A big reason that drove me was that I have a micropenis.
Fake. There are no “reasons to drive someone” other than their internal gender, this sounds like something a cis personsomeone who thinks being trans is a choice would say.
Edit: For clarity, I’m not speculating on whether or not the OP in the post is trans or cis, I’m saying it doesn’t sound like a real story because it sounds inauthentic to the trans experience. A trans person could easily think this up, like anyone can make up a story that is close to their experiences, but since it isn’t real it doesn’t really pass scrutiny.
That’s such reddit logic. You assume everyone has a perfect understanding of themselves, but people have a lot of different things internally that drive them and they’re not always aware of it. When I was young I was interested in other men, and frankly, quite disgusted by it. It’s the habitat I was raised in and if you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you it was because I was a sinner. The real reason as I came to discover was indeed that I’m just gay. It took a lot of steps and discovery to get there. I’m not saying this is real, I’m just pointing out that just because your logic is correct does not mean that this person if they are real has made enough discoveries about themselves to be strictly logical.
You assume everyone has a perfect understanding of themselves
The ‘understanding’ of gender is appreciating how gender is socially constructed. That requires observation of society, hence revealing of new information, hence a journey of understanding.
Your own gender is an experience, one that is even present (although not labelled) without the social norms. It’s what you experience as what you want to be and do. It would exist without the social construction of gender. You could prefer certain colours and certain toys regardless of what society says is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for your external genitalia and designation on a birth certificate. I have known what society thinks about gender is not important to me since I first saw gender norms in the real world. I found the whole concept ridiculous. I’ve known that I am treated as male for having a penis, but am actually not interested in gender, since before I discovered terms like non-binary.
Someone saying that “you need to watch Gordon Ramsay says about cooking before you know what food you like” is ridiculous. You’ve had experiences and you prefer some of them without Gordon Ramsay. He doesn’t even need to exist.
Someone saying “you realise your gender preferences by being mocked for your micropenis” is being similarly ridiculous. Gender does not equate to external genitalia.
It’s not a ‘perfect understanding’. It’s ‘having experiences’, which everyone does.
When I was young I was interested in other men, and frankly, quite disgusted by it. It’s the habitat I was raised in and if you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you it was because I was a sinner. The real reason as I came to discover was indeed that I’m just gay. It took a lot of steps and discovery to get there.
You did have an understanding of yourself. That was scared out of you by threats. You didn’t discover that you were gay - you just knew it, because it was a feature of your experience - you discovered that other people were wrong when they told you that was disgusting.
I’m human, and I’m speaking on the issues of self discovery, a progress path we can all share as people learning who they are, so maybe you shouldn’t assume I’m stepping where I have no ground.
As for being told something made me gay, I have been. I’ve been told it was sexual assault (that did not occur) when I was young. I’ve been told it was the media and my friends. I’ve had those experiences, and yes, I know that we’re born that way now but I did not always have the space to make that discovery. I lived a life where I thought there had to be a reason because I thought it was a negative quality in myself. I hated it because I grew up around others who hated it. Insults behind closed doors, threats of violence and hate, and I agree with you that if they believed it was the reason they discovered their identity, they have more to learn. That does not mean they have learned it.
But seriously, yeah, people don’t seem to realize that people tend to want to pick the path of least resistance. If someone really is trans I have to believe it’s because who they are is so at odds with the expectations of society.
Edit: added a qualification because I am not trans
Exactly. Coming to terms with being trans, when trans people have been seen as nothing but the butt of far too many jokes in damn near all exposure most of us had growing up, is a difficult process rife with cognitive dissonance and defense mechanisms. No one wants to be trans, they just want to be their gender and have to be trans to get that.
two of my trans women friends, when getting their sperm frozen before starting hormones, found out they just have XX chromosomes and never had working sperm in the first place
i think we underestimate how many intersex people there are
Yup. My belief is that we are likely to eventually combine the categories of transgender and differences in sexual development (formerly known as intersex) as we discover more about it’s biological origins. The vast majority of people have never been karyotyped and have no idea what their chromosomes are.
That’s a good point. I haven’t browsed 4chan since way before they had any LGBT community/rep visible on it, I don’t know what kind of convoluted views they have. Let me guess, some of them unironcally identify as “agp” don’t they?
