What is something you learned or experienced from being trans that you wish you knew pre-transition, or that you wish cis people knew?
I’ll go first: the temperature differences when going from testosterone-dominance to estrogen-dominance is not just real but significant, my body just puts out less heat and I feel colder much easier now even when otherwise maintaining a high metabolism, eating in excess, etc.
It may have just been my trans denial before, but I really wanted to believe that the difference was not that great and I was wrong.
What’s something you wish people knew?
ah, freedom from gender norms! I think everyone, cis and trans, has different tolerances for the extent to which they feel comfortable adhering to or violating gender norms. Ironically, transitioning has been so great for me because it allows me to finally be “normal” by being conformist.
As a man I was always wrong because my natural inclinations made me gender non-conforming (making me seem like a gay man). It was very stigmatizing living that way, but once I transitioned it’s like everything lined up and now for the first time every I “fit” society, and I just live as a relatively normal woman without stigma.
However, my sexuality still makes me non-conforming, but in women that seems to be more ignored or overlooked compared to men (esp. when you are feminine / conforming in your gender expression). It’s only when it’s made explicit that people seem uncomfortable, and even then the average person seem more accepting than of gay men, at least in my experience.
That said, it makes sense that being trans would lend itself to seeing the possibilities in gender and the freedom from gender norms that can be accomplished.
The popularity of beyond-the-binary ideas of Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg and the increased adoption of non-binary as a political identity show a thirst for tearing down gender norms and replacing them with gender freedom (particularly focused on individualist ideas of gender expression and non-conformity).
Though I am ultimately skeptical that this is how gender works, and it reminds me of the failed political lesbianism of second wave feminism, the problem then was that sexuality was not wholly cultural or political as mistakenly assumed, and you cannot will yourself to be a lesbian and build a new utopian society on that basis. Straight women exist, and they will continue to be attracted to men even if it’s they’re told it’s wrong. Still, it’s exciting to see movements like this push to create space for gender non-conformity, that’s a win regardless in my book.
Our point isn’t that people can’t behave in ways they like more that they don’t have to adhere so strictly to gender roles, expression etc. They can still, of course, act in more ‘conventional’ ways but the point is that they should be able to choose that and if necessary choose to break that or merely change over time, nobody should be forced to behave or look a particular way nor feel they can only be those things and that is all forever.
So it’s not always exactly gender non-conformity more that behaviour and expressions shouldn’t be tied to gender, and roles shouldn’t exist at all. Just be you, even if most of the time that matches what society currently sees as matching what they expect, but you don’t always have to.
yes, such a good point, even recognizing there is a choice of conforming or not is beyond some people’s awareness (especially I think in more collective cultures, whereas individualism lends itself to people prioritizing their desires over social expectations).
I do think a lot of gender norms and roles are arbitrary (like blue for boys and pink for girls, or women only in the home and men only at work), but I suspect humans do have what we might categorize as hard-wired gendered behavior as well (though with considerable overlap, the idea of strict differences without overlap is just not evidenced).
Otherwise I’m not sure gender dysphoria makes much sense, since it seems to be a natural phenomenon rooted in the biology and found throughout human history and across cultures, and is even found to be genetic. That said, gender dysphoria is still worked out in a social and psychological context and is not pure biology either, so a lot of what you are saying here is relevant about how arbitrary social norms can be.
Thanks! Interesting point about different cultures, that’s why we think there needs to be a mix.
We agree about the colours and where people should be. Ah yes, humans might be like that because of that. It’s very interesting to us non-humans.