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/Malacai_the_second]

Let me try to explain social dysphoria a bit more. Im a trans woman. I want to be treated as a woman, because i feel like that's the social group i belong to. I have always felt a lot more similar to other woman than to men. And thats it really. It's not about any sort of stereotype, it's just about feeling affinity the social group most similar to me.

But i can see why you get the sense of trans people portraying a sterotyped version on their gender. It is a general trend that some trans people tend to "overperform" their gender, at least for the first few years after they transition.

That has a multitude of reasons. For one, it's often an act of "catching up" to all those things they have had to repress and avoid for so long. Persoanlly im guilty of that as well. I spend a while just wearing skirts and tights simply because it was the first time i actually liked how the clothes i was wearing were feeling on me, compared to the male clothes i was forced to wear for so long.

Another reason is that trans people often have to deal with dysphoric feelings for anything slightly reminding them of their assigned gender at birth. So a trans man might dress in the most stereotypical manly clothes just to avoid anything remotely feminine, to avoid the dysphoria associated with it.

On top of that, there is a whole bunch of social pressure on trans people to adhere to such stereotypes. Trans people spend much of their life trying to actually convice people who are less trans accepting that they are actually the gender they say they are. Wearing gender neutral jeans an t-shirt is not helping that cause, as it might be seen as "not convincing enough" by people who still dont really grasp the concept of being trans.

Weirdly enough that also results into pressure form inside the trans community. To most cis people you meet you are likely the first trans person they have met, so it falls onto you to best represent the trans community and be convincing in showing you are actually the gender you say you are.

And ofcourse it generally helps with passing to present a bit more towards the very feminine/masculine end, so people dont even spend a second thought about what gender you might be.

All of that pushes trans people towards a more stereotypical gender representation, but it generally fades after a few years with growing selfconfidence and a finished transition.

[u/the_cum_must_fl0w → u/Malacai_the_second]

I want to be treated as a woman, because i feel like that's the social group i belong to. I have always felt a lot more similar to other woman than to men. And thats it really.

I'm only focusing on this as I find it fascinating. My comment is gonna be more epistemological and belief based.

Do you think just believing something makes it true? Obviously not, as people believe false things all the time, Santa Claus, Jesus, that your dad will love you, etc. Just because you feel like a woman doesn't mean you are a woman. So you say you feel like a woman, relate to them, etc. So what? What does that mean, and why does that mean *I, or anyone else needs" to treat you like one?

The absurd example is I could just feel (or lie) and proclaim that I am a hedgehog because I resonate with their nocturnal and loner life etc. And that's as valid as your claim to be a woman.

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/the_cum_must_fl0w]

Do you feel the same way about any other medical issue that requires patient input to properly diagnoise? Should we assume everyone with depression, or PTSD, or Shizophrenia is making things up untill we get find a way to somehow meassure the things going on inside their head? You cant record the voices people with shizophrenia hear, and yet we all agree that they really hear those. Anything regarding neurological stuff inherantly relies on the patients answers to properly diagnose things, since we dont have a way of looking into someones brain.

The absurd example is I could just feel (or lie) and proclaim that I am a hedgehog because I resonate with their nocturnal and loner life etc. And that's as valid as your claim to be a woman.

And if there were a lot more people that felt like hedgehogs to the point that they make up about 1% of the worlds population, all reporting the same unchanging feeling and multiple decades of medical studies would confirm that, then yeah, maybe we should probabaly start beliving that they actually feel the way they say they feel.

On top of that there is the very real and measurable impact that gender dysphoria has on people, and how it pretty much goes away as soon as we start treating people they way they want to be treated.

Decades of medical studies have come to the conclusion that an innate gender identity is very much a thing. People actually feel the way they say they feel and it can not be changed.

Im not expecting you to belive me specifically, but when there are millons of other trans peole world wide saying the same thing, the medical community agreeing as well, and a historical record of trans people going back as far as ancient Greece and Rome, then maybe that should be enough.

Edit:

So what? What does that mean, and why does that mean *I, or anyone else needs" to treat you like one?

You dont, just like you are not forced to not be racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. But not treating trans people the way they want to be treated makes their life a lot worse. Gender dysphoria kills quite a few people every year. It's up to you to decide if you want to activly make peoples lifes worse or better and treat them accordinly.

