Gender identity is not - over rated - ** Arwin** you jackass.
We had a lot of multi-training as well - boys cooked, too, girls also knew how to change a tire and our oil. None of that made us more or less willing to “live with” the bodies we had.
That’s like saying “blondness” is overrated and you should counsel a friend against it before they go ‘ruin’ their hair permanently by pouring whatever the equivalent of 15th century chemicals for hair bleaching were over their head.
There are different degrees of trans-ness - some folks it is just another means of escape or being different, yes, as problem avoidance, but other people really are pretty much stuck in the wrong body and self.
I’m with Arwin. This is not to disrespect transgendered people nor deny them the right to hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery and so forth; nor is it to disrespect people who have a strong gender identity that coincides with their body.
But I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the sentences “I feel like a man” and “I feel like a woman”. I think gender is one of the things that are extremely hyped by our society and culture. I truly believe that I would be happy in either kind of body (of course, that is impossible to prove). Just the other day I said to my ex that maybe I should switch sex. Her response was the obvious one that they don’t let people who say “hey, maybe I should switch sex” one evening at the age of 27 actually do so.
Now, Arwin expressed himself clumsily, I admit. He should have chosen other words. But what he said is not bullshit, not even applesauce.
I know that Eve and the other transgendered persons of this board and elsewhere have had extremely strong experiences indicating the exact opposite of what I’m saying. I accept that you have strong gender identities, but you’ll have to accept that I do not.
I guess I’m confused why the OP had to go into the Pit rather than simply placing a point-by-point deconstruction of Arwin’s post in that thread. I didn’t see Arwin making any snide references or stupid jokes about people or taking the “you people are just messed up” and “the medical community is just feeding into your fantasies” approach that previous clowns have done.
It looked to me as though he just needs a bit more education on the topic, so that he does not confuse an ability for an 11 year old boy to play with dolls with the actual issues of “in the wrong body.”
I’m a man, and I live in a male body, and it’s never been an issue. But if I woke up tomorrow morning to find that my male-bodiedness had all been a dream, would I long to get back into my male body, or would I say “Huh, I guess I’m a woman” and start playing that role?
I honestly don’t know, and I never will know. But I suspect Priceguy is right, and some people have a strong mental gender identity, while others don’t. However, I couldn’t begin to speculate about why this should be so.
Christ, didn’t we rehash all this stuff last month? Now I gotta listen to a bunch of self-appointed experts who do not know whereof they speak tell me I’m a deluded drag queen again?
Why don’t you leave us the fuck alone alone and go try to make gay people straight with aversion therapy, shock treatments and lobotomies?
This is the kind of damaging, inaccurate crap all transgendered people have to spend most of our lives hearing from non-transgendered “friends,” family, doctors, psychiatrists and people on message boards. Try telling a gay man, “I think sexual attraction is one of the things that are extremely hyped by our society and culture. Just the other day I said to my ex that maybe I should start falling in love with other men.”
I’m outta here, let the younger kids fight the fight. I’ve been listening to this shit for 48 years—fighting ignorance for longer than Cecil, a and I am just fucking sick and tired of it. S’long, have fun, think whatever the hell you want, I don’t care anymore.
I do think sexual attraction is one of the things that are extremely hyped by our society and culture, which is more or less a subsection of gender being so hyped. I don’t understand monosexuality either.
Now, I made it clear, but wish to do so again, that I understand that this view of mine is subjective. Your subjective experience is completely different, and I respect that, and I support your (and every other transgendered person’s) right to whatever treatment you deem necessary. I’m just puzzled as to why you cannot respect that my experience is different from yours. I do not think you’re deluded, I do not think you’re wrong. I don’t understand, but I realize that my lack of understanding lies with me, not you. Why can you not say the same thing?
Ya know, Eve, if these threads piss you off so much, stop reading them. And frankly, I could do without the “I’m finished with this topic” post from you every time this comes up.
It would be nice (oh so nice) if people would stop assuming that everyone else is like them.
That one person has a strong gender identity does not mean that everyone else does, too. And that one person does not have a gender identity does not mean that everyone who claims to is deluded or indoctrinated or whatever.
I don’t know what you mean by this question. “Man” and “Woman” denote, among other things, different modes of participation in society. I’m not going to sit here and give examples of something completely obvious just to have some smartass come along and pick them apart out of context.
No to make too weird a hijack or trivialize the subject, but it’s not unusual (or particularly impolite) for people to say “I don’t get it” re various impulses and feelings that others might have that are utterly foreign to them.
As an example, I’ve struggled with weight issues most of my life, and part of the reason it’s difficult for me to control my intake is that my physical “appetite” is subordinate, in some odd intermingled way, to my mental appetite. I will eat just for the pleasurable sensation of eating well beyond hunger.
Some people I’ve explained this to, look at me like I’m from Pluto when I try to tell them how my physcial and mental appetite(s) are two distinct entities.
“What do you mean? Just stop eating when you’re not hungry anymore!” .
The impulse to eat when you’re not physically “hungry” is totally foreign to them physically and mentally. They just don’t “get it” and they never will, not because they’re stupid, but because it’s so far out of their personal context.
If someone describes the “woman in a man’s body” (or vice versa) mental state, to be honest I have no way to access that. I can be sympathetic and supportive but I won’t pretend that I really “get it”, because I don’t. But I’m also not going to tell them that they really shouldn’t cut off their testicles, start hormone therapy and get implants, because they’re confused or impulsive, and a little decent counseling would get them to accept themselves “as is” ,anymore than I would just tell an overweight person that “lack of willpower” is the reason they’re fat.
People live in very different mental spaces re individual mind-body connections in gender, in appetite and variety of other ways. I think we need to respect those differences instead of telling them it’s really not that big a deal.
One reason for this might be that you have to confront this less intensively as a non-trans person than you would have to if you were trans or genderqueer.
Because statements like the one she’s talking about have a direct bearing on her life, as a transsexual woman. It’s not just a difference of taste or of trivial personal experience: people constantly feel free to discuss and question the legitimacy of trans people’s identities, imposing their worldview on the trans people, taking no account of their experience or their perspective. I have to deal with the same thing as a Queer person, and I imagine that it’s even more tedious than that.
In Eve’s defense, she might (like many other long-time posters) do a vanity search for her name at soon as she logs on. Eve’s name was mentioned in PriceGuy’s first post and would have drawn her to this thread. Having previously responded to the poster (Arwin) being pitted, it would have taken a lot of resistance (for me at least, in the same situation) to *not * open this thread.
It’s not Eve’s job to educate everybody about transgender issues, it’s her job to live her own life.
Eve, if you’re still reading, I apologize for speaking for you. And also if you are not still reading.