Im confused about what a transgender person actually is
Submitted May 30, 2020, 5:33 p.m. by Falon03My initial reaction to the trans movement was, good for them, they felt as though they were in the wrong body but now get to live their lives expressing themselves as the gender they identify with.
But then delving deeper into the matter (I'm going to use transwomen in my examples) I thought, what makes a woman a woman? Makeup? Dresses? A feeling? I don't wear dresses or heels, I'm not very feminine but my body parts are female. So am I actually a male? I've toyed with being non binary, because I don't really identify with femininity.
It's a mind f*ck when you actually think about gender identity. Gender identities have been molded by society. For those who are dysphoric and feel like a woman, well, do you actually feel like a woman or just feel too feminine to be a man because society doesn't tolerate feminine men very well?
Does your penis disgust you because it's deemed a masculine body part, and not a feminine one? What actually is the feeling and knowing of being female? Maybe there's a preferred ideal of presenting and being treated as a female, because to be female means to express oneself as feminine (or what society deems "feminine")
When it comes down to biological sex, trans women don't have menstrual cycles, they don't deal with endometriosis or ovarian cysts. They have a lower risk of breast cancer, they don't go through labor and experience complications thereof.
It's like, presenting as the part but not experiencing the core of what a biological female experiences.
I don't want to be intolerant or hateful or tell people what to do with their lives. But I do wonder what actually compels someone to wish to live the life of the opposite gender and how valid those feelings are, if it's induced by society or if it's an inner spiritual thing that someone just KNOWS.
I wonder this too, and have not gotten a satisfactory answer yet. I’m beginning to consider myself a radical feminist, but being vocally gender critical in any way is scary. It feels like no one is allowed to ask these questions. I’m still not sure what to think.
We can't really know whether it's an inner spirit or society. I feel like some aspects of my personality i only realize after reflection are not part of an authentic self, but really how i've been molded by society. It's rather unacceptable tho to question if feelings are mistaken. I've had some trouble with mental health myself, so i mean it sincerely, but maybe we should not try to figure it out.
These are good questions, i encourage you to post them on /r/GCdebatesQT because you will probably not get answers here from trans-identified individuals.
It's supposed to be people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Basically a mental illness that makes you think you're of the other gender. The way society has decided to deal with this illness is to medically transition them to living as the gender their illness makes them believe themselves to be.
The issue is that it's hard to get a proper diagnosis before being allowed to transition legally, there are few people able to diagnose and seperate being dysphoric for other issues that lead to you wanting to radically change your life and so many people convinced they're trans that they are allowed to pass through the system pretty much unchecked.
Then there are people who felt left out so they decided you can be trans without dysphoria (Tucutes, aka too cute to be cis) and live out as if they are trans regardless of if they can legally transition. Then there are "informed" consent clinics where you basically sign a paper that says you "know" you're trans then some hack gives you hormones. Not to mention in the states it's legal to import hormones for personal use so some do that then save up (or create GoFundMe campaigns) for their surgeries. It's way too easy to "transition" and we currently have stats saying we have more trans people in the USA than people with dysphoria. All this irrelevant to whether or not it's best to feed the mental illness vs use therapy to rid them of their delusions like we do with literally every other illness like body dysmorphia (we don't tell people to eat themselves to 300 pounds if that's how they perceive their body). Another thing is that in a world where there wasn't gender, where boys could wear dresses, where women aren't shamed for not being "girly", where people on the left and right aren't snidely telling girls they're trying to be boys if they're slightly tomboyish, would there be transgenderism and dysphoria? Likely not. Especially because the concept of a male and female brain was debunked decades ago and only existed as a way to "prove" women as inferior.
Are you less of a woman if you don't conform to what society expects of you? No. Are you less of a man for being gay? No. And that's where the inherent sexism and homophobia comes from with a society that encourages transgenderism when you don't conform. Look at some of the bigger trans subreddits like traaaaans. Look at the sexism, look at how many of them fetishize being suddenly dumb and that being inherently "girly". Look at the disconnect and contradiction when they say they're becoming more girly (aka stupid and weak) with transitioning. But I thought they said they were already women? Also, if they were born in the wrong body, then why are most of them "lesbians"? They don't have the same rates of sexuality of normal humans, they are majority straight before transitioning.
