Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.
Mostly I’m interested in what people are holding back.
The questions I’ve been asked IRL:
- why / how did you pick your name?
- how long have you known?
- how long before you are done transitioning?
- how long do you have to be on HRT?
- is transgender like being transracial?
- what do the surgeries involve?
For the most part, though, I get silence - people don’t want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.
If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.
For trans women who haven’t or don’t intend to get bottom surgery: What is the line between a man who just happens to enjoy a good penis and likes yours, vs someone who is fetishizing it? I have never pursued a trans woman (to my knowledge), but as a dude who thinks some cocks are nice regardless of who they’re on, I always wondered how you approach that approvingly without seeming objectifying.
When considering dating trans/NB folks, what is the best way to ask about their genital configuration, gender identity, and future planned trajectory?
In other words, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. I also strongly prefer limited or no body hair (shaved is fine). There is a set of tomboy/androgyny/boi that is my type. Is there a polite way to ask about this?
Honestly I am not sure there is a particularly perfect way to raise genital preference, but it is good to be transparent and honest about your preferences, it might be good to raise early and in a context where you are opening the floor to understanding their needs and preferences too, esp. around any dyphoria they might experience and what their needs are.
The majority of trans folks are pre- or non-op, so it’s best not to assume anything about their genitals, and if you have preferences it’s even more important to communicate about.
For transmasc folks you might need to examine your preferences and the extent to which female gentials make you see men as women (just like when men really enjoy penises on trans women), and just be honest with yourself and your partner, and be careful not to invalidate someone’s gender.
Tbh, this isn’t that far from talking about hair and sexual preferences with cis people, it’s just good to be sensitive because being misgendered can be really dehumanizing.
That’s pretty much what I figured. Wish trans folks had something like the old school hanky code.
As far as my preferences go, I was in a triad for a while with an NB. If I were stuck on a desert island and had to pick between a vanilla woman or a sub boy, I’m picking the boy. However, like I said, I have a strong preference for female genitalia. The whole tomboy/NB thing is the sweetspot for me in this spectrum.
I also have smell preferences. MtF, many NB, and cis women smell much more attractive to me. I imagine it’s related to test levels. I don’t find heavily transitioned FtM very attractive. There’s an androgynous smell that’s kind of like fallen leaves that I really like.
Not trying to fetishize here, but thought the perspective might be interesting. I’m very masculine and fall somewhere between a wolf or bear.
there might be like hanky codes, but I just might be the wrong girl to ask, I’m the over-committed lesbian trope, have had a single monogamous relationship for over a decade 😅
If I were single, I wouldn’t be interested in dating or actively seeking out a relationship.
Are puppygirls more of a local thing, or a worldwide thing? And what are the criteria for being one? Does it have significant crossover with the pup/petplay community?
not sure I can speak to this, not really directly related to trans folks either
Questions mostly directed to FtM if possible:
I’m non-binary/transmasc, would I qualify for top surgery/sterilization as is or do I have to fully commit to HRT? Who do I even talk to about this? Will I get resistance from medical professionals?
Unfortunately, I live in the US and my health insurance is UHC. Do I have a snowballs chance in hell of getting gender affirming care covered by them?
Where do you find the energy to just be alive in 2025? Things weren’t great for you before but now the reds are out for blood over being told to mind their own damn business. You people are going to be first line for the next round of gas chambers if the Nazis get their way.
And yet you persevere.
Just, fucking how?
Spite.
I mean, the suicide rate is pretty high, relative to cisnormies.
survivorship bias is real
love for my peers and allies, and spite for my enemies. i am made of iron. i will persevere. i will prevail.
Every alternative is worse.
My only question is why? Why go through all that stuff to “become” someone when you can just “be” who you already are?
I mean, almost nobody is happy with the body they’ve grown, but most of us just accept it and go on with life. What is the reason for drastic changes like taking hormones and getting surgery and needing other people’s validation?
I hope this isn’t seen as transphobic, I’m happy to accept anyone, I just really don’t understand the drasticness of it.
Because that body was so unpleasant I was considering suicide. There was a wrongness pervading every aspect of my life. And I’ve long liked the term “hormonal dysphoria” to describe how in some trans people such as myself the mere act of having the wrong sex hormone dominance essentially has very similar symptoms to major depression.