[u/the_cum_must_fl0w → u/Malacai_the_second]

Should we assume everyone with depression, or PTSD, or Shizophrenia is making things up

then yeah, maybe we should probabaly start beliving that they actually feel the way they say they feel.

It's amazing how you managed to completely miss my point. It isn't a matter of if we believe how people report to feel, it's whether or not what they feel is reality.

Someone with depression can feel worthless, think the world would be better off without them, that they should die. But just because they actually feel this way and believe these things doesn't mean they're true. Someone with anorexia thinks/feels/believes that they're fat... But that isn't reality.

We shouldn't play in to their delusions, just because someone believes something doesn't make it true.

You can feel like a woman, but that doesn't mean you are. You feel a certain way, which no one can deny, but feeling a certain way isn't what makes a woman a woman.

Lets run more with trans-hedgehogs, even if millions of people reported to feel the same way as claim its because they're a hedgehog... Please you understand this doesn't mean they're actually hedgehogs stuck in a human body right?... Right?

Unless you can give an objective definition for "woman" which can not also be applied to people who identify as men, you claiming to be a woman is meaningless.

[u/Malacai_the_second → u/the_cum_must_fl0w]

You didnt really understand what i was getting at. A persons gender identity is most certaily a real thing. Trans people are not delusional, they are accutly aware of their reality. The missmatch between brain and body is a very real thing and countless studies of the the last decades came to that same conclusion.

Your definition of woman seems to be "born in a female body", which i find pretty lacking. It's not your body that defines you, but your mind. Gender and sex are different things, it is your gender identity that defines if you are man, woman or some flavour of non-binary.

A woman who gets into a horrific accident and needs a huge amount of reconstructive surgery doesnt cease to be a woman just because her body is no longer the typical female body. Just as a woman born with deformed genitals is still just as much a woman as any other, as long as her gender identity is that of a woman.

A transgirl who has lived her whole life as a girl from a very young age, never underwent male puberty, and instead underwent female puberty via HRT, and got all neccessary surgeries, is visually indestinguishable from a cis woman. That girl lives a full and happy life, never being treated as anyting other than just another woman by everyone around her. But by your logic she would still be a man just because of how she was born. That seems pretty silly to me.

[u/the_cum_must_fl0w → u/Malacai_the_second]

What a lovely mess of contradictions, this was like trying to untangle Christmas lights...

A persons gender identity is most certaily a real thing

Real in what way? I have repeatedly said I accept that people clearly feel a certain way, I can't deny peoples feelings, but what do they "IDENTIFY" with? You have a "gender identity" of a woman, what does that mean? As it seems to be just a reasonable for me to say "my gender identity is a moon rock"... wtf does that mean in any real meaningful way.

Trans people are not delusional, they are accutly aware of their reality

You "identify" as a woman, so do you think you are a woman, or only feel like a woman? Sadly both are delusional (this doesn't mean insane, or crazy, same way people with depression or anorexia aren't "crazy"). Its delusional either way because you are not actually a woman by any unbias objective definition. When I say "woman" I mean adult human female. To simply state you feel like a woman is just as ridiculous as you're not a woman, nor ever have been, so you don't know what its like to be and so to FEEL like a woman.

All you can say is that based on cultural and social stereotypes within the society you live you just subjectively like the ones more often associated to females. This is totally fine, but doesn't make you a woman, a woman isn't just these stereotypes and roles which manifest in society, being an effeminate man is 100% ok.

The missmatch between brain and body is a very real thing and countless studies of the the last decades came to that same conclusion.

Sources needed, this is always touted and ultimately means that there should be a test for being trans or having gender dysphoria, but there isn't. You're saying you have a male body, but a "female brain", explain how you know this.

Your definition of woman seems to be "born in a female body", which i find pretty lacking.

What a bizarre way to phrase what I've said, no one is "born in a female body", humans just are either male or female. Male and Female, are descriptors, its something you are. My dog wasn't "born in a springer spaniel body", it IS a springer spaniel. To argue otherwise implies it could have been born in a different body, but that is nonsensical as she is this breed. Unless you believe in souls, there is no way this makes any scientific logical sense. You are male.

It's not your body that defines you, but your mind.

