Having difficulty understanding transgendered people? I'll try to help.

shrekfan246

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thaluikhain said:
However, my question was because, well, they were a man before, weren't they, just nobody knew or admitted it or something?
I don't have an answer for your original question, but as far as I understand it "they were a man before" isn't technically correct. Physically, perhaps, but I would say that the crux of what makes all of this a problem in the first place is that people seem to define gender and sexuality far too heavily based on physicality. To use my own anecdotal evidence, I have a family member who is trans. He was raised female, but was always masculine in mannerisms. It wasn't until he had turned nineteen that he finally understood what was going on, but that doesn't mean he was strictly speaking a girl until that point.

Now, I imagine everyone will have a different take on how you should refer to them with relation to their past, but I believe that most trans people prefer to uniformly unite their pronouns. "When you were a man" and other such similar phrases tend to just reopen the proverbial wounds, as it were, and in most cases of casual conversation are relatively easily avoided.
 

Thaluikhain

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shrekfan246 said:
thaluikhain said:
However, my question was because, well, they were a man before, weren't they, just nobody knew or admitted it or something?
I don't have an answer for your original question, but as far as I understand it "they were a man before" isn't technically correct.
Yeah, that was a typo, should have been "were a woman". I've edited my original post.
 

necromanzer52

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
or it can apply exclusively to people who want gender reassignment surgery.
This is actually something I've been wondering about lately. I've been reading a webcomic called validation, which is about a transwoman. It's been quite interesting and I've learned a fair bit, but one thing that confused me is that she mentions she still has a dick and has no intention of changing that. Now, obviously that's her choice, but it seems to me that if you feel like you were born as the wrong sex that having the wrong genitals would be one of, if not the most important aspect of that. Maybe you could shed some light on this?
 

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ShyGuy said:
Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but you mentionned that there were people born with two Y chromosomes and no X. How functional are those people? I seem to recall that the Y chromosome is much shorter than the X chromosome, and therefore, such people would lack an important amount of genetic information.
That part must be a mistake on behalf of the OP, it is impossible for a human to survive to even birth with no X chromosome, there's too many important genes carried only on the X. There are men with an XYY combination, so that may be what the OP means, the rest of what she said about XX men, XY women and such is all correct though.
 

shrekfan246

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thaluikhain said:
shrekfan246 said:
thaluikhain said:
However, my question was because, well, they were a man before, weren't they, just nobody knew or admitted it or something?
I don't have an answer for your original question, but as far as I understand it "they were a man before" isn't technically correct.
Yeah, that was a typo, should have been "were a woman". I've edited my original post.
Ah, okay. In which case, yeah, sorry I don't have an answer for you. I'd be a little interested in that myself, really, if only because I know how sensitive a subject it can be if the conversation absolutely can't avoid bringing it up.
 

Holy_Handgrenade

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Hey, I am actually thankful for this opportunity, the few people I know who are transgender in real life I shy away from asking these questions for fear of offending. I fully understand and accept that people identify with a sex different from that which they were given at birth and we should help in every way we can for them to feel comfortable in their own bodies and be the sex they identify with. What I'm not 100% on is non binary this is largely just as I kind of view sex as pretty binary in that your parts can be male, female or in rare cases in between. I see gender as a social construct and that it doesn't really exist what sex you are exists and I think you should be able to change such. I see myself as possessing both traditionally masculine and feminine traits as I think almost everyone does but sex wise I identify as male. What I don't understand is when it comes to non binary people who are talking about gender why can't they say my sex is male or female but I have traits that are both masculine and feminine (if they want to literally be somewhere in between sex wise i.e hermiphrodite or some such that is A-Okay with me I was just wondering about the gender side). Also this might just be exposure to the more extreme opinions because no trans people I've met in person have said this but why are some trans people that against stating your sex in capacities where it is required such as medical in the UK under the NHS. Like just say I identify with this sex but currently I possess the physical attributes of this sex. Or if they have physically transitioned say I am now this sex but I was this sex? Thanks again if anything I've said is insensitive in anyway please call me out.
 

