Disagreement with the trans community

I don't really see where you're coming from, but then I do not experience your life, just as you do not experience mine.

Like Akari said, hormones cause us to go through puberty again, in a similar manner to that of the gender we identify with. As far as upbringing, I don't really see what you're saying. People are raised all different ways, regardless of gender. My sisters, brother, and I were brought up similarly to each other.

 

That's a good point too. My dad always kind of wanted a son, so we would do stereotypically father-son activities. I've gone shooting fishing hunting, I had toy cars etc. My mom was a bit more pushy on the girl stuff. She wanted me to wear dresses and things which I often fought her over. And since I mostly like girls, and dated them in high school, many of my friends I grew up with never treated me as feminine at all. It wasn't until later I pieced everything together but I didn't have a girlie upbringing at all.

 

Yeah, you're right. That is gonna piss people off.

Here's the thing. "Man" and "woman" are social terms and always have been. You can argue that trans men shouldn't be called "male" and trans women shouldn't be called "female" because those were meant to be words that describe one's sex, but "man" and "woman" aren't scientific words. They're words used socially. If a trans man transitions to make his body as male as possible and is seen as a man by society, why should he not be called a man? The vast majority of people who see him will have no idea that he is even trans. When they refer to him as a man, should he go "no, no, good sir. I am not a man. I am a transman. You see, let me tell you all about my genitals and previous sex characteristics..." or should we just accept the fact that this person lives fully as a man in society and should be referred to as such?

Anyway, whether or not cis people are offended by me calling myself a man is really not my concern. They should probably work on understanding what it actually means to be trans instead of assuming trans people aren't really men and women just because they had different experiences.

And I agree with the others who have pointed out that everyone has a different life experience, even within the same gender.
Consider a trans woman who transitioned as a young age (say, social transition at 5 years old, physical transition at an appropriate age following puberty blockers), so she has essentially always lived as a woman. Is she not really a woman just because a few years of her life were spent as a young boy? If she counts as a woman (lots of cis women are masculine as children; lots of cis women do not have periods; I don't see how this trans woman's experience differs that significant from the experience of those cis women), then where's the cutoff? How long does someone have to live as a man before they lose their right to be a woman once they transition?

Furthermore, the only thing that forcing trans people to identify themselves as separate genders from cis people does is ensure that they will have to discuss their genitals (although indirectly) and personal life experiences with so many strangers. Do you ask every cis woman you meet whether or not she menstruates to make sure you have enough in common? Do you ask cis men whether or not they had typical, gender conforming childhoods? A cis man who wore dresses as a kid and developed gynecomastia due to natural medical issues has a very similar experience to a trans man who always knew he was trans and came out at a young age. The only real difference is the genitals, and that's no one's business anyway. Why force the trans man to consider himself a separate gender?

 

Well, OP, I'd debate you instead of calling you an ass. But I would also debate that being bigender is not possible, too.

And as for calling trans people men/women... well I guess it's two things. Trans- already means not cis, already differentiates from cis. To make things simple, man/woman, really no harm using the words.


What I wonder though, is my life experience one of a man, or one of a girl that had to live among boys? Because I feel like the latter has happened to me. Like what I did to fit in was what a girl would have done to be part of the boys' club. Of course not the cis experience.


Thing is, how we categorise ourselves has two layers, the precise way and the convenient way. Precise is transgender (duh), convenient is man/woman, because it's simple.


Also, if I function and think like a woman, then for all intents and purposes I am one. Of course we can go into details and say trans experience is different and all, but that's not something I'll forget nor anyone will if I use simple language for convenience. If context requires, I will freely admit that I'm biologically male and haven't had a cis girl's childhood. But this makes me want to say "duh", and your idea feels like just over thinking the semantics. I mean you don't say anything new, we already have the prefix "trans" to denote the difference.

