until you retract your claim that I am a liar, I shall have no intention of discussing these matters with you further. I consider honesty to be a prime virtue and any accusation that I am not being honest (which you have done when you claim that I am practicing deception) is a grave insult not to be forgiven easily.
Polycarp, an example of a nontranssexual transgender would be RuPaul. RuPaul has no intention of obtaining a reassignment and does not live his life substantially as a woman. Other examples include transvestitic fetishists (men who wear women’s clothes solely for sexual reasons) and a variety of other things. The term “transgender” is a mixed bag of different groups, many of which really have little in common with one another. I rather dislike the term, but it seems to have stuck.
MaxTheVool:
Yes, it is hard to believe, but only because it’s so far outside of our experience. And your intuition is correct, my description was not an accurate description of the 1400’s – my confusion, as it’s something I came across while studying Chaucer-- by then the situation had changed dramatically due to exotic influences, although there were vestigial traces of that way of thinking:
Also many references in early lit. to young men as “meer girles.”
Nope. First you said gender wasn’t a biological construct, then you said it was influenced by biology. A contradiction.
No, it is quite literally true that it was difficult to tell what sex Eddie/Gwen was, and that this was his/her intent. Even people he had sex with didn’t know.
The guys he had sex with seemed to have gotten the idea from somewhere, and their subsequent actions certainly show that they would not have had sex with him if they knew he was a biological and physical male.
dorkusmalorkus - back pedalling how? Eddie A. had male genes and male genitals - therefore male. Losing one expression of his male genes - a penis - does not affect the maleness of his genes.
KellyM - no one called you a liar. I said Eddie Araujo was being deceptive by presenting himself as if he were female and having sex with unconsenting males under that pretense.
The point is, such a statement deprives the terms “girl” or “male” or “female” of any meaning at all. If a “woman” can have a penis or] a vagina, and can have XX or XY chromosomes, then in saying so-and-so is a woman, you haven’t succeeded in saying anything at all. And in saying “I am a woman - have sex with me” you are being deceptive.
It would be like saying so-and-so is a midget, who is six feet tall. What meaning does the word “midget” hold in that sentence?
You cannot assign arbitrary meanings to words, and then act the injured innocent when you are misunderstood.
You want to say that you are gay, or bisexual, or a transvestite, or a bottom, or something like that, things are fine, because these words have clearly understood meanings. If you start saying “gay” really means “trumpet player”, don’t get upset when you ask someone if you can toot their horn, and they misunderstand.
Shodan, you are calling me a liar when you claimed that any pre-operative male-to-female transsexual who calls herself a woman is “acting deceptively”. There was nothing about “have sex with me” in your previous statement.
I continue to take offense at the original insult and take added offense at your attempts to wiggle out of it.
And you can stuff your “regards” back up the orifice out of which they spewed.
Lamia, I think there is such a thing as “biological gender” – it’s just that the coupling between genotype and biological gender is not perfect.
Biological gender is not necessarily coupled with social gender, either, although when the coupling is poor the individual in question usually suffers distress. Social gender is entirely a social construct, while biological gender appears to be an inherent neuroanatomical concept established sometime before birth.
I see the statements that Shodan labeled a contradiction rather as an equivocation on the term “gender”; in one case it was used to refer to social gender while in the other it was used to refer to biological gender. Ambiguous use of language often leads to apparent contradiction.
No, it deprives them of a static meaning that applies to everyone everywhere under every circumstance. Indeterminacy != meaninglessness. This is nothing either new or particularly complex.
Well, actually, dickhead, I’d be thinking that for most fucking sane people, the “fact” (as presented in this thread) that male isn’t necessarily male and female ain’t necessarily female is kind of, well… lacking.
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