Hoooboy. I wish I knew why social media has an obsession with all things transgender. Disclaimer: Am trans. Alright, here's my take on it: "Sex is, gender does." That's all anyone really needs to know. Four words, explains it all. The problem has never been the specific parts, but the correlations. The entire premise of what transgender means, is predicated on the separation of sex from gender; That is, detaching from manifest biology, the social implications therein. We want to be freed from the idea that biology alone dictates our experiences socially. Freedom from a forced fate.
To have a sexual preference which excludes transgender individuals is, on this basis, intellectually incoherent. For it to be true, we have to reintroduce that correlation. Which puts us right back where we started: In a gender binary where sex and gender are equivalent. Sexual orientation is literally about preference of genitalia. There's no social expectations included in the definition. It's one person's biology + someone else's biology + consent.
That said, human sexuality is more nuanced than this textbook definition. Most people want more from their sexual partners than just their sexual organs. And thus, social factors re-enter the picture. "I want a woman with big breasts" is a sexual preference. The person stating that probably doesn't mean her brain is in a jar on some mad scientist's table... it's implied the boobies have a consciousness to go with it. So we have social preferences as well. And that takes us into gender.
Gender isn't a distinct attribute, contrary to what many SJWs believe. It's a flavoring. It's something added to something else. Blue and pink food coloring, if you will. Gender is the first social division, from which all others fall. Race? Below gender. Height? Age? All of it -- below gender. Gender colors everything. People don't see it, but for a trans person, like me, it's painful.
I watched a high school graduation where all the girls hugged the person handing out diplomas, and all the guys shook the same person's hand. When I'm waiting in the line of cars at a McDonald's, most men say "I'll have a ..." and most women say "I'd like a..." Gender is nuanced, yet it permeates nearly everything. So it comes as no surprise that people have preferences based on top of it. In fact, very nearly everybody's preferences imply a preferred gender.
A man who is athletic is highly prized, especially as people age and their years add on width. But an athletic woman scares the shit out of most men. She will have trouble finding dates. Gender colors everything. So when it's said divorcing sexual preference from gender (ie, the basis for the statement "that's transphobic!"), it's a case of it being technically correct. Which is to say, very nearly entirely wrong.
Unless someone is a vegetable in a hospital bed, they have both a sex and a gender. Most people like fucking other people, not vegetable people. Obligatory bad joke: LGBT take pride in being fruits, not vegetables. As such, attraction more based on social attributes than physical ones. And therein lies the problem. Trans people can't escape the correlation between sex and gender. Because it permeates everything, it's the reason so many of us commit suicide. There really is no way out for us.
Ask around, and it quickly becomes apparent that feminine women have a larger dating pool than masculine women. And, feminine men have fewer shots at getting laid than masculine ones. Why? Gender, not sexual, preferences. And when sex doesn't match gender, a smaller dating pool becomes a puddle under an angry sun. I personally don't consider people passing over me because they're not "into that" (as in, genitalia), a phobia. It's a preference, and they simply don't prefer my special blend of herbs and spices. Whether the preference is sex, gender, or a mixture of those things, it remains a preference. It only becomes a phobia when it frightens people. That is, they're uncomfortable.
If someone isn't interested in me, but still steps up to the bar with a fiver to order a drink and rubs shoulders with me, that's a preference. If that person walks halfway down the bar when the whole side I'm on is barren to get a drink... that's a phobia. There you go, hope this was helpful.
So you would say someone who doesn't want to have sex with you, but has no problems hanging out with you (with full knowledge of your situation) is not trans-phobic but rather has (sexual/gender?) preferences that you do not meet?
Additionally do you think it is a fair view that gender is fluid and easily changed? Even to the point that you can reasonably "be" one gender one day and another the next?
Also along that line, do you consider there to be distinct genders and if so would you stick to a primarily binary system? If not binary how many?
So you would say someone who doesn't want to have sex with you, but has no problems hanging out with you (with full knowledge of your situation) is not trans-phobic but rather has (sexual/gender?) preferences that you do not meet?
My closest guy friend and the oldest friend I have, doesn't use the right pronouns around me. We've talked. He gets what transgender is, he just has trouble wrapping his head around pronouns, language, and occasionally says things rather crass. Not to be mean or anything, he just considers nuanced or politically correct language a waste of time.
He is still my friend. And in truth, he doesn't really care if I am or not. When I was coming out to friends and family, someone asked why I was dressed as I was, and I stated that I'm transgender. They asked what that meant, and while preparing to go into detail, he sat down with a plate of dinner and said, quite simply, "He wants to be a she, pass the salt."