 

I can understand why you'd think this way, Cailan. Your reasoning generally seems fair. However, I personally dislike the thought of being automatically excluded from other males just because of something that I could not help. Yes, I can't deny that I am trans and that my life experiences are different from cis people's, but that doesn't mean that I cannot attempt to relate to them from here onwards. If I could transition, I'd do it in order to live the life that I should have lived from the beginning, which is to say the life of a man. Having to say that I'm a "trans man" to everyone I met would totally defeat the purpose of transitioning for me.

Calling myself a man won't harm anybody, especially if I pass. So why argue against it?

 

I think this is what we all really expected you to say Don't worry about it. This is something each and every one of us has dealt with. I'll only speak to how I dealt with this question.

:rolle: Kidding. I always try to be respectful, as I think you will find everyone here will. I do tend to be a little long winded because I feel that your arguments deserve a thorough, thought out response. But if I am anything less than kind or do anything that warrants that fear you had, please let me know.

I am going to snip this so it's easier to respond to. If I leave anything out or mischaracterize your position please let me know.

• Cis women object
• Trans women did not have cis female childhoods
• Comparison with different races etc
• You can't transition to intersex
• Media portrayals are unrealistic
• Drag performance makes a mockery of femininity
• There is more to being trans than just binary medical transitions
• Third+ genders exist culturally
• The rest of the civil rights movement needs to be represented, not just binary transitioners

I'll mention intersex people in a follow-up post, as I am going to have a different response to that.

You have made a lot of valid points (if the above list is fair) but I don't think all of them speak directly to whether a trans woman is a woman. In particular,

• To your point that one can't transition to intersex, non-binary transitions do exist, and physically I personally have only partially transitioned physically
• Media portrayals of trans women are not affected by trans reality, which is something you yourself mentioned later on when you discussed there being more to being trans than just medical transitioning and being surprised that a male-to-female transitioner would prefer a mixed presentation (e.g. prefer flannel)
• To your points about cis women objecting, and about "over the top" feminine presentation. Males going "over the top" in presenting as female is drag performance. I will be happy to discuss drag performance, and how it relates to femininity politically, separately. There are valid concerns here that you have touched on. Here, where I am talking about what is on topic or not, I will only say that trans people play to stereotypes because we have to
  [**]full time requirements in many countries are still very medically uninformed
  [**]"passing", which is necessary for a lot of us to e.g. get jobs and otherwise fully function in society with no friction (because being trans is not central to our identity or life goals), is a game of having more female or male gender clues (or in the case of a non-binary person, a balanced number so as to appear androgynous; passing is an issue for them too) and we thus, just like cis people, have to work with what we have
  [**]a lot of us have not had enough time or room to define ourselves fully. Cis people go through an awkward phase their first puberty too.
• To your point about cultures that have other words for trans people and more than two genders. I am not nonbinary. I have great nonbinary friends. I am not "two spirit" or "hijra". You seem to understand a little bit about not "treading on intersex people's turf" in the arguments you presented. I would ask that you show the same respect to nonbinary people.
• Whenever anyone is discussing civil liberties that affect them, there is often a call to solve other problems. I will not solve world hunger before I transition. I do support nonbinary people, crossdressers, and every other member of our queer community, in every way I can, whenever I can. This is tangential to my concerns.

So this leaves these that, I feel, are actually on-topic, as far as whether binary trans people are men or women :

• Trans women did not have cis female childhoods
• Comparison with different races etc

To the first one, you're right actually. I didn't have a normal female childhood. I also didn't have a normal male childhood. I have absolutely no idea and never will what it's like for people that aren't queer. As young as 7 I've had other kids come up to me and let me know they were gay because they thought I was too. I've caught tons of hell and it has caused no end of humiliation and confusion and has gotten my ass kicked (or suspended when I fought back, which isn't better) too many times to count. My pretending to be a man got me into a doomed relationship with a woman I still love who still loves me back, and the two years after I broke up with her were the most painful I had ever experienced. You and I have not understanding what it's like to grow up being a boy in common. Everything directly related to sex - I'll keep it PG but I'll just say that any time boys talked about stuff and nodded their heads in agreement it made me feel so damn alone and weird, and actually trying to have it, I don't know whether my ex fiancee cried more than I did. There always has been something very real and very different about me, other people have always been able to pick up on it, and it's completely destroyed my ability to have a normal male life. I only wish it was me being a gay male; those confusing experiements really fucked with my head and got me in some awful spots; guys have a different sex drive and really, really don't like being turned down in the heat of the moment.