There’s a whole lot of blanchardianism (agp vs hsts). Quite a bit of homophobia, it’s actually a lot straighter than you’d probably expect. A lot of how they act is surprisingly old school, like back in the day when you weren’t allowed to transition unless therapists thought you couldn’t live a normal life as your assigned sex old school. And all this with the characteristic 4chan edgy bs. Also they’re anti supportive, like full on terf forum level of critical of trans people’s appearance.
I haven’t been but I’ve learned to pick up the signs by seeing the shit trans people who come from 4chan say.
Yeah I think there’s just something about 4chan that encourages a sort of emotional automasochistic culture. I think it’s partly that the culture pushes away the healthy, but it also drives those capable of health away from it in favor of “uncomfortable truths”. I forget what Natalie Wynn called it, but it’s the philosophy of “it is true because it hurts”. And it happens all across the website. It’s the thing that ties the Nazis, the trolls, the incels, and the self hating trans people together, and it’s antithetical to happiness.
Holy shit I never heard of it put into words but jesus fucking christ does that CLICK. I’m no longer there myself but there was certainly a time when I felt in a similar way:
The truth is painful,
Therefore the more that it hurts,
The more true it is.
This rhetorical position is insidious, deranged, toxic, and most importantly: blatantly incorrect and false. Holding this belief is a diagnostic flag of fundamental cognitive stack malfunction. Suspend all non-critical executive processes and seek therapy.
So I just remembered the term she used was masochistic epistemology. It was in this video about incels.
But yeah it’s such an easy trap to fall into when you’re already unhappy. And yeah it’s a form of accepting defeat because trying is hard and the possibility of failure is scary. Sometimes the truth hurts, and if you’re generally miserable the truth you need is likely uncomfortable, but that discomfort could be anything from “you need to get your shit together” to “your expectations are unrealistic” to “you’re surrounding yourself with people and things that make you miserable because it’s easier to accept unhappiness than to change”
Incels for example think they need to accept that they’re just ugly and unable to ever be seen as attractive and thus are destined to be miserable forever, when in reality they often need to accept that getting laid won’t make them happy and their misery is part of why they can’t get laid. They need to find a happy life in which sex would be a nice plus and then be clean, groomed, and enjoyable to be around.
i have spent and still spend lots of time in these places and yes, they do. they desperately want to be hsts and hate themselves for being agp and not being trutrans enough. lots of reppers too (trans people that know they’re trans but repress it out of self hatred). there’s lots of lore
AGP = autogynophilia: the idea that a person is a trans woman due to a sexual interest in having a vagina
HSTS = Homosexual Transexual: the idea that a person is a trans woman due to being a homosexual male, in other words that they are transitioning in order to have sex with straight men
Trutrans sounds like it just means “valid” as in they will claim a lot of trans women aren’t trans women unless they are trutrans. Also, it may be those who insist that some are not actually trans because they say they don’t experience gender dysphoria or because they don’t want general surgery.
All of which are old, unsupported, and frankly regressive ideas.
This very well may be fake, but it’s also entirely possible to identify as trans for any number of reasons. You might say such a person is “not really” trans but, supposing that is true, there’s no contradiction between that and some person who doesn’t have such ideological convictions having a thought process like you see in this image and acting on it.
That said, I agree that it’s probably fake, though I’m not as confident that the poster is a cis impersonator.
Excuse you, I would never tell someone they are not really trans. If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someone’s gender.
I’m somebody who absolutely does think I am trans purely by life circumstances, but I also recognize that the vast majority of trans people aren’t. Like I am incredibly glad that I transitioned and am now living life mostly stealth as a woman, years down the line, but I’m almost positive that if I wasn’t put through literal hell as a child (in the very cruel and specific ways that I was) I wouldn’t have even thought to have transitioned as a young adult. Perhaps I am completely incorrect in my assumptions about myself, and I would have turned out this way no matter what, but I find it hard to believe that if I wasn’t relentlessly bullied, harassed, beaten, and rejected by my peers as a child, that I would be sitting here now as a woman. I feel like I literally became a woman by sheer force of will in order to save my life, because I literally could not continue as the broken husk of a “man” I was at 21, and by some miracle it worked. But maybe I’m just delusional, idk
What do you think happened that made your internal gender change? To me, and to most trans people in my experience, it was a discovery of an already present internal gender and not a change.
