Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[Jonti]

With what?

 

[Clair De Lune]

With what?

I was hoping you'd clarify that since you were the one who said it.

 

[Sea Star]

Steady on. This isn't something *you* have to deal with

don't smile at me - you have used offensive language to say that trans women are men and are demanding to sleep with lesbians. I'm not even going to argue with you. It shouldn't be on this thread. It's off topic. Start a new thread, use less inflammatory language and show the evidence.

 

[Jonti]

I was hoping you'd clarify that since you were the one who said it.

Oh I see. With the "just fetishism" angle. No, it's not just that. Dealt with.

 

[iona]

I can understand how it's possible to be gender non-conforming instead of transgender, but not how it's possible to be both simultaneously.

The latin prefix trans explicitly means from one thing, position or state to another, frequently from one thing to its opposite.

Those who are GNC, as I understand it, are not seeking to transition from one gender to another, but to conform neither to the social gender they were originally assigned to and socialised in nor to the other (or perhaps "any other" might be better).

I can appreciate why some trans people and some GNC people might see themselves as having some shared interests, and to be potential political allies, but to attempt to stretch the meaning of the term trans to include GNCs seems to me to obscure differences between the two, differences which are important not only to the individual but also socially/politically, and therefore of relevance to all who have an interest in gender politics, whether they identify as trans or GNC or not.

No, I wasn't trying to "stretch the meaning of trans to include (cis) GNC" people. I was talking about people who are transgender but somehow don't conform to societal expectations wrt gender roles or expression - a trans man who likes wearing makeup and high heels, for example, or a butch trans woman who works as a scaffolder or something.

Re the bit I quoted in bold - think we had different understandings of GNC and that's where the confusion came from? I've always understood & seen GNC used to mean not conforming to roles etc associated with that person's gender, rather than any gender. So a cis woman who conformed to male roles etc would be GNC even though she is conforming to gender roles, because they aren't the roles typically associated with her gender. And the same for trans women (expected to conform to female roles) and trans men (male roles).

E2a I absolutely agree about the importance of not conflating the two, btw.

 

[Sea Star]

Re the bit I quoted in bold - think we had different understandings of GNC and that's where the confusion came from? I've always understood & seen GNC used to mean not conforming to roles etc associated with that person's gender, rather than any gender. So a cis woman who conformed to male roles etc would be GNC even though she is conforming to gender roles, because they aren't the roles typically associated with her gender. And the same for trans women (expected to conform to female roles) and trans men (male roles).

that's exactly how i use it too. Surprisingly high numbers of people seem to think, eg, that a trans woman conforming to female standards of femininity is a form of GNC.

Also will add that quite a few GNC men that i have seen, ie, presenting femininely enough that they might be accused of cross dressing - but not wanting to transition, do actually choose to identify as trans. Trans being the umbrella term, which transgender and many other identities sit under.

 

[iona]

I think FabricLiveBaby!'s post and kabbes' response is a great read for where we are. Worth every word.

"suggested treatment other than medical transition might be preferable" I'm not sure I did this, but certainly wouldn't like to rule it out.

Sorry, just catching up with the thread after being offline... I read this part of your earlier post (quoted below) as suggesting treatment other than medical transition might be preferable - was that not what you meant?

<snip>
All that can be offered is to medically alter the individual patient to fit better into one of the rigid sex-roles on offer. Preferable, might be a social response which allows people to be who they are in the body they were born with.

Wrt to other methods of treatment for transgender people, WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) has this to say (my bold) -

Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and lived gender expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past (Gelder & Marks, 1969; Greenson, 1964), yet without success, particularly in the long term (Cohen-Kettenis & Kuiper, 1984; Pauly, 1965). Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.

 

[bimble]

that's exactly how i use it too. Surprisingly high numbers of people seem to think, eg, that a trans woman conforming to female standards of femininity is a form of GNC.

Also will add that quite a few GNC men that i have seen, ie, presenting femininely enough that they might be accused of cross dressing - but not wanting to transition, do actually choose to identify as trans. Trans being the umbrella term, which transgender and many other identities sit under.

Why would you not just call those people you've just described trans women ? (genuine question, as you say that they choose to identify as such).

eta) I suppose I don't understand what transition actually means. Didn't think it required a person to necessarily begin or intend to begin any medical treatment.

 

[iona]

that's exactly how i use it too. Surprisingly high numbers of people seem to think, eg, that a trans woman conforming to female standards of femininity is a form of GNC.

Also will add that quite a few GNC men that i have seen, ie, presenting femininely enough that they might be accused of cross dressing - but not wanting to transition, do actually choose to identify as trans. Trans being the umbrella term, which transgender and many other identities sit under.

