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non-binary gender (not trans)

Coriolis

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The inherent problem and underlying assumption is that just because it's not a big deal to you, it should not be a big deal to others either and the world doesn't work that way. You have no right to dictate what is a big or not big a deal to someone else when it comes to their right of identity and mode of self-expression. Just because it feels like this to you, it doesn't mean it feels like this to a non-binary.

I don't get what is so difficult to understand about this.
You are right in that I cannot personally relate to the idea of my identity being strongly tied up in any aspect of my physical being, unless that were to limit what I can do, as in a physical disability. Other people are welcome to identify strongly with their physical attributes, or indeed to make a big deal of whatever they want. Some people may find that their hair type, or height, or some other physical attribute is a much bigger part of their identity than it is for me or someone else. That is their right, and I would not attempt to interfere with it. I am simply putting the one distinction in the broader context of "physical distinctions that we don't choose".

As for what [MENTION=21639]Kullervo[/MENTION] wrote or not, I feel that the entire post twisted my original intention in the first place and used it more as a jab on me as a person because we had a disagreement elsewhere and they thought, for some odd arbitrary reason, that I was defending some stance I was not. Of course people who fall outside the norm experience suffering and it does not give them monopoly to it, but that was never my point. The point is that I don't see what's so difficult to understand that people's experiences differ and to show some little bit of fucking basic understanding along with it. You don't have to like it, but at least respect it, yeah. I think that's very basal just like I don't have to like that someone is a born-again Christian because I'm atheist, but I can still respect their life choice and that they have the right to call themselves Christian and identify as such. This is the right you actually deny these people because you think it seems trivial and they do it for the sake of snowflake status. Do some people do that? Probably. I would say that hardly defines the queer movement, though. They just want to be recognized as everyone else and I utterly fail to see the sin in that.
It may be undeniable that that is what you feel, but it is far from certain that that is what he meant. You accused Kullervo of projection; might you not be doing a bit here yourself? I would think that someone who was bullied for one reason would have more understanding of someone who was bullied for a different reason, since they share the common experience of being bullied. Perhaps this is expecting too much of human nature.
 

Entropic

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You are right in that I cannot personally relate to the idea of my identity being strongly tied up in any aspect of my physical being, unless that were to limit what I can do, as in a physical disability. Other people are welcome to identify strongly with their physical attributes, or indeed to make a big deal of whatever they want. Some people may find that their hair type, or height, or some other physical attribute is a much bigger part of their identity than it is for me or someone else. That is their right, and I would not attempt to interfere with it. I am simply putting the one distinction in the broader context of "physical distinctions that we don't choose".

Exactly, you can't relate so how in the world does that give you the right to also speak for their experiences and decide how the world should operate for them? But to a transgender person and again, non-binary is a part of the transgender umbrella so what the OP is trying to do by delineating transgender and non-binary apart makes no sense, the OP is referring to transsexuals and not transgender people as a whole; it does matter. It matters because they want their inner sense of self affirmed just like everyone else, and people deny them that basic right when they scoff at them and say "stop be such a special snowflake for wanting a different pronoun or refusing to be referred to X pronoun like everyone else; step back in line and just accept that you should be like the rest of us". That is denying them the basic right for self-expression and to a trans person, having that part of their gender identity denied can cause ridiculous levels of dysphoria and of course, hurt, because your identity isn't accepted and affirmed by people around you even after you take the time to explain to people how you feel and how you want to be treated. That is not showcasing a basic level of respect for their right to be a person and when this happens again and again, yeah, you are bound to be fed up at some point. It's not a matter of 1% misgendering, but it's a matter of constant misgendering, people giving you odd looks and whatnot, people who go out of their way to try to place you in a folder. I've heard stories of non-binary where people immediately upon meeting them begin to ask them questions about their gender e.g. Are you a boy or a girl? while secretly giggling and the like for doing such menial things as ordering a coffee as a cafe. And you say this is ok when you say they are merely seeking snowflake status. It isn't. It really isn't.

