Finally think I understand what "identify as" means

[WombOfOnesOwn]

For a long time, I wondered what it meant, when trans people who had no intent of taking transitioning steps claimed to identify as a woman/man.

I think I know, now! So that's something.

It appears to be this: to identify as something is to wish to be witnessed and judged by others according to social standards set for that class.

This is exactly, when you think about it, what this nebulous notion of "identity" is. Which is interesting because it changes a bit of the classic Blanchard categories.

Blanchard identified gay young transitioners and older autogynephiles, but the lines are blurring. And now FTMs are more common than MTFs among younger age groups.

What if what we're really looking at are two kinds of trans people: those who transition to fit in, and those who transition to stand out?

We see these patterns, if they're structured these ways, in a very parallel way across the sexes. There are transitioners, often gay or lesbian, who don't conform in any way to societal gender roles, and who would fit much better into the stereotypes used to judge members of the opposite sex.

And then there are transitioners who want to stand out and be different. This is why so many of the autogynephile men and the early-20s fetishist university TRA crowd are absolutely bog-standard men, who adhere to every male stereotype imaginable: too many video games, too much porn, don't pick up after themselves, low hygiene standards, unable to commit to relationships or put anyone above themselves.

But because they've been that way as men all their lives, and because they fetishize women who play video games, are into porn, etc., they think they'd be hot stuff if they just got judged as being hot nerd girls. Suddenly, playing video games wouldn't make them normal and boring, it makes them exciting and interesting, wow, a girl who plays video games and likes porn, who wouldn't want that (in their mind)?!

The same phenomenon explains the heterosexual female transitioners who fetishize "soft bois" and gay male relationships while often taking few steps to transition in any permanent physical way. They think that their proclivities that are currently marked as "feminine" and "basic," in the parlance of our times, would be viewed as awesome, interesting, unusual characteristics for a man.

Once I realized what "identify as" really meant, it made sense to me that there's a category of trans people who really believe it's more important for you to use their pronouns than it is for them to even attempt to "pass" as the opposite sex. It's why they think their identity is being stolen to the point of feeling like they're being murdered by words: If other people don't buy in, then with this idea, they are essentially killing the desired identity.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me until now that this entire 21st century social media contagion phenomenon of "gender identity" isn't about actually seeing the world "as" the opposite sex, but about wanting to be seen by others in a new way. In a world where people feel ever more judged and do more and more "curation" of their "brand" and image, they want to feel what's often called "empowerment" about which standards they're judged by.

don't know why it didn't occur to me until now that this entire 21st century social media contagion phenomenon of "gender identity" isn't about actually seeing the world "as" the opposite sex, but about wanting to be seen by others in a new way. In a world where people feel ever more judged and do more and more "curation" of their "brand" and image, they want to feel what's often called "empowerment" about which standards they're judged by.

An interesting perspective with more than a grain of truth.

I think some of this is young people finding a tribe; like being punk or a goth. But it's harder to shock the oldies now - but gender will do it. Left to their own devices, many of these young people will go on to lead ordinary lives, with fond memories of their gender-bending past.

But the stakes are higher now: being a goth generally didn't lead to body altering surgery and life altering hormones.

But there seem to be so many categories of what it means to be trans now - and the most listened-to and noisy are the ones who respect women least.

I agree it's all about how they want to treated. Rather than just their inner perspective on the world.

Which is why they appear so sexist. They buy the stereotypes 100%.

I think for many it is true that "identify" means "be seen and treated by others as" which is, of course, validation.

For others it would appear to be "be witnessed performing" which veers into exhibitionism.

And for many others, especially young women who identify as trans, it is self-harm and a desire to dissociate themselves from the male supremacist sociopolitical female sex role.

As with everything else in this world, transgenderism is not the same thing for women as it is for men. Ironically.

But yes, being one's "authentic true self" does seem to require other people as props.

Oddly enough, a similar idea surfaced on r/gendercritical yesterday, but leaning more towards the performative idea - that we're so steeped in social media that some people try to enforce SM norms on the real world, desperately trying to curate their real life in the same way as their online life. Forced use of pronouns being the primary way to do that.

It rang disturbing little bells for me - if you listen to Abigail's talk at LAWS Plymouth or read through the trans widows thread, there are so many descriptions of the AGP being performative, especially during sex - as though he's watching himself be a woman on screen. And then you have a recent study which showed defined changes in the part of the brain that deals with self-perception. I do think there's a phenoma at work here, but it would be a long and difficult study to do to find out whether those brain differences are innate or induced.

Yes some great analysis on this thread. Someone made a good comment the other day that made me sit up and think about how it's like cosplaying to many of them, like a furry identity. They have an idea of "woman" which the average woman doesn't fit. And only the bits which are fun to play interest them.

