If being transexual is so dangerous, why would anybody go in for that lifestyle?

[MikeSee]

TRAAAANS [B/]GENDER[/B]

I'm pretty sure...is the accepted vernacular

OT: I don't know...why don't you ask the gays?

Because Homoseuxality is seperate from Transgenderism. Gender does not equal sexuality. This means you can start out a boy who likes girls, then figure out you really are a girl, and still like girls. Thus you go from heterosexuality to Lesbianism when you switch your gender. Yes, yes gentle thing its so much more complex then what you can just scratch the surface on. Imagine the day you figure out that Gay people and trans people don't always get along, socially and politically too and the whole alies shit, is just PR a good 60% of the time (oh to start a thread on angry trans people getting riled up over marriage equality over their rites) LOL The drama is real.

 

[Vault101]

Because Homoseuxality is seperate from Transgenderism.

oh yeah, I knew that. I was sort of pointing out how the question could be considered rather silly if asked in regards to gay people

 

[MikeSee]

Because Homoseuxality is seperate from Transgenderism.

oh yeah, I knew that. I was sort of pointing out how the question could be considered rather silly if asked in regards to gay people

Oh ok, my bad ^_^

 

[inmunitas]

It seems more like people who claim to be transsexual just feel like they lack the stereotypical male/female traits that most people exhibit or expect and conclude that they're the one who is flawed as opposed to the distinction between men and women being mostly arbitrary as far as personality goes.

Uh, no. I'm a trans woman, and I fit a lot more gender roles assigned to men than women. I like fighting and contact sports, boxing especially. I'm terrible with kids, I generally dislike "women's clothing", I hate fashion, I hate big flashy weddings and those big, expensive dresses people wear one time for a wedding. I like dressy "men's clothing" like dress suits. I hate skirts and frilly shirts, I haven't worn shorts in years and I wear a hoodie everyday. I'd be in the military right now if transgender people were allowed, a combat position like 11B to be specific. I'm pretty far from what is typically deemed feminine, but that doesn't mean that I'm not trans.

Those are just personal preferences not "gender roles assigned to men than women". The concept of gender is based around stereotypical behaviour exhibited by men and women, it's not something society imposes upon you. They are just stereotypes, gender isn't something that actually exists, what you personally like and dislike is part of what defines you as a person.

 

[iller3]

Question all statistics. Especially questionaires

 

[Charli]

Imagine knowing that the sky is green. You see it as green, you're damn sure it is green, the doctors claim there's NOTHING wrong with your eyesight or colour perception. And yet everyone around you tells you it's blue.

You've seen green, you've compared it to objects that are infact...green. Yet you are still disbelieved. Are you going to just accept that it is blue and go along with what others claim just because they're giving you grief about it? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.
I'd first try to figure out if there IS anything wrong with me, and failing that, I'd just go on accepting that the sky is green in my world.

Transexual people feel that confusion and worry alot, and they should be supported without fear of nutters going out of their way to kill/rape/harass them.

So how about instead of asking 'why do they even do it', ask, why do murderers, rapists and thugs still even feel like this is in anyway acceptable behaviour. The answer? We don't do enough to discourage it by standing by them, so that needs to increase.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Sure, you may not get to live your life with the body you want to, but is it really worth all the time and money when all you get out of it is harrasment and abuse? It's not like it comes as a surprise how poorly treated trans people are.

So why would anybody look at all the mockery in the movies, abuse stories in the news, read all the horror stories on the forums and then think "yeah, I want in on all that"?

*facepalms at the OP, hasn't read the rest of the topic*

Let me put it like a trans friend of mine did.

Imagine that one day, you woke up as the opposite gender and everyone acts like you've always been your new gender. When you try to tell them that, no, you're not that gender, they laugh at you and tell you you're just being stupid and that you've always been your new gender, stop being silly and be a good little boy/girl.

Now imagine living that lie for your entire life.