And it is bigoted and hypocritical as fuck to on the one hand claim, "I got no problem with how people choose to be" but then also claim "but stop put on the victim hat when you consciously choose to go against the norm and act as a special snowflake". That is accusing the victim to be a victim because again, they do not choose their gender identity. Many trans people, binary and otherwise, repress themselves because they know their mode of expression is not accepted. It causes unnecessary harm and this is why there is such a high suicide rate among trans people, and that doesn't even include the risk a lot of trans people run at being the target of physical attacks and the like.

It's such a ridiculous privileged position to take because you can do that because you are not trans so you don't understand and you don't even bother trying to understand, and the fact people are supporting this bigoted view in this thread honestly makes me sick.

It may be undeniable that that is what you feel, but it is far from certain that that is what he meant. You accused Kullervo of projection; might you not be doing a bit here yourself? I would think that someone who was bullied for one reason would have more understanding of someone who was bullied for a different reason, since they share the common experience of being bullied. Perhaps this is expecting too much of human nature.

Indeed I did, because the projection was very obvious. They thought I was trying to put on the victim hat and as a result, seek snowflake status, when I did not at any point allude to seeing myself or claim myself to be a victim and that was not my intent with my presence in this thread, either. I do however, defend the rights of trans people and that no matter how silly some outsider think they are for making a big deal over something they do not personally care for, it does not automatically make them wanting to be a special snowflake for demanding rights to be recognized and accepted like everyone else and the fact they attacked me because they felt his own pain wasn't recognized because trans people are open about theirs is clearly a form of projection. Again, I made no allusions to my own life and my own pain and what I've experienced as I've only been talking about non-binary and their experiences.

One would think, given their experiences then, that they would use that understanding of pain and instead of attacking me recognize that trans people have as much right to complain when they are not being recognized for who they are as any other person, and that is not an attack to diminish their rights to their person.
 

prplchknz

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here's the thing ^^^ I never thought we were refering to you as the victim as i don't give a shit about you. all I wanted was to understand the need for so many labels as i find them in any capacity especially socially to be restrictive when the 5 or 6 i proposed would cover everything. I was speaking general. but thank you for calling me a bigot when you wouldn't even take the time to get what i was actually saying. and the other thing you do look like you're playing the victim at this point because you saying i have every right to be the victim and act like no one else does. lot of people here have had shit happen to them just because they're not talking about it does not mean you have a monopoly on bad shit happening to you. so once again i don't care about you this thread was never about you. it was never about how you express yourself it was I DON"T FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE NEED FOR THAT MANY LABELS.
 

Coriolis

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That is denying them the basic right for self-expression and to a trans person, having that part of their gender identity denied can cause ridiculous levels of dysphoria and of course, hurt, because your identity isn't accepted and affirmed by people around you even after you take the time to explain to people how you feel and how you want to be treated. That is not showcasing a basic level of respect for their right to be a person and when this happens again and again, yeah, you are bound to be fed up at some point. It's not a matter of 1% misgendering, but it's a matter of constant misgendering, people giving you odd looks and whatnot, people who go out of their way to try to place you in a folder. I've heard stories of non-binary where people immediately upon meeting them begin to ask them questions about their gender e.g. Are you a boy or a girl? while secretly giggling and the like for doing such menial things as ordering a coffee as a cafe. And you say this is ok when you say they are merely seeking snowflake status. It isn't. It really isn't.
How is this different from anyone who has part of their identity denied or criticised by different others? Believe it or not, people who fall outside the gender binary are not the only ones who experience this. Part of the problem is that people who are having such an experience, whether because of gender issues or other distinctions, often feel entitled to the kind of treatment they desire without taking the time to explain how they want to be treated. Gender issues are unique in this regard simply due to how our language uses pronouns. Until and unless this is changed globally in the English language (or whatever language is being used), people who are mistaken for a gender they don't identify with will keep needing to make the correction, AND not assume that the error is intentional or based in deliberate disrespect.