That is really interesting, thank you. Part of my dissertation was 'performing feminine', how femininity is written about, especially by men. I can absolutely see that it is all one big performance, either for themselves or making the audience participate. Interesting times we are heading towards.

Why do you think if someone says ‘trans women are men’ some trans people and their advocates get very upset and angry because they say that person is ‘erasing’ them? I don’t understand this because say someone calls me a man or mr or sir then I’m not being erased. I’m not being goady, I genuinely don’t get it, but I’ve a feeling it perhaps links with the op.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me until now that this entire 21st century social media contagion phenomenon of "gender identity" isn't about actually seeing the world "as" the opposite sex, but about wanting to be seen by others in a new way.

I've thought in similar terms but along the lines that for some the fetishistic arousal comes from making women say things they don't believe where the say-er and the listener both know 1) that both of them don't believe those things and 2) that the say-er is being compelled to say them.

But this is only one small part of a complex picture. Overall I go along with Beachcomber that many different things are happening at the same time and these are providing opportunities for those most motivated to grab power over others.

They’re like Tinkerbell, if we don’t clap along they lose their power. It’s so apt it’s scary, and for some reason this narcissistic make-believe has been allowed to take hold.

I think for many it is true that "identify" means "be seen and treated by others as" which is, of course, validation.

There's also something a bit odd about the way proponents of self-id view changes in the law. There seems to be an idea amongst some of them that a change to self-id would be somehow validating for them and hence improve their lives. Almost as if they think a change in the law which allows them a new birth certificate will make them 'pass' better, or make everyone spontaneously use their preferred pronouns.

The reponse by Amnesty to the Scottish GRA Consultation has lots of examples of this:

“Legal gender recognition is important as it is a validation of who I am … Legal gender recognition also validates you within the rest of the population."

If nobody is allowed to know whether you have a GRC, I don't understand how having one affects how others perceive you. Especially since under self-id, anyone would be able to get a GRC, so a holder would not be in any way 'special'.

The "erasure" thing is because genderism (and therefore transgenderism) is a house of cards.

Gender is a social construction. Gender identity is a social construction. If one's gender role, performance and identification are not complied with and validated by others, they cease to exist other than in one's own head. And that is a problem because social constructions, by definition, involve other people and group thought.

Hence the rage we often see when women do not play along with the delusion. Small details such as pronouns, etc take on hugely significant importance in the gender project as it is a project of let's pretend. Everyone knows it's bullshit and therefore intensely fragile.

It's a house of cards. It has no solidity. Hence the anger, the threats, the violence, the legal fictions. Genderism is an ideology that must be capitulated with in order for it to have any existence.

I think I see. I guess I see the ‘erasure’ thing as the exact opposite as an innate sense of gender identity because if it’s innate it cannot be erased with someone else’s words or viewpoint, it just is. And I suppose that’s why I’m confused because there seems to be so many contradictory strands and stances and it’s not possible to hold so many different viewpoints as accurate in a logical way. I suppose that explains the attack as a form of defence that’s seems to be employed as a strategy to make it harder to see the bigger picture doesn’t seem to coalesce into something coherent.

Absolutely. Whenever I read 'I identify as X' I now interpret it as 'I'm not actually X, but I want people to act as if I were'. They'd prefer if we genuinely believed it, but if we don't, that's fine as long as they have total compliance with the pretense that it's true.

It's important for people to have control over how they present themselves, but they seem to have conflated that with having control of how others perceive them. We see that when GC feminists are accused of enforcing gender roles, as if saying that wearing a dress doesn't make a man a woman is the same as saying that man shouldn't be allowed to wear a dress.

But in response to the OP, whether you are trans to fit in, or to stand out, it is all about control of others.

I was in a hotel a few months back, having breakfast when a couple came in. A female and a male, who was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, sparkly sandals and a bit of subtle make up. The 'fit in' sort of person, if you will. But was clearly male. The posture, hair pattern, muscle definition, all very male. They sat at the table next to me, and as they ordered their breakfast, the female of the two said 'I'd like mine as it is on the menu, but she likes hers different' (Or something along those lines)

At the time I thought the female was being kind, using her companion's preferred pronouns. But then I thought how is it kind to go along with the delusion / illusion? By pretending that the other person was female, when they clearly weren't despite wearing 'woman clothes' isn't kind, so it feels more a control thing . The male wanting validation and the woman feeling compelled to go along with it. They both know that one of them is male and the other female. So either by socialization or perhaps by fear the female was being controlled

They sat at the table next to me, and as they ordered their breakfast, the female of the two said 'I'd like mine as it is on the menu, but she likes hers different' (Or something along those lines)

You'll have noted, of course, that the female made a deliberate point by speaking for the male (who I assume wasn't incapable of speaking) specifically in order to draw attention to the pronouns.

