Don't understand how someone can be transgender? This man explains it all!

[WeeBisom]

There's a Facebook post doing the rounds that promises to explain transgender identity. Unfortunately the explanation is very poor and just leaves me with more questions. Seriously, this is the best they can do? I'm going to break this thing down.

Our helpful guide is a "cis" man. And his basic premise is he FEELS like a man but he doesn't know why! He doesn't like any stereotypical guy stuff! (I find it really funny that he says he likes music, cooking and the arts, all things which are incredibly male dominated.) Ok, but I don't think activities ought to be gendered anyway. You do you. You're still a bloke if you like knitting.

But then he tells us it's not physical either. He has this man feeling, but it's not because he has a penis. He then tells us that if you put his brain in a robot body his 'essence" would still "feel male'. He then informs us he has an acute lack of imaginative power and "literally" cannot imagine what being any other gender would feel like. And this is supposed to persuade me that being trans is a real thing.

The problem with running thought experiments, like the brain transplant scenario, is that you take the risk of others just simply not sharing your intuition. And this is what has happened here. If you put my brain in a robot body, god knows how I would feel. God even knows if it would still be me in any meaningful sense. I'm very much like David Hume in that I don't get the impression I have a 'me' "essence." I don't think my personality or 'self' is intrinsically gendered. And more to the point...the biggest conflict is this guy super strongly 'feel's male (so much he can't even imagine what it would be like to be female!) and I don't share this feeling at all. I don't 'feel' female at all. I find it very easy to imagine being in a male body. There is just an irreconcilable clash, here. He has a lack of imagination and a very strong feeling he labels 'male'. I have a good imagination and zero gender feelings. So, er , how is he supposed to persuade me?

He then tells me that he's a man but he has no clue WHY he's a man.He surmises he is a man because "of something ephemeral." Well, now we are just getting into theology. I have deeply religious friends who are baffled at my atheism. It is so confusing to their worldview that some of them even think I do think God exists but I choose to deny his existence. And when I ask them why they believe in God they just know. They can't point to anything rational or tangible, or even coherently explain it - they feel it. But unless you share these deep special feelings there can be no persuasion. There's nothing rational here - no evidence, no argumentation, no logic. Just an appeal to inexplicable feelings.

I'm sooo sick of hearing this same stupid take from men. "I'm just a man. I'm so comfortable being a man! I don't even have to think about it! That must mean my inner essence is man!"

When women for millennia have been screaming "let me out of this fucking woman box!" as they were forced down aisles, stoned, raped and impregnated. When they took on male pseudonyms in order to have a career, sometimes even disguising themselves as men for decades.

Fucking think.

Kaiserin

I think that’s an interesting point.

quaggers

I don’t understand the feeling like a woman thing though. I’m not trying to start a fight with you but how exactly does that work for you? I feel tired, or hungry, or awkward, or silly etc but I don’t feel woman. I know I am one, other people have told me I’m a girl/woman all my life. I menstruated. I carried a child. I breastfed. I couldn’t have done that without female biology. When I’m around some women I feel quite unfeminine when I’m around men I don’t as much. And I do have lots of stereotypical woman characteristics but also lots of man ones. Because it’s not me decided shoes are for girls and video games are for boys. But inside? I dunno.

[quote WeeBisom]@DidoLamenting: Well, it's part of the problem with 'gendering' activities in the first place, but in one sense they are super macho: 95% of classical conductors in the UK are male, 84% of chefs are male, and 70% of artists hosted in galleries are male. If a man tells me he enjoys 'music', 'cooking' and 'arts' I don't see anything particularly feminine about that at all, and yet he's trying to frame it like a man liking these things is somehow not manly.[/quote]

Someone is going to have to tell Gordon Ramsey that he must be a woman?

Yikes!

If a man tells me he enjoys 'music', 'cooking' and 'arts' I don't see anything particularly feminine about that at all, and yet he's trying to frame it like a man liking these things is somehow not manly

Generally if you do any activity for no reward and no pay, it’s a female activity.

Make it into a job or career and suddenly it’s male, and prestigious.

If he likes visiting the theatre to watch musicals, cooking for his family at home, and searching out nice art for the family home = feminine.

If he has a job in music, art or food = masculine.

It’s all about value.

If my innate sense was that of being a man instead of a woman, I can kind of understand how being trans would come about.

But the only way we have of communicating an innate sense is with words, words which we are using to describe a personal feeling that no-one else can ever feel, so by using the same word - 'woman' or 'man' - as we use for an externally verifiable, objective state, you're confusing concepts.

Sure, you might innately feel you are , but what possible evidence can there be that that feeling is that of 'woman' which, to most people, boils down to having an adult, human, female body?

Rachel Rooney wrote a lovely book for children called “My body is me”.

That is basically how I feel about it. I don’t believe in a soul or inner essence. My body, all of it, is me. My brain is part of my body not separate from it, just like my lungs, heart, kidneys. All formed together inside my mother. None of me or anyone else is wrong. Self acceptance used to be encouraged as a path to mental health and wellbeing. Disassociation from our bodies is now de rigour apparently. It certainly does make some people a lot of money to be able to sell drugs, surgery, various accoutrements of womanliness and manliness etc

There is so much effort, time, energy and money to be expended in persuading oneself and the rest of the world that one is that which one in fact is not.