And it is bigoted and hypocritical as fuck to on the one hand claim, "I got no problem with how people choose to be" but then also claim "but stop put on the victim hat when you consciously choose to go against the norm and act as a special snowflake". That is accusing the victim to be a victim because again, they do not choose their gender identity. Many trans people, binary and otherwise, repress themselves because they know their mode of expression is not accepted. It causes unnecessary harm and this is why there is such a high suicide rate among trans people, and that doesn't even include the risk a lot of trans people run at being the target of physical attacks and the like.
People do not choose their gender identity, but they do choose how to react in situations where their identity is misinterpreted. The whole world is not out to get you. There is a difference between people who treat you the wrong way out of ignorance, and those who do so out of judgment or malice. The first just need to be enlightened, and being judgmental with them in turn will lose a potential ally or even friend.
 

prplchknz

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How is this different from anyone who has part of their identity denied or criticised by different others? Believe it or not, people who fall outside the gender binary are not the only ones who experience this. Part of the problem is that people who are having such an experience, whether because of gender issues or other distinctions, often feel entitled to the kind of treatment they desire without taking the time to explain how they want to be treated. Gender issues are unique in this regard simply due to how our language uses pronouns. Until and unless this is changed globally in the English language (or whatever language is being used), people who are mistaken for a gender they don't identify with will keep needing to make the correction, AND not assume that the error is intentional or based in deliberate disrespect.


People do not choose their gender identity, but they do choose how to react in situations where their identity is misinterpreted. The whole world is not out to get you. There is a difference between people who treat you the wrong way out of ignorance, and those who do so out of judgment or malice. The first just need to be enlightened, and being judgmental with them in turn will lose a potential ally or even friend.

or do what i do, and say fuck it and do their thing without demanding special treatment.
 

Nicodemus

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I mean, if you want to force people into categories they're not comfortable with then you can erase gender and completely categorize people by whether they have a penis, vagina, or both. But to me it sounds like you're saying that trans/NB identities are invalid because of their "contradictory" sex organs (at least since Rasofy liked it). Gender is a social construct yes, but no gender is wrong. If you don't like gender and just go back to the "boys have a penis, girls have a vagina" mentality then how do you account for the people with penises who don't feel like a boy and don't want to be treated as a boy?
The point is to erase all categories except the ones which people, for better or worse, are kind of naturally programmed to be curious about: penis or vagina. If we do away with gender, not feeling like a boy can be a natural expression of being a boy, that is, of having a penis. In other words, it becomes meaningless to say 'feel like a boy', which, I believe, is just another way of saying 'feel like I think most boys feel' anyway. 'Two billion shades of male, female, and shemale' was supposed to signify individual treatment, not 'being treated as a boy', a monochrome representative of one of two (or three) possible personality patterns.

I have always wondered how much of the gender dysphoria transgender people experience is a result of feeling different from, in contrast to converse to, other members of their sex. From an epistemological point of view, nobody born with a penis knows how it feels to be a girl. He is likely to know how it feels to be in the wrong body, but is wrongness an intrinsic emotion or a discrepancy between what is and what, by society, parents, friends, and ultimately oneself, is supposed to be? In my experience, the only time children have a problem with their gender is when someone else draws attention to their being different from an irrelevant majority.
 

Coriolis

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or do what i do, and say fuck it and do their thing without demanding special treatment.
Yes. Asking to be treated with the same respect due to anyone, simply as a human being, is not demanding special treatment. Highlighting how they (they being anyone who stands out from "the norm" in some way) are different from other people can look like asking for special treatment because it highlights a difference. It also shows how all these prejudices, whether against different gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, races, religions, or any other distinction, all boil down to failing to accept each individual as they are.

I have always wondered how much of the gender dysphoria transgender people experience is a result of feeling different from, in contrast to converse to, other members of their sex. From an epistemological point of view, nobody born with a penis knows how it feels to be a girl. He is likely to know how it feels to be in the wrong body, but is wrongness an intrinsic emotion or a discrepancy between what is and what, by society, parents, friends, and ultimately oneself, is supposed to be? In my experience, the only time children have a problem with their gender is when someone else draws attention to their being different from an irrelevant majority.
I have wondered this myself, since I have always felt different from other members of my sex, but in the sense of how I behave and live my life, not my anatomical parts. Wouldn't the feeling of being "in the wrong body" potentially encompass aspects other than genitalia: say, for instance, my hair example above; or if someone with a short, stocky build felt they really should have been born tall and willowy? I suppose my comments to Entropic center around the low priority I give to all these physical considerations. My body is the physical means by which I navigate life and do all the things I want to do. Either it works and I can do what I want, or it doesn't. I can obviously derive enjoyment from physical things which are tied to the specifics of my body. If it were different the exact nature of that enjoyment would change, but I suspect still be present and available.
 

