Actually, I did the opposite. I identified feeling something was wrong with one's physical body as the part of gender dysphoria that made the most sense, since everything else is just a social construct. I compared it with feeling one was born with the wrong build, or skin/hair/eye color. Some of these are easier to correct than others, and than even physical sex attributes.
And I've already told you why that analogy is bunk because no one feels as if there is something inherently wrong with their hair unless you were born without hair, perhaps, as much as there's more of an envy or a desire to have a different kind of hair. I offered a much better example in the very post you quoted but it seems as if you conveniently overlooked it.
As an example, I'm born quite short in comparison to other people in my country, largely because I'm Asian. I've always wanted to be tall like my cousin (we are not blood-related). My dissatisfaction with my height is not the same kind of dissatisfaction I experience in relation to my gender identity and presentation and how I'm read and understood by society at large, though I now realize another aspect
why I wanted to be taller
is probably related to gender. There are also obvious impractical issues that come with being shorter than average height; issues that are in fact outright discriminatory though they aren't big enough to really impede in my daily life more than as frustration moments (like being able to find clothes that fit my body size).
My experience surrounding certain physiological aspects not being in agreement with how I perceive myself to be is different. It is one thing to be born short and desiring to be taller because it is more convenient or it seems better because it's seen as more desirable to be, and another to feel a strong sense of dissatisfaction with your body because it does not fit or should not be. In the former case, the desire is other-oriented, the desire is derived from outside the self; but in the latter the desire is intrinsically derived and not associated with external expectations or needs. As such I can come to terms with being short. It's not ideal or desirable but I can't do anything about it so that's it, and similarly, while I wish my voice would be even deeper I can't do anything about that either but at least it is deep
enough, within a male range, to feel as if it's finally making sense.
Some of these, like the highlighted, are easily dealt with. I am a woman and look like a woman, and have no compunction about buying products targeted at men, shopping in the men's part of stores, etc. I understand this approach doesn't work for completely segregated spaces like bathrooms and fitting rooms, but it deals with some of it.
It has nothing to do with how easy or not easy it is to deal with, but has to do with how permeating it is in Western society. You again make it into a non-issue because it is not an issue for you, and entirely missing the point of what was being conveyed. It has nothing to do with whether it is an issue for the sole individual, but has to do with how deeply pervasive the segregation is actually ingrained. What I brought up were simple examples of how our daily lives are separated in this particular way, even down to such silly things as hygiene articles.
It was never about you as an individual, but it's about society.
I really found this post really interesting. I have never much thought about what it would be like to have a fundemental disconnect between how how one identifies vs. identification imposed by standards of society.
I do sort of suppose that gender is sort of a more fluid thing, you innately asscociate yourself somewhere on a line, but if where you relate happens to be too far away from the shades that society expects of you there will be a continuous knowledge of unbalance and unease.
To have gender sterotypes repeatedly enforced and made such a huge part of western culture, would just perpetuates the image that if one cannot completely 'be taught' to accept the cultural ideals, than they are just not utilizing their 'resources'.
You can pretend be a certain way for so long, and of course you are influenced by your environment, but as with personality, intelligence, and the like, you can only work with what is already there. If someone strongly, strongly, identifies naturally as a man, sure you can 'inform' them of 'traditionally' feminine behavior, and maybe they will adapt some of that into their mindset, and possibly be able to feign a movement towards what is pushed, but what is at the core is at the core.
Conforming to gender expectations placed upon by society only places a bandaid on wound that continues to fester. Being ma'md and sir'd almost seems like it would be a slap in the face, you want to be able to relate but you also know your true self and and know that at the end of the day you can never achieve the homeostasis expected. I have to read more about this.
You are taking about
presentation as opposed to
identification, though. They are related but not the one and the same. A person can identify one way and choose to present another. This is often the case with transgender people who haven't come out yet. We often desire our presentation to match our identity, but in some cases this is not possible to accomplish. The video someone posted in the above about Judith Butler is entirely focused on gender as a concept of presentation. This is why performance becomes such a big part. Butler doesn't want to touch on identity because identity is a tricky subject that is difficult to separate from essentialism, and Butler rejects all essentialist arguments which is why Butler's theory of gender performance is problematic when understanding trans people, because if gender is something we create and perform, it suggests no person truly has an actual gender identity that they identify with as much as it is something that is an ideal that people are taught to conform to. All other gender expressions would be created in relation to this ideal. While one can argue that this ideal in itself is essential in an ideological sense, gender as a concept is not essential to people. We are not born as men and women though society tends to teach us that this is how it is, but we are made into ones and even contrary to other social theories, Butler implies that we even do this ourselves. We (un)consciously choose to conform because we identify the values of conformity as being more advantageous (consider for instance how mistreated men become would they suddenly be read as effeminate/feminine). It raises an issue for trans people and their identities being questioned since Butlerism posits that they are actually not transgender because their innate sense of who they are doesn't exist since Butler doesn't believe that gender as an essential concept to humans as in, I'm born a man or a woman, doesn't exist. If we are not born into men or women, then how can I know that I'm born in the wrong body?
With that said, I for example don't mind catering to some gender stereotypes. In terms of personality I'm in many ways a very stereotype male and I don't mind being one. The problem is that people think of gender identity as linear with two ends on a pole like this:
:---------------------:
The problem is that this understanding of gender is very simplified and actually removes how complex it truly is. Gender isn't a one-dimensional line on a piece of paper, but it is multi-dimensional. A person can therefore for example possess several traits that in general are considered very feminine and in other situations posssess traits that are considered very masculine. This doesn't make the person in question androgynous, assuming the distribution of traits would be roughly equal across time and space, furthermore, how do we even measure it to begin with? Is an effeminate man really more androgynous or feminine just because he's deemed effeminate? Is it not just simply so that he is as masculine as any other man since he still identifies as one? And therein lies the problem with a one-dimensional understanding, because it posits that all other forms would be variations or relate to this one concept where presentation and body is congruent in comparison to what is deemed as the ideal that I mentioned in the above. While society does indeed organize according to this view, it is erroneous to assume that gender itself operates in accordance to it. A multi-dimensional understanding for example allows to label the effeminate man as masculine, but a one-dimensional view does not. It is about the realization that one can't quantify subjective experiences by weighing them against each other (more or less masculine for example), yet we attempt to do so.
But yeah, I don't think it's really related, since the whole gender/sexuality thing is separate.
