Trans passport question

[MipMipMip]

This isn't a thread for what safeguards there should be or if a person should be able to get a passport in the opposite sex. This is just a question that I had no idea where to put and I'm hoping someone (or more probably several someones as it's about a repeatable scenario) can answer. Here because there are a lot of very knowledgeable about trans people present.

Assuming someone has got a passport stating their sex as something other than they were born with, what happens when they go abroad? I imagine in the UK they get waved through but what about other countries? Particularly ones with heightened security or who disagree with the concept of trans. Does not passing make people question it?

And by the same token what happens if your passport is aligned with your sex but you present as the other? Again, does it get questioned?

Are there places you just can't go? Do you end up being strip searched (not nice for anyone!)? How about people with a mix of boobs and a dick?

I'm genuinely trying to understand the practicalities here and would be grateful if people could tell me more, both policy and experienced.

Many thanks.

When trans people transition, it doesn't been they're buying into society's myths and stereotypes. They're just aligning their bodies with their gender identities

Sorry, I had a late night too (non-Strictly related, sadly) and I don't understand what that means. For example, apart from the TRAs I'm pretty sure are trolling us, I have yet to see a transwoman who doesn't grow their hair long, for example. Long hair is not exclusively a female thing, of course, but it is culturally and historically associated with femininity (and female sexuality - hence the requirements of certain religions for women to keep their hair covered in the presence of non-family men)

If stereotypical gender roles did not exist, and there were no expectations or constraints placed on people because of assumptions linked to their biological sex, how would gender identity play out? Do you think people of one sex would still feel their gender identity 'belonged' to the other? I can't really get how they are not interlinked ideas.

Security processes thousands of people per day. I reckon they see trans people regularly, possibly daily, and they will have a policy on how to deal with us. In the UK, the law says I should be treated as a woman, and they will no doubt comply with that law. I certainly wouldn’t want to cause distress to someone who’s religion meant they didn’t want to touch me. The safest thing here would be for an officer not of that religion to search me. I would presume a religious security officer would be fully trained in what to do and know how to deal with this sort of situation. I certainly wouldn’t be upset if a security officer felt they couldn’t touch me because I was trans. I would be very upset, and I would complain, if an officer refused to search me because they said I was a man. It is the security people who are in control here, and the onus would be on a female security officer to recuse herself.
I doubt the security officer would be permitted to recuse herself. Also WRT security officers in hijabs - if the rule is that females search MtF trans then that's the issue, not that muslims will have more of a problem with it. Muslim voices don't have any added weight in this argument, that wouldn't be fair.

tinydancer88

If stereotypical gender roles did not exist, and there were no expectations or constraints placed on people because of assumptions linked to their biological sex, how would gender identity play out? Do you think people of one sex would still feel their gender identity 'belonged' to the other? I can't really get how they are not interlinked ideas.

That’s a good question! I can only speculate.

My own feeling is you can minimise the differences in male and female roles behaviour but never remove them completely. We have different roles in reproduction after all.

You can certainly remove the s**t around women being caring and passive while men are strong and dominant. Blue for boys, pink for girls can go in the bin too.

ButI think there would still be people with variant gender identity who experienced Gender Dysphoria. And there’d still be people so uncomfortable they’d need to transition. Because there will always be some sex differences. And unless we learn how to prevent it, some of us will always grow up with variant gender identities.

I’m guessing, I think there’d be far fewer people transitioning. If sex roles weren’t sodivergent, there wouldn’t be the level of dysphoria experienced staying in your birth sex. That’s guessing. I really don’t know.

This is the first question I’ve been asked on this thread that I haven’t seen before, and didn’t know my answer in advance. Thank you for making me Think!

I would speculate that there would be more Gender Dysphoria where gender role differences are greater. But that’s just hypothesising. I can’t provide any evidence for this.

So in answer to your original question, I think “stereotypical gender roles” exacerbate Gender Dysphoria and put more pressure on trans people to transition. But they do not create variant gender identity in people and I am still defending trans people’s right to transition. Unless you are trans, you cannot know the intensity of alienation from self and other people you feel because of the difference between your gender identity and your body. It’s not just about Gender Dysphoria.

Feminism isn’t always about challenging different roles for men and women. It’s about bettering the lives of women. Material improvements in women’s lives can come about without challenging gender roles.

Gender Identity is nothing to do with society, it is either innate or acquired before a child is around 3 years old. It's the person's own internal sense of what sex they are.

Are you saying it’s a sex identity then rather than a gender identity? I can totally understand body dysphoria. It’s the conflation of sex and gender that is confusing.

Thank you for your answers Donnabe.

jellyfrizz

I don’t think the meaning of “gender” is very clearly defined. It’s a word that causes a lot of confusion.

Gender Dysphoria is said to take two forms, body dysphoria and social dysphoria. I’ve experienced both.

If you want to think of one as “sex dysphoria” and the other as “Gender Dysphoria”, feel free. The concepts and the understanding of them are more important than the labels we put on them.

We really need a clear definition of what we mean by gender though. Just to stop us arguing at cross purposes all the time.

MipMipMip

You are very welcome. Thank you for listening.

We really need a clear definition of what we mean by gender though. Just to stop us arguing at cross purposes all the time.

I agree.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it's been interesting to read.

So in answer to your original question, I think “stereotypical gender roles” exacerbate Gender Dysphoria and put more pressure on trans people to transition. But they do not create variant gender identity in people

I think I probably agree with you here, more or less. I would like to believe that a society without gender stereotypes would allow everyone to be comfortable in their own skin, but acknowledge your point that it is difficult to imagine the experience of Gender Dysphoria if you don't have it.

tinydancer88

Thank you. That was a good question.

Body dysohoria and social dysphoria actually make a lot more sense than gender dysphoria.

I would say the feminist position is one of social dysphoria (obs not feminist spokesperson so only speaking for myself) which is why people hate being called cis.

I think that is spot on. I can understand the pain of sex dysphoria, which I understand to be the belief that your body should be that of the opposite sex, and that is quite clearly a medical condition.

Social dysphoria where you feel alienated by the expectations assigned to your sex is extremely common and those expectations need to be broken down. I feel zero affinity with women who shave, wear makeup, heels, think shopping is a leisure activity, enjoy spa days etc etc. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with those things but when younger it did make me question if I was a proper woman.

I'm loving the pulling apart of ideas on this thread. Lots to think about, particularly around "social dysphoria" and "body dysphoria". Personally, I had a brief point where I hated my body when I was a teenager, mostly because I wasn't getting boobs when most of my friends were. But I've always had something that could be called "social dysphoria", where I don't "get" many of the social expectations of women or understand why others would see them as a good thing.

I would speculate that there would be more Gender Dysphoria where gender role differences are greater. But that’s just hypothesising. I can’t provide any evidence for this.

I suspect one difficulty in gathering evidence for this hypothesis is that the cultures with the most rigidly defined gender roles are also ones where homosexuality is very discouraged (at best) or outright illegal, because of the overlap with conservative religions. So we see a relatively high number of transwomen in Iran because they would be executed for being gay men, whilst there are lots of vocal transmen and transwomen in the US who have a Bible thumping background.