Kanova

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I find Transphobia isn't actually a phobia, more like the person hates and finds trans disgusting.
"I am not going to other myself by counting you as "normal" for being born and feeling one way"
Well, straights are normal, whether someone likes it or not. That is the way people are supposed to be, and how the majority of people are. So that makes it normal. Being anything else is arguably an error in your mind and body. Now, I fall into the uncomfortable around trans people category. I don't have anything against you people, but I just can't stand being in the presence of them. I just find it disturbing. If you are a man, no amount of dick taping or hormones will change that. And seeing men go to the extent some do to be a different sex is just weird to me. Just how I am, no scare, no problem.
 

Queen Michael

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
We're all humans, but some people identify as non-human animals, or objects, for example.
Surely that must be totally different, though? I know several trans people, and they all actually behave as the gender they identify as. For instance, my pal Jacob goes to the grocery store, plays computer games, takes care of his pets and watches TV, just like other men do.[footnote]As do women too, of course, but that's beside the point.[/footnote] People who identiy as cats, though, don't act like cats[footnote]Except for sometimes making an active effort to be catlike by for instance meowing, which isn't the same thing as a cat meowing because it's the only way of talking that a cat knows.[/footnote] or think like them and -- no offense intended -- pretty clearly just want to be one, which isn't the same thing as being one.
 

Korenith

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Thank you. That was interesting. I don't have anything more to add really and I worry about the path this thread could take pretty sharpish but I found that worth reading and wanted to say so before it all kicks off.
 

Amaror

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Ok i have a question, or rather more your opinion on something.
Back in, what in America would probably be high school, we had a girl in our class that as it turned out identified as a man.
Now over the time this lead to various complications, mainly with certain things that were based on gender. For example the changing room before sport or the public bathroom at the school.
I'll just refer to the person as a girl from now on, since that's what i started with, i hope that's not insensitive.
So as the time went on and she started the transision, she didn't tell anyone but you could notice, there arose these problems. She had confessed her love for one of the girls in our class, that girl was her best friend before, so they didn't feel that comfortable having her in their changing room. But the boys didn't really want her in their changing room either, after all she was still a girl.
She ended up dressing by herself before sport.
This is just a short story of what happened, it was obviously more complicated with more "stages" in between. But i am curious about your opinion to this subject. Because personally i think a lot of people that are uncomfortable with transgender people are most uncomfortable with the transition. When does a person stop being female and start being male? When the person identifies as the other gender, but clearly still has the original body?
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Twintix said:
elvor0 said:
"don't call it a girl! let it decide!"
This attitude, I feel, will only do more harm than it will do good.

Here in Sweden, a few years back, there was a couple who gave birth to a child, named it Storm and refused to tell anybody what gender the baby was with the movitation: "He/she sould be able to decide on hir own when the time comes".
That's...not how it's going to work, I think. Isn't it easier to decide if you're the "wrong gender" if you know what gender you are from the start?

This is not going to help the child, it'll just confuse it. You can't just pretend that biological gender doesn't exist, that's not how it works. Storm should be school-age about now, what about changing rooms? How will he/she know where to change clothes, or do the parents mean that he/she should use whichever changing room he/she feels like using at the moment? And even then, he/she will probably see the other kids without clothes and see if there are...certain parts missing from hir body.
Or what, do the parents want hir to change in the bathroom or something? That'll only isolate hir, I think.
(I am speaking about this child, by the way. If you're transgendered, of course you should use the changing room that is meant for the gender you identify as. But here, I think it'll just lead to confusion.)

As good-natured as it may be, this just feels like an attempt at forcing the child into transgenderism, actually. Then again, it has been, like, 6 years, so I don't know if it worked out in the end.
I sort of see the point, given that a lot of the things we assume corresponding with gender are a whole lot of fallacious stuff mized in with a whole lot of self-construction and enculturation. There is no set transcendental ideality of womanhood beyond what the individual can conjure. The act of being woman, also, differs from society to society.

So I sort of see the benefit. It's kind of like; "We've been doing this thing for millenia. Treating people as if they should be, or ought to be, due to something that isn't actually elected into or self-chosen. Maybe we need a new approach?"

I have no problems leaving gender off birth records, and I don't really think it 'pushes' anyone into being transgender as much given boys will identify with how they think being a boy is, and girls will identify with how they think being girl is, and people who identify as neither don't feel they need to because their parents haven't sign a box that every level of government will think of you as. So I don't think it's going to cause anymore problems than what currently exists, which I'm going to labour is nil from the perspective of the person who is transgender.