It is also true that people who are more introspective, such as people who experienced trauma, are more likely to come out as trans - perhaps this is true for you.
I guess I am rather unique in my experience of transness in that I started living full time (and even passing) as a woman before I even self identified as one. The thing is, lifing as a women for aabout a year literally changed my internal sence of gender, I wanted it to happen and I made it happen. Maybe that’s just me rationalizing my inherent “transness” but that’s my recollection of events.
I’m sorry if I misunderstand, are you saying you were forced to present as a woman? If so, I’m sorry that happened to you but it does sound like it worked out for you.
If that wasn’t the case, to me it sounds like you were unconsciously aware of your gender but had conscious defense mechanisms that took time to work down.
My experience isn’t all that dissimilar, in that I admitted to myself and my therapist that I was “not cisgender”, knowing perfectly well that that would definitionally mean I am transgender, but also denied that I was transgender. This was repression, “still cis though” to a higher level. It sounds like your experience was similar.
Forced? Only by myself, as I thought it was the only way to keep living, though maybe that’s just proof that I am trans, and I simply constructed a bunch of mental hoops to jump through due to internalized transphobia?
Yeah, that’s what it sounds like to me. Cis people don’t transition their gender even if it’s “just for a year”, but trans people do try really hard to not be trans especially just before coming out.
If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someone’s gender.
I think it’s worthwhile remaining open to this but not really valuable to trans people to like make it part of activism or anything. There are enough instances of people saying things like their sexuality has completely shifted for me to be open to the idea that what gender we’re attracted to can change. I don’t think we know enough about being trans to be certain one way or another, trans people however have a very understandable defensive reaction to this because we don’t want it to be weaponised against us as “fake” or whatever.
My basic point is this: If it’s inflictable, it’s curable.
I for one knew my gender from about as young as I could talk (Edit: I repressed this for many years due to massive social pressures). I remember my assigned gender being inflicted upon me at a young age, when I did not immediately conform. If you asked me pre-transition but after I realized I was trans whether or not I would press a button and become cis in my assigned gender, I would say that that feels like losing a significant part of myself. If you were to ask me, if I could have pressed a button and become a cis in my actual, realized gender, I would have said yes and that it wouldn’t have been a major loss of self at all. This is true pretty much my whole life. But I lacked the self awareness to realize this about my self, and that has changed, not my actual gender.
We are quite literally gaslit our entire lives in regards to our assigned gender. Usually, before one comes out, one tries to embrace their assigned gender only to find that they do not feel comfortable (i.e. dysphoria).
I don’t reject people having fluidity in their gender or sexuality. The way I view it, there is a multidimensional spectrum and people tend to inhabit different areas of it. If they did actually change sexuality or gender, and not just discover it, due to fluidity, then they might inhabit an area that includes something close to or exactly their assigned gender as well as their realized gender.
The leading theory for what makes people trans, and gay for that matter, is hormonal fluctuations during critical moments in fetal development. In other words, we are born this way.
“Cure” is loaded language. Your gender doesn’t need curing, your gender is what it is.
If it can be changed, then yes perhaps it can be intentionally changed. But what the mechanisms are for that to occur are absolutely not understood and any attempt to forcibly do so to anyone should be considered a violation of human rights.
I don’t disagree with the reasoning everyone has for being extremely defensive about this possibility, I just also don’t really rule it out as solidly as many others do. I get it though. I do understand why people have such a reaction to this and want it to be untrue. I feel like we don’t really understand any of it though. We’ve barely scratched the surface.
I also think a lot of the research is trying to confirm the idea that people are born this way. IE working from the conclusion. Because the science is performed by those with a desire for it to be the outcome because it’s the safest outcome for trans people. I’m not really convinced all of it is good.
I don’t know. I’ve just seen a lot of change in myself in my life and am open to the idea that we’re not as fixed as we believe. And of course that that’s OKAY and doesn’t change anything about how people should be treated or viewed.
Yes, my point in saying “cured” is that it is a loaded statement but is logically consistent with the idea being trans is inflicted upon you by something external, and that would lead to conversion therapy which has been shown to not work.
