# Transgender for everyone **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 8, 2025, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523 "2025-12-08T17:34:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/121 "2026-05-30T12:39:36Z")
It’s medically necessary in unexpected-to-laypeople ways. A friend knows someone who had a perforated colon during a routine colonoscopy because the doctor didn’t know the patient was afab, and had a colon shaped more like a typical woman’s colon than a typical man’s colon. Now, obviously the doctor messed up, because there are a lot of reasons to have a non-typical body part and people doing medical procedures should be aware of that. But all new medical providers now ask me what sex i was assigned at birth, what my gender is, and what my pronouns are. And that seems like a good thing. I think a lot of the tension is between people who really want the world to be packaged into neat little boxes, and people who don’t fit those neat little boxes. Nothing in the real world is as simple as i was taught it is. It’s hard to define a species. Newton’s laws don’t quite work. Hey, it turns out that sex is complicated, too, and the approximations that work for most humans (born with a penis means XY means…) don’t actually work for everyone. But i love what you said about the value of letting teenagers try on various identities. Professional, sexual, etc. Yes, teenagers light to be experimenting, and learning who they are. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/122 "2026-05-30T14:11:04Z")
I’ll bet you, though, that there are some people out there who were assigned male at birth, and have (and have always had) a penis, and so on, and who have always thought of themselves as male, who have a “female-shaped colon”. And vice-versa. I’d expect that everyone has some biological trait or another that’s more typical of the opposite sex, even if they don’t know it. It’s not every individual’s responsibility to know their chromosomal sex, and their hormonal sex, and their colonic sex, and all of their other medical traits. Most of us don’t even have any way of knowing most of those details. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/123 "2026-05-30T14:17:28Z")
I think the issue was that there used to be a uterus there, and my guess is that most adults know whether or not they have a uterus. They asked me if i had had my uterus removed before the colonoscopy, they may not have thought to ask a guy that question. But yes, there are lots of irregularities in human bodies ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/124 "2026-05-30T14:22:42Z")
> Transgender for everyone ~~“I love the ignorant.” ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/125 "2026-05-30T17:53:11Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > But i love what you said about the value of letting teenagers try on various identities. Professional, sexual, etc. Yes, teenagers light to be experimenting, and learning who they are. My oldest daughter was, and still is I think. I think she’s still figuring out who she is and I’ve made sure I don’t care what she figures out, I love and support her regardless. I don’t think there’s anything special about that; all parents should be like that. That should be normal. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/126 "2026-05-30T17:54:14Z")
Nearly 6 months after this thread started and I still haven’t got my DOGE check, my tariff check, or my transgender. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2026, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/127 "2026-05-30T23:58:18Z")
Promises made, promises broken. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2026, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/128 "2026-06-01T15:30:45Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Newton’s laws don’t quite work. Newton’s laws absolutely always work. Physics details: > **** > > First Law: an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays at the same velocity, unless acted on by a force. This is always true, and also a special case of the Second Law. > > Second Law: the time rate of change of an object’s momentum is equal to the net force on it. Always true. Perhaps what you were thinking of force is mass times acceleration, but that is a special case that is not generally true. > > Third Law: every force has an equal and opposite reactive force. This is conservation of momentum, and is always true where there is translational symmetry. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2026, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/129 "2026-06-01T15:59:14Z")
Not quite. The first law is that an object retains its velocity unless acted on by a force, in an inertial reference frame. Functionally, it’s a definition of “inertial reference frame”, which is in turn also required for the second law. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2026, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/130 "2026-06-01T18:10:41Z")
Yeah. _“Don’t quite work”_, in the context of Newtonian dynamics, is short for _“are generally expressed in a simplified form that is not adequate to describe many phenomena involving quantum mechanics or general relativity”_. Just like strict binary-sex categorizations such as _“Males have XY chromosomes and sperm-producing testes and a penis”_ etc. etc. etc. are not adequate to describe the sexual physiology of some individuals. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/131 "2026-06-02T05:00:51Z")
Yes, both are excellent approximations of the world, if you ignore some of the complicated details. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/132 "2026-06-02T23:04:27Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I think a lot of the tension is between people who really want the world to be packaged into neat little boxes, and people who don’t fit those neat little boxes. [Essentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism) is a closely related belief; the idea that everything (especially living things) has some immutable essence that cannot be changed. So you are not only born into the male or female (and human ) box, it’s inherently impossible to _change_ that. There’s a big overlap between creationism and transphobia because both evolution and gender transition violate [biological and gender essentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism#Biological_essentialism). It’s one reason why you get people insisting that somebody who looks, dresses and acts completely feminine is “really a man”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/133 "2026-06-02T23:11:11Z")
What people miss, though, is that if gender is some essential, unchangeable thing, then it’s also unchangeable by the obstetrician who delivers a baby, and it’s quite possible for that doctor to mistakenly assign a baby a different gender than their fundamental one. Clearly, essential gender can’t be determined just by anatomy, because anatomy is changeable. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2026, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523/134 "2026-06-03T00:42:34Z")
Well, yes. The thing about the whole essentialism concept is that it not only tends to fall apart if you think about it too hard (much less what evidence does to it), but it often doesn’t even really do what its proponents want. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-for-everyone/1025523.md?page=6)