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.

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.

But only with the option to then change it, which obviously is a very cheap cop out.

(The second round was without copout though, fair enough).

I think as soon as you uncouple 'woman' from female it becomes very hard to define. We all know what being female means, as it's based on the physical fact of DNA etc. And yes I know there are exceptions to this. Being a transwoman isn't one of them.

But woman? For me, the two are the same, as my experience as a woman is very tied up with other people's perception of me as a female. This means I get treated in a certain way because I am officially a female. From the point of view of society and the law, I could do certain things and not others as a female. For example, I wasn't allowed to sign my own tax return when I started work. My DF didn't allow me to play with Meccano. My School Head told me girls didn't study Architecture. I am shaped by society's view of me as a female.

But what does feeling like a woman mean? It is unique to me. So I don't feel like a woman, I feel like me. Who happens to be a female.

The problem with saying that you feel like a woman when you are physically male is that I can't understand it any more than you can explain it. As a physical male, you are just as much of a threat or a challenge physically, as a male who thinks he's a man. However, as long as it doesn't directly affect me, I can tolerate your belief. Asking me to take it 'on faith' and believe it too, is asking too much.

@SpartacusAutisticus

suggestionsplease1 I don't think oppression coded as gender is hard-wired in some way, no. Gender norms are too variable across time and place for this to be likely.

Female humans are oppressed by male humans through the mechanism of gender, and it's not because female humans are innately subordinate and have an innate appreciation of subordinate things.

Your post that I quoted made no reference to oppression, only to the coding of behaviours as masculine or feminine. In my reply I was giving a possible origin for a biological mechanism behind this.

I think as soon as you uncouple 'woman' from female it becomes very hard to define.

I have yet to hear any such definition of 'woman'. If they try, they unfailingly end up with some word salad that is by definition no definition, because definitions need to be objectifyable and non-circular. Sic transit gloria linguae.

*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.*

I think it is a massive stretch to hypothesise areas of the brain which encode gendered norms!!!! Your first statement about the brain having areas for specific functions is an oversimplification so don't build anything on those poor foundations. I don't think there is convincing evidence that 'societies' have created similar gendered norms unless you look at a small range of societies in a limited range of history which would be a good way to prove your point but a poor reflection of reality. We do socially construct our realities and in order to make sense of the idea that someone 'feels like a woman' we have to look at how we have socially constructed 'woman'. I think this is really important and really neglected as unless we can unpick these kinds of statements we are left with people saying they want their bodies to be other than they are (which maybe is OK, I an not judging but it is a very different statement that to say I 'feel like a woman).

As humans, it is absurd how quickly we master language, but it is because we are primed to do it - it is instinctive to us because the brain regions are there, ready and willing to go.

How many threads do there exist on mumsnet, by women who said that, before they had children, they believed absolutely that it was pure socialisation that led to gendered behaviours in infants, and committed themselves to strictly ensuring their own children would not have those gendered expectations foisted on them? Only to backtrack a couple of years later when they see how strong toy, behaviour etc preference can be.

Another bizarre study to take a look at - www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/

and www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755553/

It seems that other primates show gendered preference for toys too - despite having never been socialised for this.

Suggestions - but there is more overlap than these studies initially suggest so these do not enable us to take a behaviour and call it 'male' or 'female' so what this is supposed to prove?

There are also studies showing that if you dress a baby boy in 'girls' clothes we respond differently to it, suggesting that a lot of gender bias is sub or unconscious so this is not evidence for anything innate.

It seems that other primates show gendered preference for toys too - despite having never been socialised for this.

I would be stunned if this weren't statistic curves showing Gaussian distributions, I know in humans they are. Not even Jordan Peterson would deny that. So what you generally have in such studies are two strongly overlapping Gaussian curves with distinct means. This implies that you have populations where a substantial part of the female sub-population will have more strongly pronounced 'male' preferences than a substantial part of the male sub-population.

In short, such a statistical distribution cannot explain or justify the binary attribution of preferences to gender. It simply can't.

Your post that I quoted made no reference to oppression, only to the coding of behaviours as masculine or feminine. In my reply I was giving a possible origin for a biological mechanism behind this.

The example given by Spartacus was football (or soccer in the US). What biological mechanism do you see here? Because it obviously works differently depending on which side of the Atlantic you live.

Some 'gendered norms' do have a biological basis - like the respective roles of mothers and fathers, since mothers have to do the pregnancy and breast feeding, so their role as the nurturing partner while the man goes off hunting or to the office has obviously come about from their respective reproductive roles.

But others are purely cultural and vary between different societies, like football/soccer, or even within societies. I wasn't aware that some people viewed mowing the lawn as a 'male' gendered activity until I read this thread, for example.

And of course women have often been forced into their gendered roles because of the greater physical strength of males, which means they get to choose who does what. So in that sense, there is a different sort of biological component.

In short, such a statistical distribution cannot explain or justify the binary attribution of preferences to gender. It simply can't.

Put so much better than me! I am worried about the over interpretation of science to 'demonstrate' that something exists in the gendered world outside of that which we 'choose' to construct. It's worrying to see this as the ramifications are big and scary. We make gender and a lot of people are saying that they are not happy with their gender. This means we need to make it better or stop making it at all. I am not convinced that creating a situation where people feel the need to undergo painful surgeries, take medication with not fully known side-effects on an on-going basis and then sometimes later want to un-do all that is inevitable but when we try and make out that gender is innate that is what we are reinforcing.

@alexk3 I wouldn't be upset or miss having a female body at all. If I woke up in a male body I'd be happy
But I also don't really mind that much being in a female body

Another bizarre study to take a look at

In general the males preferred to play with wheeled toys, such as dumper trucks, over plush dolls, while female monkeys played with both kinds of toys.

Out of 11 male and 23 female monkeys. I'd want to see the full article with all the analysis to see what, if any, conclusions could be drawn from this.

But there is obviously lots of overlap between the behaviour of males and females ('in general' is the clue here). What were you trying to prove here?

Could it not be possible that there are innate brain structures that work similarly to encode gendered norms?

So, let me get this straight: you suggest that gendered norms (which may vary significantly across cultures) are encoded in the brain basically from the start, even while (as is well documented) children believe until age 3 or so that their sex is mutable and that they may grow or shed a penis down the line?

That's a wild theory.

Illustration of overlapping and non-overlapping bell curves as mentioned by deepwatersolo and randolph.

Very interesting thread.

Re the monkey paper - is this what Gina Rippon describes in her book when she says “oh not the bloody monkeys” (I paraphrase)

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

alexk3 Mon 13-Jul-20 23:08:12
haha yes exactly!

I'm just thinking more on this - people say they don't have an innate sense of being a woman, that's fair enough, but it's obviously more to it for some.
I've just tried to imagine always being in a male body and actually did a physical shudder.
The thought repulses me even though I have no beef with men, know lots of them and like them!
It's just not and never will be me as there's more to it than your physical body.
How that gets put into law though I have no idea so see the conundrum!

Top bit didn't bold, was quoting previous posts

Could it not be possible that there are innate brain structures that work similarly to encode gendered norms?

Well yes, a lot of things are possible, aren't they? Like an all knowing Creator.

I don't see a biological basis for "gendered norms" but I suppose many fans of evolutionary psychology will do.

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.

They do, because at the moment they seem to expect an oppressed class of humans to prop this up by living to these stereotypes.

There is a quote function which you might find useful

Is that only for people with subscriptions? Didn't think it was for just everyone? I don't seem to have that option so just bold instead.