Yeah I was going to mention that whole grey area of trans-as-umbrella-term / non-medical-transition / non-binary / GNC / whatever else stuff but I would've ended up veering wildly off topic and writing a whole book

 

[Sea Star]

Why would you not just call those people you've just described trans women ? (genuine question, as you say that they choose to identify as such).

eta) I suppose I don't understand what transition actually means. Didn't think it required a person to necessarily begin or intend to begin any medical treatment.

because they don;t identify as women. And the ones I know are absolutely adamant that this is not about identity or gender for them but they just like dressing up, or looking feminine. Some just really like the clothes. But they are absolutely men. I don;t see any connection between my own identity and their's but i do accept that they face the same sort of transphobia that i faced when i began to explore my own gender. And quite a few not yet out of the closet trans women come up through cross-dressing groups. I did myself until a point where i met a few trans women who transitioned and began to work out what was really going on in my case.

Transitioning - though it has been medicalised - can be as simple as a statement of name and gender change. For me that was my starting point and i moved in from there, seeking NHS treatment and self medicating hormones and nearly 4 years on I'm still not at the end of that journey but I would say i transitioned 4 years ago. Sometimes called a social transition rather than medicalised or legal. Though there isn;t really a legal process in the UK for transitioning, just bits and pieces.

 

[bimble]

Ah, so when you said they 'identify as trans' that means they are using the word in a totally different way. ok thanks.

 

[The Flying Pig]

You're a fucking idiot.

I take it you must have been in the crowd of attackers or are you just an internet warrior?

Do you have to deal with it then?

 

[Sea Star]

Ah, so when you said they 'identify as trans' that means they are using the word in a totally different way. ok thanks.

It's confusing i know because Trans as an umbrella term and trans short for transgender are the same word, but its the context i think that is different.

I just pulled this off Google for illustrative purposes, though I don;t necessarily agree with the specifics - or disagree, its just illustrate of what i mean.

All of this together would be labelled Trans or Trans*

 

[The Flying Pig]

Just to be clear about this, the violence was out of order and Stella linked to a very good response to it from a trans woman's blog, where she rightly berated the punchy idiot for the enormous damage the violence did to the cause, in the process introducing yet another incident of violence against women to the world. So nobody's defending the violence, and it frankly would not be any better if the woman who was punched had been 30. So I don't agree at all that 'punching someone in the head is not the issue'.

But there is a separate issue related directly to the video in the OP and its purpose. Its purpose was very clear - to advance the viewpoint that this was male violence against women and an example of trans terrorism. These are unpleasant people who go out of their way to demonise trans women. This idiot happened to play right into their hands in this instance by doing an out of order thing that they could then use to advance their narrative that trans women are men in disguise and a violent threat to 'real' women.

There is no reason why it can't be possible to recognise both of these things - that the assault on this person was wrong, and that the assault has then been used by the person's group to advance a deeply unpleasant agenda.

So are you saying that the person attacked purposely antagonised the opposition so that she could be physically beaten? This sounds quite a familiar thread and often heard by men who beat their wives. Or have I misunderstood what you mean?

 

[Clair De Lune]

I take it you must have been in the crowd of attackers or are you just an internet warrior?

Did you mean to quote me and accuse me of being an attacker or an internet warrior?

 

[bimble]

cripes AuntiStella . google is not helping much with the acronyms

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So are you saying that the person attacked purposely antagonised the opposition so that she could be physically beaten? This sounds quite a familiar thread and often heard by men who beat their wives. Or have I misunderstood what you mean?

No. I'm not saying that at all. I was careful to say exactly what I meant. I'm saying that the video that you posted to start this thread was made and released to further a very specific, nasty agenda, and that they are using the attack to push that agenda. I didn't say that there was a deliberate attempt to provoke violence or that she brought it upon herself or that she deserved it or anything like that. You've made that bit up yourself.

The clue there was the way that I separated off the two issues - the use made of the video has no bearing on the wrongness of the violence. Separate issues.

 

[Sea Star]

cripes AuntiStella . google is not helping much with the acronyms

ha ha!! No. This stuff is still being worked out. I struggle to keep up. It's just that its all so new I guess, even for us - I mean being able to talk about it to other trans people. Before that we were pretty much isolated from each other. I'm sure it'll settle down eventually.

 

[iona]

cripes AuntiStella . google is not helping much with the acronyms

Ft = female to ; Mt = male to

So they're just variations on ftm/mtf (eg ft3 would be female to third gender, mtx I'm guessing the x would be something neutral/other - like having X as an option on ID as well as M/F). A lot of them aren't all that widely used, but as AS says it works well to illustrate what she meant.

