Examples have provided in this thread of this, but they’ve been dismissed as one-offs.
If Joe Biden were to come out as a woman right after being elected, do you think this would be a sucess for women? Or a success for trans rights? You don’t have to tell me that the likelihood of this happening is super tiny, because I know it is. But just imagine it for a second. Do you think most women (especially women who are Hillary Clinton’s age) would be overjoyed by a male-presenting individual claiming the title of “first woman president” without having to overcome any of the hurdles that female-presenting individuals in politics have had to deal with (like having people question your intellect, credentials, and temperment every time you open your mouth)?
Is this really that hard to understand? I don’t think it is.
As I said previously in this thread, it’s only a problem if we give hormones and surgeries to kids who would have been happier without them. Or if we treat these kids in ways that reduce the chances of the dysphoria resolving naturally, eg by giving them puberty blockers. My view is that a lot of this is a societal problem: being too rigid with gender roles, and homophobia that makes it really hard for gender non-conforming kids to be themselves. Living in the opposite gender role allows them to escape all this disapproval and fully express themselves.
@monstro, I want to thank you for posting in this thread. You’ve expressed stuff I was thinking so much better than I could have myself, and also given me new ideas, as has YWTF and some others. (Although he probably won’t want me to thank him for it, @Riemann has convinced me that I don’t believe gender identity determines sex, and I never really did.)
I also wanted to say that I hope your medical treatment goes okay and you don’t have any further problems.
It’s not if you read some accounts. The existence of transgender people needn’t threaten traditional gender roles in the way that homosexuality does. See Iran’s state policy of providing free SRS surgery to gays and lesbians as an example.
ETA: Internalised homophobia can also play a part.
Still using ambiguous and nonstandard terminology. Sex is assigned at birth, gender identity is not something that is assigned, it is an internal sense of self that is discovered. (Gender reassignment surgery has sometimes been used as synonymous with sex reassignment surgery, sometimes part of transition.)
Once again, it behooves you to spend at least half an hour educating yourself if you expect to have a coherent discussion.
You don’t have to reject anything, because gender identity explicity does not mean girly parts.
The modern view of gender is that someone’s gender identity is what determines whether we treat someone as a person as a man or a woman. If you insist that what’s between someone’s legs defines whether they are a woman, that is by definition transphobic.
We are sometimes nevertheless dealing with purely physiological aspects, so of course we need to find appropriate vocabulary to describe what’s important. And in some cases, nothing is perfect, because our legacy vocabulary just isn’t up the task. I agree that “Female Health Center” seems better than “Women’s Health Center”. The objective in the vocabulary would be to avoid exclusion, to try to minimize any implication that male/female aspects of physiology override gender identity in the way we recognize some in a broader social sense as a man or a woman. And the sensitivity here is not just pedantry - it’s obviously because trans people have been historically subject to exclusion and persecution.
You may not be able to relate to it, but that doesn’t make it perverse.
Like JK Rowling, I can totally seeing myself escape “womanhood” if I were 13-year-old today. When I was that age I secretly hated my breasts. I hated my hips. I hated periods. I hated things associated with my gender–the clothes, the hair, the emphasis on beauty and cuteness. I hated that my “nerdiness” wasn’t appreciated the same way that boy nerdiness was. In 1992 I didn’t know about the nonbinary identity. If I had, I can totally see myself latching on to it. The fact that I’m asexual would have made that identity “sensical” to me.
So we’ll have to see how many of these nonbinary females will stick with that gender identity throughout their lifespan. I’m guessing a significant number of them will realize that “woman” doesn’t mean the horrible things they thought it meant and drop the “nonbinary” stuff. Others might realize that going by “nonbinary” doesn’t spare them from the troubles that come from inhabiting a female body and that “woman” is a more apt political descriptor even though their self-identity might be something else (like how Tiger Woods views himself racially).
I don’t think talking about the possibility that young people might be choosing gender identities to escape unpleasant social realities is perverse. But I do know it’s perverse to shoot down that possibility just because it makes you uncomfortable.
And I didn’t intend to imply the kids are pretending, either. Just that it’s a heck of a lot easier to make your mind up about your gender when there isn’t so much pressure to conform to expectations that you really can’t meet.
Exactly. Someone can be sincere in thinking they are X but think that for the wrong reasons. Just like someone can sincerely believe they are straight or gay but be guided by incorrect assumptions.
I think girls are especially vulnerable to self-hatred. Internalized misogyny is a real thing.
This fantasy scenario is not hard to understand. But is it the correct question?
We could imagine the U.S., for example, going down several different paths in the next 20 years. Imagine a future U.S. society in which it is plausible that a transgender person could be elected president, compared to one in which it is not. In which of those two societies would you predict that there has been greater progress in women’s rights? In which of those societies would you predict that a cis woman is more likely to be elected president?
You seem to have a model where there’s some finite amount of social progress to dole out, and anything trans people get is taken away from cis women. All the evidence I can see is that’s the wrong model.
Wait, I’m not going to answer your question until you answer mine. If Joe Biden (or name any male political candidate you want) came out as “woman”, do you think women would feel like we got a “win”? Or do you think trans folks would feel like they got the “win”? I’m not interested in whether you understand my point. I want you to answer the question.
Here’s another example that’s more realistic:
If we compare the number of women in computer science today to the women in computer science from 20 years ago, and we find that the number has increased by 50%, but 90% of this increase is being driven by the inclusion of transwomen in the “woman” category, do you think women in general would be overjoyed by this finding? Or would only transwomen really see it as a “win”?
You may not think that “wins” like this matter but they do. They are concrete ways of assessing progress and success.
I can’t tell you how other people would feel. But I can tell you that I think progressives should be celebrating all social progress, not seeing it as some kind of zero-sum competition among historically marginalized groups.
It’s not perverse because it makes me “uncomfortable,” it’s perverse because it downplays the level of social oppression trans people face daily just by existing.
I don’t think that’s “all lives matter” at all. I think it’s a trick gotcha what-if question, and I think those are supremely unhelpful when trans people are in reality (not what-if, in reality) suffering high rates of murder, suicide, and other forms of violence.
If we could knock it off with the “What if Biden is trans?” kinds of questions, I genuinely think it’ll help us focus on reality.
I, personally, wouldn’t call your Biden scenario a “win” for anybody but Biden. Either of those groups claiming “victory” would be… bullshit.
My confusion for the second issue is… How many trans-folks, as a percentage of the population are there? I have always been under the impression that it is really a very small number, but they are still deserving of respect…
Is believing some people settle on a sexuality identity based on faulty assumptions also perverse? Or is gender identity the only one out of all the identities that is 100% infallible?
Do you think this person’s story is perverse? Or do you think there’s some room in the discourse for folks like him to voice their concerns?
This is one of those things that I really sympathethize with parents on. If a parent has a kid who has been sexually abused and the kid comes out as the opposite gender, do you fully embrace that without question? Do you give them support but have them talk things out with a therapist just to be sure? I mean, I think I’d be progressive enough to say “you do you boo”, but I know deep down I would be concerned that the new gender identity is a coping mechanism and that we were in store for unnecessary headcache and regret before everything was all said and down. I wouldn’t tell them this, but I would be thinking it. And I would be at a loss about what to do for them medically. I don’t think this is “perverse”.
These answers may be clear-cut for you, but I can understand why they aren’t for someone else.
Apparently it really is that hard to understand. There’s none so blind as those who are afraid of somehow saying the wrong thing.
It’s not a completely implausible situation. Most of the trans women I know are members of a hobby/group that is so male dominated there are more trans women than cis ones. (Also vastly more gay men than straight ones.)