If you're male now, imagine having people question if you're actually a fan of traditionally male things (sports, FPS games, etc) because you present as a girl, imagine people looking down on you for refusing to dress up pretty when going out to formal events like a friend's wedding, imagine your married-with-kids friends or family constantly asking when you're going to get married and have babies like it's the only thing that matters, imagine how awkward dating would be, etc.

If you're female now, imagine never being able to dress up pretty (if you enjoy that) because everyone will treat you like a freak (and trying to pass as female when you're male is super hard too), imagine being called a pussy for not being a stoic brute caveman by lots of males, imagine how hard dating will be, imagine how so much of society expects you to be dominant in your personal life your dating life and your professional life when you might very well not lean that way, etc.

Your gender determines a LOT about how people perceive you and treat you. It's not like some deviant kink or BDSM fixation that you can hide and then indulge in secret with like-minded friends. Your gender is a huge part of your personal identity and REALLY influences how people treat you, and it's not something that you can hide.

If your inner and outer sex/gender don't match, then you're forced to put on an act for the world and pretend to be something you're not and suppress what you are. Doing that for too long drives you crazy and makes you miserable and hate your life, because you're not allowed to relax your guard and just be yourself.

Trans people aren't trying to "change genders" because they think it'd be more fun to be the other one. They're trying to become what they know they ARE.

 

[TWRule]

The reason transgender people are open about being transgender is mostly the existential idea of authenticity. Being honest with yourself and presenting yourself honestly might reduce the amount of tolerance you'll get, but it'll also mean that those that love you and the love you feel for yourself is just more genuine.

I think there is some confusion regarding this idea of 'authenticity', and it's a confusion that is centrally important to issues of identity in general. Whether or not you meant it this way, I think some clarification is called for.

The common-sense idea of 'authenticity' assumes that there is some stable, unchangeable 'true', 'core', or 'essential' self that we ought to act and think in accordance with, identify ourselves with, in order to be 'authentic'.

This is *not* the idea of 'authenticity' spoken of in existential philosophy - in fact, thinkers like Sartre explicitly took issue with such a notion. If human beings have radical freedom to shape themselves, as existentialists hold they do, then it is basically nonsensical to speak of a 'true' self - each of us is constantly changing, and ultimately we have the freedom to construct and constantly re-construct (or change) how we understand ourselves.

Sartre would argue that someone saying "no, I am not a man, I am a woman", for example, and subsequently acting out the part of what they thought constituted 'womanhood' (say, dressing a certain way, behaving a certain way, making sure they look the part, etc.), would be in 'bad faith' (deluding themselves about what they are), because they have just exchanged one objectifying label for another in the same way someone could say "no, I am not a lamp, I am a salt-shaker". Sartre corrects: you are not this thing nor that thing, you are an existentially free human being - an a perpetual whirlwind of change. There isn't any way that you can deliberately 'present yourself' that will not already be simply you acting out a caricature of yourself.

This comes back to the issue Kopikatsu raised; if there isn't any essential 'you' that you need to surgically alter your body and/or put forward a certain set of theatrics (to meet social expectations) to supposedly live in harmony with, then what exactly is the concern that is being addressed by going through all this? Why should someone considering going through all that have confidence that their identity will somehow gain 'stability' - that their anxiety over identity will be calmed?

In discussions like this, many simply try to sweep such questions under the rug by making the move to deny the possibility of the more robust existential freedom thinkers like Sartre champion, often by claiming that things like gender are purely 'biologically hardwired' and thus supposedly outside the realm of human freedom, though this strikes me as a move made from desperation to stop the questioning and to stave off a perceived risk of persecution more so than from any genuine attempt to express the attitude which commands how they understand themselves.

Why not just allow that you cannot be put into any box rather than go through a lot of trouble to insist that others sort you into the "right" box?