Speaking from a purely clerical perspective, it makes sense given it's a PAIN IN THE ARSE (Need to emphasise, I really do) to get official documentation changes in ANY country. Governments have an invested interest in owning and cataloguing you, and typically make it hard for anybody that wants to screw up their categorizations of people. Course this will likely still be the case if the parents wait till their offspring elect a categorization if they choose to do so, and go through the process of having it done.

(Edit) I see a massive benefit in Australia. We have gender neutral passports, and gender neutral options in birth record forms. Naturally this throws a wrench into the bureaucratic cogs that is Australian Marriage Laws of which can't even get around to gay marriage. So by having a gender neutral option there, it will likely expediate that process of granting equal rights under the law for homosexual partnerships.
 

Combustion Kevin

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I'm dutch and I use my pronouns biologically, we have no word that describes gender as opposed to sex.

This concept seems offensive to a lot of people. >>
Areloch said:
Can we stop making sex and gender be the exact same thing?

I think that only serves to over complicate things. Sex is the physical, biological aspect of what you are - male or female - while gender is the mental, psychological aspect. They tie together but aren't the same.

You can be the feminine gender all day as much as you want, but that'll never make you the female sex - in context of the lion suckling example provided in the OP.
In my opinion, the terms "Masculine" and "Feminine" apply to someone's collective personality traits, being a man or woman is purely biological.
Showing feminine traits doesn't make you any less of a man, and you shouldn't be shamed for it either, however you wish to express it, but the fact remains that you are a man.

Let me share my perspective on this: the effects of being a man or woman have on your personality are both social and biological, right?
The way society responds to either sex shapes your perception on what it means to be either, and the way your hormones affect your mind can help give shape to your personality and behaviour, but fundamentally, people are psychologically "Human".

The only instance in which we gender our psyche is when we decide to do so, same way we decided to gender personality traits, my advice would be to distance yourself from these concepts and not gender yourself outright.

To me, "man" and "woman" is what you're simply born with, if you think you would be happier in another body than the one you're born with then you should go for it, keeping in mind you did your research and and prepared accordingly, you psyche and personality however, are human, no matter the traits you may express.
 

Areloch

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PaulH said:
Twintix said:
elvor0 said:
"don't call it a girl! let it decide!"
This attitude, I feel, will only do more harm than it will do good.

Here in Sweden, a few years back, there was a couple who gave birth to a child, named it Storm and refused to tell anybody what gender the baby was with the movitation: "He/she sould be able to decide on hir own when the time comes".
That's...not how it's going to work, I think. Isn't it easier to decide if you're the "wrong gender" if you know what gender you are from the start?

This is not going to help the child, it'll just confuse it. You can't just pretend that biological gender doesn't exist, that's not how it works. Storm should be school-age about now, what about changing rooms? How will he/she know where to change clothes, or do the parents mean that he/she should use whichever changing room he/she feels like using at the moment? And even then, he/she will probably see the other kids without clothes and see if there are...certain parts missing from hir body.
Or what, do the parents want hir to change in the bathroom or something? That'll only isolate hir, I think.
(I am speaking about this child, by the way. If you're transgendered, of course you should use the changing room that is meant for the gender you identify as. But here, I think it'll just lead to confusion.)

As good-natured as it may be, this just feels like an attempt at forcing the child into transgenderism, actually. Then again, it has been, like, 6 years, so I don't know if it worked out in the end.
I sort of see the point, given that a lot of the things we assume corresponding with gender are a whole lot of fallacious stuff mized in with a whole lot of self-construction and enculturation. There is no set transcendental ideality of womanhood beyond what the individual can conjure. The act of being woman, also, differs from society to society.

So I sort of see the benefit. It's kind of like; "We've been doing this thing for millenia. Treating people as if they should be, or ought to be, due to something that isn't actually elected into or self-chosen. Maybe we need a new approach?"

I have no problems leaving gender off birth records, and I don't really think it 'pushes' anyone into being transgender as much given boys will identify with how they think being a boy is, and girls will identify with how they think being girl is, and people who identify as neither don't feel they need to because their parents haven't sign a box that every level of government will think of you as. So I don't think it's going to cause anymore problems than what currently exists, which I'm going to labour is nil from the perspective of the person who is transgender.