prplchknz

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Yes. Asking to be treated with the same respect due to anyone, simply as a human being, is not demanding special treatment. Highlighting how they (they being anyone who stands out from "the norm" in some way) are different from other people can look like asking for special treatment because it highlights a difference. It also shows how all these prejudices, whether against different gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, races, religions, or any other distinction, all boil down to failing to accept each individual as they are.
what i was talking about myself? I'm all for mutual respect until they lose they right to it, and its not because of self-expression but rather how they treat others. I'm saying I do my own things and most of my life i didn't fit in, i still really don't. but you reach a point where you realize the world isn't gonna change and as long as you're not punching babies what the world says shouldn't matter.
 

Entropic

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How is this different from anyone who has part of their identity denied or criticised by different others? Believe it or not, people who fall outside the gender binary are not the only ones who experience this.

I never made any claims about that in the first place, so bringing it up is frankly, very irrelevant and it reeks of a strawman. That was never the point, whether others experience it or not or how others experience their identity and whatever. The point is to understand that it is important to them and that it causes pain. Why it does so or what triggers or generates it, all that is largely irrelevant.

Part of the problem is that people who are having such an experience, whether because of gender issues or other distinctions, often feel entitled to the kind of treatment they desire without taking the time to explain how they want to be treated.

Can you give ONE example of where such entitlement occurs? And why this notion of entitlement is somehow worse than any other form of entitlement people can experience when people make claims to have parts of their identity respected?

Gender issues are unique in this regard simply due to how our language uses pronouns. Until and unless this is changed globally in the English language (or whatever language is being used), people who are mistaken for a gender they don't identify with will keep needing to make the correction, AND not assume that the error is intentional or based in deliberate disrespect.

It's not about language use, and I have no idea why you and others, harp on language. Language is but one tiny speck of this shithole called gender. No one made any claims about that people expect others to know without them saying anything or that they automatically assume everyone is vile and always deliberately says the wrong thing on purpose. However, it is extremely frustrating when you incessantly need to correct other people even after they know. I don't know why you operate on the underlying assumption that trans people automatically think people are ill-intended. There are paranoid trans folks out there, but paranoia isn't unique or explicit to being transgender. You will find the same attitude in a wide range of individuals who will react the same way but to other aspects of their identity e.g. religion, what have, whatever they hold important to their sense of self. One could equally argue that your attempt to argue back and to justify your position is in fact, a reflection of something akin to it.

People do not choose their gender identity, but they do choose how to react in situations where their identity is misinterpreted. The whole world is not out to get you. There is a difference between people who treat you the wrong way out of ignorance, and those who do so out of judgment or malice. The first just need to be enlightened, and being judgmental with them in turn will lose a potential ally or even friend.

So? The world at large, in many cases, when it comes to trans people, is out to get them. The entire society itself is built against you. It is evidently clear here, that you do not realize the extremity of how deep this goes, and how much it takes to go against the status quo. For most trans people, just being able to pick a public restroom they see fit can pose direct threat to their being, and for people who feel shoehorned to pick between a choice that they don't identify with, that's also largely unnecessary.

But I see I am speaking to deaf ears. You make an implicit claim that you belong in the camp of the educated or in the very least, is accepting to be educated but no, I don't see such attitude coming from you. If you were, you would simply accept the experience and let it be instead of arguing over it and trying to find loopholes that would somehow circumvent the experience felt as negligible. Trans people do not seek to be special snowflakes, nor do most trans people operate on that people are automatically ill-intended. You cannot, however, blame trans people for turning jaded when the entire society they live in work so hard to deny them their own experience and their rights to self-expression.

