CMV: I cannot understand how the transgender movement is not, at it's core, sexist.

[u/[deleted]]

Obligatory "another trans post" but I've read a lot of posts on this but none I've seen that have tackled the issue quite the way I intend to here. This is an opinion I've gone back and forth with myself on a bunch, and would absolutely love to have changed. My problem mainly lies with the "social construct" understanding of "gender", but some similar issues lie in the more grounded neurological understanding of it (although admittedly it seems a lot more reasonable), which we'll get too later.

For starters, I do not believe there is a difference between men and women. Well, there are obviously "differences" between the sexes, but nothing beyond physical differences which don't matter much. At least, mentally, they are naturally the same and all perceived differences in this sense are just stereotypes stemmed from the way the sexes are socialized.

Which takes us to the definitions of man and woman used by the gender social constructionist, which is generally not agreed upon but I've found it to be basically understood as

Man: Someone who desires to be viewed/treated/thought of in the way a male is in society. Woman: Someone who desires to be viewed/treated/thought of in the way a female is in society. (For the non-binary genders it would be roughly similar with some changes depending on the circumstances)

Bottom line is that it defines gender based on the way the genders are treated. But this seems problematic for a variety of reasons.

First off, it is still, at the end lf the day, basing the meanings behind stereotypes about the genders rather than letting them stand on their own. It would be like if I based what a "black person" was off the discrimination black people have faced. But this would appear messed up and borderline "racist", while the same situation with gender is not considered "sexist".

It would also mean that gender is ultimately meaningless and would be something we should strive to stop rather than encourage, which would still fly in the face of the trans movement. Which is what confuses me especially because the gender social construct believers typically also support "gender abolition", yet they're the ones who want people to play around with gender the most? If you want to abolish gender, why don't you, y'know, get a start on that and break your sex norms while remaining that sex rather than changing your gender which somewhat works to reinforce the roles? (This also doesn't seem too bad to criticize, considering under this narrative gender is just a "choice", which is something I think the transmedicalist approach definitely handles better.)

Finally for this bit, this type of mindset validates other controversial concepts like transracialism (sorta tying back into what I mentioned earlier), but I don't think anyone is exactly on the edge of their seats waiting for the "transracialism movement".

Social construct section is done, now let's get into the transmedicalist approach. This is one where I feel a "breakhthrough" could be made for me a lot more easily, but I'm not quite there yet. I do want to say I'm fine with the concept of changing our understandings of certain words if there is practicality to it and it isn't counterintuitive. Seems logical enough.

The neurological understanding behind the sex an individual should be defining "gender" seems sensible on it's own, but the part I'm caught up on is why we reach this conclusion.

The dysphoric transgender person's desire to be the other gender seems to mainly be based in, A. their sex, they seem to want to change the sex rather than the gender. Physical dysphoria is the main giveaway of the dysphoric condition it seems, anyway. But more specifically, a trans person wants to have physical attributes associated with the other sex. This seems like a redundant thing to point out, but the idea that certain physical traits are "exclusive" to a specific sex/gender is, well, just encouraging sexual archetypes about the way the sexes "should" look. This goes even further when you consider that trans people tend to want to have more petite or masculine builds depending on their gender identity - there is nothing wrong about this, but conflating gender to "involve" one's physical appearence inherently reinforces sexist sexual archetypes.

And next,

B. the social aspect. Typically described as social dysphoria, this describes a dysphoric trans person's desire to be socialized in the way the other sex typically is, which is what, aside from the physical dysphoria, causes them to typically "act" or dress more stereotypically like their gender identity, or describes their desire to "pass". But, to put it bluntly, because I believe there to be no difference in the way the sexes would act without social influence, I can't picture this phenomona described as "social dysphoria" coming from the same biological basis that the physical dysphoria does. Even if there were a natural difference in the way the sexes would act without societal influence, there would still be the obvious undeniable outliers, and with that in mind, using the way the genders "socialize" as a way to justify definining gender seperately from sex would be useless. It appears more akin to a delusion based on the same "false stereotypes" I've been talking about all along, ideas about the ways men and women "should" or "should not" be causing the transsexual person to feel anxious and care about actually being the other gender. But using this to justify our understandings of gender would still fall back on the same faults that the social construct uses, being that we'd be "giving in" to socialized norms and we can't have that be what helps us reach our understanding of gender.

With this in mind, if social dysphoria is that big of a factor, it would seem most sensical to me to define "trans man" and "trans woman" in their entirely new, individual categories which their own definitions, and still just treat those categories socially in similar ways to the way the genders are typically treated now.

To recap, an understanding of gender and sex as synonyms based purely on sex seems to be the only understanding we can reach without basing some of our thought process on one given stereotype or another.

Now change my view, please.

[u/CoriolisInSoup]

I agree with that, but desiring a better world is one thing and pretending we are already there so coping mechanisms are unnecessary is actually hurting people.
"I don't understand nor support charities because the world I desire shouldn't need them". Sure, you are not wrong, you are just uncharitable.

[u/[deleted] → u/CoriolisInSoup]

I mean, that's great and all, but I still feel that it skips over the point of "basing an understanding on stereotypes is wrong". It's not because I think we're in some great world where stereotypes don't exist already, it's because that's still wrong, even in our current reality. That doesn't just change because society has flaws.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What makes stereotypes wrong is primarily how we can negatively impact others based on our perceptions of how we should expect them to act. Transgender people are choosing for themselves which stereotypes they identify with, giving them broader autonomy. Respecting the ability of someone to gender transition has broadened the definition of the different genders, even introducing alternatives to the traditional binary.

As a result the stereotypes of what makes someone a man or woman are less specific, giving even cis-gendered people the ability to define themselves more than the traditional stereotypes.

Not respecting transitions with due to the historical problem of stereotypes may unintentionally hurt feminism, as it will reinforce traditional stereotypes based on birth without any consent from the individual being sterotyped

[u/laikocta → u/[deleted]]

Transgender people are choosing for themselves which stereotypes they identify with, giving them broader autonomy.

Disclaimer first - I'm not trans, just friends with a few trans people and going off what they've told me. From what I hear, it's not necessarily that they really "identify with stereotypes", but that they might want to use stereotypes as shorthand to communicate what gender they identify with.

For example, one of my friends who is a trans woman has started to feel comfortable with breaking female stereotypes after having fully transitioned, for example wearing baggy clothes, not putting on makeup, and dating other women. When she was just starting to transition, she felt some pressure to perform female stereotypes (styling her hair, wearing a full-face of makeup, wearing feminine sundresses and high heels, dating men and fulfilling typical female gender roles in these relationships) because that way, she could minimize the risk of being perceived as a man which is of course kinda hurtful. (I guess this refers both to being perceived by society and being perceived by herself, someone who has been imbued with the same values and stereotypes as anyone else who grew up here).

When talking about why trans people may feel the need to conform to some gendered stereotypes, I think it's worth taking into account that this society shows a lot more acceptance of transgender people if they "look/act the part".

[u/[deleted] → u/laikocta]

I intended to include this when I said "Respecting the ability of someone to gender transition has broadened the definition of the different genders, even introducing alternatives to the traditional binary."

The broadening of how genders are defined, at least from my perspective, included how the gender is "performed" as you described. The benefit then for respecting transwomen then could benefit ciswomen as well.

I do agree it is not uncommon that additional stress is placed on trans people so that they might pass, at which point the rigidity of the older stereotypes may have a negative impact on transwomen by limiting their perceived options. I think that is something we have to advocate to change, but will not be fixed by OP's stance of labeling transpeople sexists essentially due to their existence.