There does need to be more research. The current research supports what I’ve said, and future research could change that. However, at the very least some people are born trans, even if others somehow become trans in some critical early developmental milestone.
As for the idea that the research is seeking evidence of transness being inherit at birth: that is not the case, there have been many attempts to study so called “sudden onset gender dysphoria” or the idea that someone could suddenly become trans, and those studies can’t find any evidence for that (other than one that asked TERF parents if it seemed sudden to them, who of course said yes). Other studies have shown that people tend to have a concept of their internal gender from about as soon as they can talk, which is the earliest we could possibly test, indicating that if it is not prenatal then very early in life.
I think this lacks an open mind. This reaction isn’t that surprising though, I do get why you and other people are very invested in this. I think you’re too wedded to gender overall though, I find the camp of trans people writing about the idea that eventually society will enter a post-gender phase to be the most compelling theory. If gender can be abolished then it can also change.
Gender abolitionism usually focuses on roles and rigidity surrounding it, not the idea that we will eventually have no actual genders. Gender is biologically real but all the social constructs surrounding it are not. If this is not what you have read, I’m interested in links.
But there is no world in which I am not a woman - but very much a world where I am happy to reject the social constructs built up around womanhood.
I still posit that anyone that can actually change their gender (not realize it and change presentation and potentially roles) was gender fluid in the first place.
We’re talking about an imagined person whose internality we have access to. If you acknowledge that, within the assumptions of your own ideology, there could be people that are “likely not trans”, that means essentially that there is an array of different possible stipulated people and some of them are trans, but most of them aren’t. Another way to put it is that, if you said you were “80% sure” that someone wasn’t trans that means, depending on certain unknown variables that actually determine the truth of that guess, there are 20 possible worlds where they are trans and 80 where they aren’t.
All this to say, based on what you expressed ideologically originally and even in your refutation, it is consistent to stipulate a self-identified trans person who you identify as not trans, even if you would never tell a person that in real life (out of respect, because it involves information you can’t access, etc.). Does that make sense? I feel like I got a little bogged down in adjectives, but I felt obliged to explain myself further given the “Excuse you”.
The judgement of whether or not someone is trans is if they say they are. I frankly don’t understand what I said that makes you think I think it is acceptable for anyone to dictate someone’s gender or whether or not they are really trans, but I absolutely don’t believe that. I edited my original comment with a clarification.
The story sounds inauthentic to the trans experience and I think they made it up. I don’t think the OP isn’t trans, I think their made up story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The leading theory for what causes people to be trans (or gay for that matter) is hormonal fluctuations at critical points of fetal development. So we are born this way. People can be gender fluid as well, and they may have a different relationship with their gender(s) than I since I am not.
I see. I neglected an interpretation and it was important. So if someone says, for example and not necessarily making assertions about the OOP, that “I’m trans because I was born with a micropenis and that fuckin’ sucks,” your internal response would be “This person is trans, but doesn’t understand why they are trans.” [Or that it is likely that they don’t understand, and see what I said before about this implying it is true of some hypothetical people]
Is that a more fair representation of your view?
(I put this under the wrong comment at first somehow, but also I was partly using information from that one)
The word “likely” is just me acknowledging the potential for this view of trans people as being born trans, which is based on research, could change as more research is done.
The leading theory for what causes people to be trans (or gay for that matter) is hormonal fluctuations at critical points of fetal development. So we are born this way.
The evidence for this is really poor, the entire field of the hormonal theory of sexuality (and gender) is garbage
There’s lots of good literature on transmedicalism
Anyway someone who subscribed to that theory would say that a micropenis would be consistent with low fetal testerone and this story would be readily believable by them - far more than a trans woman who was born with a macropenis.
No someone wouldn’t, because a core tenet of that theory is the critical points part, there is a separate point that influenced genital development and a separate point that influenced mental gender development.
Fake. There are no “reasons to drive someone” other than their internal gender, this sounds like something
a cis personsomeone who thinks being trans is a choice would say.Edit: For clarity, I’m not speculating on whether or not the OP in the post is trans or cis, I’m saying it doesn’t sound like a real story because it sounds inauthentic to the trans experience. A trans person could easily think this up, like anyone can make up a story that is close to their experiences, but since it isn’t real it doesn’t really pass scrutiny.