That's really how simple it is and again, I don't even understand why this is even a subject to be discussed or why it needs to be compared to other kinds of experiences. Then one is clearly not empathizing with what is being said and presented and actually try to understand from their shoes, as much as one is simply intellectually masturbating while still remaining detached from the actually felt experience of what is truly going on. Get the experience. Get out in the real world. Feel it, realize that it feels real and deals with actual real people. That's how you get it. Not sitting and observing from an armchair and think you "get" it through intellectual masturbation.

here's the thing ^^^ I never thought we were refering to you as the victim as i don't give a shit about you. all I wanted was to understand the need for so many labels as i find them in any capacity especially socially to be restrictive when the 5 or 6 i proposed would cover everything. I was speaking general. but thank you for calling me a bigot when you wouldn't even take the time to get what i was actually saying. and the other thing you do look like you're playing the victim at this point because you saying i have every right to be the victim and act like no one else does. lot of people here have had shit happen to them just because they're not talking about it does not mean you have a monopoly on bad shit happening to you. so once again i don't care about you this thread was never about you. it was never about how you express yourself it was I DON"T FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE NEED FOR THAT MANY LABELS.

Here's the thing: don't respond to a post that is clearly not directed at you and try to turn it against the poster in order to validate your position. Again, I addressed your point about labels. You don't think they are necessary and I made it evidently clear that it shouldn't matter. Why does it bother you? People can call themselves whatever they want. Do you think anyone outside of this MBTI forum gives a fuck whether you think you are an INTJ or an INTP? There are people out there who would laugh at that too and think that's a special snowflake attitude, and this is a claim I already expressed to you, or that you, in such a cool defiant stance, rather call yourself a "yupp" because you for one reason or another, do not want to identify with an MBTI type. It can easily be as interpreted as seeking to be a snowflake by trying to make a claim to be above or outside the MBTI label system.

Ironic, isn't it?

You don't need to understand or like it, but merely respect it and don't be an asshole when expressing that view. That's rather simple but it seems impossible for you to write a single post without falling back on personal attacks.

The point is to erase all categories except the ones which people, for better or worse, are kind of naturally programmed to be curious about: penis or vagina. If we do away with gender, not feeling like a boy can be a natural expression of being a boy, that is, of having a penis. In other words, it becomes meaningless to say 'feel like a boy', which, I believe, is just another way of saying 'feel like I think most boys feel' anyway. 'Two billion shades of male, female, and shemale' was supposed to signify individual treatment, not 'being treated as a boy', a monochrome representative of one of two (or three) possible personality patterns.

I have always wondered how much of the gender dysphoria transgender people experience is a result of feeling different from, in contrast to converse to, other members of their sex. From an epistemological point of view, nobody born with a penis knows how it feels to be a girl. He is likely to know how it feels to be in the wrong body, but is wrongness an intrinsic emotion or a discrepancy between what is and what, by society, parents, friends, and ultimately oneself, is supposed to be? In my experience, the only time children have a problem with their gender is when someone else draws attention to their being different from an irrelevant majority.

Yeah, this is what happens when cis people try to understand, especially cis people who are clearly cognitively undualized. The simplest way to understand it is to compare it to something that you think should be or not be there. If you lost an arm, wouldn't you still have an innate experience that the arm should be there, be a part of you? Or similarly, if you somehow began to develop a gigantic zit on your face, I'm pretty that you at should level would feel that it should not be there. Gender dysphoria operates the same way but on a much more gigantic scale. You don't feel that your physical bits match your internally felt experience, at least when it comes to transsexuals. For other people, it can just be a discomfort with social roles and expectations. It largely depends on the person since being trans comes in a wide spectrum. Some people realize they are actually happy with the way their body works but are unhappy with social gender roles. Some people realize it's both. Some people realize they are fine with the gender role they actually inhabit but do not like their bodies aka butch/femme people.

The point is to understand that physical sex isn't the end all to categorize and shouldn't be. Your thinking is erroneous since you equalize "being a boy" with "having a penis", since you are only categorizing based on the physical dimension. When trans people say, "I feel like a boy", they don't just mean the social part. It's more than that and it's an experience I don't think a cis person can ever understand unless we reverse the question and say, "how do you know that you are X?" Likely because you, at some level, identify with X because it makes sense to you and there is no internally felt experience of contradiction between your body and your sense of self.

Also, I would encourage you to stop use the term "shemale" as it's a term explicitly used in porn and is a largely derogatory term to use in order to refer to MtF individuals and the like.