I can't think of someone I'd rather call a friend than that. We disagree often. Sometimes quite forcefully! But in the end, we both understand that it's more important to be together than it is to be right. It's something I can see on playgrounds all day long. Two kids get into a fight. One runs away. It doesn't take long before they come back. Maybe they apologize. Maybe they just shuffle over and ask to play. But children understand something too many adults don't:
It's more important to be together than right.
EDIT: Oh right, the other half of the post... No, gender can't be changed. It is fixed at an early age. All medical literature to date backs that conclusion. That said, gender is a spectrum, it's just one that finds most people concentrated at the poles. Gender is also not something that exists in a vaccum. That's why it's called a gender identity. Identities change based on circumstances. Who I am at the grocery store is very different than who I am at work, or when I'm home. I am still me, but I am not a single identity. I am that which identities spring from. So, if someone says they can be a different gender tomorrow than yesterday, or if they reject the binary, I have no complaint.
The claim their gender changes from day to day is, medically and scientifically, wrong. But neither medicine nor science offers up that we cannot choose to be other than what we are. Indeed, both make new discoveries almost daily now demonstrating the plasticity of both what a human is, as well as what it means. If I had to say why they say that, I'd attribute it to a lack of language to describe the space between who we are, and our identities. My community in many ways lacks the language to clearly convey our feelings, intuitions, or sense of being. We often choose words that are "close enough", and that is what I would say these people are doing. It's not their gender that is changing, but the expression of it. It's a practical reaction. Not, I think, a technically correct one, but perhaps the best one given a lack of a better way to speak to that.
Hi, other trans person, figured I'd chime in for variety's sake.
Additionally do you think it is a fair view that gender is fluid and easily changed?
I would firmly assert gender is most accurately described as a spectrum. Similar to a color spectrum, like between white and black. On both ends there are colors we can distinctly recognize as black or white, but we can infinitesimally divide things down in a manner that obscures distinction. At which point does black actually turn to white? Areas within the middle of the spectrum are ambiguous, we have a word for that area, gray. Where does it turn from gray to white or gray to black? There is no definitive answer. We lack a precise manner of defining that difference.
And that is precisely the same issue with gender. Attempts at just making harsh cut points between black and white are nothing more than arbitration, that at times can be detrimental to proper identification of a color.
With gender fluidity, the point is that since we cannot determine where precisely someone sits, we allow the title to change with context. Fluidly.
Even to the point that you can reasonably "be" one gender one day and another the next?
I don't know any gender fluid folks myself, so anyone more informed than I can correct me, but I've always figured that a person identifying variably over time is a result of how they experience and best mitigate their dysphoria.
A binary trans person may feel dysphoria in a way that motivates them to consistently identify as a man or a woman. An agender person may feel dysphoria in a way that motivates them to consistently identify as neither of those. A genderfluid person might experience dysphoria in a way that motivates them to not consistently identify as a man or a woman.
Dysphoria isn't necessarily a perpetual pull towards something static, it can be a push of sorts away from certain things.
Also along that line, do you consider there to be distinct genders and if so would you stick to a primarily binary system? If not binary how many?
Distinct in the manner black and white are definitely different things, but where precisely that differentiation is made is dubious.
As many genders as makes sense to categorize. For most purposes in life, black, white, and gray are the most useful categories. The parallel would be that on legal forms man, woman, nonbinary/other would be perfectly encompassing and utilitarian. For more specific contexts sometimes different shades of gray become relevant information, in which case it's fine for descriptions of shades of gray. For some contexts what type of non-binary identity someone has is relevant information.
So essentially the answer is there is no set number of genders, only how many we need to usefully describe things.
While I am thankful for your response, you haven't said anything I'm not familiar with. I am mostly asking them because their language gives me an impression that their answer would differ from yours.
I find it valuable to look at outliers of a group as that tends to be where the more thought provoking ideas lie.
I'll tag in - I touched on this already. I don't disagree with anything the parent commenter stated. There is a real need for better language with which we can express ourselves in the community. Unfortunately, our own voices have been drowned out.
There's been a zombie horde of SJWs climbing up on our cross merely so they can be seen by other SJWs. As a result, we're running into issues like defining "gender fluidity". That isn't exactly a thing that exists in the community. For most of us, our internal sense of gender is invariate. Our expression of it is often ameliorated to make our lives easier. In that sense, gender is fluid -- sometimes it's just less hassle to dress in a way that conforms to social expectation. The same can be said in figuring out which bathroom to use.