That’s such reddit logic. You assume everyone has a perfect understanding of themselves, but people have a lot of different things internally that drive them and they’re not always aware of it. When I was young I was interested in other men, and frankly, quite disgusted by it. It’s the habitat I was raised in and if you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you it was because I was a sinner. The real reason as I came to discover was indeed that I’m just gay. It took a lot of steps and discovery to get there. I’m not saying this is real, I’m just pointing out that just because your logic is correct does not mean that this person if they are real has made enough discoveries about themselves to be strictly logical.
The ‘understanding’ of gender is appreciating how gender is socially constructed. That requires observation of society, hence revealing of new information, hence a journey of understanding.
Your own gender is an experience, one that is even present (although not labelled) without the social norms. It’s what you experience as what you want to be and do. It would exist without the social construction of gender. You could prefer certain colours and certain toys regardless of what society says is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for your external genitalia and designation on a birth certificate. I have known what society thinks about gender is not important to me since I first saw gender norms in the real world. I found the whole concept ridiculous. I’ve known that I am treated as male for having a penis, but am actually not interested in gender, since before I discovered terms like non-binary.
Someone saying that “you need to watch Gordon Ramsay says about cooking before you know what food you like” is ridiculous. You’ve had experiences and you prefer some of them without Gordon Ramsay. He doesn’t even need to exist.
Someone saying “you realise your gender preferences by being mocked for your micropenis” is being similarly ridiculous. Gender does not equate to external genitalia.
It’s not a ‘perfect understanding’. It’s ‘having experiences’, which everyone does.
You did have an understanding of yourself. That was scared out of you by threats. You didn’t discover that you were gay - you just knew it, because it was a feature of your experience - you discovered that other people were wrong when they told you that was disgusting.
deleted by creator
I’m human, and I’m speaking on the issues of self discovery, a progress path we can all share as people learning who they are, so maybe you shouldn’t assume I’m stepping where I have no ground.
As for being told something made me gay, I have been. I’ve been told it was sexual assault (that did not occur) when I was young. I’ve been told it was the media and my friends. I’ve had those experiences, and yes, I know that we’re born that way now but I did not always have the space to make that discovery. I lived a life where I thought there had to be a reason because I thought it was a negative quality in myself. I hated it because I grew up around others who hated it. Insults behind closed doors, threats of violence and hate, and I agree with you that if they believed it was the reason they discovered their identity, they have more to learn. That does not mean they have learned it.
Your internal gender didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
Wait, are you saying people would lie on 4chan???
But seriously, yeah, people don’t seem to realize that people tend to want to pick the path of least resistance. If someone really is trans I have to believe it’s because who they are is so at odds with the expectations of society.
Edit: added a qualification because I am not trans
Exactly. Coming to terms with being trans, when trans people have been seen as nothing but the butt of far too many jokes in damn near all exposure most of us had growing up, is a difficult process rife with cognitive dissonance and defense mechanisms. No one wants to be trans, they just want to be their gender and have to be trans to get that.
The pain of self repression against the potential pain of self expression
two of my trans women friends, when getting their sperm frozen before starting hormones, found out they just have XX chromosomes and never had working sperm in the first place
i think we underestimate how many intersex people there are
Yup. My belief is that we are likely to eventually combine the categories of transgender and differences in sexual development (formerly known as intersex) as we discover more about it’s biological origins. The vast majority of people have never been karyotyped and have no idea what their chromosomes are.
It’s time to just replace the old questionnaires with Skyrim type character creator slide rules.
“Please define yourself. If you take more than an hour you fail no matter what.”
Idk 4chan has a notoriously toxic and strange trans community. Giving “reasons” is exactly the sort of thing I’d expect of them
That’s a good point. I haven’t browsed 4chan since way before they had any LGBT community/rep visible on it, I don’t know what kind of convoluted views they have. Let me guess, some of them unironcally identify as “agp” don’t they?
