Here’s a post I found linked on one of the Reddit transgender forums, for the benefit of people questioning whether they might be transgender. Anyone else think this sort of thing might just possibly lead to people wrongly diagnosing themselves?
“That was dysphoria?” 8 signs and symptoms of indirect gender dysphoria
1. Continual difficulty with simply getting through the day 2. A sense of misalignment, disconnect, or estrangement from your own emotions. 3. A feeling of just going through the motions in everyday life, as if you’re always reading from a script. 4. A seeming pointlessness to your life, and no sense of any real meaning or ultimate purpose. 5. Knowing you’re somehow different from everyone else, and wishing you could be normal like them. 6. A notable escalation in the severity of these symptoms during puberty. 7. Attempting to fix this on your own through various coping mechanisms. 8. Substantial resolution of these symptoms in a very obvious way upon transitioning, particularly upon initiating HRT.
My problem with it is that it robs us of the ability to talk about “women’s issues” without sounding like an absolute moron. What are “women’s issues” if women are people who say they are a woman or could one day say they are women? Why should women be treated as a cohesive group in a political, social, or biological sense, if “woman” encapsulates the full spectrum of humanity?
To me, if a gender class doesn’t encircle a politically, socially, and/or biologically cohensive group, then it’s not a real gender class. It’s some other thing, like maybe a Myers-Brigg type or something. But it’s not a group that is worth caring about or talking about. That is definitely problematic.
Except that this is not what I meant. I take care with my writing – if I had meant trans woman, I would have said trans woman. I didn’t mean trans woman – I meant trans person, and so I wrote trans person. I have indeed read accounts from both trans men and trans women that discuss all those kinds of incidents of brutality.
Based on this and a few other posts, it seems you’ve come to the opinion that I’m a dishonest writer. That’s a great shame – I’m a huge fan of you as a poster and this cuts me. But I’ll just kindly ask that you pretend to believe that I really believe what I’m writing, and if I say I meant trans person and not trans woman, then please try to pretend that you believe I’m telling the truth.
Did you mean to quote a different post of mine? Nothing you wrote here addresses the question you quoted.
You don’t need to be talking about a trans person to do that, you know. Tons of cisgender women have been telling JK Rowling that she doesn’t speak for their gender for a couple weeks now.
Anyway, the “speak for women” thing is a bit overblown, don’t you think? How many trans people out there are positioning themselves as authorities on being women? At most, you have people lobbying to include, “born male, then transitioned,” as an authentic experience held by a small minority of women.
No, I don’t grok that at all. I don’t think it’s remotely true. I don’t think there is any significant population of people who were content and comfortable in their male identity, who suddenly got up one day and decided that they’re actually women.
Accepting someone else’s experience as valid doesn’t require invalidating any part of your own experience.
I’ve said, repeatedly, that I’m okay with calling out dishonest people, and with gatekeeping when there’s genuine safety issues at play, so I don’t know why you keep bringing this up to me.
Miller, do you accept what the ex-gay’s say about their identity? They say sexual orientation can be changed, does that require us all to accept it as true?
The “hopelessly circular” thing doesn’t bother me.
Of course it doesn’t! You’re a man. The Orwellian prospect of “woman” becoming an identity that has been appropriated by opportunistic predators is something that wouldn’t affect you. But it would most certainly affect me and all my female loved ones, including my daughters. It’s not your rights or existence on the line, so congratulations. You have the privilege of pondering this like it’s a theoretical exercise.
Like, it is seriously bugging me that this even needs to be explained.
If someone has a sense of what being a woman (or man) is, and they feel they match that, there’s just no percentage in my deciding to argue with them on the subject. Gender is weird, and complicated, and it’s not my role to say, “EXCUSE ME WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘WOMAN’ SO THAT I CAN EVALUATE WHETHER YOU MATCH IT AND ALSO WHETHER IT IS BASED ON STEREOTYPES.” I’m gonna take them at their word.
False dichotomy. If a male calls themself a woman, it would not be worth my time or energy to try arguing them out of that position. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to meekly swallow “ trans women are women” without any skepticism or pushback. When it’s shoved down my throat, I’m biting the hand feeding me.
Not only is it a cultish thing to say, its illogical when you look at it rationally. Trans women are males, by definition. Women are females, by definition. There is no definition of “woman” that allows someone with a male reproductive system to qualify as a woman. These are irreconcilable states of being and as a scientist, I resent the fact that kids are being taught the gender equivalent to flat earthism.
Not about that, I haven’t been. I replied to you twice today before that last post. The first post, I questioned your assertion that we haven’t done any work remove male-gendered idioms from the language. The second post, I explained a few scenarios in which a person might be sincerely, persistently trans, but be unable to publicly present their actual gender identity.
Except that this is not what I meant. I take care with my writing – if I had meant trans woman, I would have said trans woman. I didn’t mean trans woman – I meant trans person, and so I wrote trans person. I have indeed read accounts from both trans men and trans women that discuss all those kinds of incidents of brutality.
Trans men are not being stomped by cops or beaten by their dads. And they aren’t at elevated risk of prison rape; they tend to be housed with women. These are examples of violence that disproportionately affect males.
What trans men complain about is being seen and treated as a female despite their male identification. Surprisingly (or not), they have same exact same woes that women do. Being sexually objectified, talked down to, and ignored. As if they aren’t even the subject of the conversation when they actually are. That’s the irony I want you to see and consider.
I don’t think you’re being dishonest. I think you’re so blinded by your own biases that even when they are pointed out, you can’t even see it. Sorry if this is hurtful to hear from me, but I respect you enough not to lie.
Breonna Taylor was also killed by a cop. That doesn’t make this an example of femicide. So unless you can establish Dade was killed specifically for being a trans man, you’re just throwing up smoke.
According to my reading, trans men do in fact face significant violence, and apparently this is not nearly as widely known as violence against trans women:
"That study shows that transmasculine individuals were actually more likely to be victims of childhood sexual assault, adult sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking than were transfeminine individuals (as shown in the chart below).
The only category in which trans women were more likely to be victimized was by hate violence, and even there the difference was small: 30 percent of trans women reported having experienced hate violence, compared to 29 percent of trans men."
The subreddit r/FtM is riddled with accounts from transmen about being abused by their parents (and sometimes others).
So yes, some trans men (or boys) have been beaten by their dads, and worse. And it doesn’t appear that this is as widely acknowledged as it ought to be.
The ones who don’t believe dysphoria is necessary to be trans are called ‘tucutes’. There’s some kind of big split on the internet between them and the ‘truscum’ who are the ones who think medically transitioning is necessary.
Violence against transmasculine folks is an issue that is currently very much underdiscussed. Part of this invisibility problem stems from the current focus on just one aspect of violence against trans people: hate violence that results in death. But there are other kinds of violence we need to be taking into account to get a full picture, including sexual assault, domestic violelnce, and stalking.
There’s another group of people who complain about the same phenomenon. I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
For some transgender people, the difference between the gender they are thought to be at birth and the gender they know themselves to be can lead to serious emotional distress that affects their health and everyday lives if not addressed. Gender dysphoria is the medical diagnosis for someone who experiences this distress.
Not all transgender people have gender dysphoria. On its own, being transgender is not considered a medical condition. Many transgender people do not experience serious anxiety or stress associated with the difference between their gender identity and their gender of birth, and so may not have gender dysphoria.