Last but not least, there is science pointing to that our gender identity is at least partially biologically determined. Brain development and DNA, seem to operate together one degree or another, to create what gender we supposedly feel we are. And I mean gender, not sex, because gender is a much more holistic pattern than sex. It also seems that you are woefully uneducated on the subject in the sense that you operate on a binary logic wherein you seem to think that a trans person will always transition to the opposite gender expression assigned at birth; that is not so. There are plenty of non-binary people who may feel comfortable living as the gender identity assigned to them but still feel that their internal bodily experience does not match their idea of who they are, like so:

 

Entropic

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But yeah, I'm done with this thread. It's pretty clear it boils down to an issue of cis people trying to "get" trans people and that there's no way you'll get it until you gain some actual experiential understanding of the world outside of your minds. And I am not going to sit here and guide you, that's for sure.
 

prplchknz

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Fuck this thread I am done, everything you has said to me has demonstrated a god damn misunderstanding of my point, I know it doesn't match i never claimed that. My argument of if it doesn't match why have it at all, and making more catagories aren't gonna do shit. IN THE GOD DAMN FUCKING TITLE I EXPLICITLY SAID IT DOES NOT INCLUDE TRANS!!! So yeah i got angry cuz you aren't getting what i'm trying to say you're claiming how we're out to get you. when truth is you're making yourself look like an asshole all on your own.


and hate your personality and want to opress you. i want to oppress you personally, because quite frankly you suck. other trans that I am friends with I don't want to, so maybe sometimes its not what you id your self as but your personality

btw yupp is a joke from people telling my type unsolicitly all the fucking time on here. it's a mockery of that dumbass.
 

sprinkles

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As far as I'm concerned this problem is more due to information standards than anything else.

You have a blank to write your name on a form, yes? Well, what's the point of check boxes then? Pure convenience. Convenience for the person filling the form so they don't have to write a typical answer, and convenience for the entity that will store or use the information.

However, there's a continuum here were when it comes to the practical application of information theory, there's sort of a parabolic curve for the utility of check boxes vs. fill-the-blank. If the info is only of trivial use then there's really no point in making check boxes for it and you might as well have a blank to fill in. On the other hand if the info is incredibly nuanced, check boxes may not be sufficient because they don't achieve a high enough resolution (or are too computationally expensive to achieve high resolutions)

Basically check boxes are like old 8 bit video game graphics. Each box makes a pixel and gives you a 'picture' BUT you can only get certain kinds of pictures from check boxes. If the information which doesn't fit in that picture is ever relevant, then you have a computational hurdle.
 

BadOctopus

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What must it be like to perceive threats everywhere and take offense at everything? It must be so exhausting.
 

Nicodemus

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Yeah, this is what happens when cis people try to understand, especially cis people who are clearly cognitively undualized. The simplest way to understand it is to compare it to something that you think should be or not be there. If you lost an arm, wouldn't you still have an innate experience that the arm should be there, be a part of you? Or similarly, if you somehow began to develop a gigantic zit on your face, I'm pretty that you at should level would feel that it should not be there. Gender dysphoria operates the same way but on a much more gigantic scale. You don't feel that your physical bits match your internally felt experience, at least when it comes to transsexuals. For other people, it can just be a discomfort with social roles and expectations. It largely depends on the person since being trans comes in a wide spectrum. Some people realize they are actually happy with the way their body works but are unhappy with social gender roles. Some people realize it's both. Some people realize they are fine with the gender role they actually inhabit but do not like their bodies aka butch/femme people.
Perhaps my take on gender dysphoria stems from a reluctance to view it as a disorder or illness. Considering how you describe it, however, there seems to be rather little chance for most transgender people to live happy lives without major changes to the bodies they were born with. Although nature obviously delivers malfunctioning products, I generally prefer to think that, under congenial circumstances, people have the capacity to be fine without such drastic measures. I will take your testimony into account, of course. Maybe [MENTION=7]Jennifer[/MENTION] can shine her light on the matter as well.

