A question for Transmen and Transwomen

[SpiritOfEnquiry]

I have name changed for this.

I'm not sure whether this is the best board (or place on the internet) to post this but I gather it's watched by many people so I'm hoping to get an answer from people with first-hand experience one way or another. This is not intended to be in any way goady, there just seem to be so many different understandings of what makes someone 'trans' and I think it's important to know what we're talking about.

I'm generally and genuinely curious about how transmen and women view their own desire to present or be viewed as the opposite sex to which they were born.

Leaving aside anyone for whom presenting as the opposite sex is a sexual thing (I gather there are complicated rules on speaking about this on this board and don't wish to be offensive), my current (no doubt very basic) understanding is that it must fall into one or both of two categories:

1. Dysmorphia in the sense of being uncomfortable or horrified by your physical body, or parts of it, as are people who feel a deep revulsion towards a healthy limb.

1. A feeling that you are a man or a woman, regardless of your body, and wish to be treated as such.

The first category I can get my head around to an extent. I don't pretend to know the reasons or best response but I can understand what is being said.

The second causes me more problems and I am curious to know how transmen and transwomen think of it to themselves. What, to you, counts as 'living as' a woman or man? What, in your view, is the difference between being treated as a man and treated as a woman? If you lived in a society where the expectations ascribed to each sex we're different, or you'd received different messages about that growing up do you think you'd feel differently?

Particularly:

A) Do you believe that there are in fact (perhaps even in science) internal feelings/traits etc. common to all women or all men regardless of the society they live in that you, as someone biologically of the opposite sex unusually share, making you therefore really a man/woman on the inside? Or perhaps
B) Do you feel that 'feeling like' a man or woman is indeed based on sexist stereotyping of the society in which you live but, while that stereotyping is alive and well, it's more comfortable for you to describe yourself as being the opposite sex than to try to present as the biological sex you are but live outside of the stereotypes?

Doubtless I'm stepping on landmines left and right, here, but I truly can't find my own way through the difference between "living as a woman" and sexist stereotypes, and rather than immediately conclude that there isn't one, I'd be very interested to hear others' thoughts.

Thank you in advance.

even though now I think (in the least self congratulory way) I would probably get with a girl with my body haha.

@Justhadathought

I don't know really, it's not that I look at the male waiter and think 'ah yes, we are both men', it's just like 'aw he sees me as a man'. Honeslty I don't know if I am 100% straight, and I get similar amounts of men and women hitting on me so not bothered about that really.

For your second post, don't really agree? Not with something as banal as ordering a meal anyway.

@bishopgiggles

I think if people don't have dysphoric feelings about being female then they're not trans? I think agender is more like dysphoria but not wanting to be the other sex, just kind of wanting to be not anything? I don't know about it or really get it at all though, so am the wrong person to ask!

@deepwatersolo

I do not understand how I can make it any clearer that I do not care about stereotypes. Don't care about muscles, happy with being skinny so yeah I don't want to be a fat man? But I won't be so doesn''t really matter.

@OldCrone

general society? and, again, I've said it's a coincidence. I don't care about them apart from the one second where I might think 'aw that was manly', however that is about one second a month

feel for you but not my experience, I'd make a pretty fit lesbian haha it's just not me.

The real question is: if your choice was having this 'fit but female' body you have or a rather mushy but real male body, what would you choose?

@SpartacusAutisticus

ah, was your earlier post indirectly at me? I think I know what a stereotype is thanks

@deepwatersolo

male body I lose weight easily so whatever

I don't want to be a fat man? But I won't be so doesn''t really matter.

But it is an important thought experiment. If you choose your skininess over a male fat body, clearly your issue is not gender dysphoria.

My generation solved the 'I don't want no female curves' issue by anorexia, I have the very strong impression your generation has discovered T as a little helper in that department.

At the same time, you recognise that you have grown up in a society that is inherently and pervasively gendered, and therefore you recognise that while you don't feel your dysphoria is societal in origin, adopting behaviours and activities that our society codes as male does allow you some temporary happiness and alleviation from the dysphoria, because it reinforces your sense that you are living in a male way. You're aware of that as a gender role rather than innate, and that's why you raised it at all; not that you believe those gender roles are what defines masculinity, but that you acknowledge the interplay and that one does interact with the other.

I think this is interesting, and Alex has said that this is accurate (I think). But what this does is confirm the conflict between feminism and transgenderism, if conforming to gender roles and stereotypes are seen as a 'treatment' for gender dysphoria.

People who are unhappy with their sexed bodies need a better treatment for their mental health than one which involves perpetuating outdated and harmful stereotypes.

@deepwatersolo

This is so funny to me, it's a made-up situation that would never happen so don't take it too seriously. I would take a male body until it got to like super-morbidly obese levels, but then I can hopefully afford surgery soon-ish and am starting T in two weeks so pointless experiment anyway. I love that you think from one sentence that I don't have gender dysphoria, that is absolutely ridiculous.

@OldCrone

not treatment though is it? it's just a second of feeling slightly less shit.

[quote alexk3]@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

thank you!!