I tried plenty else first. I attempted to man up, I grew a beard and got somewhat strong. I tried being an effeminate man and cross dressing for a bit. I tried religion. When I transitioned there were still old trans people giving the old advice, to wait to transition until the only alternative was suicide. I hit that point at 19 and began hormones at 20, but in a more accepting world I’d’ve probably accepted myself at 16.
Re: “wrongness” and “accepting yourself”, how much do you think it has to do with how society/others regard the identity you present? I.e. how much do you think the path you’ve taken is an internal development vs a response to society?
In order to describe what I’m thinking: Today, you’ve found a place/role within society where you’re more comfortable than the places/roles you’ve taken in the past. However, a completely different culture/society would have had different available “options”.
Sorry if I’m being way too abstract/hypothetical. Even as a “more conventional normal person”, I’ve long wondered how different I might be had I grown up in a completely different society.
I think about bits of it somewhat often as well as the global history of Trans identities is complex and because as a feminist I maintain criticisms of our society’s expectations on gender. But at the same time, I’ve experimented and messed with the social roles relating to gender since I was young. So when I look at groups like the hijra and two spirits I can see that in those cultures I might’ve fit in those genders. But ultimately, it’s a thought experiment. My culture and I shape each other, and as much as I challenge it i am also bound by it as my place of understanding of the self.
But at the same time, the body wrongness that’s hard to see as anything other than innate. I remember having phantom breasts as a teenager. I remember being uncomfortable having a penis as a very young child. I do not believe there is a world in which I could be happy with a testosterone dominant body without serious neurological differences. I think in a time period where no form of estrogen was available I could have managed with mere removal of testosterone, but it would not have been thriving.
For me at least, there’s a pretty significant difference between being in a body i find revolting versus one I don’t. I wanted to live my life as someone I could tolerate, who didn’t make me feel disgusting.
I’m not underselling it, dysphoria is repulsive. I felt like a freak, I felt wrong. I just did whatever I had to do to fix that. Validation wasn’t something I sought as much, it’s certainly nice to be recognized but I transitioned for me first and foremost.
It can be really hard to understand why trans people transition - the answers are complicated and involve explanations of the neurobiology of sex and gender.
One way to help you understand is to imagine or even try out being in the wrong sex yourself - if you are male, imagine you were born a woman, they named you Sue and expect you to date boys, play with dolls, dress in frilly skirts and dresses, and so on. Why can’t you just be Sue authentically? Why bother with horomones and social transition?
When it feels wrong to be in the wrong sex, it is due to how your brain developed as a fetus, and you can’t help that the wrong sex hormones make you depressed and anxious, you can’t help that your body feels completely wrong, you can’t help that the only known solutions to the suffering is to take the right hormones, to fix the body and to live as your actual gender. Cis people don’t have to go through that struggle, so it’s harder for them to understand what it’s like to be trans. It makes complete sense you would have difficulty understanding, even as a trans person I struggled to recognize I experienced gender dysphoria or that I needed to transition - it was not obvious at the time.
Thats such a good way of explaining it so people understand, Ill start using that example
Edit: to clarify in case there is confusion, im not trans, just like the explanation and will use it in future
Many people go out of their way to transform their bodies, from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery. My question is why not? It’s your flesh puppet; decorate it how you like.
I wouldn’t characterize transition as decorating your flesh puppet in the same way that cis people do when dieting and plastic surgery … not that transition doesn’t involve those things, but there is a clinical basis of transition that is not there when just pursuing beauty. This is why your boob job may be covered when trans, but not when cis.
I have a lot of curiosity about Trans and I’m impressed your so open to questions. I fear that my questions might come off poorly and it isn’t my intention, I just don’t know how to ask these in the best light.
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I see that you mentioned there are studies that point to Trans likely being a mismatch between the brain and body at development. But, do you think there is also a link that involves childhood trauma? Or is the science very clear?
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I often find myself uncomfortable with Trans people in person, but I often wonder if half of that is simply that I don’t know how to treat someone. The ones that I met that had relatively normal behavior I found pretty easy to talk to and I felt for them. But ones that were more complicated, say neurodivergent beyond dysphoria, or they had a lot of emotional trauma, made me very uncomfortable. Do you think most of this issue is that as children we are taught how to treat people that are squarely female or male, rather than learning how to treat people as a whole?