I'd love to know how people are aware this so-called feeling is innate, anyway. Where does that certainty come from? On what basis do people conclude that nurture has had 0% impact on their sense of X ?

I'm not sure I can really imagine being a man, but then again I'm not sure I can truly imagine being any woman other than myself.

I wouldn't be so bold as to claim I speak for all other women let alone all men too, let alone all people of both sexes who think they are trans, but personally, for me the causation is very much: I feel like a woman because I have a woman's body, life experience and am treated by others as a woman. I can't divorce what it feels like to be a woman from...er...being a woman.

Or in other words, to misquote, I am therefore I think.

He seems to believe that what he thinks has an independent reality aside from what he is, more like: I think and I am. The thinking and the being could be in sync, or, he imagines, they could be entirely unconnected.

This idea that his experience of being male could exist on its own in a kind of magical thought realm seems bizarre. Given he admits he has not the faintest idea of what it would be like to be female because it is literally outside of his experience, why on earth does he imagine that any human being is capable of this kind of imaginative leap or transference of experience via the medium of woo??

I sometimes wonder if part of this is that men just don't live in their bodies as much as most women do. We have to deal with all this biological stuff and whether we like it or not, our bodies constantly demand our attention and notice. Whereas I think men's bodies don't really make as many demands on them, unless there's some kind of illness to deal with, so they can live in their heads/in the clouds and assume women do too.

I know I'm a woman because I'm female, and I'd know I was female even if society didn't tell me so, because my body does female stuff. I could definitely imagine being another sex or indeed another species but I don't think I'd be 'me' in any recognisable way because my body is the medium through which I experience the world and if my body were completely difference, my experience and sense of self would be different.

I think that's the same for all of us, but I do wonder if men can sort of forget about their bodies more, and find them more disposable or less central to their understanding of who they are and how they live.

I’m fed up of all the thought experiments people like this come up with. “If you put my brain in a robot body...” just stop right there. That’s impossible, and therefore not a valid argument when discussing realities. In addition, you have no idea how you’d feel. Same goes for if your brain was magically put into a body of the opposite sex. You might have ideas about how you’d like to feel (or how you wish you would feel), but it hasn’t happened so it’s wholly irrelevant.

I’m a woman because I have a female body. How do I feel about that? Well, I don’t. It’s a fact. It’s immutable. It is what it is. It cannot possibly be changed, so what would be the point in having feelings about it?

(Not to be confused with the consequences of being a women & my feelings about how society treats women - that is very different!)

The problem is that its the people with the female bodies who are denied the right to vote, access education, control their bodies, drive - and nobody checks or cares whether they actually have male souls.

The post might as well be about reincarnation or having a spirit animal.

The trouble with these daft thought experiments is they don’t go far enough.

If you put my mind into a robot....

...and completely erased every memory of ever having been female. Never had a female body. Never had a period, or given birth, or breastfed. Never had sex as a woman. Never been called “Miss” “Mrs” or “Ms”. Can’t even remember my name. Didn’t do netball at school. Never worn a skirt or had my hair in pigtails. And so on and so on...

...then would I “just know” that I’m a woman?

(NCed -- you probably know what my former, similar, MN name is; this one is here to stay for certain reasons.)

Rachel Rooney wrote a lovely book for children called “My body is me”.

That is basically how I feel about it. I don’t believe in a soul or inner essence. My body, all of it, is me. My brain is part of my body not separate from it, just like my lungs, heart, kidneys.

Speaking only for myself alone: I don't feel "my body is me". I feel that I HAVE a body, I AM not that body. I inhabit it. Yet still, I do not have an immutable "feminine essence": that body is the reality in which I must go through this life, and I have to accept that body with all its female qualities, the things it can or cannot do, they way it is accepted or not accepted by society.

It is a woman's body; it had periods and got pregnant, bore children, breastfed, went through menopause.And because it is a female body, I am a woman, and get to call myself woman, just like every other adult with a female body. Nobody else gets to do that.

You can't conjure yourself into womanhood. There is no way that someone who has not experienced what it is to live in a woman's body, can be a woman. The two, personality and body, are linked together, the one shaping the other and dictating to some extent its role in life, such as the ability to conceive and give birth.

And just to be quite clear, the OP is right about religion. Though I don't belong to any religion, I do feel a "higher, all-intelligent power" and believe that it is that feeling that propels people towards a particular religion. I understand it perfectly, as I feel it too; but because it is a feeling, there is no way I can or would persuade another person that it is the truth and it is the only way to be. It's a feeling that absolutely cannot be explained rationally. (I also know what it is to be an atheist, as I was raised to be one by very atheist parents!)