There’s a whole lot of blanchardianism (agp vs hsts). Quite a bit of homophobia, it’s actually a lot straighter than you’d probably expect. A lot of how they act is surprisingly old school, like back in the day when you weren’t allowed to transition unless therapists thought you couldn’t live a normal life as your assigned sex old school. And all this with the characteristic 4chan edgy bs. Also they’re anti supportive, like full on terf forum level of critical of trans people’s appearance.
I haven’t been but I’ve learned to pick up the signs by seeing the shit trans people who come from 4chan say.
Good to know, thank you for the info. That’s really sad.
Yeah I think there’s just something about 4chan that encourages a sort of emotional automasochistic culture. I think it’s partly that the culture pushes away the healthy, but it also drives those capable of health away from it in favor of “uncomfortable truths”. I forget what Natalie Wynn called it, but it’s the philosophy of “it is true because it hurts”. And it happens all across the website. It’s the thing that ties the Nazis, the trolls, the incels, and the self hating trans people together, and it’s antithetical to happiness.
Holy shit I never heard of it put into words but jesus fucking christ does that CLICK. I’m no longer there myself but there was certainly a time when I felt in a similar way:
The truth is painful,
Therefore the more that it hurts,
The more true it is.
This rhetorical position is insidious, deranged, toxic, and most importantly: blatantly incorrect and false. Holding this belief is a diagnostic flag of fundamental cognitive stack malfunction. Suspend all non-critical executive processes and seek therapy.
So I just remembered the term she used was masochistic epistemology. It was in this video about incels.
But yeah it’s such an easy trap to fall into when you’re already unhappy. And yeah it’s a form of accepting defeat because trying is hard and the possibility of failure is scary. Sometimes the truth hurts, and if you’re generally miserable the truth you need is likely uncomfortable, but that discomfort could be anything from “you need to get your shit together” to “your expectations are unrealistic” to “you’re surrounding yourself with people and things that make you miserable because it’s easier to accept unhappiness than to change”
Incels for example think they need to accept that they’re just ugly and unable to ever be seen as attractive and thus are destined to be miserable forever, when in reality they often need to accept that getting laid won’t make them happy and their misery is part of why they can’t get laid. They need to find a happy life in which sex would be a nice plus and then be clean, groomed, and enjoyable to be around.
i have spent and still spend lots of time in these places and yes, they do. they desperately want to be hsts and hate themselves for being agp and not being trutrans enough. lots of reppers too (trans people that know they’re trans but repress it out of self hatred). there’s lots of lore
That’s really sad. It would also explain how she is relating her micropenis, via shame and self-hatred, to being trans.
oh no that greentext is just a meme, she didn’t call herself a gorillahon or talk about how she gets mogged by cissoids or how bonepilled she is.
Those are a lot of new words. I kind of want to ask, but I kind of don’t want to know
I wish people would explain the acronyms.
AGP?
HSTS?
Trutrans?
I really wanted to get into 4chan, but unfortunately the slider captchca annoyed the fuck out of me.
AGP = autogynophilia: the idea that a person is a trans woman due to a sexual interest in having a vagina
HSTS = Homosexual Transexual: the idea that a person is a trans woman due to being a homosexual male, in other words that they are transitioning in order to have sex with straight men
Trutrans sounds like it just means “valid” as in they will claim a lot of trans women aren’t trans women unless they are trutrans. Also, it may be those who insist that some are not actually trans because they say they don’t experience gender dysphoria or because they don’t want general surgery.
All of which are old, unsupported, and frankly regressive ideas.
This very well may be fake, but it’s also entirely possible to identify as trans for any number of reasons. You might say such a person is “not really” trans but, supposing that is true, there’s no contradiction between that and some person who doesn’t have such ideological convictions having a thought process like you see in this image and acting on it.
That said, I agree that it’s probably fake, though I’m not as confident that the poster is a cis impersonator.
Excuse you, I would never tell someone they are not really trans. If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someone’s gender.