I often wish the world wasn’t so hostile, but I also find that some things that were set in motion in my childhood are the hardest to change. It’s easy to change what I act on, but harder to change how I feel.
Thank you again for doing this!
I see that you mentioned there are studies that point to Trans likely being a mismatch between the brain and body at development. But, do you think there is also a link that involves childhood trauma? Or is the science very clear?
Gender identity does not seem to be influenced by trauma, and we have decent evidence it’s genetic, though it’s a complex trait and there isn’t a single “trans gene”. Trauma might be more common in trans populations, but that is true for gay folks as well, it’s not that the trauma makes them gay, but being gay does make them more likely to be victimized and experience trauma. I myself thought that trauma caused my gender dysphoria (or the experiences I had, which I now realize are gender dysphoria), and it took a long time for me to learn there is good evidence trauma isn’t causing my dysphoria (part of this is that I recovered from PTSD, and this alleviated my PTSD symptoms, but did not alleviate my gender dysphoria).
Here are some follow-up articles and citations I have read, and which you may find helpful:
- Joshua Safer’s “Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity” (DOI)
- Joshua Safer’s “Etiology of Gender Identity” (DOI)
- the collective research of Daphna Joel and Dick Swaab for the current scientific theories of “brain-sex” (which likely plays a role in gender identity and gender dysphoria):
- Joel & Swaab, 2019, “The Complex Relationships between Sex and the Brain”, (DOI)
- Joel, 2015, “Sex beyond the genetalia: The human brain mosaic”, (DOI)
- Swaab, 2008, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity”, (DOI)
- Swaab, 2000, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus”, (DOI)
- Swaab, 1995, “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality”, (DOI)
In a video format, some of this is broadly summarized in these videos:
On biological sex more generally I recommend these videos:
- Julia Serano’s overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymYiwoRoC0
- Sex & Sensibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVQplt7Chos
I also highly recommend reading this literature review to better understand why trans healthcare is so important, but also why it’s not considered controversial in an otherwise conservative medical establishment:
What We Know Project, Cornell University, “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Effect of Gender Transition on Transgender Well-Being?”, 2018.
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often find myself uncomfortable with Trans people in person, but I often wonder if half of that is simply that I don’t know how to treat someone. The ones that I met that had relatively normal behavior I found pretty easy to talk to and I felt for them. But ones that were more complicated, say neurodivergent beyond dysphoria, or they had a lot of emotional trauma, made me very uncomfortable. Do you think most of this issue is that as children we are taught how to treat people that are squarely female or male, rather than learning how to treat people as a whole?
I don’t know all the reasons you have for discomfort around trans people. I can experience that discomfort too, and especially as you mention when there are other issues like neurodivergence (which is a common comorbidity with gender dysphora). Beyond the behavioral issues, I have identified in my feelings that gender clashing or inconsistency can bother me - a combination of a masculine signal like a beard and a feminine body like breasts can look wrong to me, and I suspect this is mostly a social norm - I have been raised in a society where being gender non-conforming is taboo. This is not unlike ableist perspectives - the ways that we might feel uncomfortable around people with amputations or birth defects that make their bodies not “normal”.
One of the ways to help with this is exposure therapy - being around or exposing yourself to positive experiences with people who are “not normal” can help acclimate you to those differences. It’s a long, hard process to undo that cultural programming, though - I have internalized a lot of transphobia, and that has made my transition much more difficult, as my body becomes “not normal” (the experience is akin to feeling like a monster, like being less than human).
So you would have to examine what about trans people is unsettling to you, there is a lot there to figure out - but probably it’s just your internalized transphobia (which is fairly typical, you shouldn’t feel especially bad for this - it’s not like you chose to be raised that way).
I often wish the world wasn’t so hostile, but I also find that some things that were set in motion in my childhood are the hardest to change. It’s easy to change what I act on, but harder to change how I feel.
That’s my experience too, and it’s a shame because a lot of things set in motion when I was a child are not adaptive or good for me or others now. 😅
Thanks for your questions and thoughtfulness, I hope I have been helpful. ☺️
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I know this is the place to ask but I still feel shy so I’m sorry first-hand. I’ve read that people transitioning with estrogen seem to get an increased libido than when they just had their testosterone libido, but did change how frequently you want to do that self indulgence to get a release or is it around the same frequency, just more intense desire? Also, did that make any changes to how you want your partner to touch you? Not just about foreplay, but where the actual play would be. Last question is did your prostate get more sensitive to stimulation from anal stuff or did it not change/got less sensitive? Sorry if this is too personal
No worries, these are personal questions but that’s what I’ve signed up for.
