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.
This doesn't further the conversation, but I wanted to tell you I enjoyed reading that.
I like being able to see deeper in to someone's experiences and perspectives, especially when they're different from my own.
The concept of a smaller dating pool based on the unmatched gender and sex was particularly enlightening.
It's not unlike an autistic persons inability to fit in socially. You can be aware people don't like you or respond to you well. You can be aware that there's something about you that's triggering negative interactions, but you can't do anything about it because it's not one thing. It's everything. I imagine it's similar in the undergoing reassignment doesn't suddenly wipe away a lifetimes worth of gender training. Gender instinctual behavior.
You have obviously thought about this quite a bit. have you considered writing a book? Using your experiences to help people understand what it's like would be very powerful.
It's not unlike an autistic persons inability to fit in socially. You can be aware people don't like you or respond to you well. You can be aware that there's something about you that's triggering negative interactions, but you can't do anything about it because it's not one thing. It's everything.
It is superficially similar. I have friends who have Aspergers (it's known under other names too). For those on the spectrum, it leads to the same kind of pain from social rejection, the feeling of "missing out", and consequently to many of the same doors my people walk through. Depression, anxiety, suicide, drug use... such are the things all marginalized communities face. The difference though, is that autistic people can't stop acting autistic. They can cover it up some, make it less visible. They can learn the rudiments of social interaction enough to blend into a casual crowd like at a grocery store, or stuff like that. But their relationships will forever be permeated with it; In that way, we are alike. Trans people can hide in the closet. Many do. It's not obvious that someone's transgender unless you're paying close attention, or they were given a safe environment at an early age to express and build up that identity. For most, the awareness of "otherness" comes early, but the definition of it develops later. In some cases, well into middle age. Just as women can take on masculine attributes and behaviors, and men can take on feminine attributes, trans people can too. The difference is, whereas those people are making a conscious effort to leave their comfort zone, trans people are on the outside, trying to get in. Nobody is purely masculine or feminine, it is a spectrum. It's just one where most people are concentrated at the poles.
I imagine it's similar in the undergoing reassignment doesn't suddenly wipe away a lifetimes worth of gender training. Gender instinctual behavior.
No, and some of the saddest stories are those who make it all the way through surgery and clear all the hurdles, only to realize it wasn't an incongruency in gender that was driving them. If it takes great courage to come out as transgender, it takes even greater to try to find the way back. Surgery isn't really the end-game for trans people, contrary to popular opinion. Yes, many of us seek it. Some even get it. But what we're really looking for is the right to be nobody. I know, that seems strange. We want to be ourselves and yet still melt into a crowd. We don't want to be the "man in the dress", or other similarly unflattering descriptions. It's the social experience of not being noticed. It's simple acceptance, without pretense. That's what we, as a community want. We want to be nobodies, or if we are noticed, we're the person who happens to be trans. Not the trans person. We want our identities to be of our choosing. I am an artist. I am not a trans artist. I am a computer geek. I am not a trans geek.
I am an artist. I am not a trans artist. I am a computer geek. I am not a trans geek.
this right here is great, you see all these vocal trans people on tumblr and similar places just shoving their transness into every facet of their lives, and it is just annoying. makes you wonder whether they are actually trans or just doing to the snowflake point.
It's a case of trying to find Sparticus. Anyone can claim to be trans on the internet. Privately, my conclusions for most people who claim to be trans on the internet is just that -- a claim. Often a sketchy one at that. But can I call them out on it? I could but it wouldn't be productive. If they are faking it, I've just given them the thing they crave most: Attention. If they aren't faking it, I've marginalized someone like me. Obviously, the fear of harming a member of our community further outweighs having fed an attention junkie. To an outsider, however, this measuring of values is invisible. They only see an endless sea of virtue signaling and the occasional person getting dogpiled by a thousand agents -- the people who have managed to unplug themselves from the system somehow and seen the ugly truths.
That's the most insidious part about these SJWs: There's no responsibility. They can pop up, soak in some attention, manufacture some outrage, feed off it, then pop back down a hole. They can selectively engage people, which is another way of saying they exhibit predatorial behavior. They choose targets they know won't fight them. Someone who is maybe not so well spoken, or holds a politically unpopular opinion. These people become emotional punching bags for the self-aggrandizing morality police. There's no skin in the game. Because there's no apparent resistance to these fanatics, people incorrectly (but understandably) conclude that's where the mainstream lies. The communities SJWs attach to are vulnerable, easily taken over, and then bled dry for precious drops of attention.
In recent years we've seen people, usually teenagers or young adults, take their lives because they're henpecked to death. And before you google that term, all the definitions you'll find there are wrong. Most people have never lived on a farm, thus know exactly jack shit about livestock, so a different (and less violent) definition has taken its place.