I’m somebody who absolutely does think I am trans purely by life circumstances, but I also recognize that the vast majority of trans people aren’t. Like I am incredibly glad that I transitioned and am now living life mostly stealth as a woman, years down the line, but I’m almost positive that if I wasn’t put through literal hell as a child (in the very cruel and specific ways that I was) I wouldn’t have even thought to have transitioned as a young adult. Perhaps I am completely incorrect in my assumptions about myself, and I would have turned out this way no matter what, but I find it hard to believe that if I wasn’t relentlessly bullied, harassed, beaten, and rejected by my peers as a child, that I would be sitting here now as a woman. I feel like I literally became a woman by sheer force of will in order to save my life, because I literally could not continue as the broken husk of a “man” I was at 21, and by some miracle it worked. But maybe I’m just delusional, idk
What do you think happened that made your internal gender change? To me, and to most trans people in my experience, it was a discovery of an already present internal gender and not a change.
It is also true that people who are more introspective, such as people who experienced trauma, are more likely to come out as trans - perhaps this is true for you.
I guess I am rather unique in my experience of transness in that I started living full time (and even passing) as a woman before I even self identified as one. The thing is, lifing as a women for aabout a year literally changed my internal sence of gender, I wanted it to happen and I made it happen. Maybe that’s just me rationalizing my inherent “transness” but that’s my recollection of events.
I’m sorry if I misunderstand, are you saying you were forced to present as a woman? If so, I’m sorry that happened to you but it does sound like it worked out for you.
If that wasn’t the case, to me it sounds like you were unconsciously aware of your gender but had conscious defense mechanisms that took time to work down.
My experience isn’t all that dissimilar, in that I admitted to myself and my therapist that I was “not cisgender”, knowing perfectly well that that would definitionally mean I am transgender, but also denied that I was transgender. This was repression, “still cis though” to a higher level. It sounds like your experience was similar.
Forced? Only by myself, as I thought it was the only way to keep living, though maybe that’s just proof that I am trans, and I simply constructed a bunch of mental hoops to jump through due to internalized transphobia?
Yeah, that’s what it sounds like to me. Cis people don’t transition their gender even if it’s “just for a year”, but trans people do try really hard to not be trans especially just before coming out.
I think it’s worthwhile remaining open to this but not really valuable to trans people to like make it part of activism or anything. There are enough instances of people saying things like their sexuality has completely shifted for me to be open to the idea that what gender we’re attracted to can change. I don’t think we know enough about being trans to be certain one way or another, trans people however have a very understandable defensive reaction to this because we don’t want it to be weaponised against us as “fake” or whatever.
My basic point is this: If it’s inflictable, it’s curable.
I for one knew my gender from about as young as I could talk (Edit: I repressed this for many years due to massive social pressures). I remember my assigned gender being inflicted upon me at a young age, when I did not immediately conform. If you asked me pre-transition but after I realized I was trans whether or not I would press a button and become cis in my assigned gender, I would say that that feels like losing a significant part of myself. If you were to ask me, if I could have pressed a button and become a cis in my actual, realized gender, I would have said yes and that it wouldn’t have been a major loss of self at all. This is true pretty much my whole life. But I lacked the self awareness to realize this about my self, and that has changed, not my actual gender. We are quite literally gaslit our entire lives in regards to our assigned gender. Usually, before one comes out, one tries to embrace their assigned gender only to find that they do not feel comfortable (i.e. dysphoria).
I don’t reject people having fluidity in their gender or sexuality. The way I view it, there is a multidimensional spectrum and people tend to inhabit different areas of it. If they did actually change sexuality or gender, and not just discover it, due to fluidity, then they might inhabit an area that includes something close to or exactly their assigned gender as well as their realized gender.
The leading theory for what makes people trans, and gay for that matter, is hormonal fluctuations during critical moments in fetal development. In other words, we are born this way.
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“Cure” is loaded language. Your gender doesn’t need curing, your gender is what it is.
If it can be changed, then yes perhaps it can be intentionally changed. But what the mechanisms are for that to occur are absolutely not understood and any attempt to forcibly do so to anyone should be considered a violation of human rights.
I don’t disagree with the reasoning everyone has for being extremely defensive about this possibility, I just also don’t really rule it out as solidly as many others do. I get it though. I do understand why people have such a reaction to this and want it to be untrue. I feel like we don’t really understand any of it though. We’ve barely scratched the surface.
I also think a lot of the research is trying to confirm the idea that people are born this way. IE working from the conclusion. Because the science is performed by those with a desire for it to be the outcome because it’s the safest outcome for trans people. I’m not really convinced all of it is good.