Speaking from a purely clerical perspective, it makes sense given it's a PAIN IN THE ARSE (Need to emphasise this given the horror stories of the days spent waiting and the hours spent queueing in lines) to get official documentation changes in ANY country. Governments have an invested interest in owning and cateloguing you, and typically make it hard for anybody that wants to screw up their categorizations of people. Course this will likely still be the case if the parents wait till their offspring elect a categorization if they choose to do so, and go through the process of having it done.
Or you can record the medical sex at time of bith, like I'm sure those forms are actually doing, and be done with it. What potential issues crop up later in life has no impact on their medical sex at the time.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Areloch said:
Or you can record the medical sex at time of bith, like I'm sure those forms are actually doing, and be done with it. What potential issues crop up later in life has no impact on their medical sex at the time.
I'd personally have no problem with this if said diagnosis wasn't then treated as a core characteristic of the person in other forms of bureaucracy. If it was solely for medical perspectives of the individual, I'd be down with that. Given that it is in the direct pursuit of wellbeing, but it makes little sense going beyond this also.

(Edit) Better yet, given they have karyotype testing as standard, why not just do that and have a seperate box for gender? That thing that governments will use for dictating to the individual. Or mpore to the point, why not just scrap gender box all together?

Make it something one chooses at 18, as part of voting registry application. At the very least it would mean less time spent having to change names, gender, etc? If gender is going to be that which how the self identifies. Most kids have themselves figured out by 18, and by that time they're already adults anyways... not only that, but beyond education and medicine, there's no point of looking at kids as sexed creatures.
 

CrystalShadow

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Silentpony said:
What happens if I self-identify as someone who doesn't believe you're trans-gendered?
Couldn't I say that you disagreeing with me is bigoted, maybe even prejudiced?
~facepalm~ That's like asking if it's bigoted to take issue with a racist being racist...

Altough... Taking what you said literally actually makes no sense whatsoever. That's like pointing at a cat and saying "I don't believe that's a cat".
Poor choice of words, to say the least... >_>

Though in general I see little reason to be tolerant of intolerance. Although that position is of course a paradox if taken literally. (if you're intolerant of intolerance you end up being intolerant of yourself...)
Anyway, tolerating the right of someone to be a dick to others for some arbitrary reason just doesn't seem like a good idea.


Areloch said:
Can we stop making sex and gender be the exact same thing?

I think that only serves to over complicate things. Sex is the physical, biological aspect of what you are - male or female - while gender is the mental, psychological aspect. They tie together but aren't the same.

You can be the feminine gender all day as much as you want, but that'll never make you the female sex - in context of the lion suckling example provided in the OP.
Not the best example, given that there's demonstrated proof of men lactating under various circumstances.
I don't find it an especially compelling argument either, given how it demands an entirely functional concept of what a person's sex is.

Does this mean post-menopausal women aren't female? Are men who have lost their genitals in some kind of accident no longer male? Because the logic of what you just said definitely implies it.

Although, if you take it as an aggregate of everything together that makes someone male or female, then you couldn't attain a full change, but you could arguably attain a statistically significant biological change, where it becomes increasingly absurd to maintain that position...

Biology, especially with a subject like this is far from absolute. There's a lot of middle ground, and the harder you try to make an obvious binary situation out of it, the more absurd the reasoning starts to get.

So really, can a person change their biological sex is more of a philosophical or ideological question than a scientific one. Because the belief in such a distinct either/or binary definition of sex isn't particularly scientific, and can only result from picking and choosing your definitions in rather arbitrary ways.

For instance, according to the fundamental cellular definition, a female cell is one capable of unaided self-replication. While a male cell is one that has become too small to still divide itself, and must rely on another cell to do so.

That doesn't sound all that confusing, until your realise that almost ALL cells are female by this definition...
Follow through with the implications of that, and you have to wonder how a being composed of cells that are almost entirely female can ever be male...

