Is being trans a choice?

[user888]

Spotted in Does anyone ever wonder how this will end? Thought it might be worth its own thread. Maybe not. We'll see.

What happened was that women stopped putting up and shutting up. Nobody asked us how we felt about sharing our spaces and you have no idea whether there were any issues or incidents, because for years we smiled and pretended not to notice. Sometimes this was to be kind and sometimes it was because many of us had learned the hard way not to challenge. It was the epitome of entitled behaviour.

That's why it's cruel to expect either gay or trans people to repress that part of their identity, to force them to live a lie
Homosexuality isn’t an identity. Just like being female or male isn’t. It just IS. Like blue eyes, or a big nose. I’ve never heard a gay man say that they ‘identify’ as gay.

Eyes down everyone.

Christian far right.
True trans aren't predators.

I suggest, disgusted, if you know how to sort the true trans from the predators you let the appropriate authorities know. As people are identifying as trans and damaging your cause.

Wanting to be the opposite sex, obviously arises out of all sorts of things. Internalised homophobia, fetishism, gender dysphoria.

Saying you're the opposite sex is definitely a choice.

As is expecting other people to agree with you.

Especially when it reinforces sexism and damages women.

@notactuallylolling

A friend of mine said it this way ‘being trans is not a choice. What you do about it is a choice’

I think this sums it up perfectly. You could go through life knowing you are transgender (identifying as a gender which is not aligned to your biological sex) but you may spend your life trying to conform to the gender you were assigned at birth (due to your genitals). You would still be transgender but not actively seeking to live as the gender to which you identify for whatever reason. With the right support, awareness etc however you may try to live the life you feel like you should have been living all along.

Except no one is ‘assigned a gender at birth’. Everyone has their sex observed no recorded. Nothing to do with gender.

@AquaTorfana

For those with gender dysphoria, it isn't a choice just like being depressed isn't a choice for someone with clinical depression. The transition is often the only method of treatment that's likely to work for someone with gender dysphoria.

Non-binary and other umbrella trans identities are absolutely a choice. They choose to identify as x because they feel x doesn't suit them. It's not dysphoria, it's an unwillingness to subscribe to gender norms and stereotypes and a conscious choice to distance themselves with pronouns and identity markers.

And yet GIDS claim that over 80% of those who present with GD grow out of it once they reach adulthood without the need for intervention apart from watchful waiting. Therefore one could only claim that transition is likely to work with a small number of people diagnosed with GD.

I think it's a choice for some people but not for others.

I also think sexual orientation is a choice for some people, not for others.

Well something happened, and probably funded by the Christian right.

Why did all these progressive liberal women decide to do what the Christian Right wanted?

Male perverts continued pretending to be women, not trans women, to access single sex spaces.

Decent of you to admit that this is an issue, though.

Except no one is ‘assigned a gender at birth’. Everyone has their sex observed no recorded. Nothing to do with gender.

If you are assigned anything at birth, that thing is gender. As soon as your sex is observed, society imposes stereotypes. Society assigns your gender by imposing stereotypes upon you based on your sex.

Whether or not you choose to identify with those stereotypes is another matter. The trans ideology pathologises any sense of identity that does not conform to those stereotypes.

My birth certificate specifies sex.

but you may spend your life trying to conform to the gender you were assigned at birth (due to your genitals)

That's not what happens. Your sex is observed at birth. Being observed to be female at birth does not condemn you to a life of frilly dresses and femininity. If anything does that, it's the insistence (including by the trans movement) that thinks like clothing preferences or toy choices determine your 'gender'!

Seriously, question to my GC fellows. I am beginning to feel slightly maddened by the twisting of words and language and the rewriting of my entire 46 year history on this planet.

I worry that I am educating my children with inaccurate scientific information. I feel gaslight and alienated from humankind.

What I was taught at school, college and university:

My understanding is that sex is biological, your chromosomes determine your genes, which determine your body type, genitalia, hormones, development etc.
It is universally accepted that XX results in female offspring, by sex, who grow in to women. XY form the male chromosomes, which result in male offspring, by sex, who grow in to men. Some people have DSD and are more complicated to assign, their genotype and phenotype being inconsistent.
The sex of an individual is defined clearly in law and is a protected characteristic. It is on you birth certificate. It exists as a fact.

Is this all wrong? Factually? I mean maybe the issue is that we have been misinformed throughout our entire lives?

I have never been taught or educated about gender. I have found that all of a sudden I am transphobic for not knowing what this is. I have tried to ask others about it, but the sands are forever shifting and I don't seem to be able to grasp it firmly.

I cannot work out what words mean anymore.

I feel gaslight and alienated from humankind.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of humankind knows perfectly well what a woman and a man are. It's just that the people who want to change that are the ones who shout the loudest!

@JellySlice

Except no one is ‘assigned a gender at birth’. Everyone has their sex observed no recorded. Nothing to do with gender.

If you are assigned anything at birth, that thing is gender. As soon as your sex is observed, society imposes stereotypes. Society assigns your gender by imposing stereotypes upon you based on your sex.