And it is quite unlike the personal sense of being a woman, which CAN be explained rationally, as I did above. My sense of the personality which lives inside my body is very much influenced, not only by the functions of my female body, but by the way society has treated it. Being harassed by boys as a teenager, being coerced into having sex which I really didn't want, being spoken over and interrupted by men with louder and more forceful voices: all these things have shaped my personality and made me me, the me that inhabits this female body. And while my personality can change, and has changed enormously over the past 69 years, the experiences of living in a female body is part of the process of making it what it is today. Not ONLY those female experiences, I might add!

But I am a personality within a body, and I disagree with the general feminist stance on MN, and that book, that "my body is me". I am more than my body, but I have to and do take my body seriously.

So, that's my own take on it. Sorry this was so long, and hope you can make sense of it.

Malahaha, I think that's a very common way to feel and why dualism in so many forms (inc gender ideology) is so persistent. The brain very effectively conjures the effect of a "me" that dwells in the body. It is an illusion, probably one with a strong evolutionary underpinning. Look at all we are learning about the gut and mood. The self is the body, the body the self.

As a young woman I was very interested in the nature and essence of the self, partly due to suffering low self esteem due to witnessing my dad's psychological abuse of my mother, partly as a result of studying psychology. I experimented with drugs (including ketamine - once and never again) in an attempt to find my own answer to the question "what in the self is enduring and not affected by brain chemistry". My answer: a tiny spark. I did not feel like a woman in a k hole.

I can imagine it, but that doesn't necessarily translate to thinking it is a healthy way to think.

When I was young I had quite a serious accident, long time in hospital, physio, rehab etc. I remember having a strong sense that this crap, broken body wasn't the real me. However, the medical team saw me talking like this as a red flag for quite serious mental health problems, and they added some counselling to my treatment. I can see with hindsight that it was a barrier to me accepting the situation and fully engaging with help. I now feel no shame about certain physical limitations I have as I see the recovery as a formative part of who I am. Your life and body forms you, it isn't separate.

I've read interviews with Stephen Hawkins which says similar. He couldn't live with regrets and what ifs, he has his life and his body and that is his reality. To have that kind of strength is genuinely good mental health and it makes no sense to me to promote the opposite (I feel this was about things like plastic surgery as well, not just gender).

While we can all agree that humans (and most of the rest of the animal kingdom) are split into a reproductive binary - the concepts of "female" and "male" are entirely human creations.

Of course it makes evolutionary sense that we would quickly be able to observe and categorise ourselves into two reproductive classes. And it follows that we have created words for those two categories (female/male, woman/man). But that's all we can say. The idea that we are born with an inner sense of our sex (outside of any external influence) is entirely speculative. There's no evidence for that whatsoever.

In fact the evidence would more be to the contrary. We know that some societies have a "third gender" or "third sex" which is (often in a very homophobic way) primarily used for men and women who don't fit societal expectations of their sex. And we know that people in these societies often strongly identify with that third gender/sex.

If people in different societies think about sex/gender in different ways then it suggests gender identity is down to social conditioning, not some inner essence.

@namechange9357

Malahaha, I think that's a very common way to feel and why dualism in so many forms (inc gender ideology) is so persistent. The brain very effectively conjures the effect of a "me" that dwells in the body. It is an illusion, probably one with a strong evolutionary underpinning. Look at all we are learning about the gut and mood. The self is the body, the body the self.

I am a Vedantist, and a non-dualist.

I believe there is a consciousness, which enlivens the body; which gives the body life. According to Vedanta which is indeed an unprovable philosophy the self is not the body, and can never be. That is the foundation of the teaching, which I have practiced for 45 years with good results, so unlikely to change now!

I believe that all aspects of personality, including "gender" feelings, are all superimpositions on consciousness, which is free from all attributes. But it's much too far reaching, and boring for most, to go into it in detail here!

I just won't be told that my body is my self, as it isn't. Neither of us can prove our point of view.

@DidoLamenting

I find it really funny that he says he likes music, cooking and the arts, all things which are incredibly male dominated

Really? I don't think so.

How many of the great composers were female? None that I can think of. Why is that?

He's mixing up sex and gender which makes it very hard to make sense of what he's trying to say. Other than 'I don't understand it'.

The only times I've ever 'felt like a woman' have either involved biology such as during pregnancy and breastfeeding or social norms and expectations of me based on that biology (formerly known as 'gender') that we used to just called sexism.

But what has that got to do with the concept of a 'gender identity' - an undefinable, indescribable sense of where one lies on the jelly baby scale of masculinity and femininity for GI Joe to Barbie doll? Because gender is nothing to do with sex which seems to be one thing everyone agrees on*.

*For clarification, I think that when proponents of genderism talk about gender this is a shorthand and they actually mean gender identity. As with a lot of this subject though, it can be confusing but I'm sure someone will correct me if they feel I'm wrong

from GI Joe to Barbie, that should read.

The best question I have heard on this was when Posy Parker asked,
So where are all the middle aged women with children transitioning to men?

What's the fact a trans man may or not have children got to do with anything, though?
Plenty of trans men around, whether they have kids or not is neither here nor there.

Quaagers, it's when we get these breaking news headlines in the gutter press (saw a FB post on just that today) saying, "A Man had Given Birth!" that we need to take a deep breath and just quietly utter, nope. Didn't happen.