The point is to understand that physical sex isn't the end all to categorize and shouldn't be. Your thinking is erroneous since you equalize "being a boy" with "having a penis", since you are only categorizing based on the physical dimension. When trans people say, "I feel like a boy", they don't just mean the social part. It's more than that and it's an experience I don't think a cis person can ever understand unless we reverse the question and say, "how do you know that you are X?" Likely because you, at some level, identify with X because it makes sense to you and there is no internally felt experience of contradiction between your body and your sense of self.
To say my thinking is erroneous 'since you equalize "being a boy" with "having a penis", since you are only categorizing based on the physical dimension' is to completely miss the point of my post. Since you have a record of getting things wrong, I am going to wait if there are more misunderstandings or questions before I attempt yet another explanation. To you, I suggest to read my posts again.

Also, I would encourage you to stop use the term "shemale" as it's a term explicitly used in porn and is a largely derogatory term to use in order to refer to MtF individuals and the like.
I take it you can appreciate that 'shemale' fit the 'male, female' line much better than 'hermaphrodite'.

It also seems that you are woefully uneducated on the subject in the sense that you operate on a binary logic wherein you seem to think that a trans person will always transition to the opposite gender expression assigned at birth; that is not so. There are plenty of non-binary people who may feel comfortable living as the gender identity assigned to them but still feel that their internal bodily experience does not match their idea of who they are, like so:

The fact of the matter is that I proposed 'two billion shades' of gender for every possible sex, which is a far cry from being binary. Using the classic male-to-female transition as an example is just that, an example.

But yeah, I'm done with this thread. It's pretty clear it boils down to an issue of cis people trying to "get" trans people and that there's no way you'll get it until you gain some actual experiential understanding of the world outside of your minds. And I am not going to sit here and guide you, that's for sure.
I believe nobody asked you to.
 

Totenkindly

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For my two cents:

I would appreciate if ALL OF YOU would focus on the actual thread topic and not purposefully derail this into a discussion of "Trans issues" and gender dysphoria when the title of this thread clearly stated that that was not the topic.

It took a slight detour in the middle due to bathroom issues, which can be applicable to anyone regardless of why they identify with another gender, so that wasn't a bad thing, but now it's been going south and causing problems.

Thanks for your help in keeping this thread on track.
 

Crabs

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This is essentially the same question that people used to have about gay marriage. The answer being, we can't know that they're sincere about their gender identity -- but we have never known that they're sincere, so in that respect nothing would change.

Since there are probably as many XX females that are mistaken for XY men (at least with clothes on), as trans females that use a given sports club bathroom, it sounds like they've chosen that statement as a more workable standard than taking blood samples and/or inspecting driver's licenses at the door (each of which has its own problem) or some other equally flawed solution.

The statement of course goes on to note why she actually got kicked out:


Still, when it comes down to self-identification, yeah, there's gonna be some kerfluffle in the United States (which has always drawn some sharp gendering lines) while all of this butts heads and works itself out. I expect us to be adding more unisex bathrooms over time, with more stalls, for one. (You'll see single-person bathrooms in some restaurants doing this now -- they'll have two unisex bathrooms rather than a male and female. But our old bathroom "infracture" was always very gender regimented.)

ahh....i see.

i've never been one to keep up with the kardashians, but i'm curious - what is bruce jenner? i hope this isn't off-topic; but i don't really understand what the topic is. i guess i'm trans-ignorant.

 

prplchknz

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ahh....i see.

i've never been one to keep up with the kardashians, but i'm curious - what is bruce jenner? i hope this isn't off-topic; but i don't really understand what the topic is. i guess i'm trans-ignorant.


the thing is i don't consider trans non-binary, whether or not other people do or don't, it does not make sense, as trans is still a two gender system, what i was talking about are those who don't fit into either catagory, which i believe exist but the number of terms keep getting creating where it's like enough, male, female, trans, both, none. there perfect .it's not getting rid of self expression because those are pretty broad categories. but trans it's like you are physically male but emotionally female or switched, still two gender system still binary since binary is two.
 

HongDou

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The point is to erase all categories except the ones which people, for better or worse, are kind of naturally programmed to be curious about: penis or vagina. If we do away with gender, not feeling like a boy can be a natural expression of being a boy, that is, of having a penis. In other words, it becomes meaningless to say 'feel like a boy', which, I believe, is just another way of saying 'feel like I think most boys feel' anyway. 'Two billion shades of male, female, and shemale' was supposed to signify individual treatment, not 'being treated as a boy', a monochrome representative of one of two (or three) possible personality patterns.