Yup.

The transtrenders outnumber the transexuals by a large margin now.

I agree that a lot of it is bog-standard teen rebellion. I see the 'non standard reassignment surgery' as a more extreme version of what was going on when I was a teen.

There was a definite normalisation of BDSM through body morphication becoming mainstream. I remember when everyone started getting their navels pierced. It was the done thing, then it was eyebrows, then the centre of the nose, then tongues, then lips, then it was nipples and dicks and clitorises, sometimes on a night out you would see someone with their whole face silver with piercings. Nowadays the more extreme get their balls cut off and a cavity made to tuck their scrotum into - with a bit of extra harvested skin.

Another thing - every man and his dog now has full-body tattoos - so how can the youth stand out?

What if what we're really looking at are two kinds of trans people: those who transition to fit in, and those who transition to stand out?
This. Before self ID and the fury of a group I can't mention we had mostly those who transitioned to fit in. Now I'm met with guys
(I've already been disciplined for saying guys to one) who claim to be trans with next to no effort to transition or blend in to be who you claim to be. All demanding their pronouns and new claimed identity are respected.

It appears to be this: to identify as something is to wish to be witnessed and judged by others according to social standards set for that class.

For trans women it seems to be that they want to be judged by others according to standards that they have set and demand we all go along with.

Clarice - I’ve written quite extensively on this - when increasing numbers of women began to have significant, visible tattoos it provoked a kind of crisis amongst men.

For example, I know a lot of tattooed men who prefer to date ‘blankies’ because if they walk down the street with a tattooed girlfriend, they perceive that it’s her who gets the attention they deserve. I don’t know of any tattooed women who routinely date blankie men in a comparable way - whenever I’ve (briefly) attempted it it’s been a disaster.

I used to assume there was a parallel between being tattooed and being trans, a kind of shared authorship, a display of the inner self on the outer surface -but when I started to research my theory it didn’t stack up AT ALL.
Tattoos are a record of the self as it passes through time (like an old film photographed, capturing time with light and holding it on paper, only for the paper to eventually dog ear and face) and being trans is more like erasing the old self and replacing it with a new one (as is apparent in the language of trans - ‘deadnaming’ ‘identity’ etc).

Tattoos take your past with you, they make your nistory a visible part of your present. A literal heart on your (tattoo) sleeve.
Transitioning leaves your past behind you. It’s a disguise, not a revelation. ‘Passing’ is prioritised (in legal terms, ‘passing off’ is a type of fraud).

Even the modern primitives (the dick splitters!) aren’t much like transgender people. There probably is some crossover with BDSM being the centre circle of the Venn diagram but modern primitives like Mr Pearl and Fakir Mustafa were concerned with pushing themselves to their own limits (and beyond), rather than creating a facsimile of something, or someone, other.

Both tattooing and body modification are (imo) about inhabiting and celebrating your own personal material reality, it’s more like a weird internalised endurance sport (with a single competitor) than a sexual paraphilia.

So I can understand that to someone who really and truly believes that they were born in the wrong body, having some official recognition of their experience can be deeply important.

I'm sure it is important to them, but unlike your very real experience, their feeling that they were born in the wrong body is not real. It is not possible to have a female brain in a male body or vice versa.

Thanks Wombofonesown I find that helpful. The idea that being perceived by others is almost the same as existing helps explain the ferocity of the anger, which I've struggled to understand. But I also agree with Beachcomber that there are many strands to the culture. I would add to that list computer games and their adoption of personas, augmented reality; and so on, and interest in certain kinds of quite niche science (I see genetics quoted a lot on Twitter, fairly sure that the person quoting has no more understanding of genetics than I do and could for all I know by quoting one niche theory but they get to say "science" which is commonly supposed to stop the argument) .

That's very interesting about the way 'blankies' are perceived Betty.

Both tattooing and body modification are (imo) about inhabiting and celebrating your own personal material reality, it’s more like a weird internalised endurance sport (with a single competitor) than a sexual paraphilia.

Even nipple, dick, clit piercing and dick splitting? Or all the gross stuff Mapplethorpe photographed? A lot of sicko BDSM involves needles, sewing and piercing skin. The BDSM origins of a lot of body morphication means it must have a sexual element in a lot of cases.

I know there is also a link between abuse and re-claiming ownership of the body too, for example women getting their vulva tattooed and pierced because their abuser(s) made them feel like their body no longer belonged to them. This links in with female transitioners as well as with self-harm, anorexia, etc.