The answer is that it varies significantly. It’s not uncommon for trans women to experience a reduction of libido on estrogen, but I experienced increased arousal and libido (much to my dismay, I wanted libido to reduce). However, I think viewing libido as just “more” vs “less” does not portray the changes accurately. Testosterone libido felt different, more desperate and animal-like. It was like a simple biological urge, like hunger or the need to pass a bowel movement. It felt imposed on me, and like a hijacking of “me”.
Estrogen libido was deeper and more meaningful, more emotionally connected and harder to just stamp out. Testosterone libido was like performing a duty, estrogen libido was like yearning, pining, burning lust. Estrogen libido feels right, testosterone libido felt awful (to the point where I wondered if I was on the asexual spectrum).
The further into transition I got, the more my dissociation melted and the more dysphoria I experienced as a result - and in this case, the more I experienced bottom dysphoria. I started to wear underwear to bed to hide my genitals, and I started to recognize when I was dissociating during sex, and trying to avoid it by opting to not be touched. I couldn’t stand being the center of attention in sex, focusing on me and my orgasm was very upsetting and usually I disappeared when this happened.
All this varies significantly among trans women - many of them feel no bottom dysphoria at all, and enjoy topping. Many of us feel varying levels of dysphoria, and either cannot use their genitals at all, or very little.
I was a middle case - I could have sex, but it required accommodations and working around my issues, usually by hiding the genitals and treating them more like female genitals (treating the glans like a clit, and so on). I found using a vibrator much more pleasurable on estrogen than before transition, and I really did not like having erections so I did everything I could to promote penile atrophy (but ultimately I didn’t have much penile atrophy - I would have trouble being hard enough for penetrating, but still technically could sometimes). This was all pre-op, obviously post-op sex changed significantly - I am finding I am surprisingly more comfortable now being the center of sexual attention, though I still have dysphoria and there are struggles I have to work around (like feeling my new genitals are like the old ones).
I’m not sure my prostate changed much at all, to be honest. I didn’t notice any difference, but post-op, vaginal penetration is prostate stimulating and featured more heavily. (Anal took more prep and time to do and could be painful, so it was admittedly done less frequently. Also, it could introduce gender feelings in a way, which could increase my dysphoria - sometimes gender-affirming activities can emphasize how much I’m not a woman, and can ironically backfire and make things worse.)
Sorry for making such personal questions, but I’m very grateful for your answers!! My partner wants to transition when he feels safe and the more he talks about it the more curious I’ve become about it but I was afraid I might regret it, but your experiences are really good to know beforehand! I think I’m going to experiment more with how I present my gender but I am feeling much more comfortable with stepping up to hormone therapy! Thank you very very much!! And once again, sorry for the intimate questions
no worries at all, and I always encourage people to start with HRT because it’s fairly low risk, can be stopped early if it’s not working or doesn’t feel good without any long-term effects, and can have such an immensely positive effect when it is helpful. I felt like I made a mistake waiting so long to start HRT, estrogen was life changing for me. Plenty of trans folks don’t feel any mood or mental change when they start HRT, though - so remember your experiences can be different.
I think this is all extremely variable from person to person and can’t really be generalized, including the libido thing. Transition brings unusually deep change, including to sexuality, but the way it plays out is extremely individual
+1, all of it is very individual and your mileage may vary
There are some patterns or common ways people are (like, it’s not exactly surprising when a trans woman doesn’t want to top and take a penetrative role in sex), but there is so much variation it’s best not to assume.
Do you have dysphoria hoodies suitable for hot weather? If so, where can I get them?
My sibling, what you need is a sun jacket! They’re very light, breathable, and baggy. I got mine at REI but it was kind of pricy since I try to do as close to Buy It For Life as possible, and there are more affordable ones out there.
