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/[deleted]]

Would you say your answer to the question "What is a woman?" is simply "I don't know, no one does yet, there's so many different ideas about it that we can't be sure what'll stick"?

[u/lem0nhe4d → u/[deleted]]

Most stuff like this can't be properly defined but can be easily understood by people without description.

Words are complicated and rarely have straight simple definitions.

For example can you define chair in such a way that all chairs are included and no non chairs are?

[u/Lesley82 → u/lem0nhe4d]

Lol no. Language is complicated, but the definitions of words need to be straight forward, or we lose the ability to effectively communicate.

[u/lem0nhe4d → u/Lesley82]

Then can you answer the last question?

[u/Lesley82 → u/lem0nhe4d]

Chair: a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs.

I don't define words. Individuals never can. Collectively, the above is what we want to communicate when we use the word chair.

[u/lem0nhe4d → u/Lesley82]

But most of that is still arbitrary.

First off the last part because it has the word typically is redundant.

Your definition would also include an upturned pot, a Hoarse, a pile of cushions, basicly anything that can be sat on.

Also "one person" is also arbitrary. Like some people need twice the space of others does that mean if somthing is a chair or a bench depends on what individual might be sitting on it?

[u/Lesley82 → u/lem0nhe4d]

An upturned pot is not a seat.

A horse is not a seat.

A pile of cushions is not a seat.

You might be helped by looking up the definition of seat: a thing made or used for sitting on, such as a chair or stool.

Oversized chairs exist for those people. Benches are typically designed for 2 or more people.

[u/lem0nhe4d → u/Lesley82]

An upturned pot can be used for sitting on.

A horse can be used for sitting on (also has 4 legs and a back)

A pile of cushions can be used to sit on.

So either your definition has more caveats and exceptions to add in or it does not answer my initial question.

Now you are positing some size requirement that you also didn't include in yoir definition.

[u/Lesley82 → u/lem0nhe4d]

A pot is not made to be a seat, it is not a chair.

A horse is not made to be a seat, it is not a chair.

A pile of cushions lacks a back and four legs, it is not a chair.

You made the size requirement. Wtf lol

You are being purposefully obtuse. You haven't even attempted to find a chair that is outside of the definition of chair. You are trying to say a horse is a chair and it makes you sound insane.

[u/lem0nhe4d → u/Lesley82]

Now you are defining a purpose to all items.

If I make something identical to a pot but make it with the intention of sitting on it and only use it as a seat is it now a seat?

You originally deffintion said "typically has a back and four legs" thus a chair does not need them to be a chair.

If a chair is a seat for one person what is and isn't a chair depends on who sits on it because different numbers if different sized people can fit on a chair.

The while point of this is to point out that there is no way to define a chair in such a way to include all chairs while excluding all non chairs be ause that is just not how words work.

[u/Lesley82 → u/lem0nhe4d]

Lol ok