There are of course other definitions too... Genetics. Where in humans, one of the chromosome pairs varies between the sexes, and the female will typically have an XX pair, and the male XY.
Though... The Y chromosome is a degenerate X chromosome that has become almost non-functional, so in fact nearly all the genetic information that controls the process that turns a foetus into a male or a female is spread through the entire genome, and the Y chromosome acts as little more than an 'on' switch.
Which of course brings us to the developmental process where a foetus initially develops a combination of ambiguous and dual genital structures (some, such as the gonads and erectile tissue are the same structure initially, but develop differently under the influence of prenatal hormone exposure. Others, such as the Wolffian ducts and Müllerian ducts initially develop in everyone, but depending on which sex the foetus ends up being, one develops into various structures, and the other attrophies)

The nearly the entire sexual development process is dictated by prenatal exposure to testosterone...
And hormonal exposure during puberty completes the process and develops the secondary sexual characteristics that adults have, but children lack...

Given how complex this process is, how many elements does it take before you can claim someone is or is not a member of a given sex?
Sure, you can pick something specific, but that leads to weird convoluted situations, or definitions that are absurd even in the majority situation.

-Genetics? That's an invisible trait, and most people would have no clue what their genetic code actually says they are. They would be working it out in reverse from more obvious physical traits... (which raises the question of why even bother with the genetics if that's not what you're using in the first place)
-Reproductive ability? That's just one whole big can of worms considering all the various reasons someone can be entirely infertile. And besides which it would mean the only way to conclusively prove someone's sex is if they had a child...
Presence of reproductive cells of a specific type? Less problematic, but there's still a lot of room to exclude lots of people from being anything at all?
-Genitals? ... OK, how do you define what any given sex's genitals are meant to look like? And what do you do with surgically created genitals, whose appearance may not be distinguishable from anyone else's except to experts? Even then, what does it really prove one way or another if they ARE surgically created? After all, if it's being used as a defining characteristic, how can it be argued that changing what's there doesn't also change what physical sex you are?
-Other sexually dimorphic characteristics... This is even worse, because depending on what you're using, you could define a lot of people as something that by current logic would make no sense. (manboobs, anyone?). If you use a combination of traits, you end up right back where you started, because that's ambiguous. If you measure 8 traits, and 4 imply one thing, and 4 the other, what then?
- behaviour... Don't even get started on this... To begin with behaviour is one of the least stable things here. Even if a person has some instincts related to their sex, amongst populations as a whole most such traits would vary considerably, and people could even hide or alter them on purpose with considerably less effort than physical traits...

Anyway, I have to wonder why people are so convinced you can't change biological sex. Have those of you so certain of this actually really considered what your implied definitions would have to be to make that true?
You either have to have some really misleading and problematic definitions, or worse, you don't have a clear definition at all, and keep changing what your definition is (either because you don't really know what it should be, or deliberately for some ideologically based reason)

But that's just it. It's an ideological or philosophical point, nothing more.
Depending on what you choose to make your definition of what male and female are, you may change who does and does not belong to either category. But regardless, edge cases are inevitable, and there really isn't any way to claim your specific definition is valid even in a biological sense.
(besides which, lots of people have a tendency to point out things as biological fact that are provably untrue. Such as... Men being unable to breastfeed. Which simply isn't true in the slightest. It's not easy to make it possible, and it's questionable whether it's a good idea to do it even if you can, but that's a completely different issue to stating it to be outright impossible)

Anyway, I just wish more people could admit that their definition is not some kind irrefutable fact.
Quite the opposite.

You can't really discuss something if people insist on treating something as factual that isn't.

My definition of sex is somewhat arbitrary. But, so is yours. They likely have some basis in biological fact, but the nature of sex as a concept inherently renders it impossible to have a single 'correct' definition.
Some definitions are certainly less problematic than others, but that still doesn't make them factual rather than ideological in nature.

It is what it is. It shouldn't matter anyway, unless it rubs up against some practical concern.
And the only real practical concern I can think of with regard to the question of what a transgender person is, (or isn't), is where the subject of having children comes in.
Which... Honestly, largely comes down to the same questions you'd be faced if you found your partner turned out to be completely infertile.

The reasons are likely to be different, but the issues are largely the same....

Aside from that every other aspect of arguing about whether they are male or female is of little to no relevance in any biological sense anyway. It's a social and cultural issue...
 