 

[Rosiv]

The reason transgender people are open about being transgender is mostly the existential idea of authenticity. Being honest with yourself and presenting yourself honestly might reduce the amount of tolerance you'll get, but it'll also mean that those that love you and the love you feel for yourself is just more genuine.

I think there is some confusion regarding this idea of 'authenticity', and it's a confusion that is centrally important to issues of identity in general. Whether or not you meant it this way, I think some clarification is called for.

The common-sense idea of 'authenticity' assumes that there is some stable, unchangeable 'true', 'core', or 'essential' self that we ought to act and think in accordance with, identify ourselves with, in order to be 'authentic'.

This is *not* the idea of 'authenticity' spoken of in existential philosophy - in fact, thinkers like Sartre explicitly took issue with such a notion. If human beings have radical freedom to shape themselves, as existentialists hold they do, then it is basically nonsensical to speak of a 'true' self - each of us is constantly changing, and ultimately we have the freedom to construct and constantly re-construct (or change) how we understand ourselves.

Sartre would argue that someone saying "no, I am not a man, I am a woman", for example, and subsequently acting out the part of what they thought constituted 'womanhood' (say, dressing a certain way, behaving a certain way, making sure they look the part, etc.), would be in 'bad faith' (deluding themselves about what they are), because they have just exchanged one objectifying label for another in the same way someone could say "no, I am not a lamp, I am a salt-shaker". Sartre corrects: you are not this thing nor that thing, you are an existentially free human being - an a perpetual whirlwind of change. There isn't any way that you can deliberately 'present yourself' that will not already be simply you acting out a caricature of yourself.

This comes back to the issue Kopikatsu raised; if there isn't any essential 'you' that you need to surgically alter your body and/or put forward a certain set of theatrics (to meet social expectations) to supposedly live in harmony with, then what exactly is the concern that is being addressed by going through all this? Why should someone considering going through all that have confidence that their identity will somehow gain 'stability' - that their anxiety over identity will be calmed?

In discussions like this, many simply try to sweep such questions under the rug by making the move to deny the possibility of the more robust existential freedom thinkers like Sartre champion, often by claiming that things like gender are purely 'biologically hardwired' and thus supposedly outside the realm of human freedom, though this strikes me as a move made from desperation to stop the questioning and to stave off a perceived risk of persecution more so than from any genuine attempt to express the attitude which commands how they understand themselves.

Why not just allow that you cannot be put into any box rather than go through a lot of trouble to insist that others sort you into the "right" box?

Philosophy was never my strong suit, although I did enjoy reading it.

To be honest, I don't think I understood you perfectly, but as for your end point I don't think that is very fair, if you are directing that to trans people that is.

I mean, cis-women focus on being seen as women by dressing as women, if someone focuses on something, it means they want to be seen as such no?

So I feel the same should be applied to trans women, since they make the genuine attempt to be seen as women.

I guess if I am being too rambly, identity matters for people, which is why they like the label. For a trans women to accept a neutral identity seems a bit too defeatest, given we do not expect cis-women to do the same.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Why not just allow that you cannot be put into any box rather than go through a lot of trouble to insist that others sort you into the "right" box?

Mostly because society and centuries of ingrained instincts keep going "No, screw you. Get in your neatly defined box like a good little man/woman!"

Society likes labels because it makes identifying things so much easier which in turn makes life simpler.

Although really, I wish that the whole "society likes neatly defined boxes" thing went the way of the dodo. It irritates the hell out of me when people question if I'm actually asexual because I care much more deeply about the emotional aspects of relationships rather than all the free sex I could be having instead. -_-

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Why not just allow that you cannot be put into any box rather than go through a lot of trouble to insist that others sort you into the "right" box?

Mostly because society and centuries of ingrained instincts keep going "No, screw you. Get in your neatly defined box like a good little man/woman!"

Society likes labels because it makes identifying things so much easier which in turn makes life simpler.