I don’t know. I’ve just seen a lot of change in myself in my life and am open to the idea that we’re not as fixed as we believe. And of course that that’s OKAY and doesn’t change anything about how people should be treated or viewed.
Yes, my point in saying “cured” is that it is a loaded statement but is logically consistent with the idea being trans is inflicted upon you by something external, and that would lead to conversion therapy which has been shown to not work.
There does need to be more research. The current research supports what I’ve said, and future research could change that. However, at the very least some people are born trans, even if others somehow become trans in some critical early developmental milestone.
As for the idea that the research is seeking evidence of transness being inherit at birth: that is not the case, there have been many attempts to study so called “sudden onset gender dysphoria” or the idea that someone could suddenly become trans, and those studies can’t find any evidence for that (other than one that asked TERF parents if it seemed sudden to them, who of course said yes). Other studies have shown that people tend to have a concept of their internal gender from about as soon as they can talk, which is the earliest we could possibly test, indicating that if it is not prenatal then very early in life.
I think this lacks an open mind. This reaction isn’t that surprising though, I do get why you and other people are very invested in this. I think you’re too wedded to gender overall though, I find the camp of trans people writing about the idea that eventually society will enter a post-gender phase to be the most compelling theory. If gender can be abolished then it can also change.
Gender abolitionism usually focuses on roles and rigidity surrounding it, not the idea that we will eventually have no actual genders. Gender is biologically real but all the social constructs surrounding it are not. If this is not what you have read, I’m interested in links.
But there is no world in which I am not a woman - but very much a world where I am happy to reject the social constructs built up around womanhood.
I still posit that anyone that can actually change their gender (not realize it and change presentation and potentially roles) was gender fluid in the first place.
We’re talking about an imagined person whose internality we have access to. If you acknowledge that, within the assumptions of your own ideology, there could be people that are “likely not trans”, that means essentially that there is an array of different possible stipulated people and some of them are trans, but most of them aren’t. Another way to put it is that, if you said you were “80% sure” that someone wasn’t trans that means, depending on certain unknown variables that actually determine the truth of that guess, there are 20 possible worlds where they are trans and 80 where they aren’t.
All this to say, based on what you expressed ideologically originally and even in your refutation, it is consistent to stipulate a self-identified trans person who you identify as not trans, even if you would never tell a person that in real life (out of respect, because it involves information you can’t access, etc.). Does that make sense? I feel like I got a little bogged down in adjectives, but I felt obliged to explain myself further given the “Excuse you”.
The judgement of whether or not someone is trans is if they say they are. I frankly don’t understand what I said that makes you think I think it is acceptable for anyone to dictate someone’s gender or whether or not they are really trans, but I absolutely don’t believe that. I edited my original comment with a clarification.
The story sounds inauthentic to the trans experience and I think they made it up. I don’t think the OP isn’t trans, I think their made up story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The leading theory for what causes people to be trans (or gay for that matter) is hormonal fluctuations at critical points of fetal development. So we are born this way. People can be gender fluid as well, and they may have a different relationship with their gender(s) than I since I am not.
I see. I neglected an interpretation and it was important. So if someone says, for example and not necessarily making assertions about the OOP, that “I’m trans because I was born with a micropenis and that fuckin’ sucks,” your internal response would be “This person is trans, but doesn’t understand why they are trans.” [Or that it is likely that they don’t understand, and see what I said before about this implying it is true of some hypothetical people]
Is that a more fair representation of your view?
(I put this under the wrong comment at first somehow, but also I was partly using information from that one)
Yes, exactly.
The word “likely” is just me acknowledging the potential for this view of trans people as being born trans, which is based on research, could change as more research is done.
The evidence for this is really poor, the entire field of the hormonal theory of sexuality (and gender) is garbage
There’s lots of good literature on transmedicalism
Anyway someone who subscribed to that theory would say that a micropenis would be consistent with low fetal testerone and this story would be readily believable by them - far more than a trans woman who was born with a macropenis.
No someone wouldn’t, because a core tenet of that theory is the critical points part, there is a separate point that influenced genital development and a separate point that influenced mental gender development.
well they could be lying
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Yeah, this seems like the ‘joke’ is that only guys with tiny dicks would want to transition.
Which has nothing to do with it
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