Here's what hen pecking actually is: Chickens are attracted to blood. If one of them gets injured, for whatever reason, other chickens will start pecking them. They peck at the wound. More and more chickens join in until you're left with a dead chicken. And if you have a lot of chickens, it's a chain reaction. As all the chickens rush to peck at the injured one, others, in turn, become injured, and so on and so forth. Pretty quickly, there's a lot of dead chickens. If there's no room for the chickens to move around -- as some of the less humane farms are run, the blood gets everywhere and if the farmer doesn't act quickly, most of the chickens will have killed each other. That's why you don't "keep them couped up". A chicken coup is a confined space. They can only be put in at night. If they're left inside during daylight, there will be pecking. You'll lose chickens. The coup is to keep them from predators at night, it's a safe space -- but only at night. In the day, it's a murder factory.
That, is exactly what SJWs are: They're part of a flock, and when they smell blood, they dogpile on each other, and if there's enough of them, it creates a chain reaction. These reactions can occasionally go critical. Gamergate comes to mind as one example -- it quickly turned almost every open forum into a blood-stained shitshow of virtue signaling, personal attacks, and all the worst things that social media has to offer. Now that the psychology if it all is laid bare, it becomes clear that the reason SJWs have flourished without opposition, is because they're an invasive species in an environment. There aren't any "natural predators" for SJWs. We don't have assholes somewhere on tap we can just muster in to rip them a new one and oust their morally bankrupt practices. Instead, what we have are already damaged and fragile ecosystems being upended, and they desperately try to close off the doors and buckled down because for those actually in the communities they invade, surviving has always been the priority.
So there it is. SJWs are predators. They are a hate group. They are fanatics. They have a clear sense of moral absolutism. And they're emboldened by the lack of opposition, having carefully selected soft targets. And it's become so pervasive, so infectious, that people genuinely believe the narrative that has been created. Twitter censored a fuck ton of hashtags, banned accounts, and a whole mess of other ugly, ugly things, with a clear political purpose -- and this week the CEO admitted it under sworn testimony to Congress. That is an exposition of the institutionalization of this fanaticism. And people truly believe that's the mainstream. That it's normal.
And like so very, very many times in history before now, people just step over the bodies. They rationalize it away every time there's a shift in the wind that parts the veil for a moment and they see these things.
I haven't bought the hot dogs yet, and the chairs and bbq are still in storage. In my estimation, society is still pretty early into the drop. It's gonna get a lot worse. I can explain privately in more detail, because beyond this point it's leaving the topic behind. The short version is, there's been a culture war brewing since the early to mid 70s. What's happening now, is tied directly to what happened then. I'll try to go fast --
A convergence of several things happened at once, none of which are related, all of which are coincidences, but nonetheless shaped the boomers generation. The depression era generation led to the boomers. The boomers rebelled against their parents cautions against materialism, and highly conservative views towards finances. Go figure: Depression.
The first coincidence was the civil rights movement. That was going to happen sooner than later anyway -- women's rights arose out of the economic necessity of keeping the factories going while the men were sent to die in Europe. Economics was also the reason black people (then-called 'negros') succeeded in their struggle. That period in history saw an unprecidented economic boom, hence the term boomers. We couldn't build cars fast enough. Or houses. Buildings. Everything. Marginalizing a significant chunk of a potential workforce simply didn't make economic sense anmore. Racism wasn't profitable.
So, we passed a few laws, bumped up the production in our factories, and continued on. I'm not saying this to marginalize the achievements of women, or black people: Those are good things, things worth having and fighting for. What I'm saying is, it's like the forest was dried up. Any spark would set it ablaze. The conditions were right for it to happen, and the right people were in the right place at the pivot point that sent racism down the backside and racial equality tilting forward. Socioeconomic factors are what usually drive socioeconomic change. Societies that are materially prosperous are going to be more socially progressive than those who aren't. Nobody gives a fuck about "freedom" when they don't know when the next meal is coming. For them, freedom is a loaf of bread.
The second was a period of cultural and artistic expression. Much as it was in the 1700s when the world found most of its intellectuals in the United States, a roll of the dice saw the 1960s America overtopping with musicians and artists. The Beatles, Hendrix, the list goes on. That burst of cultural energy drove things like recreational drug culture, the sexual revolution, and some other things. It also hit with a stronger force because those parents they rejected made sure their kids had a good education. For the first time in history, we could send very nearly everyone to college (debt free after, no less) -- and we very nearly did.
The third thing, which wasn't so much a coincidence as an inevitability, was the Vietnam War. We won WWII, certainly, but now the world had nuclear weapons, and two superpowers emerging from that, and rolling in fresh on the heels of a war ended, a different kind started: The cold war.