This isn't going to happen. In an ideal world I can see it, but here gender isn't going anywhere.
 

Crabs

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the thing is i don't consider trans non-binary, whether or not other people do or don't, it does not make sense, as trans is still a two gender system, what i was talking about are those who don't fit into either catagory, which i believe exist but the number of terms keep getting creating where it's like enough, male, female, trans, both, none. there perfect .it's not getting rid of self expression because those are pretty broad categories. but trans it's like you are physically male but emotionally female or switched, still two gender system still binary since binary is two.

quite the conundrum, indeed. i'll just call people by their names and shirk these silly labels.
 

Coriolis

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Well, the OP here is rather vague. The idea of which check boxes regarding gender should appear on forms was mentioned. Then there was the statement, "I mean also the special treatment, like no one's gonna know unless you tell them i've totally lost my train of thought so there was more". I have been mentioning this in the context of other groups because we have seen these issues before. We have now, for instance, much more variation in the race and ethnicity boxes than we ever used to, presumably because people in the "none of the above" category asked for it. More and more we have people who wish to check multiple boxes. We have more boxes for religion, for marital status, for employment status, and other demographic properties. Seems in the case of gender, we can learn from these experiences. At the same time, the whole system begs the question: when, if at all, should we even be asking these questions? What is the purpose of asking? Nosiness? Government control? Desire to understand the demographic makeup of various locales, careers, economic groups, etc?

That was never the point, whether others experience it or not or how others experience their identity and whatever. The point is to understand that it is important to them and that it causes pain. Why it does so or what triggers or generates it, all that is largely irrelevant.

Can you give ONE example of where such entitlement occurs? And why this notion of entitlement is somehow worse than any other form of entitlement people can experience when people make claims to have parts of their identity respected?

There are paranoid trans folks out there, but paranoia isn't unique or explicit to being transgender. You will find the same attitude in a wide range of individuals who will react the same way but to other aspects of their identity e.g. religion, what have, whatever they hold important to their sense of self.

So? The world at large, in many cases, when it comes to trans people, is out to get them. The entire society itself is built against you. It is evidently clear here, that you do not realize the extremity of how deep this goes, and how much it takes to go against the status quo. For most trans people, just being able to pick a public restroom they see fit can pose direct threat to their being, and for people who feel shoehorned to pick between a choice that they don't identify with, that's also largely unnecessary.

Trans people do not seek to be special snowflakes, nor do most trans people operate on that people are automatically ill-intended. You cannot, however, blame trans people for turning jaded when the entire society they live in work so hard to deny them their own experience and their rights to self-expression.
This was my point: that there is a commonality in the experience of everyone who is ostracised, judged, or persecuted for being different. Some of those so affected will come to see everyone as potentially hostile, every mistake as intentional; many will not. Yes, it looks like the world is out to get transpeople; just as it was out to get blacks, women, Jews, gays, Armenians, and the disabled at one point or another, and in many places, perhaps still is. On the Everyday Sexism thread awhile back, there was discussion of the many small ways women are belittled or marginalized each day, as well as the notion that we should speak up in these cases rather than just let them roll of our backs in the interests of getting along. This is the "no one's going to know unless you tell them" part. Many well-intentioned men don't realize the effects of the small things they say and do. And yes, I have seen plenty of women complain about this to other women rather than speak up to the men actually doing it. I suspect the same applies to comments and actions involving other human distinctions, including those of gender identity.

Get the experience. Get out in the real world. Feel it, realize that it feels real and deals with actual real people. That's how you get it. Not sitting and observing from an armchair and think you "get" it through intellectual masturbation.
Unless I suddenly wake up some morning with gender identity issues, the most I will ever be able to do on that specific topic is observe. You can dismiss all the experiences I do have as irrelevant, or accept that there is some commonality of experience among every form of bullying, hostility, or discrimination based on our individual characteristics, whatever they may be. While the first approach might feel satisfying in the moment, it is not realistic, or constructive in the long run.
 
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