would you date a transgendered man?

[ecofreeek]

I am in my late 30's and single (divorced). Recently though work I met a man who seemed really nice. We flirted a bit and last weekend he asked me out for a drink. It went really well, nice snog! and we arranged to meet for dinner this week

At dinner he told me that basically he used to be a woman. He has had testosterone treatment for many years and both breasts removed and a hysterectomy. But not the surgery that makes a penis...

I really like him. But I'm a bit freaked out. I guess that's why he told me 'early' in our dating... I dont want any more children s thats not an issue... its the whole man thing - he looks like a man, acts like a man and I would never have guessed that biologically he is not a male...

the sex thing ....

would you date a transgendered man >?

lueji - how do you know?

The brain, or the mind (are they the same thing)?

I've never seen anything very convincing to suggest that brain architecture can yet tell us about the origins of anything as complex as gender identity. That's not to say gender couldn't possibly be determined by the brain, but I don't think we know yet.

What are you two doing back???

moths and flames

SIOB = sharp intake of breath

I'm a biologist.

I don't think it's purely a social construct.

That's an opinion.

Society is also very much dependent on biological systems. :o

I have a question about this social construct thing.

If my gender is a social construct...is it still mine ? Is it "real"? Do I not actually exist as who I think I am ?

I was still awake at four am having an internal crisis over that one last night.

Lueji, can you expand? I'm so used to being told it's a social construct I've come over all funny

Hah!

Fair enough. I am definitely not a biologist, I'm just curious and trying to understand, because I keep trying to understand how much we really do know about the brain.

Do people think they've demonstrated how brain architecture relates to gender identity, and is there a consensus on this?

I agree society is dependent on biological systems. I was saying on another thread - does it matter if something doesn't have a basis in something physical, like the architecture of the brain, or the DNA? Is there something wrong with suggesting something might be a social construct?

The reason I end up going back to 'social construct' is that I think it helps explain why some people would have 'gender identity' and others wouldn't, maybe? Because I think, if it is a social construct, maybe it's the same bit of social construct that we can all see and feel, but we don't all experience as 'gender identity'. Some of us see it as pressure from society to make us act a particular way, but we don't interpret that as 'gender'.

I don't know, I'm just trying to think aloud. Of course, it could be there's a physical difference, so some people have the bit of the brain that says 'you will have a gender identity and it will be this' and others don't ... but I wonder.

I mentioned both because they were mentioned (and confused) by some posters

You must be confused too then.

Loquace would it help if I said everything is socially constructed to some extent? We all view life through different prisms due to culture and experience. But based on some genetic and biological starting points.

A m to f transsexual starts at the point that they feel wrong in their skin but the fact they may try and look erm Marilyn Monroe is cultural!

Nb a lot of cultures have space for kind of third sex people - areas in Mexico, Thailand, some native American people's....

Aw now my eyes have glazed over. I'm too thick to understand all this.

Pork sausages and beans are wonderful, even if it's full of muck.

I believe - from another thread on the subject - that (in general, I'm sure there will be differences of opinion as in any group) transpeople don't especially want to be considered a third sex?

Loquace would it help if I said everything is socially constructed to some extent

Like nature/nurture ?

I can live with that. Anything that doesn't give me a Buzz Lightyear post visit to toyshop feeling is within my personal circle of "OK".

Allowing for both makes more sense to me, especially since I saw that docu about twins where they showed the level beneath genes, these little thingies (highly scientific term )that turned genes on and off and it was enviroment/events that casued them to run around turning genes on and off. That takes the nature/nurture interaction to a whole 'nother level !

Aw now my eyes have glazed over. I'm too thick to understand all this.

I have to say I have had actual brainache over the last couple of days. And my eyes hurt too. The nearest I've got to a degree in gender studies...is a very dusty o level in domestic science. Which didn't help one bit. There are parts of it that I find so impenateable that it feels like hacking your way through a forest of very determined brambles.

The last time I read that kind of bulk of stuff in one fell swoop was when I managed to buy and sneak home an illict copy of Flowers in the Attic. I read it cover to cover in one go only coming up for air so I didn't get caught. I got a massive headache that time too.

Lrd yes you're probably right that transpeople in this context don't like to be considered a third sex. I just meant that gender dysmorphia is something that has been recognised in many cultures for millennia and is not just some kind of weird modern aberration!

Loquace glad I cld help! I could probably go on for hours about this...

I could probably go on for hours about this...

Keep talking

I think it'd be very hard to prove that what you're seeing in other cultures/times was gender dysmorphia, though. It's like when people say 'so and so in the past was gay' - well, maybe they were, but we can't know it in the same way. I'm sure sexual attraction to the same sex has always been around; I'm sure discomfort with gender roles has always been around. But does that mean it's always been what we now call 'gender dysmorphia'? Rather than, say, someone trying to find a way to avoid having to act in a very restricted way?

LDR do you mean that some of what have looked like GD long long ago was perhaps gay people having to confrom to what their culture expected of them at the time ? Like the enforced sex changes for lesbians and gays in Iran today?

No, I didn't mean that, though it's possible.

I mean, it's risky (IMO) to look back over history and apply terminology that didn't exist at the time. Because it might be that the concepts we have now don't really describe how people saw themselves then. It's disrespectful to label someone retrospectively, and assume that the labels in our culture are better or more true than the labels in theirs. And this is especially a problem if we then advance these people we've labelled as evidence for something we'd like to support.

The reason I made the comparison to homosexuality is because it came naturally to me, is all. We know that in the past, there have been men who were sexually attracted to men, either for their whole lives or for parts of their lives. But those men didn't have a concept of what it is to be 'homosexual', not necessarily. They might, for example, have been sleeping with men because, in that culture, there was fairly heavy peer pressure to do so.

If I'm looking at examples of people in the past who refused to perform their gender's role, for example crossdressing and acting as the other gender - how do I know that's what we now call 'gender dysmorphia'? If a woman in the eighteenth century ran away to join the army dressed as a man ... do we know she did it for the same reasons someone today has GRS?

I think that's really difficult to prove.

Gah. Re-reading I'm not sure I understood your post rightly - if you mean, was I saying people in the past who appeared to have gender dysmorphia were actually gay - no, I wasn't. It's possible. But I think there are loads of reasons why people might act in ways we now have different labels for.

Clear, I am, like the mud.

Clear, I am, like the mud

No, I get what you are saying. That we can't look back notice what looks like a behavoir match and slot it into a "today" lable claiming it is identical, becuase we can never know if there was a motivation/feelings match too.

Is that right ?

Yes, exactly! Thanks for wading through.

trust me, wading through does not describe the process of reading your posts.

Wading through applies to pages and pages of of very dense, very jargony, very shouty blogs, threads, articles and papers.

You speak an English I understand

NO because essentially I would still see that person as a woman

Are there any examples in literature, or primary historical docs like diaries that give a clearer picture of how GD (as we know it today) may have manifested in the past ?

Oh, good!

I always feel as if I spend ages talking my way around to the point. But I expect we all do sometimes.

I can think of historical examples of people who lived as the other sex - some pretty recently, others further back. There was someone called Billy Tipton, who lived as a man, and I believe was married (can't remember), who was biologically female, and that was sometime in the 20th century. Jackie Kay writes about it. I would like to know more about that, since it's so recent.