That would be the dysphoria flannel shirt
Somewhat related: Australia’s state-funded ABC channel produced a Q&A documentary show called “You Can’t Ask That” with an episode for transgender people. It might be harder to watch outside of Australia but it’s worth the effort. The semi-related Drag episode was also fascinating. Disclaimer/CW: I haven’t watched the full episode in years and suspect there might have been transphobia in some questions.
Official 2 minute teaser question: https://youtube.com/watch?v=GSilokmn8zI
(A couple of other countries had localised spin-off versions of the show but I haven’t watched them.)
That particular episode was one of the final steps in breaking down my own internal resistance to accepting myself.
I might have to try to find this, thanks!
Why are there virtually no FTM sex workers?
Why are there so few male sex workers in general?
I’d wager it’s because most sex work consumers are probably cishet males seeking women.
sounds like we found our answer!
I feel pretty comfortable asking questions IRL because over many years I’ve had two friends who are openly Trans. But I want to show some support for the community, so here we go:
A train leaves the station at 9pm… 😆
Love and Respect.
This is super longwinded but I’m having trouble putting the ideas together concisely, apologies in advance to anyone reading.
I generally hear people describe being trans as feeling like you were born into the wrong body, like biologically male with a woman’s soul in some sense. But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to. I identify as a man and would feel out of place in a woman’s body, but if I had been born into a woman’s body I would feel out of place in a man’s. That’s my mental picture of what being cisgendered is. I’m not sure I’m articulating this great but hopefully it’s coherent.
That gives me the impression that being transgendered is an emotional discomfort, and I’ve wanted to hear an opinion on if the resistance to labelling it as a mental illness is because of the societal stigma against mental illnesses and how some people think successful treatment should always mean suppression and never accommodation (which would look like gender-affirming care if being trans counted).
Part of where this is coming from is I’ve been dealing with my own mental demons lately after some traumatic experiences in the past couple years, and the way I think about it is different when I’m looking inward. If it’s another person behaving strangely it is easy to say they are suffering and deserve care, but when it’s me I am a crazy person doing crazy things and I know better.
I do feel inclined to see being trans as a mental illness (for the reasons I’ve given above). I believe I’ll be open to hear what I’m getting wrong there. It’s not something I’ve ever been comfortable enough to ask though because I expect that statement to be received offensively (for the reasons given above). I get a lot less hostility in general over who I am and I still sometimes have a very strong gut reaction to perceive that stuff as an attack.
But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to
The few cases we have of cis people being medically transitioned in some way without their consent suggest that this simply isn’t the case, at least for many cis folk.
Alan Turing and David Reimer are both examples of cis folk who were medically transitioned without their consent, one as an adult, one as a child, and both experienced severe dysphoria. They ultimately both took their own lives
So my intuition is wrong there, thanks. I clarified my question to the other guy just a minute ago to hopefully make what I’m asking more clear, (I didn’t fully understand myself tbh), I’d be curious to get a response to that.
I really apologize if it came across as hurtful. I was being overly wordy trying to be sensitive to how this question would come across (hence using this thread for it) and it didn’t convey great. It just seems like it would be very similar to the mental and emotional struggles I’ve gone through and comparing and contrasting to to my own experiences helps me understand people better.
So my intuition is wrong there, thanks
Maybe, maybe not. Your own intuition about your experience of gender may not be wrong. There’s not really any way to know. What we do know though is that at least some cis people have a strong sense of their own gender, that can cause dysphoria in certain circumstances.
The current science points to gender dysphoria being caused by the brain developing as one sex while the body develops as another.
If you ask whether someone is primarily their brain or their body, I think most would say identity resides in the brain and subsequent mind. In that sense, gender dysphoria is a genetic and hormonal disorder, basically a condition of yes, having the “wrong body” for the brain they developed as a fetus. This glosses over a lot of details and sex is complicated, but that’s the rough sketch. The condition arises from the brain and the mind, and in that sense can be labelled a mental illness, but that would ignore a lot of context and evidence we have about what is going on.
It is with this understanding and with the guidance of substantial empirical evidence that transition and gender-affirming care are recommended - it is the only treatment that alleviates symptoms (conversion therapy, for example, increases risk of suicide), but also these are treatments with a very high success to failure ratio. Gender affirming surgeries have lower regret rates than practically any other surgery, much lower than knee replacement surgeries, for example.
