Gender identity - is it even a debate at all?

Great Debates
1

A tangent from certain posts in this thread.

I don’t see how there could be a debate as to whether transsexuals are really the gender they identify as or the gender corresponding to their birth sex. Some cisgendered people have a habit of insisting the latter, especially for transwomen. How can the cisgendered possibly make that statement, given that they have never been transgender and will never understand what it’s like?

If a person is born with a penis, does that make them a man? My personal favorite analogy for that is, if someone is born with a cleft palette, does that make them a camel. If you were born with a cleft palette, I, as someone who was not, am still not going to insist that you are a camel unless you tell me that you feel you are one.*

Aren’t people entitled to define themselves and not be limited by what others think?

Aside from all that is the issue of simply treating people with respect. An MtF who goes and spends $29,000** on psychologist sessions, hormone therapy, endocrinologist visits, laser and/or electrolysis, and surgery isn’t doing it so that she can go around being referred to as a man. If that’s what she wanted she wouldn’t have had to do anything. Also, for many the main driving force behind transition is an intense dislike for the characteristics of their birth sex. Referring to a transitioned person as their birth sex feels as insulting as calling them a cockroach covered in slime. This is not a slight to the other gender, merely a reflection of the deep psychological struggles these people suffer through for decades before seeking treatment.

So is it really so difficult to say, “I hear you saying that you identify as a man/woman so I believe you, I will consider the idea that you really are such, and I will respect your desire to be treated as such”?

*(Incidentally, there are people who identify as trans-species - I know of such a person in real life, I used to work with him, but that’s a whole nother topic for a different thread.)

**(I’m sure some spend three times that.)

2

We’re not trying to say what it’s like, we’re saying what it is. I am not a ball of plasma thousands of miles across, but that doesn’t stop me knowing the attributes of a star.

Being a man that thinks he’s a woman doesn’t make him a woman. Neither does being a man altered with surgery and hormones to approximate the form of a woman.

I think it’s perfectly relevant. Otherkin and furries are just a more obvious example of the same absurdity. Thinking you’re a wolf doesn’t make you a wolf, it makes you a sufferer of dysmorphia if you want to be diplomatic, or a delusional idiot if you don’t.

You’re free to define yourself as a table if you really want to, but you aren’t entitled to expect everybody else to respect your definition.

I’m sure there are religious people who feel just as insulted by the concept that we are decended from lower species. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

3

Wait. If someone told you they were a camel, then you would refer to them as a camel! I’m not sure I can buy that, or even see it as workable. If someone asks you if there are any people left in a room, and the only person in there was your camel-friend, you’d say “no, just one camel”? I mean, at somepoint, words are meant to convey information, and if you start calling people camels, the words “people” and “camel” kinda loose their usefulness.

I don’t really care about the trans-gendered thing. If someone wants to be refered to by pronouns of the other gender I don’t have any problem doing so. I don’t really understand the underlying psychology, but I don’t really have any problem flipping pronouns if that makes them happy.

4

Hell, yes, it’s difficult. Even men who already have all the biological equipment have to constantly earn the right to be treated like men.

5

Because being treated like a man is so much better than being treated like a woman?

6

I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go into equivalencies.

If gender is at all socially constructed, it’s not going to be a walk in the park asserting your gender without society’s approval.

7

Did you give your trans-species coworker a treat everyday for not going on the rug?

What is required in the way of respect and do the same rules apply to people who think they’re a different species? Clarification is needed.

8

I used to feel the same way you did. Then one day I was in a bookstore, and read the first chapter of a memoir of a MtF transgendered person. I will try to reconstruct it for you, in order to explain what changed my mind:

The author was explaining that when they were a child, even as young as 6, that they remember having a strong cognitive dissonances. For example, when their mother would talk about something that women did, the child unchoosingly identified those things as something that would apply to them someday. Similarly, when talking about men, the child felt as if their mother was talking about someone else. At this point, the author knew they were supposed to be a “boy,” but couldn’t help personally identifying with everything feminine, and viewing as foreign everything masculine. This was not a decision on the author’s part. It was just something that never made sense: why was everyone telling her she was a boy when it was clear to her that she was a girl?

The conclusion I came to was this: Trans-sexuality might be a mental illness*, but it sure-as-shit isn’t a choice. It’s like the author had a female brain in a male body. Therefore, it only makes sense to treat this person socially as a female. Calling a MtF transsexual a man would seem just as bizarre to them as if someone called me a woman. (I’m a cis-male). I mean, I wouldn’t be offended, but I would be confused. I move about in this world as a man, and there are a million little day-to-day (socially constructed) things I do that make me a man**, so how could the person not see that I’m a man? So, even if it were a mental illness*, it just seems so damn impolite to insist that such a person is their birth-gender, end of discussion.