 

[Sea Star]

i should have picked a simpler one - that would have illustrated it just as well

 

[abstract1]

I take it you must have been in the crowd of attackers or are you just an internet warrior?

No, I'm a woman who thinks you're a fucking idiot.

You start a thread using provocative and pejorative terms - you then presume to suggest that language used (by a man) to describe the woman in the incident you posted about is of no relevance, and go on to suggest a person's age is more important than assault.

Fuck off.

 

[The Flying Pig]

Did you mean to quote me and accuse me of being an attacker or an internet warrior?

No slip of the finger

 

[The Flying Pig]

No, I'm a woman who thinks you're a fucking idiot.

You start a thread using provocative and pejorative terms - you then presume to suggest that language used (by a man) to describe the woman in the incident you posted about is of no relevance, and go on to suggest a person's age is more important than assault.

Fuck off.

Thank you question answered ....Internet warrior. I thought so.

 

[bimble]

In this area (if not many others tbh) I have an optimistic feeling that things will get better a couple of generations down the line, when all this stuff that right now is so new that the language is still being formed when it gets metabolised and becomes just part of life, maybe in a couple of decades people will look back at this historical period with a sort of pity and some affection.

 

[iona]

ha ha!! No. This stuff is still being worked out. I struggle to keep up. It's just that its all so new I guess, even for us - I mean being able to talk about it to other trans people. Before that we were pretty much isolated from each other. I'm sure it'll settle down eventually.

Oops, cross posted! Sorry, didn't mean to talk over you..

Yeah that's it I think, terms like man/male and woman/female have been around so long that they're both universally (within that language) used and understood to encompass a range of definitions; those are still up for debate, as this thread proves, but generally speaking one woman calling herself a woman isn't taken to mean someone else who defines her womanhood differently must actually not be a woman and should find something else to call herself (sorry, that's a bit garbled I know). Whereas people who don't fit into that binary haven't got a standardised set of terms - there's no "two spirit" equivalent in our culture - so having the chance to create them means everyone goes looking for the exact term that fits them 100% perfectly rather than just making do with what's there. If that makes sense at all?

 

[The Flying Pig]

In this area (if not many others tbh) I have an optimistic feeling that things will get better a couple of generations down the line, when all this stuff that right now is so new that the language is still being formed when it gets metabolised and becomes just part of life, maybe in a couple of decades people will look back at this historical period with a sort of pity and some affection.

I am looking upon some of the players with pity now, never mind in two generations time. Certainly not exasperated enough to go attacking physically with or without a camera any of the players in this sad debacle.

 

[Sea Star]

Oops, cross posted! Sorry, didn't mean to talk over you..

Yeah that's it I think, terms like man/male and woman/female have been around so long that they're both universally (within that language) used and understood to encompass a range of definitions; those are still up for debate, as this thread proves, but generally speaking one woman calling herself a woman isn't taken to mean someone else who defines her womanhood differently must actually not be a woman and should find something else to call herself (sorry, that's a bit garbled I know). Whereas people who don't fit into that binary haven't got a standardised set of terms - there's no "two spirit" equivalent in our culture - so having the chance to create them means everyone goes looking for the exact term that fits them 100% perfectly rather than just making do with what's there. If that makes sense at all?

Makes perfect sense.

For me now going through a process of wondering how I feel now about she/her being used for me. At first it was relief but slowly I'm not sure if I'm entirely comfortable with female pronouns either. Don't know if that's because I'm actually non binary, if I'd be more comfortable not being gendered at all, or if it's after years of getting used to being him/he it just takes some getting used to. Or is feeling that I don't entirely fit into female, while remaining not at all male, or the same as the discomfort with female roles that a lot of cis women report?
But I do know that my body now nearly matches my internal identity so it didn't seem like such a big issue any more.
Anyway. These are the struggles we go through, which I consider to be a luxury these days, to have the words, the concepts and people to bounce things off people that understand.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sheer fucking bollocks. The level of transphobia relates directly to the abuse transpeople suffer. If women participate in that transphobia then they are a threat.

And the threat they comprise, by and large, is verbal violence, NOT killing.

 

[bimble]

AuntiStella Why should you or anyone else 'entirely fit into female' ? I have no idea what that even means to be honest unless it means being happy to conform to every attribute and behaviour that our patriarchal society has pushed onto the category of other things that is defined as "feminine".
I (cis woman) have massive issues with 'female roles' in terms of what I have been taught to understand them to be and am kind of glad to hear it if you do too.
We're stuck it seems with a language that relies on gendered pronouns but questioning what rigid connotations the word 'she' conjures up in our heads is surely still up for grabs.

 

[pengaleng]

I been away for a few days and this happened, it's gonna take me a while to read, brb