Hypothetical perfect sex change

If there was a medical procedure that could dissolve your brain and completely rebuild it do you think you’d be less obsessed with asking bizarre questions on public forums then refusing to engage with the fact that the hypothetical question bears absolutely no relevance on real life issues?

You really haven't been reading replies on your other thread have you? The one where your so-called gender critical parents enforced sex stereotypes?

Y y thirdfiddle — I think many young people don’t really appreciate that to older people who grew up believing overwhelmingly in science and material reality, our objection to the discourse of gender identity is not because we’re stuffy old right-wing “phobes”.

It’s that it quite literally sounds like a mass brainwashing of a whole load of young people with an antiscientific, ideological, religiose system of thought, which idealises imaginary entities into a theology of gendered souls and woolly vague beliefs in imaginary things like “identity” (is identity inside or outside? In the mind or outside the body in clothes and stereotypes? Gender ideology will not enlighten us on this point….)

It sounds to us like an ideological, even propagandist, delusion - like people in Russia saying that Putin is great and isn’t invading anyone because Russian state TV days so; or Americans wearing MAGA hats and chanting about Hillary’s emails; or Scientologists talking about the great Xenu.

Quite literally, none of us can imagine what it’s like to be in another body. Our bodies and our brains have no way of knowing that. How could a brain tell a body that it feels like it should have been born with a dick? How could it know? Telepathy? The Jungian Unconscious? Spirit travelling? Past life memories? Religious ecstasy? It might as well be nineteenth century idealists talking about the Absolute and the spiritual world of Forms. It simply doesn’t mesh with rational materialism, or indeed anything logical that we know about the world.

But hypothetically if society as a collective agreed to raise children free of gender then you believe there would be no gender dysphoria?

Isn't that what feminists and allies have been trying to do for years? Free kids up from gendered expectations? My parents gave it a damn good go. We have done our best with our kids. I don't agree with pretending kids don't have a sex, I think that is too ostracising and they do need to know their sex to understand biology. And you can't completely remove them from surrounding culture. But being neutral in the home, and talking about stereotypes so they understand when they see them, goes a long way towards freeing kids.

And yes I think it would help a lot to free people from dysphoria if we could free up society more from stereotypes. FFS, lots of kids need to declare themselves a different gender before they feel able to do simple things like grow their hair/cut their hair, wear a skirt, wear makeup, be friends with the opposite sex. Every transition story I've ever read starts with a child who feels they don't fit in, want to wear different clothes, play with the other sex, are bullied for stereotype non-conformity etc. Clearly they do feel heavily hemmed in by both the stereotypes themselves and other people's applications of them. If they were already looking glamorous and cheerfully accepted as a boy, would they still feel the need to declare a gender?

I don't really understand accepting what your mind tells you over material reality. The human mind is so easily fooled and fallible, and the material reality of a sexed body is so unarguable. If what I feel doesn't match up with reality, I just accept it's my mind that's mistaken, not reality. And have done. And if other people tell me I 'should' have a certain personality or style because of my sex, the older I get the better I get at telling them to sod off.

“The mother-child relationship can be seen as the first relationship violated by patriarchy.“ -Adrienne Rich

Blaming the mother is a trick of the patriarchy. Read "Of Woman Born: Womanhood as an Experience and an Institution."

…and come to that, why would you see transness as a mass failure of mothers in any case? (Which wasn’t exactly what I asked…) Especially if you don’t think there is anything wrong with being trans…? Why would it be a failure, exactly..?

You might think of exploring some of these ideas. It’s certainly the case that the young gender-questioning and trans/NB people I know have preexisting family, health and parental issues. Is it too much if a stretch for you to imagine that it might be that gender ideology, whilst somewhat incoherent in itself, is appealing to many young people precisely because of its ability to externalise other problems and other desires?

Why the vitriol directed against your mother, then, pop91, if she has nothing to do with it?

I do think it’s fair to say that - though anecdotal of course - pretty much of all of the young women I know with gender identity issues, all have some kind of interpersonal issues with their mothers, and often see identifying as a man as a way of acting out against a mother-figure.

should ALL children not be raised 'non-binary' where gendered socialisation itself is entirely removed?

• Another parent here who raised children without gendered socialisation, as much as was possible. (Is that what 'non-binary'means? I thought it was something else, to do with the fantasy of gender identity in some way. No matter.)

We were not in UK, which made this much easier to do, in many ways.

And results? Well, we only had girls ... but all our children now have serious jobs in STEM-related areas, some academic, some not. All have PhDs in STEM subjects ... all are happily partnered, some married, some not, all successful mothers ... all happy women who have no truck with gender nonsense.

However, those of my children who themselves have children in UK now worry, as I do, about the shite we hear (from people like the OP on this thread, from Stonewall, Mermaids, the SNP, some schools ... and all the rest) about 'gender' and 'changing sex' and all that bloody nonsense.

[And here I delete a rant about gender identity true-believers. Just leave my grandchildren alone, is all. I mean it. Go fuck up the minds and lives of your own offspring if you must. Just leave mine alone. (I had to say precisely this to a religious nutjob who once tried to influence one of my children: I repeat it to all you identity-crazy loons. Leave other peoples children alone!) ]

Not necessarily. But here is the thing. You identify as what you believe is your version of a man. But it is your version and only your version of what you think a male is. It may have some or a few similarities of the male lived experience.

Living as your expectation of what a male experience is, helps you.

