Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?

[Jonti]

The point that no-one is going round telling children who experience some symptoms of gender dysphoria that they are transsexual, the diagnosis model is much more complicated than that.

And it may not have been her intention, but this line of argument - that I experienced gender dysphoria but I'm alright now - is regularly used to undermine transsexual people's lived experiences, as well as being used to undermine treatment for transsexuality and could skirt dangerously close to telling trans people that they just need to pull themselves together and they'll get over it. As I say that may not have been the intention, but that might be one reason why AuntiStella reacted so spikily - this is one of the consequences of prejudice, people experience it so often that they begin to assume the worst.

This is all fair enough, but we're being offered an experience of gd, not an argument.

 

[smokedout]

You can't get ecstasy from doctors either.

Sketchy Pharmacies Are Selling Hormones to Transgender People

You can buy ecstacy on the internet though. Thats a different issue surely, and one best dealt with by parents not giving children unrestricted access to their credit cards.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

You can buy ecstacy on the internet though. Thats a different issue surely, and one best dealt with by parents not giving children unrestricted access to their credit cards.

I was just pointing out that not getting a prescription isn't an obstacle for obtaining whatever pharmaceutical product you desire. Not having a credit card perhaps isn't either. Although you would need access to money.

 

[Jonti]

I think that sign is daft, but also relatively harmless. You can't 'catch' transsexuality, no doctor is going to provide hormone blockers without a solid diagnosis, so it strikes me that the worst possible outcome of any peer coercion is that it might lead someone to experiment with gender. And so what if they do.

My mum used to go on about how terrible the gay switchboard was in case they convinced vulnerable young people they were gay when they weren't . Im sorry but im struggling not to see paralells with that.

This word gender what does it mean to you (unfair question)? The kids you mention were concerned with their sexuality.

 

[Clair De Lune]

Fwiw I really don't want you to shut up weepiper. I think this conversation is important even if it's a very difficult one at times.

 

[snadge]

You can buy ecstacy on the internet though. Thats a different issue surely, and one best dealt with by parents not giving children unrestricted access to their credit cards.

Sometimes it is the parents, I wanted to be a fucking train when I was six.

 

[Red Cat]

The point that no-one is going round telling children who experience some symptoms of gender dysphoria that they are transsexual, the diagnosis model is much more complicated than that.

And it may not have been her intention, but this line of argument - that I experienced gender dysphoria but I'm alright now - is regularly used to undermine transsexual people's lived experiences, as well as being used to undermine treatment for transsexuality and could skirt dangerously close to telling trans people that they just need to pull themselves together and they'll get over it. As I say that may not have been the intention, but that might be one reason why AuntiStella reacted so spikily - this is one of the consequences of prejudice, people experience it so often that they begin to assume the worst.

weepiper is a really thoughtful poster who isn't given to talking out of her arse and she isn't a bigot. I'm sure you know that.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The change in the law being proposed, allowing people to self-certificate a request for a legal change in their gender, as has been the case in Ireland since 2015, does bring up some odd issues. Well, those odd issues are already there, tbh. It's odd for starters that there is such a thing as legal gender in the first place, rather than legal sex. I guess a person who is biologically intersex would need a separate category if the system were based purely on biology, but I have to say that those who are gender-critical have a point when they criticise the way that we're all legally defined by a gender, not a biological sex, so we're all legally defined by what is essentially a social construct - an essentialism is granted to gender, not sex, by the law. It's a very strange situation.

 

[elbows]

I'm not sure I find it that odd that the legal system has grown in a manner that pays heed to, and reinforces, various social constructs.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I'm not sure I find it that odd that the legal system has grown in a manner that pays heed to, and reinforces, various social constructs.

I was pondering why we needed to have our sex/gender legally defined then remembered prison. I'm sure there's other reasons.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm not sure I find it that odd that the legal system has grown in a manner that pays heed to, and reinforces, various social constructs.

I think it's more than that though. It's grown up in a manner that clearly at one time didn't distinguish between the social construct and the biology on which it sits. Because that social construct isn't assigned at birth according to culturally defined ideas - it's assigned attempting to follow the physical reality of biological sex. Now there is a wide recognition of a difference, but the legal framework still exists from a time before that.

 

[Shechemite]

I was pondering why we needed to have our sex/gender legally defined then remembered prison. I'm sure there's other reasons.

Helps in medicine.

 

[elbows]

I was pondering why we needed to have our sex/gender legally defined then remembered prison. I'm sure there's other reasons.