You're right that I'll also never know what it was like to get my period, I've never had boys snap my bra, Lisa Frank is a name I learned when I was in my late 20s. Even more importantly, I did have a lot of opportunities girls didn't have. It breaks my heart to see the way girls are discouraged whenever they show any sign of intelligence. Call me an SJW if you want but I think it's entirely fucked up girls are raised to depend on men and I really did not realize to what degree until I was in this role full time. People ignoring me and explaining things to me I already know are real, and if I do speak my mind like I'm doing now, that's a gender clue. I don't care if it is; I transitioned to make my life work, I am not changing my life to make my transition work. Dysphoria was in the way of my goals, and was hurting the people around me, and so I decided the opinions of everyone around me could get shoved up their respective asses, and that I was going to transition whether or not anyone liked it.

Which really leads me to addressing your second point. This is a very real, and very personal thing for me. It responded directly to my HRT, and I really need to stress that there is a component to my transition that is the most important part to me, that is invisible to everyone else, and when you decide to tell me I can't use the word "woman" you are denying this reality. Woman really is, please understand, just a word. Like man. Labels like these are how we describe reality to each other. If I pick up an apple, I can say it's red, or I can say it's scarlet, or I can say it's a warm, dark red, or I can take a picture and pull it up in an image editor and give you a hex value. I'm talking about the same thing in each case. I am mentioning this, because I am about to say that in my case, my HRT directly impacted my dysphoria. It stopped becoming as immediately important to me, in that reflexive moment before conscious thought kicks in, whether I am a girl or a boy. It was still there; I still get dysphoric days from time to time. I do feel a little panic when I get misgendered a lot because it makes me worry there's something wrong with me; my body can't produce testosterone naturally. But beyond that I don't care if people know I'm trans; the other day at Taco Bell when I was having an off day I heard someone call out for "Joe" and it took me a long time to realize they had my food up. But it's not like it used to be.

You see, there are some things I can't control. I can't close my eyes and make pain feel good. I can't bite into a hamburger and make it taste like cheetos. When I'm tired, and I feel like sleeping, I can't just say "it's all in your head, your need for sleep isn't real". And at least for me, my need to be a woman was at that level. It was the thing about me that made my ex fiancee have gynocelogical conditions with me that she has not had with any man since. It was the thing that prevented me from being capable of reaching orgasm in less than 20 minutes (but then gave me the cabability to have a few at a time). And it's the part of me that responded positively to HRT. I am only barely scratching the surface here, but the point I am making, is that I at the very least am not a man.

Now, of course, you are not calling me a man. You are saying I should call myself a trans woman. Which I do sometimes, when I need to make my history important to someone, especially if a guy is hitting on me, and especially if he won't stop haha.

But I needed to make the difference between whatever I am, and someone who claims to be a member of a different race, immediately clear. Melanin is not an endocrine hormone. Insulin, Cortisol, Grehlin. Testosterone. Estrogen. These are endocrine hormones. Your body and mine has a thermostat for each one of these. When there's enough, the thermostat clicks off, and your body stops pushing you to do things like get something to eat, run away from the BEAR THAT IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU, go to sleep, or in my case, be more feminine. In order for this to work, you and I both have something called a lymbic system, which keeps track of very basic patterns and their effect on your endocrine hormone levels. When I grab a piece of pizza, for instance, and it satisfies my hunger, I may at a later point crave pizza when I'm hungry again. This part of me recognizes a bear as a threat to begin with, something that's appropriate to respond to with fight-or-flight juice. This part of me recognizes men, and recognizes women, and a lot of things about them. It feels different when I'm cuddling a man or a woman. They smell different. I look at strangers in a crowd, and I recognize each of them as men or women. Some of them arouse me. I reflexively interact with them in different ways.