Kathinka

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I like the post! Just wanted to point out something nitpicky, as a med student:

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Some men are born with two Y chromosomes and no X Chromosome
Narp! This is not possible, for several reasons. You can have a whole mess of XXY, XYY, XXXY or XXX oddities, but YY isn't something that could occur. It's chiefly impossible because the X chromosome, simply put contains important information of how to actually assemble all the parts of the baby. Besides the fact that the female parent always contributes an X Chromosome.
 

Kameburger

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Personally I like what you're doing, and while I never felt uncomfortable with trans-individuals conceptually speaking, I do feel like there is a gap in how I see trans-folk and how they might see themselves.

So my question is this. Why use the word trans at all? I feel like I know many people who come out as trans but I suppose it's easier for me to wrap my head around the idea that you simply just are what you are. If you feel like you are a man inside and you want to be that man that you feel you are, then I'm going to treat you like a man, end of story. If you feel like you're a woman then I don't see anything weird about treating you that way. But I feel like trans doesn't accurately define someone to me as an identity and I don't quite get it. This may sound stupid and irrelevant but you wouldn't call a Caterpillar in a cocoon a trans-butterfly. I guess my point is: doesn't basing an identity around the transformative process rather then the persons own identity undermine the concept of wanting to be who you feel on the inside and instead solidify yourself as an "other" so to speak? I'm sorry if this seems offensive but this is seriously what not just myself but a few others I know are thinking and it's not easy to ask this kind of a question.
 

Angelowl

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thaluikhain said:
TranshumanistG said:
What I find hard to wrap my head around is how transgenderism(I'm probably misusing the term, but what I mean is identifying one's gender as opposite of the assigned gender but don't wish to do any reassignment surgeries) fits in with feminism, particularly, the rejection of gender roles and not letting the gender define how one should act and live. For instance, if you conflate identifying as a female with 'feminine' behaviour, doesn't it support a gender role stereotype? Or is this completely different from how transgender people put their self-identification into practice?
Feminism has an awkward relationship with trans issues (as it does with the problems of everyone who isn't a privileged middle class white cishet woman, TBH).

Like the rest of society, feminists view trans people in all sorts of ways. Some support their rights, some aren't interested, some are aggressively uninterested and some are just horrific. The latter most often seen amongst Radical Feminism, but not exclusively or all Radfems.
Yep, that relation is complicated. For decades the feminist movement was dominated by radical feminists of the anti trans variant, now we are as a rule accepted at least in theory but pretty much seen as a tertiary issue. One interesting thing is that trans women with a feminist interest have more or less carved out their own branch of feminism: trans feminism, which pretty much is simply feminism (mostly liberal and sex positive) through the lens of a trans person's own experiences with gender, sexuality and so on.

And regarding terminology, it varies greatly from place to place and at times from person to person. Transsexualism is still a standard term in the nordic countries for example and the term used in contact with health care practitioners.
 

Angelowl

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Kameburger said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Personally I like what you're doing, and while I never felt uncomfortable with trans-individuals conceptually speaking, I do feel like there is a gap in how I see trans-folk and how they might see themselves.

So my question is this. Why use the word trans at all? I feel like I know many people who come out as trans but I suppose it's easier for me to wrap my head around the idea that you simply just are what you are. If you feel like you are a man inside and you want to be that man that you feel you are, then I'm going to treat you like a man, end of story. If you feel like you're a woman then I don't see anything weird about treating you that way. But I feel like trans doesn't accurately define someone to me as an identity and I don't quite get it. This may sound stupid and irrelevant but you wouldn't call a Caterpillar in a cocoon a trans-butterfly. I guess my point is: doesn't basing an identity around the transformative process rather then the persons own identity undermine the concept of wanting to be who you feel on the inside and instead solidify yourself as an "other" so to speak? I'm sorry if this seems offensive but this is seriously what not just myself but a few others I know are thinking and it's not easy to ask this kind of a question.
There are those who do that, so you are definitely on to something. Problems with it is that a lot of the time society refuse to let us just be men or women as everone else. Laws with bounties on our heads for using public bathrooms of our preference for example, even to the level when someone with hormones and surgery would be forced to use one where they do not fit in at all. But yeah, it would be simpler that way.

Personally I still identify as a trans woman as my experiences in my teens and young adult life have really shaped my personality, it explains my life situation and my views on feminism, gender and so on. As well as me having a bit of a provocative personality, being an eccentric that has been somewhat of a social outcast. I take pride in being the weird one in the group.