So we deal with gender dysphoria differently than we deal with other mental illnesses because of what we know about the condition. We know that people with body dysmorphia like anorexics feel distress about their body and might seek surgery to “fix” their bodies, but we don’t have the large body of evidence that those surgeries improve patient outcomes, relieve symptoms, or are low risk. So we treat anorexia differently than gender dysphoria, because they have different causes and require different treatments.
So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer). We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.
Took some time to reflect, I communicated my question quite poorly and that is on me but I’m gonna try to ask it in a better way.
I feel somewhat strongly that trans-affirming care is the only appropriate approach to treating being trans. I have the impression that as a trans person you feel this is wholly incompatible with my sense that it is a mental health issue. I’d like to explicitly ask why my two beliefs are contradictory.
I’m asking because I am just in the past year or so suffering with severe physical and mental illnesses, and when I try to picture what the trans experience is like, I find that what I am imagining aligns very closely with my mental illnesses and not closely at all with my physical illnesses. I was extremely reluctant to accept that I have a mental illness because of both societal stigma and because in my situation, no one in their right mind would choose to treat my mental illnesses with therapy and pills when a change in living conditions would actually help enormously more, which seemed analogous to treating being trans.
That is what’s made me feel my two beliefs aren’t contradictory - I hadn’t understand how deeply I had internalized stigma against the mentally ill until I was asked to apply it to myself. I am imagining that other people would resist identifying as having mental illness in the same way I was. I picture the trans experience as emotional anguish with all physical threats as consequences of that emotional anguish. One where, also like many cases of mental illness, physical treatments are the correct option. But I don’t understand a way to liken it to my experiences with physical illness, so maybe it would be helpful to understand the physical danger and physical suffering explicitly.
I think there are extremely few situations where a mental illness should be treated as something to correct rather than accommodate without the patient being fully on board with thinking of it as something that needs to be corrected. In many cases, the only reason a patient would be fully on board is societal stigma and designed inaccessibility of accommodations, which is the impression I have of the trans experience as well. That’s the reason I don’t think of options other than trans-affirming care as okay.
I reacted badly because of recently surfaced mental health issues (blehhh) where I obsess over my character and respond to perceived character attacks as an attack on my identity even though I should just be listening. Your response seemed to focus on why I should agree with gender-affirming care and I read that as a character attack, rather than considering that you don’t see it as even possible to believe being trans is a mental health issue that should only be addressed by gender-affirming care. I was being overly wordy to try to be clear that I’m trying to understand how your experience compares with mine, and look, we’re back again.
Also I tend to read comments like that as a disgust and a need to distance from the mentally ill, and that’s something I very much need to work on because I know it’s not the intention at all. It stung more than usual in this case because I was looking to build camaraderie and tried my best to clarify that I don’t want mental illness to be an attack and that I am in favor of gender-affirming care.
This time I promise I will have the good sense to wait at least a few hours in responding to something that makes me feel bigoted. I apologize for being hurtful earlier and I’m hoping this one is less so.
tl;dr - The core stumbling block for me is this one - when I try to picture what the trans experience is like, I find that what I am imagining aligns very closely with my mental illnesses and not closely at all with my physical illnesses. I’ve elaborated way too much on why that is. I need to hear what I have imagined incorrectly, what I have overlooked.
We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.
What I was getting at with saying I wouldn’t be comfortable switching now, but I would have been fine born into it is there there’s a shock that would come with a change from what you’ve lived, and that being cisgendered wouldn’t negate that shock, it would be miserable, but I don’t feel an attachment in the sense that I feel glad I was born a man. That’s what I meant when saying if I had been born a woman I wouldn’t be happy with the idea of changing to be a man.
So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer).
This is what I was trying to get at with the difference between suppression and accommodation, and gender-affirming care being accommodation. But I don’t think it’s fair to reduce all mental illnesses to being not biological and being “solved with therapy or anti-depressants”, I think that is part of the stigma against them. Some of them should be accommodated and not suppressed. Physical treatments are often more helpful than those things, different illnesses need to be addressed in different ways, not treated as a generic umbrella for characteristics society doesn’t approve of.
Sorry for not addressing all of it but I’m skeptical that you read what I wrote there because I explicitly spoke in favor of gender-affirming care as the treatment and your response reads to me like I was arguing against it.