If just thinking for a second about transgenderism makes it fall apart then maybe we should rethink it as a concept. And if trans people wouldn't stop censoring studies done on them to determine what exactly causes their mental illnesses (ironic, I thought they wanted to be "cured"), maybe we'd get these answers on the best way to treat their issues. Read some detrans stories if you're interested in seeing what caused them to think they were the other gender. It's certainly an interesting read
From a radical feminist perspective, gender is entirely a social construct. Femininity and masculinity do not exist beyond cultural definitions of them. The goal of radical feminism is to abolish gender, so that women and men can do what they want and like what they like without any gendered descriptions applied at all. Nothing would be "girly" or "a man's job" or anything like that.
Of course, we do live in a patriarchal society. In my view, transgender people with dysphoria are people who have internalized society's gender roles so thoroughly that they develop an internal sense of gender, aka a gender identity. Since gender is a social construct, gender identity inevitably relies on gender roles/stereotypes. Transgender people fit the roles prescribed to their biological sex poorly, and/or fit the roles prescribed to the opposite sex well. I think it's important to note that people who experience gender dysphoria typically don't seem to be consciously aware of this. Living in a patriarchy, we are so consistently bombarded by gender and gender roles that we don't really notice them, any more than we notice the air we're surrounded by and breathing in.
Where it gets complicated is with the modern trans rights movement. Trans rights activists (TRAs) currently push for a definition of transgender that doesn't require dysphoria. People can identify as whatever gender they feel describes them best. They consider this to be progressive in the sense that they're expanding the definition of gender. As an oversimplified version:
The result of the trans right movement is stuff like rapid onset gender dysphoria, where there's now an epidemic of teen girls identifying as trans when they hit puberty. From the TRA's point of view, these girls were all just born trans. From a radical feminist perspective, these girls are suddenly being sexualized by creepy old men, and are starting to physically look like the women in all the TV shows and movies that are written by men as objects with no personality, and are generally just experiencing a whole new level of misogyny. Of course they don't identify with what society says a woman is. That doesn't make them trans, it makes society wrong.
There are a couple other things that cause radfems and TRAs to clash. For example, TRAs push for self-identification. Because gender identity is an internal feeling that can't be detected with any test, and because a lot of people have limited access to therapists/medical care, TRAs push for laws that allow people allow people to legally change their gender based on their gender identity. This can create a couple of problems. 1) Teenagers dealing with puberty and having an identity crisis would be able to declare themselves transgender and get put on cross-sex hormones/have major surgery with minimal intervention, since questioning someone's gender identity is "transphobic". 2) A transwoman, for example, may not use hormones or get surgery and may, as a result, look entirely like a cis man. As a result, if you see what looks to be a cis man in the woman's locker rooms or bathrooms, you may not be able to ask him to leave without risking committing a hate crime, in case he identifies as a woman. On a related note, middle school and high school girls can be forced to share a school locker room with a pubescent male peer if he self-identifies as a girl.
Arguably one of the biggest issues is the push from TRAs to redefine the word "woman". Many radfems are fine for example with transwomen referring to themselves as transwomen. They are not fine with transwomen being referred to as women. Transwomen being literal women results in articles like "Woman arrested for rape" after a transwoman rapes someone with her penis. Depending on how clearly sex and gender are differentiated, crimes committed by transwomen may also be counted in statistics as crimes committed by women rather than crimes committed by men. Also, if transwomen are literal women, then it's impossible to exclude them from women's-only spaces. Again, it comes down to interpreting laws based on sex or gender, although recently there has been a push by TRAs to consider sex a spectrum you can identify on as well.
One other important thing to note: not all, or possibly even most, TRAs are trans. There are trans people who don't agree with any of this, and for example think that dysphoria should be a requirement to be considered trans. It's the TRAs that are pushing for laws that are dangerous for women.
This has turned into a really long rant, so I'll just leave this if you want to read more. You can also check out the wiki/FAQ on r/GenderCritical if you haven't yet. There's also a debate sub, r/GCdebatesQT, if you want to try to get opinions from both points of view.