Including some that are increasingly obsolete, like ones the applied double or triple standards to various 'morality laws' especially ones covering relationships, marriage and having sex. And various rights such as the right to vote.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Helps in medicine.

How? You'll have medical records showing details of your biological sex, no? What purpose does an additional category of legal gender have on top of that?

Strikes me that the reasons for persisting with this anachronistic legal category are quickly disappearing, and so they should be. The very fact that you will soon be able to fill out a form and send it off to get yourself reassigned is a tacit acknowledgement of that.

 

[Shechemite]

How? You'll have medical records showing details of your biological sex, no? What purpose does an additional category of legal gender have on top of that?

I was referring to the sex bit.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I was referring to the sex bit.

Which isn't legally defined. Only gender is legally defined.

 

[Clair De Lune]

Sometimes it is the parents, I wanted to be a fucking train when I was six.

And this is the bit that really hurts. The thought that some people out there will assume that I have indoctrinated, pressured, pushed my child towards identifying as trans and a medical transition. That I haven't spoken to him every day about how he feels, shared my own experiences of struggling with being a girl/woman, about how it's ok to be a gender non conforming person. My boy has been brought up by a strong single mother, he has seen me overcome every obstacle in my path. This isn't about him not wanting to be a woman due to our shitty patriarchal society because he's smart enough to see how it hurts boys too. This is not about choosing, just as being gay isn't a choice. He just isn't a girl and can't pretend to be one for much longer. Because the pretending is killing him. That is why he wants to transition. Not because he doesn't like girls or looks down on women or thinks being a man will be better/easier/superior. But because he simply isn't a girl. Just in the same way as a cis guy or woman would be horrified to wake up as someone else and not be able to change back. I'd imagine given that scenario then a lot of us would seek medical interventions to correct it.

I'm not going to pretend to fully understand what my son is going through, but I am trying. It hurts to think people are thinking oh it's just a fad, it's popular right now when I see the genuine pain it causes him. It is possible to think gender roles are a pile of wank but still need to transition. It's totally possible to transition and yet still not feel the need to abide by gender expectations and actively defy them. It's also possible to be trans but not feel the need for any medical interventions at all.
My son's already said that transitioning won't stop him wearing make up or indeed much more important stuff like being a feminist.

Just because something is really hard to relate to, doesn't mean it's not real.

This is going to be a long process. He's already been seeing counsellors for nearly two years. He's had to have psychiatric assessments, been tested for autism, depression and goodness knows what else. They are rigorous and rightly so. He is still waiting for his first appointment at a gender identity clinic, where the rigorous process will continue, probably for years. If at any point he does change his mind, then that's fine! He knows this because we talk openly.

I might not reply if people quote me with shitty comments because quite frankly the last few days has taken its toll reading all this stuff. But I believe in authenticity and the sharing of experiences and if it helps someone to better understand or engages their empathy then it's worth it.

 

[Jonti]

Of those three, I'd say the last is hugely important. The only other ape that pair-bonds is the gibbon, but gibbon males and females are the same size, which is what you normally find in animals that pair-bond, so we're doubly unusual in that respect. Humans are very likely to have evolved pair bonding from some situation along the line back to our common ancestor with bonobos/chimps where it was not the case, and we're not as strict about it as gibbons, even now. This study suggests that pair-bonding in primates evolved as a means to prevent male infanticide. I'm always a little wary of studies that run models in case the assumptions of the models are off in some small but crucial way, but it's an interesting finding. The evolution of monogamy is quite a thorny issue, generally.

Another difference would be division of labour. It was once thought that bonobos didn't hunt in the way chimps do. It's now known that they do hunt, but unlike chimps, bonobos hunt in mixed-sex groups. There is very little division of labour by sex role in bonobos.

Chimps shed a lot of light on our animal nature. I'm very comfortable with being the third chimpanzee, killing them should be considered murder. All the great apes really.

But Australopithecus was our ancestor. A bipedal ape (as we are). It's the ape that became Homo.

Really liked Richard Leakey's The Origin of Humankind, which tells the story of how this ape's habitat was partially wooded areas, where they could climb into trees safe from the African predators. Their habitat was the fringes of the great forests where they gave way to savanah. During the Ice Age, although it was still warm enough in Africa, the rainfall decreased markedly and the great forests retreated. The fringes dwindled and vanished. You cannot spend even a night on the encroaching savanna without weapons or fire without running a serious risk of death. The evolutionary pressure was as intense as it gets. Extinction crept ever closer and eventually arrived.

