a hypothetical situation

[Mischa87]

That's fine, I'm not going to put any pressure on you to that effect. Thanks for trying though.

Yeah, really sorry about that, but I've yet to find a suitable description of how it feels, or anyone else who could... I've heard plenty of times one would need some sort of device, or technique to actually simulate what it would be like... Not sure how that would work on someone who's already lived their life comfortable in their gender presentations, nor would I ever wish that sort of experience on someone... Save for perhaps poetic justice (Bigots, transphobes and the like)

There's no doubt it's tough. Societal attitudes towards transgendered individuals in general are shocking, and while those figures about abuse are really very sad reading, they're not entirely unexpected.

Yeah, there's a saying among the community "The biggest obstacle in a transperson's life, other than their own body, is other people" Which really rings true all-too-often... I mean, in pretty much any coming-out or transitioning guide you'll find online, they outright tell you, you will lose any job, relationship, and family you had, now that doesn't happen all the time, but it happens often enough to prepare for it.

Okay, sure. It might be possible to quite happily live with a feminine gender while in a male body, given the freedom to be sufficiently expresssive in a feminine way. Though I'm including (for instance) people who go into full HRT but no further as Transsexuals rather than transgendered.

I wouldn't go so far as saying they're happy (Remember those stats on suicide) But yes, some people find a way to keep going, even without a more feminine body, I'm still here (albeit I'm still pretty young, and have given myself a purpose in life to keep me going) Also, keep in mind, those people just on HRT are still considered transsexuals, there's a lot of misconception behind "transgender" and "transsexual"... and "transvestite" as well as "intersexed" for that matter. Without going to far into it, transgender is an umbrella term used for anyone who's gender doesn't entirely match what society would expect of them based on their sex (This could be transvestites, gender benders, bigendered people, heck, I'd even consider metrosexuals to be transgendered (I'm looking at you dad *grin*) and of course, transsexuals) And a transsexual is someone who's actively changing their body/appearance/presentation to match their gender, which means someone on HRT is doing just that.

Also, a little side-note, a lot of transsexuals don't like to be referred to as "transgendered" Because it can have an unwanted connotation (Namely, society's way of using transsexual and transvestite interchangeably) Not that there's anything wrong with transvestites, it's just they have much different motives for what they do (Fetishtic purposes) Which the transsexual community doesn't want attached to us heck, a huge chunk of the transsexual community is asexual. I've found a lot of transwomen even go so far as to remove one "S" from transsexual, to remove the word "sexual" from it... although... having an s right beside it kinda renders that moot... Yeah...Trans exual? Trans eckual? *Shrug* (From what I've noticed, most who do that, are also the some folks who claim that if you don't get surgery, you're not really your gender)

I think this gets very close to the real heart of my question, so thanks very much for talking about it. I guess I'm really wondering about whether the level of change in sexual identity that best resolves the feeling of gender dysphoria might be different depending on the conditions and society transsexual people live in.

If you mean a change in gender presentation instead of "sexual identity" then sure, the same way that people of a certain culture/gender can be vastly different from those of the same gender, and a different country/culture. I mean, look at English guys, and say... Brazilian guys, polar opposites really.

Taking myself as an example (No, you're an attention whore!) I'm Half-Ukrainian, part Mi'kmaq (I love it when spellcheck says part of my history isn't a word) and a little mishmash of different European nationalities (I'm actually relatively closely related to the late Princess Diana) But anyway, I was raised in a dairy farming community, by a construction worker, and a farmer-turned-janitor. This has imbued myself with personality characteristics one might call "Tomboyish" And that's very much true, that's what I've become, based on my culture, my location, and circumstances, much like plenty of the ciswomen around here. Whereas I have friends just 2 hours away in the capital city here, who are dainty, *Cough* Ditzy *Cough* hyper-feminized, *Cough* Catty *Cough* And the like. We've all taken on the characteristics of the women/culture around us. We each have our different levels of "femininity" we feel we need to present to be comfortable in our own skin.

In your current position, you accept (though perhaps not as an ideal) that moving towards a "complete" sexual reasignment would not be the best resolution of your gender identity at present. But had things been different and the medical environment better suited towards effective surgery, you would want to use this additional level of physical correction. Would the compromise point be less tolerant of "partial" transitions if the techniques of surgery and gender dysphoria diagnosis were improved and made more generally available? And would this be an acceptable consequence?

I apologize, but I'm not 100% sure I grasp what you're asking here, but I'll try to answer.

Yes, if the procedures were more satisfactory, I would definitely move towards that (If I could afford it, which I can't) Although, not all transpeople are the same, I've known plenty of transpeople who actually want to keep their birth-given genitalia, there's more than a couple reasons for this, ranging from the fact that, for example, a neo-vagina is pretty high-maintenance, or maybe a transwoman is also lesbian/bisexual/pansexual, and find it useful to keep their male genitalia.

And if you're asking if the procedures were perfected, if not getting them would the community be less tolerant of those who opt out, I wouldn't think it would change, it's pretty widely-accepted within the community that, as I like to put it "It's what's between your ears, not what's between your legs" Of course, as I mentioned before, there's a certain elitist part of the community, but hey, point and laugh.