I am saying, flat out, that no such equivalency exists for race. I don't have "apache helicopter juice" running through me. You are speaking of apples and oranges.

Now. As far as my actually being called a woman. If you really don't want to call me one, don't. If you want to misgender me, I will probably cut you out of my life, but not for the reason you are thinking. You see, I am an engineer, and an entrepreneur. I have absolutely no room for the dozens of douchebags on facebook asking me for nudes - a lot of them don't know anything about me, they just see a pretty girl they wanna screw so of course I should drop everything for their ever so important phone call so they can try to convince me to fuck them - and, respectfully, I don't have time for this kind of pedantry, or people that only see me either as a transitioner, or as a woman. I transitioned, again, because not doing so was causing problems, and the benefits outweighed the costs, and that's the only reason. Trans isn't who I am, it's not my life. My girlfriend now, my business now, my career now, the good I'm trying to do politically, that's my life.

Should I be called a woman, though? I think so. I earned it. It's true that I didn't have the challenges that cis women go through but, you know what? They didn't have my challenges either. But I did earn it.

A few years ago I'd have gone on at this point with a - quite correct - discussion about 8th grade biology (which apparently isn't taught so often any more), and sexual dimorphism, and how the SRY gene's presence on either the X or Y chromosome can cause testes instead of ovaries, and how the hormonal signals from that event are responsible for every part of the body becoming male or female, or how I have a female estrogen dominance now.

Now? Now I realize that's completely beside the point. Because we aren't really talking about science. We're talking about politics. We're talking about trans women making cis women uncomfortable at, for example, Mitchfest. We're talking about the unfair advantages I had when I went through the military, the opportunities I had that women don't when I went through college, right? That's what the whole "earned your stripes" argument was about. We're talking about my having a safe place to pee in public, because my rights don't trump other's, and they may get uncomfortable knowing I used to have male genitals and I'm squatting down in the next stall. And please don't feel bad about bringing it up, I am very glad you did, and I am not going to downplay the gravity of it. I think we absolutely need to have a conversation about this stuff.

The thing is, I have earned my stripes. I do abide by the full time requirement. I did leave a very promising job and took a $20k/year paycut between that job and the one I enjoy currently. I went from doing what I went to school for, to working in a call center. I learned what female socialization was the hard way, and I had to learn fast. I do ride the fact that I am scary competent to its fullest - but I also take a humble, modest role in conversations and let other people speak over me and get their say out there. Everyone in my environment thinks they have an all access pass to my time; their need to get their dicks wet outweighs anything I may be doing at the time. I'm lucky if "I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND" works even.

My point here, is that politically, I deal with the same crap other women deal with, 24/7/365. Piling other queer stuff on top of that and forcing me to come out over, and over, and over, and over again with some third gender term you're asking me to consider adopting, is not going to make me more effective fighting for queer rights, and is artificially imposing an artificial label on me for the sake of political convenience every bit as much as calling me a man is. It's inaccurate, and it's something we're just doing to satisfy other people's politics.

And as at the very least a lifetime queer if you don't want to call me a woman, I really resent that every waking second of my life people have been trying to cram me into costumes for their convenience.

I know I'm inconvenient. I don't care. I exist. The world can deal with it

Or not. Either way I have already won. I've dealt with my problems, and I'm living my life. My ex fiancee and I are great friends, and she and I have honest and successful relationships with other people. I've already worked my way into a couple promotions and some big names in industry are trying to scalp me even as we speak.

So yeah. TL;DR, call me whatever you want to, but we both know why someone would not call me a woman, and we both know I at the very least am living the same kind of life any other woman lives even if you won't admit I am one.

 

Well said, Jess