I guess what I would say now is, yes, you are right that an MtF transgendered person is not a woman. But they also are not a man. In fact they are MtF transgendered, and what’s wrong with that? Of course, as our language has a binary-gendered pronoun system, I’m going to be polite and use “she/her.”

*I don’t actually promote this view, but for the sake of argument…
**Actually, I’m a bit androgynous

9

I treat men and women the same except when it comes time to decide who I want to have sex with. I’m not going to decide to have sex with a man just because he thinks he’s a woman.

When else do men and women justify different treatment so that a MtF would have trouble not being treated like a woman? How would she have to be treated differently than when she was a man?

10

Meh, there ain’t really men and woman in the world, just bitches and nonbitches.

11

Pronouns would be the obvious one. Other then that, I agree that I don’t really treat genders differently, so it doesn’t really make any difference to me what someone wants to consider themselves.

12

No you are not. What it is is a person whose mentality and body don’t agree. So we do what we can to make the two come to a compromise. That’s all. Maybe in a hundred years people will look at sexual reassignment surgery in horror but right now it’s a tool in the box and so we use it. You don’t have to date or have sex with a transgendered person but you sure can slap a smile on your face and address them with the pronouns they would prefer.

13

Hek, in a hundred years I can picture even homosexuality being weeded out by prenatal screening.

14

What a crass thing to say.

15

But having a brain like a woman does make you a woman; and transsexuals have brains that in some areas are the opposite of the gender of their body. Given that the brain is the center of identity, that makes them the gender they identify as.

If you took my brain and stuck it in a life support system, I’d be a disembodied male brain. If you put it in a female body, it would be a male brain in a female body. If you put it in a mare, it would be a human male brain in a female horse’s body. You are your brain.

16

I’m always kind of curious about the number of threads regarding trans-sexuals here. People make it seem like having to figure out how to deal with them is some frequent occurrence in their lives. And yet, despite living in several sizable cities, having both friends and family who are pretty liberal and opened minded about such things and moving around a lot over the last few years and meeting a lot of different people, I’ve never knowingly met a trans-sexual. Granted I obviously might have met hundreds who have had reassignment surgery (or are just really good at making themselves look the appropriate gender) and couldn’t be distinguished from a person who was born the gender they want to be, but either way, its pretty much a non-issue for me.

But again, the number of threads I see go through Great Debates kinda makes me wonder, are people having to deal with some huge number of situations where a hairy man in a dress insists on being called “she”?

17

I dunno, given advances in technology and static human attitudes, I can hardly see why extensive prenatal screening won’t be available and put to uses that, let’s be honest, a great many people want. If gender identity (to the extent that it varies from some boring hetero penis=man, vagina=woman) has a genetic component that can be tested for, there’s a fair amount of money to be made from people determined to ensure their children be “normal”, as God intended, such people having no sense of irony whatsoever.

18

Maybe. On the other hand, the same technology would allow homosexuals to reliably have homosexual children. So, the question is, would the homosexuals born to them, their sympathizers and the people who just don’t care outnumber the homosexuals eliminated by such a process.

19

Interesting question, and I expect a whole lot of howling by people seeking to ensure embryo selection is only for the “right” reasons.

20

Well why can’t someone be both? Why is it a black and white issue?
I’ve often wondered if many of the transgendered folks out there grew up in households with very strict gender roles, and that’s why they want to be the opposite sex.
I have to say I think it’s very common for folks to feel genderqueer. It’s just not talked about in society.
I’m a gay chick, and I gotta admit sometimes I wish I was a guy. Not in a penis envy sense, but more probaly b/c that’s who I am… I don’t exactly fit into strict binaries. (One obvious example is that I’m neither deaf nor hearing, but hard of hearing)
Maybe if more TG people understood that the binary classification system is bullshit, then the number of TG iidentfying people would go down. Granted I do think there are some TG people (due to chromosome abnormalities or sex reassignment surgery for hermaproditism)
I mean, up til I was seventeen I totally wanted to be hearing. I HATED being hoh, and hated my hearing aids. Then I had surgery to reconstruct my ear canals. It worked intially and then failed.
I remember back then I was DEVASTATED (to put it mildly)
But looking back, I realize that the desire to have surgery was b/c I hadn’t quite yet come to terms with being hoh.
Heck maybe my sometimes desire to be a guy is simply a reaction to growing up in a very Stepford town where superfical appearances were all that mattered. (it was very hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I’m gay to put it mildly)
How do we know that doesn’t happen a lot with TG folks?