I would love society to stop stereotyping any one. I am sure I am not alone. Unfortunately, it is not going to happen overnight. It would be helpful though that people stop forcing anyone into labels to start with.

Would the other Llamas accept me as a medically enabled Llama, though. Or Alpaca. I'll go with either. I don't know op.

I think that if you really can’t understand the relevance of comparing racial or national or social or any other contexts to the transgender debate, then you aren’t really well placed to start philosophical debates at all. It sounds like you need to do a lot more reading, thinking and maturing to get beyond personal anecdotes to social and ethical arguments.

You also mix up gender and sex constantly, and don’t seem to have a good academic or personal understanding of the terms, which does require some further reflection. Equally, it’s a basic point that if you try to generalise and ventriloquise what others think, they can perfectly well tell you you are wrong.

Can you not understand that the requests of people to be treated as the “gender they transition to” is not a neutral request, but offensive to many women and in conflict with sex-based rights and protections? If you don’t understand this, you also need to do a lot more reading around this issue.

Bear in mind, too, that it was you who not only started this whole thought experiment, but also introduced all the personal detail about being a trans man, not posters, who were engaging with your posts. Why now complain that you didn’t expect philosophical questions and are annoyed at posters interpreting the personal details you provided?

All of this stuff sounds just a bit immature and teenage; and fair enough if you are a young teenager, that is expected — we understand that — but if you want to engage in a complex debate with philosophical thought experiments with adults who often have decades of thinking about these things behind them, you need to be a little more equipped with reading, research and arguments.

It would help to go away and read a great deal, widely, in the history of feminism, sexuality, ideas of gender, psychiatry and psychology, and so on (and, most importantly, reading stuff you don’t agree with, or don’t think you’ll agree with, as well as stuff you do agree with - it’s the only way to learn). Start by really reading some proper second wave feminism - it’s very varied and complex and has a long history - and some history of homosexuality and identity politics.

NB - there is zero research evidence for transgender identity relating to “hormones in the womb”. This is something people have been desperate to find proof of for decades (most often for homosexuality), and there has never been any serious findings that lead to this. (The environment in utero is so complex that how could you possibly expect to find any serious correlation?) However, there has been a lot of work suggesting that identity issues can be a form of social and peer contagion.

END OF.

There's a belief that this hypothetical person would have changed sex but not the gendered socialisation they grew up with. I might posit then should ALL children not be raised 'non-binary' where gendered socialisation itself is entirely removed?

If by 'raised non-binary' you mean raised without the expectation that girls will like pink and dolls, will enjoy quiet and calm activities, will be kind and reticent and will aspire to jobs traditionally done by women, and without the expectation that boys will be boisterous and forthright, will like construction toys and cars and will aspire to do 'manly' jobs, then yes absolutely!

But in my experience, what non-binary seems to mean for lots of people is not 'I am e.g. female but I don't subscribe to all the stereotypes associated with femaleness' (if that were the definition, most women would be classed as non-binary). It seems to mean 'I don't wholly subscribe to the stereotypes associated with either sex, therefore I am neither a man nor a woman'.

Mansplains my position and still gets it wrong.

Do they teach that kind of arrogance at reorientation then?

And for 'genderless', I refer to being able to one day being able to 'choose their gender' rather than accepting their sexed bodies and having a personality that means they can do whatever they want, be who they want to be but accept that they are human and cannot change sex and that their sex should not mean they should act a certain way, or choose certain roles.

I might posit then should ALL children not be raised 'non-binary' where gendered socialisation itself is entirely removed?

Sure. Tried that to a certain extent, they pick it up from their peers and from what they watch. But then, try to control the entirely age appropriate shows they watch, and you then end up with a child that starts feeling ostracised.

But to what degree? If you want to home school your child and declare them genderless, go ahead. But tell us, how confusing is it for a child to also be brought up as 'genderless'.

How about all children be brought up to accept their sexed bodies, to feel that their sexed bodies are right for them and beautiful just the way they are, and fuck off with any of this 'gendered' crap at all. Stereotypes, wrong body everything.

If someone is suffering distress at the sex they were born, wouldn’t it be better that scientists work on how to successfully deal with that distress so the person is happy with their material reality.

Rather than performing what amounts to the Star Trek transporter beam technology version of individualisation.

If any person has had any perception of themselves as a person, then miraculously changing sex is not going to work. Because it was based on someone’s perception of what the other sex is. Not on the material reality of what that sex is.

And if someone does it to a child, it would be abusive and not based on the child’s needs.

And that leaves an adult… and well, we have seen just how males who transition cannot seem to get rid of the sometimes extreme misogyny they display.

Or are we going to be told it doesn’t happen, that pp’s have not witnessed it so we are making it up, and so on. Because, we have had an instance like that this week already on a thread. And the poster still told us we were hateful and no male ever fetishises pregnancy and even abortion.

In the hypothetical world where this is possible, we’d have cured all disease and indeed mortality, and we’d have figured out how to make human beings massively smarter than we currently are. I hope we’d all be enjoying ourselves too much and have too many interesting things to think about to give this question any attention.

If my breasts, uterus, ovaries, vagina and clitoris were absorbed into my body; if I grew a penis and testicles; if I grew 4 inches in height and all my body fat was redistributed and my muscles all changed; if I grew more hair on many parts of my body and lost hair on another parts; if the proportions of my face all changed; if my brain was remodeled as though it had developed in response to male hormone levels from birth instead of female; if my internal organs all changed and my lungs had a greater volume and I had more blood pumping around my body...

Perhaps I would be some kind of man but would I still be me?