@FireUnderTheHand

jesus christ it is just a phrase! if I'm so stupid then just stop engaging?[/quote]
I never and would never call you "stupid" but your response confirms my statement.

Truly, all the best to you in all of your endeavors (including your identity). Thanks for engaging.

Fuck me this thread is infuriating. Alex you just keep shutting down. The sex thing, and no I don’t want an answer, but you haven’t thought it through really have you?

I’m assuming you’ll still want to be in a relationship at some point, right? With a woman, right? Women need reciprocal desire to get off, and where will that reciprocal desire come from if you voluntarily throw away the means to feel that desire?

The reason you have’s thought it through is because you’re too young to have the knowledge to think it through.

The sex thing, and no I don’t want an answer, but you haven’t thought it through really have you?

Why, because someone has different life experiences to you do you think they haven't thought it through?
He's telling you he's trans. Who is anyone on this thread to say you just haven't thought it through or "you're just young" The reason you have’s thought it through is because you’re too young to have the knowledge to think it through
How fucking patronising.

@SpartacusAutisticus

This isn't making sense to me at all, Alex, the things you describe as 'male' alleviating your dysphoria are only coded 'male' in the society you/we inhabit. Beyond biological functions (and most women have at some point wanted to be able to pee standing up) everything else is surely about social structures and gendered coding. Like say when a British girl likes football it's seen as a boyish thing to like, but when an American girls likes soccer (the exact same game) it's seen as a girlish thing to like.

If society didn't code things as masculine and feminine I can't see how dysphoria could exist in the way you describe.

I think this is an interesting point, but I'm not sure I agree.

To try to make a parallel - the brain is quite localised in terms of function, so that, for eg, there are specific areas devoted to language production and comprehension -Broca's area and Wernicke's area. These regions exist before infants learn to produce and comprehend speech. They do not come into existence after these skills are developed - they are there, ready and waiting to interpret the world. If these regions are destroyed language is usually severely compromised.

Could it not be possible that there are innate brain structures that work similarly to encode gendered norms? That for some people they are more pronounced, and these individuals have an innate stronger sense of gender. And that for others (I would probably count myself amongst them) these regions are not prominent and give no clear sense of gender, or need to identify on the binary.

Why have so many human societies over the millennia developed similar gendered norms, despite sometimes evolving separately and with no contact with each other?

And again, as always I stress I have no absolutist perspective on this, I certainly do not fit in myself with 'norms' of gender but I am quite happily female.

Alex you just keep shutting down

Is there any bloody wonder?!
I'd be like flicking V's at the screen and sticking my tongue out at it if I was him, I just don't get how anyone tells someone else they're deluded, too young to know what they're doing, to embrace the body you're in (even when it's not "them!" )
Having your identity and right to "be" who you are discussed - just... must be shit.For lack of a better word!

@Whatisthisfuckery

you can have an answer because I find this absolutely insane. Yes I have thought it through. I'm sorry I do not understand the second bit at all... but I was in a pretty sexually active relationship, it was just one-sided and she was happy with that.

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

completely agree

This is so funny to me, it's a made-up situation that would never happen so don't take it too seriously. I would take a male body until it got to like super-morbidly obese levels, but then I can hopefully afford surgery soon-ish and am starting T in two weeks so pointless experiment anyway. I love that you think from one sentence that I don't have gender dysphoria, that is absolutely ridiculous.

No need to get defensive. It is a thought experiment - like one does it to boil a 'philosophical problem' and your stance towards it down to its essence, a self-exploration. (We did that in bioethics class, my one 'brush with humanities', it can be illuminating). You don't even need to give me or anyone else the answer. It would be a way for you to explore your motivations and hopes regarding your transition. You say you are gender dysphoric and you don't like the more feminine parts of your body (I don't remember was it hips or waist, whatever). So what you might want to ask yourself in a silent hour is: if you could choose and would have to live with the body you choose for the rest of your life (hypothetically, obviously): would you rather live with an intact biologically male body that still has some cushions or would you prefer to have the 'ideal masculine' (whatever that is for you) body but still the female genitals...

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

I am very tempted! Don't see how I'm shutting down at all either haha. It's pretty grim really but yet somehow cannot tear myself away - think am a bit too argumentative!

@deepwatersolo

I literally said I would take a 'mushy' male body.

@deepwatersolo

Oh I didn't read the last bit: male body with dick I think dad-bod men are kind of cute anyway

It's pretty grim really but yet somehow cannot tear myself away - think am a bit too argumentative!

Yep, same, must be the same reason people watch car crash type TV, you don't want to look or engage but just can't help yourself lol

would you rather live with an intact biologically male body that still has some cushions or would you prefer to have the 'ideal masculine' (whatever that is for you) body but still the female genitals..

Alex answered that - I would take a male body until it got to like super-morbidly obese levels, but then I can hopefully afford surgery soon-ish and am starting
I read that as it wouldn't matter what size the male body, whether it was some cushions or lots of cushions, he'd still take the male body every time.
Whatever it looked like.

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

haha yes exactly!