But some Australopithecine responded by encaphalising into Homo, somehow surviving. Maybe some bands found refuge in geographically rugged terrain, cliffs and crags, maybe caves inaccessible to the predators, or that the clever apes could defend by chucking rocks. No one knows, but here we are.

Every one has their own gender, unlike with language. I think my daughter's gender is nerd (not usually a term of endearment, but that's how she has described herself for many years). But she's her own nerd of course, she's very artistic. Secondary School was intolerable to her on account of "the bitches" so she's been home educated (well she's something of the autodidact, thanks to the internet). Another trip to the science museum coming up soon

 

[Jonti]

Totally weird that the law talks about gender when a clear scientific understanding of the term is not available. Mind you I did use a legal judgement thinking about this (just omitting the reasoning about men and women). It's in the Wikipedia article under Etymology and Usage.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Totally weird that the law talks about gender when a clear scientific understanding of the term is not available. Mind you I did use a legal judgement thinking about this (just omitting the reasoning about men and women). It's in the Wikipedia article under Usage.

We're assigned a legal gender at birth based on an assessment of our biological sex - seems clear to me that the original reasoning behind this was that they were the same thing, indivisible, as some ultra-conservative religious types still think - God-given, in fact, which explains why such people will maintain that deviation from this is mental illness. Now we recognise that they aren't the same thing, and the law recognises that they aren't the same thing but it persists with the practice of a legal gender assigned at birth based on an assessment of biological sex.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I'm fortunate that I live in a trans-friendly bubble. The shit that goes on outside of it makes me angry. People are just so bloody intolerant of people who are different from them. It's women who have hurt me the most in real life and online since transition. I'm baffled by this because, well in my naivety, I thought women were the epitome of solidarity - just like I thought the left was somehow unified by ideology. I realise that putting people, principles, ideologies on a pedestal means they will fail to live up to the impossibility of my expectations. It doesn't help though.

I know this ain't my support group, just coming out quietly to urban as trans on a trans related thread that has some hostility on it, showing once again my poor choices, naivety and complete disregard for my safety

I don't think you are naive - I think you are brave. Nice to meet you.

I'm sad you've have been hurt by women especially. I used to put women on a pedestal too, I stupidly thought we were somehow morally superior - but had that beaten out of me by some nasty women, one literally with her fists. It was sad to discover women could be shits too. We're all only human.

 

[Athos]

We're assigned a legal gender at birth based on an assessment of our biological sex - seems clear to me that the original reasoning behind this was that they were the same thing, indivisible, as some ultra-conservative religious types still think - God-given, in fact, which explains why such people will maintain that deviation from this is mental illness. Now we recognise that they aren't the same thing, and the law recognises that they aren't the same thing but it persists with the practice of a legal gender assigned at birth based on an assessment of biological sex.

Are we assigned a legal gender at birth? I though birth certificates record sex?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Are we assigned a legal gender at birth? I though birth certificates record sex?

So did I, tbh, but whatever the word is that is used on the form, it clearly isn't biological sex that they're talking about. It's the social construct gender. If the word sex is used on the form, that really just reinforces the point that the legal system once upon a time did not recognise any difference between biological sex and socially constructed gender.

 

[Athos]

So did I, tbh, but whatever the word is that is used on the form, it clearly isn't biological sex that they're talking about. It's the social construct gender.

Why do you say that? Surely it's sex, as apparent from sex characteristics i.e. penis/vagina.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Of course. But I place them as secondary to class politics (which argues for equality to all) rather than being pleased that I now have a black manager and landlord.

Yes but do you fear personal /sexual violence and discrimation from your manager or landlord too? Maybe if you did it wouldn't seem so secondry.

It's how I see (maybe incorrectly?) the logical destination of identity driven politics.
Gay Pride sponsored by Barclays! Roll Eyes.

Not sure it was a logical destination. I think like our community Pride has been lost or stolen.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Why do you say that? Surely it's sex, as apparent from sex characteristics i.e. penis/vagina.

Because you can get it changed, including receiving a new birth certificate.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

We're all only human

 

[Athos]

Because you can get it changed, including receiving a new birth certificate.

But (apart from the fact that it clearly says 'sex'), it can't be gender, since no doctor could tell what the child's gender is, if gender is a matter of self- identification independent of sex.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But (apart from the fact that it clearly says 'sex'), it can't be gender, since no doctor could tell what the child's gender is, if gender is a matter of self- identification independent of sex.

Well exactly. It's this contradiction that I'm pointing out.

 

[Athos]

Well exactly. It's this contradiction that I'm pointing out.

There is none. It explicitly records sex. It doesn't purport to record gender; it couldn't.