Although really, I wish that the whole "society likes neatly defined boxes" thing went the way of the dodo. It irritates the hell out of me when people question if I'm actually asexual because I care much more deeply about the emotional aspects of relationships rather than all the free sex I could be having instead. -_-

Actually there are several factors. But the most important is actually because at a very young age we're given specific rules for both sexes, and actively discouraged from breaking them. The really irritating part is that while these standards have loosened for females, they if anything, have gotten tighter for males. Then when you don't identify as with your birth sex there is a social stigma against breaking the rules, but wanting something that is seen as unnatural. What really sucks is that society is moving slowly to accepting transsexuals, but that's to the exclusion to other subsets of transgenderism and breaking of gender rules. Which is really damaging for people like me who aren't for what ever reason interested in sexual reassignment through surgical means, but still identify as the opposite gender we were born as. I have gender dysphoria, but my plumbing isn't the defining factor in my personal gender identity, which actually makes me marginalized by the portion of the trans community that thinks it's the only way. That portion that insists on surgical sexual reassignment is as it happens, the loudest portion of the trans community.

 

[TWRule]

Philosophy was never my strong suit, although I did enjoy reading it.

To be honest, I don't think I understood you perfectly, but as for your end point I don't think that is very fair, if you are directing that to trans people that is.

I mean, cis-women focus on being seen as women by dressing as women, if someone focuses on something, it means they want to be seen as such no?

So I feel the same should be applied to trans women, since they make the genuine attempt to be seen as women.

I guess if I am being too rambly, identity matters for people, which is why they like the label. For a trans women to accept a neutral identity seems a bit too defeatest, given we do not expect cis-women to do the same.

My point was that slapping a label or a series of labels on yourself (or insisting that others do so) does not constitute constructing a properly-human identity. No labels can adequately describe a unique human person - they are only as meaningful to our identities as we decide to limit ourselves to thinking they are - and we are needlessly limiting our conception of human potential by doing so.

So yes, this means that if it is foolish and counterproductive for a self-described 'transwoman' to dress and act in a certain way in hopes of being taken as a 'woman', then it is equally foolish for a supposed 'cis-woman' to do the same. That is not to take a 'neutral' identity; to take oneself as a unique human person is not 'neutrality' - there are no 'charges' other than those we deliberately delineate. In other words: we are human beings more 'essentially' than we are gendered and the like - and we are each unique in much more profound ways than what a label could ever capture.

Why not just allow that you cannot be put into any box rather than go through a lot of trouble to insist that others sort you into the "right" box?

Mostly because society and centuries of ingrained instincts keep going "No, screw you. Get in your neatly defined box like a good little man/woman!"

Society likes labels because it makes identifying things so much easier which in turn makes life simpler.

Yes, but we are talking about self-understanding and how that is expressed. Sure, I still have to check the box labeled 'male' on legal documents, and I know to respond when people refer to me as "He", etc., but I can and do distinguish between those social categories and my actual existence. I wear clothes that comfortably fit my body and won't draw unwanted attention to me in the given social contexts I enter into (though if I had my way, the average person would be free to wear pajamas around all day), not because I'm especially 'trying to be a man'. Sure, we have to put up with small-mindedness about such things here and there still, but I prefer to maintain my integrity wherever possible rather than attempt to cater to every absurd social expectation of me - however real or imagined.

 

[Dizchu]

My point was that slapping a label or a series of labels on yourself (or insisting that others do so) does not constitute constructing a properly-human identity. No labels can adequately describe a unique human person - they are only as meaningful to our identities as we decide to limit ourselves to thinking they are - and we are needlessly limiting our conception of human potential by doing so.

Ehhh, it depends. Sometimes labels can give context to somebody's life, especially ones as anthropologically significant as genders. Rather than a limit it could end up being a starting point someone could elaborate on. And that's just considering the individual's own self-perception, gender identity also influences how they are treated by others.