This is a great breakdown. Thanks for all of that so I didn’t have to answer 😅
Sometimes I try to imagine what I would say if someone asks me why I’m gender critical and I am scared that my mind will go blank. You wrote out beautifully the basic arguments for being gc. I have this comment saved in case I ever do go blank when talking with my sjw friends. Thanks!
Really great overview, detailed but not excessive.
I have 3 questions about this view:
1. If we adopt the gender critical view then you could raise a boy as a girl and that person wouldn't be able to tell (if surgeries are involved and done without that person knowing/before that person can know) and would just adopt the gender roles of the opposite sex. This has been tried and didn't work "when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"),[9][42] and neither frilly dresses,[43] nor female hormones made him feel female." That seems like a problem for the gender critical view unless I'm mistaken.
2. Animals that don't really have culture like humans do still have gender-typical behaviour (implying gender-typical thinking beneath the surface), like gorilla's who are genetically not that far away from humans. If it is not the culture that gives (part of, I admit) those gender roles then it must be inherent/genetic, right?
3. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view that sexes behave differently, and why would we be a blank-slate? Different physical properties (more muscle for men, having to invest more energy/risk in children for women, just to name some examples) would obviously lead to behaviour (and thought patterns) that take those into account.
1. Reimer was sexually abused by his therapist to "teach" Reimer how to "be a girl." From the Wikipedia article you linked:
If anything, this is consistent with the theory that a disproportionate number of trans men were sexually abused in childhood. Being a girl/woman is hard enough in a patriarchy without that sort of abuse. It doesn't surprise me that girls/women want to identify out of the population most likely to be sexually abused.
2. Radical feminists don't deny biological reality. There are differences between women and men. The difference is that, as a sentient self-aware species, we control our behavior beyond our instincts. The way modern society is set up, with modern technology, people shouldn't be confined to gender roles.
3. Nothing good ever seems to come from evo psych talking points. Again, we have free will. Or at least, acting like we do is the only way anything gets done. We have no idea what women and men would choose to do if we lived in an egalitarian society rather than a patriarchy. All we can do is fight to liberate women and give them more choices. True liberation requires abolishing gender.
1. Well, no 'experiment' is perfect.. Do you know any case-studies in favor of the gender-critical view?
2. I'm not making claims about what people should or shouldn't do, but the fact that those instincts are there is an indication of behaviour and therefor brain/personality bound sex-characteristics, aka something we could call gender, non?
3. There is a logic behind some evo-psych points that is hard to deny, although often not falisifiable I admit. But you bring up the idea of liberation and free will and I want to comment on that: Is a society with zero expectations, learned roles, grouping and generalizing of people based on some characteristic, etc. actually possible? I cannot imagine such a world. Everything you teach a child is a form of behaviour and thought restriction, it carries a certain implicit perspective as well. What do you have in mind when you speak of liberation, if you had to define it in general terms (so I don't strawman or misunderstand you).
It's not just that - there WERE & ARE women out there making significant technological, scientific, creative, and political advances throughout the entirety of human civilization. The way their stories are erased is part of the problem of why women don't know how much we're capable of achieving. Being subjected to "mother-maids" is just one element of oppression.
Just wanted to add that to your statement - I appreciate your whole comment!
There is no coherent definition of what it means to be transgender. Years ago we referred to these people as transsexuals. They were very rare, most were very psychologically distressed by their bodies and went to great lengths to have full sex reassignment surgery.
Gender (not sex) is a social construct that is based on stereotypes. Feminine traits are considered weaker and inferior to most masculine traits.
That people who don't like stereotypical traits associated with their sex means nothing. It does not make you the opposite sex. The entire ideology is regressive and frankly a huge joke.
I'm flabbergasted that we somehow got here. IMO trans ideology is a Trojan horse meant to undermine women's rights and destroy actual feminism.
if you think that trans people only dress up like women’s your not only a terf but also uneducated. being trans is becoming the woman you should have been, by presenting however you want. trans women dress femininely so they aren’t misgendered not because that’s how women need to dress.
There is no such thing. That is why it's confusing.