Whether or not you choose to identify with those stereotypes is another matter. The trans ideology pathologises any sense of identity that does not conform to those stereotypes.

I see you've had some pushback, but I think you made a good point. The whole point of the feminist analysis of gender is that it is an imposition pushed on people depending on their sex.

Obviously sex is determined at conception, and observed before or at birth and completely immutable, coded into every cell in our body.

But gender is most definitely 'assigned' because it's an external idea based on arbitrary and shifting norms that can certainly change throughout anyone's lifetime. That's the point of the stupid 'gender reveal' parties that shower everything in pink or blue. That's the reason people make assumptions about a baby that kicks strongly in utero being 'a footballer' if they think it's a boy, or if they know it's a girl, she'll already be being pegged as strong willed, which isn't treated the same as it would be if the child was male. All from the neutral, normal development act of moving in utero. People are assigning gender to the child based on it's sex.

Feminists have been trying to say, for a very long time, that sex is simply sex. It is an innate quality that matters for some very specific things, but not for many others. Gender is not innate. Gender is indeed assigned, and therefore should be challenged. But that means pushback against restricting women to roles and personalities and appearances based on gendered stereotypes.

It's nothing to do with the realities of sex that mean women are the sex which deal with everything associated with our reproductive system, from menstruation or the lack of it, pregnancy or the lack of it, menopause, vulnerability to rape, differences in strength to males and even being vulnerable to sex selective abortion simply because they are recognized as female embryos.

Sex is not assigned. Sex matters. Gender is assigned. Gender should be challenged.

It’s not a choice to suffer with gender dysmorphia No more than i chose to suffer with body dysmorphia. I behave like an absolute crackhead at times due to my illness. It can come off as self absorpition at times.

If you don’t have gender dysphoria then I believe you have every choice on how to manage your fetish.

'Male perverts continued pretending to be women, not trans women,'

But TWAW

And the equality act meant that males had to go into female prisons on self ID?

10 years ago we weren't being told that in any and all single sex facilities, that even raising an eyebrow at a male person who was male presenting wandering in was hateful.

If transitioning is the only cure for not-a-choice gender dysphoria - putting aside the evidence that the suicide rate increases after SRS, so its efficacy as a treatment is highly debatable - what level of “transition” are we talking about? 85% of transwomen retain their male genitalia. Transmen have given birth, just about the most female thing you can do with a sexed body. Neither of those things scream “dysphoric” to me.

For those with sex dysphoria that is severe, it can help. That would be full surgery. Numbers small.

The conversation about all this - for me I want people to be ok and so for those who have the full surgery that's massive and between them and their doctor/s.

Some people with dysphoria have had limbs removed and one woman persuaded a therapist I think it was to blind her.

These are all extreme as is the risky and I imagine incredibly painful genital surgery involved for those with extreme sex dysphoria.

The fact is they're a tiny number in all.

Ditto the does gender ID exist. That's a philosophical question really. No one can really know how other feel etc. Like atheism Vs spiritual. If you don't feel it you can't really understand it.

Even if it's about stereotypes for some/ many, that makes no odds either although an interesting topic!

In the end whatever the situation female people in various situations need their own things for comfort, fairness etc. To deny the facts of weirdy creepy male behaviour and how common it is, the fact that males are in general bigger and stronger than female people, the history and current situation around the world when it comes to our sex, and the long long history of oppression of our sex all over the world...

Sex is what matters.

Of course the transgender crew have totally fucked everything up for transsexuals.

They are NOT the same thing.

The word transsexual has been deemed to be out of date, I mean it's not one that want to be used for obvious reasons.

Same as they have redefined lesbian/ gay to be about same gender attraction not same sex.

And of course redefined the words used for juvenile /adult human females (and I assume males too but for some reason no one gets worked up that the aren't used that way much).

The fact that

It's always about entering other groups by changing words to mean what they want them to mean

That the groups focused on are ones that have fought and are fighting for a better deal, they are minority/oppressed groups.

That there is never any hint of setting up new stuff even though that would be more beneficial to trans people given the specific experience they have as trans people.

But no. It's always about just helping themselves to others hard won stuff, and shouting and screaming at anyone who says no. Or even says. I'm not sure.

It's appalling behaviour.

@lazylinguist

I feel gaslight and alienated from humankind.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of humankind knows perfectly well what a woman and a man are. It's just that the people who want to change that are the ones who shout the loudest!

"I feel gaslight and alienated from humankind."

Gee, imagine how trans people feel. Trans women forced to live as "men" which to them, that's the fiction they're being forced to play along with.

And as soon as they realize this, and take steps to change their identities and bodies to ones they feel more comfortable with, they are immediately attacked, vilified, denigrated for it.

It isn't a competition.

Both have equal rights.

Transwomen are separate and equal to women by sex.

One is not more important than the other.

I mean imagine being a woman by sex, raped and sexually abused all of your life, now being expected to share safe spaces with penis owners.

Horrifying.

Imagine trying to protect your children as a mother of female sexed offspring, but you cannot keep them safe from penis owners everywhere you go.