 

[TWRule]

My point was that slapping a label or a series of labels on yourself (or insisting that others do so) does not constitute constructing a properly-human identity. No labels can adequately describe a unique human person - they are only as meaningful to our identities as we decide to limit ourselves to thinking they are - and we are needlessly limiting our conception of human potential by doing so.

Ehhh, it depends. Sometimes labels can give context to somebody's life, especially ones as anthropologically significant as genders. Rather than a limit it could end up being a starting point someone could elaborate on. And that's just considering the individual's own self-perception, gender identity also influences how they are treated by others.

I was only discussing self-perception at the moment so things like 'anthropological significance' have no bearing. I'm not sure what sort of 'context' you are referring to or how one might elaborate on such simple categories other than deconstructing and ultimately either completely redefining them or otherwise transcending the need to use them in building identity. Maybe you could give an example of what you mean?

 

[Schadrach]

Gonna be honest, I think you might actually be trying to be savvy here and are playing devils advocate. Directly bringing parallels to old "Why not just not be gay?" thing from decades ago.

Nice idea, but I don't really think the Escapist is the right audience. I don't think even the anti-trans members will agree with you here.

We have anti-trans members? They don't seem to come out and play too often. Or maybe I just miss the right threads.

I remember from a survey a while back that we, for whatever reason, have a much higher than average number of trans folk on the forums.

 

[Thaluikhain]

We have anti-trans members? They don't seem to come out and play too often. Or maybe I just miss the right threads.

Well, depends what you mean by anti-trans. We don't have many "kill them all" sorts, but we've got plenty who actively don't care about people who are.

I remember from a survey a while back that we, for whatever reason, have a much higher than average number of trans folk on the forums.

Well, or at least the survery did.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

The reason transgender people are open about being transgender is mostly the existential idea of authenticity. Being honest with yourself and presenting yourself honestly might reduce the amount of tolerance you'll get, but it'll also mean that those that love you and the love you feel for yourself is just more genuine.

I think there is some confusion regarding this idea of 'authenticity', and it's a confusion that is centrally important to issues of identity in general. Whether or not you meant it this way, I think some clarification is called for.

The common-sense idea of 'authenticity' assumes that there is some stable, unchangeable 'true', 'core', or 'essential' self that we ought to act and think in accordance with, identify ourselves with, in order to be 'authentic'.

This is *not* the idea of 'authenticity' spoken of in existential philosophy -

You're getting your philosophers mixed up. Beauvoir is typically the one that most trans people lift up in terms of authenticity. Though I would much prefer Nietzsche's chaos of self to exist as a being of one's own virtue (for me, personally speaking). The thing is, that trans people face an existential crisis each day until they begin to transition, trying to marry flesh with mind. It's not something that is merely the assumption of tropes, but rather self-construction.

Trans people do not desire some 'trope' of manhood/womanhood, infact I would say ALL trans desire a Kierkegaard-esque removal of despair. In the same way that Kierkegaard lifted the Bible as one way to remove oneself from despair, so do trans people seek a transtion from a state of knowing despair, to a state where it represents the path of least resistance.

Whether that be from external or internal reasons, or a combination of the two, matters not. But the idea of authenticity makes sense as Beauvoir meant it to mean when comparable to the nature of being for trans people. The freedom from essentialist ideas of the notions of self, and rather adopting liberty to self-expression. As long as one's character serves to emphasise, properly construct, and inevitably be true to their nature through it's construction, then that's all that matters.

It's not about tropes, but rather finding the path of least obstacles which inevitably moves towards a state of being as free as possible from despair.

(Edit) I would also say that I find your general idea of authenticity to be kind of broken from personal experience. The basics of existence preceding essence means there should be inherent rights of self-categorization (focus on the self, not subjective appraisal by others), if it means a greater ability to express oneself. Which is why labels can be a powerful means of expression rather than a limiter on it in many aspects.

Being able to say one is trans is empowering in a sense that it actually leads one to being able to change their perceived character, to have it validated as true, and thus best suited their nature as they feel they wish to construct and express it.