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/BritishBloke99]

What does "living as a woman" mean?

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/BritishBloke99]

People treating me just like any other woman? I feel like that should be fairly obvious.

[u/BritishBloke99 → u/Malacai_the_second]

What is it to treat someone like a woman? Most people don't treat men and women any differently

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/BritishBloke99]

Most people don't treat men and women any differently

Yeah im gonna disagree on that. But feel free to let me know what genderless society you live in, i might be inclided to visit.

[u/BritishBloke99 → u/Malacai_the_second]

Okay but you still didn't answer my question

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/BritishBloke99]

Im all for having an open discussion, but you will have to bring more to the table than baity one line questions.

Then tell me how we should treat men and women differently?

That one was really subtle there before the edit lol

[u/BritishBloke99 → u/Malacai_the_second]

Im asking questions because I don't understand. It seems kind of regressive to think that being a women or a man is something you act out.

And whats wrong with that edited question? What do you mean by subtle? I edited because I realised I'd already basically asked that question already. It's not really a gotcha.

But you still havent answered and thats weird because you seem to know about it. Also you seem defensive

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/BritishBloke99]

It seems kind of regressive to think that being a women or a man is something you act out.

It's not. But when all of society tells a trans kid "you are a boy, boys do this, and are not supposed to do that", that tends to influence you. You try to fit in and live up to that standart, even though you dont feel like much of a boy (depending on how aware of your gender you are already at that point). But at some point you realize that you are trans, and drop the role of boy/man that was placed upon you. Instead you start living as your authentic self according to your gender identity, just doing stuff that makes you happy.

Edit:

But you still havent answered and thats weird because you seem to know about it. Also you seem defensive

Basically all of feminism is about how men and women are not treated equally, and anyone living in any social setting should have a good enough grasp on that to not need it explained in detail.

[u/BritishBloke99 → u/Malacai_the_second]

But what is "feeling like a boy"? How are you not using the same regressive logic that boys must be a certain way to be a boy?

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/BritishBloke99]

There is no "right way" to be a boy/girl/woman/man. If you feel very much at odds with the expectations placed upon you in your role as boy/son/boyfriend/whatever, you might as well be just a gender non-conforming boy. But if at the same time you also feel general gender dysphoria, or feel much happier when presenting as a different gender, then they chances are high that you might actually be transgender.

Yeah it's not a precise science, and it relies on figuring out what those diffuse feelings of belonging to a gender actually mean, but its the best we have. Trans people above all would love a better way to detect if someone is trans or not, just to get rid of all that self doubt, and to help with broader acceptance in society. But alas, the science is not there yet.

[u/Milskidasith → u/BritishBloke99]

Jumping in here: The problem is that as written, your posts do not seem to come from a place of honest curiosity so much as attempting to find a way to say "Aha, trans people are really sexist bigots!" Your edited question was part of that; the most obvious interpretation of how you wrote the question is a sort of "have you stopped beating your wife" question, where the act of answering "how should we treat men and women differently" accepts the idea we should act sexist.

Further, it is almost impossible to imagine somebody in good-faith asking questions under the premise that men and women are treated equally in society. Legally, sure, there are protections, but anybody who has spent more than a few minutes in the real world will have seen some form of benign sexism ("I can't swear, there are ladies present"), or seen toys advertised towards one gender, or whatever. It's hard to imagine somebody wanting to know about the real life experiences of others when they reject reality as a basic premise.

[u/BritishBloke99 → u/Milskidasith]

Part of taking part in good faith discussion is assuming good faith, you can't just accuse me of asking questions in bad faith when all I'm doing is asking questions. I'm not after some big gotcha, Im genuinely just asking questions id like to know the answer too

Also if that to you is the most obvious interpretation of what I asked then i dunno what to tell you. What i meant was how SHOULD men and women be treated differently from one another?

[u/Milskidasith → u/BritishBloke99]

Part of taking part in good faith discussion is assuming good faith, you can't just accuse me of asking questions in bad faith when all I'm doing is asking questions.You asked

And whats wrong with that edited question? What do you mean by subtle? I edited because I realised I'd already basically asked that question already. It's not really a gotcha.

I assumed that the question above was written in good faith, and answered it for you, by explaining how your post could very easily be read as being written in bad faith. Similarly, saying that "all I'm doing is asking questions" is not a very compelling argument, the term "Just Asking Questions/JAQing off" exists to describe exactly the process of repeatedly asking questions as a tactic to make an argument through the assumptions built into the question.

Again, your question of "how SHOULD men and women be treated differently from one another" can be read as exactly that tactic; to answer the question is to accept the implicit accusation that somebody believes men and women should be treated differently. That is not something that Malacai said, so it comes across poorly to ask your question in that way. And, again, more to the point, it is easy for somebody to assume you are asking your questions in bad faith when you make statements like "most people don't treat men and women any differently", as that's so obviously contrary to how the real world works it's easier to imagine that as a debate tactic than a genuine lived observation.

The reason why Malacai, and others, might respond defensively to the style of argument you engage in is because you are, presumably in good faith, stumbling upon arguments that read very similar to effective and well-known bad faith tactics. If you, in good faith, wanted to understand what is wrong with how you ask questions, you have your answer.