What I was getting at with saying I wouldn’t be comfortable switching now, but I would have been fine born into
David Reimer was forcefully transitioned as a child, when he was young enough to not remember. It created a lifetime of dysphoria for him, and he transitioned back to his birth gender as soon as he understood what had happened to him, and was able to.
It sounds like for you to understand the existence of trans people you probably first need to accept that other people experience gender and sexuality differently than the way you do
Before I do that though, I’m commenting a follow-up to ask you to elaborate on if there’s something specific I can introspect on. I’ll read and think over the next few days.
One last edit:
Logging off is because I know this is an issue I have. Right now I don’t have much to be proud of other than my character, so in a moment I’m bad at listening and taking in criticisms that might suggest bigotry, because it feels like an attack on my identity. I’m aware that in reality I should be listening and not fighting, it just takes me an unreasonable amount of time and I act like a jackass until I’ve processed. Hence, logging out to introspect. Better late than never.
I’ll introspect on that. It generally takes me time to digest. I’m embarrassed here. But I do agree that gender-affirming care is the correct treatment. I read your response like I was not explicit about being in favor of it.
I think I should log off and mull on it because right now I’m just being an asshole. I’m a very slow learner and it generally takes a few days after I argue vehemently against something for it to sink in that I was wrong. I interpreted the first response like you thought I was arguing it should be addressed in a way other than gender-affirming care and responded like that was an attack, which is really shitty of me and pretty embarrassing.
Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid? Transracial identity? Otherkin? Insincere trans identity, such as the recent case of Liebich, a transphobic neo-Nazi who legally identified as a trans woman seemingly just to avoid men’s prison? Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?
I personally think transracial identity is particularly interesting when one considers that race is a fluid social concept rather than an objective concept like genetics (see how in the US and Europe different peoples have historically changed from being considered ‘black’ to being considered ‘white’ over time, see how a person can be considered a race in one society and a different race in another society, such as “mixed-race” people or people with ancestry from the edges of continents). Unfortunately most of the examples of transracialism I’m aware of are cases where deception or fame played a large part in compounding criticism, such as Dolezal and Korla Pandit, leading to claims of their transracial identity being exploitation.
Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid?
I just want to be clear. Blahaj lemmy does not allow invalidating of other folks identities.
The comment alluded to Transracial identities as a (very cherry-picked and extreme) example. I do really, genuinely wonder whether we should uncritically accept the validity of people who identify as transracial, especially people who benefit from whiteness but self-identify as a member of a marginalized race. What is the instances stance on transracial identities? Another question- do you have racially marginalized mods, and how do they feel about the subject?
Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?
Identities don’t really need to be either validated or contested, especially if the person didn’t ask for it. Validation will likely win you more friends, though.
Obv use their preferred names and pronouns to be respectful, as with any person. But beyond that, there’s really no need to get involved in their identity at all. It’s a deeply personal thing and it’s unlikely they’ll change it for anyone other than themselves.
Basically I don’t think otherkin or transracial identities are related to being transgender.
I wrote more extensively on my thoughts on otherkin identities in this comment.
I wrote more about transracial identities in this comment.
And in general, it is a good idea to respect people’s self-identity even if you feel skepticism about its validity - I don’t have to know someone has 100% figured themselves out and has the self-awareness to back up their identity claims. This goes for cis people as well as trans people. Whatever skepticism I feel can remain private so I don’t cause that person any distress, and so I remain polite and respectful.
I do believe non-binary, gender-fluid, and agender people are natural variations and are “valid” as much as binary-gendered people, the science and evidence does not really contradict these identities and only seems to affirm their existence.
In cases of the neo-Nazi who identified as a woman, I know this is a major controversy but if there are reasons to believe they are earnest in their identity it should be respected, even if they are despicable. How we know if someone is being earnest is harder, it’s a way trolls exploit this respect of self-identity. So we look at a troll’s other behavior to help us gauge, and we judge them for their other behavior, not their identity.
All bodies contain the ability to differentiate into what we know as male and female, to varying degrees and in various mixtures. Transgender is just a medical variation in how this normally plays out and spans times and cultures, whereas these other things don’t really have a similar basis.
To what degree do you believe is binary transgender identity appropriate? Does it validate the false gender dichotomy of the common mainstream binary model of gender (and sex)?