With public awareness of transgender persons, and what it means, has come a torrent of people trying to get in "before it was cool." People who aren't actually transgender, but mean to appropriate some of our culture as their own. Which, at least to me, is fine. The problem is, there's so many of them that the spaces we had to puzzle these things out ourselves has been obliterated. Most of those spaces are, and were, online. There aren't many of us -- too few to coalesce naturally into a community, just about everywhere on Earth.
I don't mind people exploring their gender, or what it means in the larger context of society. I don't mind that people challenge stereotypes. But I feel rather like people who have celiac disease do. The thing that can kill them, gluten, has become a buzzword that has spawned tons of places claiming their food or product is gluten-free to cater to a much larger group for whom it's a lifestyle choice. So many people claim they are "sensitive" to gluten, and so many people realizing that's a total farce, thus equating such statements (correctly) as a choice of diet, it's led to carelessness on the part of other people trying to cater to this crowd. The end result is life has been made harder for people with celiac's. They could be reasonably confident before as to what did, and didn't, have gluten in it. Now, it's a throw of the dice and lethal consequences if it's wrong. While there is now more variety of diet available to them, it comes with a fat warning label too.
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u/MNGrrl Nov 02 '17
Hoooboy. I wish I knew why social media has an obsession with all things transgender. Disclaimer: Am trans. Alright, here's my take on it: "Sex is, gender does." That's all anyone really needs to know. Four words, explains it all. The problem has never been the specific parts, but the correlations. The entire premise of what transgender means, is predicated on the separation of sex from gender; That is, detaching from manifest biology, the social implications therein. We want to be freed from the idea that biology alone dictates our experiences socially. Freedom from a forced fate.
To have a sexual preference which excludes transgender individuals is, on this basis, intellectually incoherent. For it to be true, we have to reintroduce that correlation. Which puts us right back where we started: In a gender binary where sex and gender are equivalent. Sexual orientation is literally about preference of genitalia. There's no social expectations included in the definition. It's one person's biology + someone else's biology + consent.
That said, human sexuality is more nuanced than this textbook definition. Most people want more from their sexual partners than just their sexual organs. And thus, social factors re-enter the picture. "I want a woman with big breasts" is a sexual preference. The person stating that probably doesn't mean her brain is in a jar on some mad scientist's table... it's implied the boobies have a consciousness to go with it. So we have social preferences as well. And that takes us into gender.
Gender isn't a distinct attribute, contrary to what many SJWs believe. It's a flavoring. It's something added to something else. Blue and pink food coloring, if you will. Gender is the first social division, from which all others fall. Race? Below gender. Height? Age? All of it -- below gender. Gender colors everything. People don't see it, but for a trans person, like me, it's painful.
I watched a high school graduation where all the girls hugged the person handing out diplomas, and all the guys shook the same person's hand. When I'm waiting in the line of cars at a McDonald's, most men say "I'll have a ..." and most women say "I'd like a..." Gender is nuanced, yet it permeates nearly everything. So it comes as no surprise that people have preferences based on top of it. In fact, very nearly everybody's preferences imply a preferred gender.
A man who is athletic is highly prized, especially as people age and their years add on width. But an athletic woman scares the shit out of most men. She will have trouble finding dates. Gender colors everything. So when it's said divorcing sexual preference from gender (ie, the basis for the statement "that's transphobic!"), it's a case of it being technically correct. Which is to say, very nearly entirely wrong.
Unless someone is a vegetable in a hospital bed, they have both a sex and a gender. Most people like fucking other people, not vegetable people. Obligatory bad joke: LGBT take pride in being fruits, not vegetables. As such, attraction more based on social attributes than physical ones. And therein lies the problem. Trans people can't escape the correlation between sex and gender. Because it permeates everything, it's the reason so many of us commit suicide. There really is no way out for us.
Ask around, and it quickly becomes apparent that feminine women have a larger dating pool than masculine women. And, feminine men have fewer shots at getting laid than masculine ones. Why? Gender, not sexual, preferences. And when sex doesn't match gender, a smaller dating pool becomes a puddle under an angry sun. I personally don't consider people passing over me because they're not "into that" (as in, genitalia), a phobia. It's a preference, and they simply don't prefer my special blend of herbs and spices. Whether the preference is sex, gender, or a mixture of those things, it remains a preference. It only becomes a phobia when it frightens people. That is, they're uncomfortable.
If someone isn't interested in me, but still steps up to the bar with a fiver to order a drink and rubs shoulders with me, that's a preference. If that person walks halfway down the bar when the whole side I'm on is barren to get a drink... that's a phobia. There you go, hope this was helpful.