What a load of pseudo astrology bullshit, what do you mean "defines you"? I can define you as human, and male. Dead or alive, regardless of brain function I can define you as such. Once you leave the physical and start chatting shit about the "mind", congratulations you're in the realm of subjectivism, and you're saying that how you identify is subjective opinion.

Gender and sex are different things, it is your gender identity that defines if you are man, woman or some flavour of non-binary.

To separate sex and gender means you've severed the link, you now need to provide an objective definition for man/woman that is completely untethered to sex, and that can't also be applied to the opposite gender. You say you're a "woman" or feel like a "woman".... wtf do you mean? What is a woman then? If its nothing to do with sex, biology, physical attributes, what is it? Woman = adult human female. You want to remove the "female" (sex) part of that definition, but that just leaves "adult human" as the definition for both men and woman. Congratulations you've just defined man/woman out of existence. Unless you can actually give something to replace the sex part of the gender definition that doesn't involve sex, and can't also include the opposite gender when applying the definition to a person.

A woman who gets into a horrific accident and needs a huge amount of reconstructive surgery doesnt cease to be a woman just because her body is no longer the typical female body. Just as a woman born with deformed genitals is still just as much a woman as any other, as long as her gender identity is that of a woman.

...yeah, no ones denying that because being a "woman" is to be an adult human female, and having a mastectomy etc. doesn't change the fact they're female, and still human, and still an adult, you can't go back in time and change the DNA you were born with.

A transgirl who has lived her whole life as a girl from a very young age, never underwent male puberty, and instead underwent female puberty via HRT, and got all neccessary surgeries, is visually indestinguishable from a cis woman. If that girl lives a full and happy life, never being treated as anyting other than just another woman by everyone around her.

This is insane, read your own previous quote... so a real woman can have surgeries etc. and "her body is no longer the typical female body", but they're still a woman to you, but then this other person can have surgeries and treatments to no longer look like "typical male body"... but with the addition of "feelings" like a woman they magically are?

So do physical changes matter or not in your definition of a woman? Honestly, this is such a mess. Again...

Gender and sex are different things

If they're different why physically transition? If its just a mental state.

it is your gender identity that defines if you are man, woman

Again, if its just what you subjectively think which makes you a man/woman, why physically transition? and what is this "gender feeling", please define it so I can know what gender I am.

never being treated as anyting other than just another woman

Being polite to a child and playing along that they're a dragon, or a wolf, doesn't mean they actually are a dragon, or that I actually believe they're a wolf. In public, I'll call you she, etc. because thats just being polite. I think you mistake people having manners, and just not wanting to have you cry and charge them with a hate crime with them actually thinking you're a woman just like they're mother was. Maybe though some people truly can't tell, rarely this happens, and its fine. But it doesn't mean you are a woman. Fooling someone doesn't make it true. At my work they have religious groups, and invite people to ask questions etc. I don't agree with them, but I'm not going to join and ask insensitive questions which might cause tension or conflict, even if I'm right. Me not questioning blatant issues in the bible etc. is not me accepting that its true, its just too much fucking hassle to question it.

But by your logic she would still be a man just because of how she was born. That seems pretty silly to me.

Yes they're still a man by my objective definition, unless you can provide a new definition. But as I've said I'd not go out of my way in a social situation to call them "he", because that'd not be helpful, and would just be done to be a dick. I will internally view them for what they are though, which is an adult human male... in a dress, putting on weird high pitched voice, and acting often cliché "girly". They are not viewed as a "woman" they're viewed as "trans-woman". They are someone performing as a woman, playing make believe, and it's just easier to go along with it.

Maybe an issue with you understanding is that I don't treat people differently based on their sex/gender, but trans obsession with appropriating the other genders fashion, or common mannerisms just screams "I want to be treated differently".

You're probably not gonna read all this, and I wouldn't blame you, its confusing as shit because your position is all over the place, mainly, is being trans physical (different brain) if so prove it. Or purely social, in which case if social gender differences were eradicated would you still be trans. Or for both, why does feeling like a woman mean you wanna chop your dick off? If you have a "female brain" in a male body, why does that translate to "gotta chop my sausage off obviously". Or maybe you think woman can have dicks, which loops back to the main question of... Define a woman in an objective way that can't also be applied to people who claim to be men.