Is it unfair to see it as unfortunate and ignorant, or to see it as a realist mechanism to adapt gender transgression to a binary society? (e.g. where a society doesn’t have any real recognition of non-binary identity, or where it’s just easier for 99% of people to understand “M->F/F->M” over non-binary identity)
So, much of gender is a social construct, but being a social construct doesn’t stop it being real. Society has a bias towards a gender binary, and that creates the social context in which we come to understand and experience our own gender. These social frameworks creates the lens through which we learn to understand ourselves.
Lets say I grew up on an island full of men. I had never seen or met a woman, and didn’t have a concept of women. In that environment, my experience of gender would have been different. I’d still have experienced the discomfort, and disconnection, I’d still have experienced dysphoria, but it would have manifested very differently. I wouldn’t have identified as a binary woman in a world without women, and I wouldn’t have had the language to describe my experiences, but I’d still have had a discomfort I couldn’t address, and I’d still have known that I was different to the men around me in ways I didn’t have the language or the concepts to explore.
But I didn’t. I grew up in country town Australia in the 80s, when societies bias towards a gender binary was strong. And my own gender is binary too.
I do sometimes wonder what my experience of my own gender would be like if I’d have grown up in a different context, if society allowed space for genders that don’t have to fit a binary. Would I still be binary? The truth is, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that my experience of my own gender does fit on the binary, and knowing that, and thinking about it doesn’t change it, because however I got there, my gender isn’t a choice. It’s just who I am.
I don’t know what to tell you, most aspects of being a woman feels right to me. Even without knowing consciously a specific change will feel good, making changes that make me more like a woman end up feeling good. There is nothing about being a man that seems right to me.
I think we can’t choose to be binary or non-binary, just like cis people can’t choose to suddenly be the opposite sex and be trans. Gender identity seems to be biological, and we can’t change it (e.g. through conversion therapy, it’s just not effective). if we could change gender identity, probably the conservative medical establishment would recommend those methods rather than transitioning, but as is, transitioning is the only effective way to alleviate gender dysphoria.
So there are problems with the binary model, but I do believe some people are women and some are men, anyway, including trans people. Not everyone is non-binary, or find an identity like that affirming or “right”.
While I can see there are many problems with gender, I don’t think trans people should feel primarily responsible for those problems. We live and breathe within gender, as do cis people, but trans folks are the least advantaged in that context. We struggle to live as our gender, so when we use gender to feel ourselves, I don’t think it’s this horrible act of reifying gender as a sin, but instead I think it is a positive and life-affirming activity. That’s not to say there isn’t anything toxic about gender, or even problematic about the way trans people use gender, but I’m not going to wring my hands about this any more - trans people were dealt a bad hand, they’re trying to survive within their context and we should grant them some space for that.
Thanks for the fast and detailed reply!
I think we can’t choose to be binary or non-binary, just like cis people can’t choose to suddenly be the opposite sex and be trans.
I think it’s a bit more complex. I agree that there’s clearly a deep-seated aspect of identity below consciousness that can’t simply be changed through conversion.
On the other hand, I fit neatly into one of the two main sexes and most of my behavior comfortably fits the gender associated with it. Most people would consider me a plain old cis, so people don’t ask me about my gender. I casually identify as non-binary but this is ultimately political or philosophical, I don’t feel uncomfortable with the gender imposed on me by society, but nor does it feel validating or “right”. I just see the gender binary and its two genders as a factually incorrect model. If someone misgendered me, I’d only be offended if it was meant as an insult. If I crossdress, I don’t feel right or wrong. (I might be nervous that some idiot on the street will be offended and bother/attack me, but that’s external, that’s a society issue, not a me issue.)
And I wonder if this is a social product of my family and friends (relatively progressive, less traditional/religious, laid-back) or if, like you suggested, there’s a biological element to this which just isn’t strong in me, like how some asexual people are missing the sexual drive that most people have, perhaps I’m missing some gender link that is ‘normal’.
So, maybe my own experience leads me to be ignorant about experiences like yours, where gender identity is affirming.
While I can see there are many problems with gender, I don’t think trans people should feel primarily responsible for those problems.
I agree, certainly not! I hope I didn’t come of as suggesting binary identity was a horrible sin. I admit I’m being particular and nitpicky, even idealistic with this question. And exactly as you said we should grant trans people space in their struggle, which is in many cases a struggle for survival.