And as for general society, I think you answered that yourself below:

It might be a moot point, of course, since society at large seems pretty intolerant of "partial" transitions anyway. The particular societal change that interests me in this respect is precisely that of changing attitudes towards gender roles. Would there be less pressure to transition in a world where we don't mind so much whether you're strictly masculine or feminine? Or would we rather be more open towards transitioning towards a sexual identity that matches individual gender variations? It's not an easy thing to try to speculate on, or even to try to think about possible consequences.

Well, yes, I imagine there would be less pressure to pass in regards to gender presentation, but unfortunately, much of the pressure to transition, is a comfort thing, to feel comfortable in our own skin, to try to rid ourselves of this overwhelming sense of "wrongness" with our bodies.

But as you said, it's difficult (But totally interesting and thought-provoking) to think about what it would be like in different situations, and the like. I've actually had a chat with a friend the other week about how things would be different if society were different/perfect. They had put forth the idea that if we could wear a symbol of our gender, never got too much into it, just... a symbol, and that everyone would instantly know our genders, and what to correctly refer to each other as. But I know right off the bat, there would be people right withing the transcommunity itself that would be against that, that we shouldn't have to advertise, that we should just be able to be "normal" like everyone else (That's what we're striving towards anyway, to be ourselves first, and to have a normal life alongside) Then of course there's people who don't subscribe to binary gender, or gender roles, etc, etc... Yeah... pretty complicated, and it wouldn't solve the self-comfort issue anyway.

There's one other question I did have, though, which is about the apparent oddness of a transsexual "community". I mean, I accept that there is a clear and important function of being able to talk things over with fellow transsexual people for support and encouragement. But presumably a lot of people go into the transition process with the idea of passing as the other sex; potentially even to the point of keeping secret that they were ever a man in the first place. Doesn't this make relationships within the community rather turbulent?

Well, it can, and does at times. There can be a lot of flak directed at, and coming from those who manage to be perfectly passable *sigh* And leave the community behind. Some people can be pretty bitter about it, and resent them, but I think that mostly comes from those who have lost hope about transitioning/passing themselves. Although, any mature person can clearly see that's what most of us are aiming for, to blend in, to be "normal" And we should be happy for them.

Like I've mentioned, there's also some elitist groups and the like, which can cause all sorts of conflict. There's also those who may or may not pass, but are still open about their trans-status... and... sadly create animosity towards those who just want to be themselves, and live a "normal" life.

Personally, I have no hope of ever passing as a woman (I may have an extremely rare condition that blocks estrogen receptors in my cells, rendering part of HRT ineffective, my endocrinologist is still looking into it) But I've spent years of my life helping other people to transition, and try to get themselves into a "normal" existence...

I'd sooner sit and watch the birds soar, then try to fashion my own wings from the dirt...



Well, hope I answered your questions satisfactorily, feel free to ask more, or even message me with them if you feel the need(That's open to everyone) The way I see it, there's no way a legit question about myself, or this topic, that could ever be as offensive as the flak we get from people intentionally trying to insult myself/us.

 

[Something Amyss]

I do not doubt for one minute that hormones would have an impact on my cognitive state. In fact, the use of supplementary hormones seems to positively support my position that biology need have very little to do with the problem at hand of self-identity. We can overrule our current biological state through acts of will, should we be so inclined.

"Will" isn't enough. Intervention is needed. You just used it yourself as an argument.

So, medical intervention proves that medical intervention is unnecessary? You're talking in circles, trying to justify a stance that does not stand on its own.

 

[Something Amyss]

You can and many, I'm sure, do make that assertion, but saying it doesn't make it so.

Nope, but nor does it make it false. I have peer reviewed science on my side, and you have "an opinion."

Remind me which one of us is simply "saying" it.

Speaking of:

It is precisely because I love my children that I would affirm reality and try to help them reconcile their internal conflict with that reality.

Calling it "reality" does not make it so.

You are confusing what you WANT to be true with reality.

Sorry.

 

[Indeterminacy]

So, medical intervention proves that medical intervention is unnecessary?

In a sense, though we'd need to equivocate over "medical intervention" here to grasp my meaning. I'm not saying "we can cure this particular problem so we don't have to", but rather "our medical capability to manipulate physiology raises questions about whether we should use it to solve a particular problem".

Transsexualism is at least in some sense similar to questions of transhumanism and physical augmentation. I'm saying there is a need to weigh up the questions of whether it's a socially positive thing to widely develop or to encourage sexual reassignment procedures or not. And it seems right to me (just as it is for say mechanical limbs or embedding computation devices into human cognition) that there are considerable social problems that would be worsened by such procedures unless we deal with those problems first.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'd like to point something out here, Transgenderism isn't purely psychological. There are cases of over exposure to androgens in utero that result in the child having a predisposition towards being transgendered.

It's not really a predisposition, though. Hormonal influences in the womb are one factor in brain setups that simply identify as something different than the body you're born into. But predisposition? You kind of...Are or you aren't.

I'm afraid biology isn't really that cut and dry :/

Being trans can be caused by a variety of factors, and there is no sole cause discovered as of yet, hence why I left out the imperative of saying that the exposure to certain adrogens would directly result in transsexual/transgender-ism, as the child might live their lives as a cis-person and be perfectly happy, or they could not, as I said, biology isn't very cut and dry.

But still, there's no predisposition.

 

[Scrustle]

I'd probably be a bit weirded out at first but I wouldn't have a problem with it. I would just feel a bit awkward when they first tell me. I mean what would you say to that? I think I would just answer with something like "umm... okay then..."