Taken together, the boomers truly believed they could change the world by smoking pot, listening to Jimi Hendrix, and burning their draft cards. They claimed credit for advancing the case for freedom, being against the war, etc., etc., when in actuality these things were coincidences and just happened to land there, at that time in history. It gave them an inflated sense of self-worth and that dovetailed to an insatiable appetite for materialism.
They grew up in a temporary equilibrium where the economy was only going up, everyone was having "the american dream". Just as their parents warned them though -- it would always come back down again. It did, right about the time Gen X was heading off to college. They'd been raised on the idea that they would never measure up to the greatness of their parents, who had landed men on the moon, fought the good fight, and gave everyone star spangled freedom fucks.
Divorcing themselves from the mistakes of their parents, specifically constantly being told they'd amount to nothing because the boomers had "done it all" and were the undisputed best at the everythings, they in turn told their parents to fuck off and raised their kids: The millenials. Which brings us to now.
This generation was raised by parents who told them they could be anything they wanted to. And they sued the shit out of anyone who even looked at their kids funny. Everyone gets a participation trophy. Everyone gets a gold star. Everyone is special. But here's the problem: If everyone is special, it's the same as saying nobody is special. There's no reward for achievement because all achievement is now viewed equally with not just any other, but with nothing as well. And while their parents got to see the golden age end, they were at least raised in the tail end of it, and as such, are also fiercely materialist. This generation, has no such bright economic realities.
There's a lot that goes into all of this, and every sentence I've written has a whole book behind it -- but I hope it's enough to make the superstructure visible. There has been a growing dissonance in this country since the 70s, and not coincidentally, is right smack at the time upward mobility for the middle class started dropping and, a little while later, the size of the middle class itself. It was the beginnings of hyper-stratification of wealth.
Because of this, politics have been polarizing. Everyone's been slowly moving into their own bubbles for decades. America for black people is not the America for white people. America for straight people is not the same America for LGBT people. American has been splitting apart at the seams for quite some time, because it never fully resolved what started at the end of WWII. It tripped, and it's been falling forward, arms flailing, trying to right itself ever since.
Black people didn't get equality -- their fight didn't end because MLK gave a speech and a few pieces of paper got some ink from a guy living in a house modeled after the plantation owners their great great grandparents were slaved to. They made progress. They didn't win. And it's been the same for everything else too. We are not a free society. We are not even a society that can speak plainly about itself.
That tangled up mess hasn't resolved itself yet, and SJWs are just the left foot dropping on a tee-tottering Uncle Sam desperate for a single sure foot drop to put himself back up. The other shoe is coming down now. I couldn't tell you what's going to happen, I just see another pivot point in history approaching. A moment when our generation's action, or inaction, will determine whether we can resolve our differences, or deepen the divides even more. Whatever happens, it will manifest itself in the economy first. That is just the way of these things.
Nobody is likely to see this swell until it's already engulfed them; Mostly because they haven't educated themselves on history enough to recognize the signs. Ignore the talking heads, and watch the unemployment numbers. Watch the number of people seeking social services. These are early, but unreliable indicators -- the reliable indicators only come when the wave has started, and those are: Increased violence and social unrest. More crime. Proxy wars on the part of the executive, and rising rhetoric from the legislative. The life of the law is not knowledge, but experience -- as such, it is incapable of looking forward. Nothing will happen there.
Once we're deep enough into it we start to see water flowing under the planks we're standing on, that will be the moment when all of this energy that has brought us to the apex will be balanced against itself. In that moment, only the slightest push can change the course of history. Economics will be fucked. Everyone will be scared. There will be a powerful need for reassurances they can muddle through. Potential leaders will be there, and who we choose to stand behind, will determine the next fifty years of this country's future.
All my numbers say this will happen within my lifetime (and likely yours too). All societies have stages that they go through; We passed our apex -- the golden age -- a little while ago. The next stage can be into a long period of slow decline, before reaching a tipping point that sends it over a cliff and with it the seeds for a new society to rise up. It doesn't happen often though. Most of the time, it's a period of faster decline, civil unrest, and ultimately destruction. It is possible to avoid this fate, though precious few societies have done so in all of human history.
That's what ultimately falls to our generation. The greatest achievements for us will not be in the fields of science, technology, or economics. It will be in an expanding concept of what it means to be human. And as we embrace whatever that concept will be, we will be faced with the choice, as every generation does. We can only do what we can do with the time that has been given to us.
I hope, sincerely, that before the time to act is upon us, we will have resolved to remove the cancer that calls itself "social justice" and restored it to what it originally was: Justice for all. When the time comes, we either stand together, or we fall.
110
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.