Is it necessary for a trans* person to transition?

sovram said:

Human, perhaps? That's how I see myself.

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Superbird said:

Ignorant question: Why is it bad to assume a pronoun based on biological sex until someone tells you or is able to tell you differently based on gender? For example, why is it bad to use he/him/his with a biologically male infant until said infant grows old enough to decide whether or not to keep using that pronoun willingly?

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sovram said:

There really are no "reasons". This coercing of people into male and female - it's sexism, it's a form of oppression. All humans deserve to be liberated from all forms of oppression. I don't know how else to explain it.

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sovram said:

Obviously this cannot be achieved through the efforts of individuals. This could only be done through the willed action of the masses. I'm calling for revolution, not reform.

Also I disagree, but you are, of course, free to believe what you'd like.

Pessimism is useless. You can't hope to see the change you want in the world without doing something about it.

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sovram said:

This is a mistaken understanding of what I'm trying to say. I'm advocating the total abolition of gender. Then your calling a child "androgynous" is nonsensical. Perhaps you meant "genderless", which, while more accurate, is simply redundant in a society without gender.

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sovram said:

... No, that's definitely pessimism. I'm sure there were slaves in ancient Rome thinking, "It is a miserable fact of life that slavery exists. There will never be a time where slavery is seen as wrong."

In my opinion, you believe society is unchangeable because that's what the people in charge want you to think; it makes their job considerably easier.

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sovram said:

Uh, that's great. I'm glad you're cool with the gender role you were assigned that puts you in a social position above women, I guess. But I'm not.

Honestly what gender you think you are has nothing to do with the gender that society gives you. This is why being transgender is so hard in contemporary society.

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sovram said:

Since I'm a student of historical materialism, I think human beliefs always have their origin in material reality. I used to "identify" (as problematic as I think this term is) as male, then female, then third gender, then agender - now I think there's no actual justification to these sorts of beliefs in the first place. From my point of view, their only purpose is to divide people into groups needlessly.

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sovram said:

I just think ~identifying~ as genders defeats the purpose of removing oneself from the accepted norms. To use liberal terminology, I consider this a form of internalisation. Like, I'm aware that people are sometimes comfortable with the gender assigned to them. But I don't see that as a good enough reason to keep the practice.

I think the analogy to religion is *close* but not quite the same. People are indoctrinated into religions in a similar fashion but they don't serve the same social purpose, though gender roles are often baked into religions.

In the materialist view of history, the gender dichotomy is a vestigial form of an older mode of production. Labour was assigned based on gender - this was the primary form of social classification. That's not the case anymore.

Religion is different ballgame because it's essentially the ideology of the ruling class with a little bit of divine mandate thrown in.

So in the same way that I'm okay with people being religious as long as it isn't used oppressively, I'm okay with people liking their gender and identifying with a certain gender, binary or no. I think it's fine because most people are pretty harmless about it.

However I do insist that this view of people having gender leads to problematic conceptions of human society that only serves to preserve and reinforce ancient forms of repression.

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pathos said:

Note, there is also the issue of 'they' not being a non-gender; you're still assigning the baby a gender when you assign it a different pronoun. You're assigning it a non-binary gender. So you can't really raise the baby in a blank state; no matter what, it's gonna have a gender assigned to it. There is really no 'empty' gender to give a person until they decide for themselves, unless you refer to it as... idk... not-person. Chair. ???

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Murkrow said:

Since when is "they" not non-gender? I use it to describe a general person, or a person whose identity I'm trying to hide/don't know.

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sovram said:

Nah, I'm not assuming that at all. It doesn't matter whether your preferred gender is the one that was assigned (obviously, it's hard to be transgender because this contradiction between your personal feelings and societal pressure - I know what this is like, though not to the degree that some experience). Gender doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's a part of a larger whole with complex interactions between each sphere. So the gender assigned to an individual is what matters insofar as society is concerned, not the individual's self-identification. (As an aside, I have a hard time understanding identifying with a binary gender but foregoing accepted roles or adopting those of the other gender. I struggled with this when I identified as third gender. What purpose does it serve? No one cares about what I think except for the pronouns I prefer. It doesn't seem to shape interactions.)

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Yeah but I don't see any evidence to support this claim. It just seems idealist. Human consciousness is itself a product of society. A human left to live alone in the wilderness will have no conception of gender other than perhaps that their body is a little bit different than others, but without society to tell them that "these people have this kind of body, and these people have this kind of body" ... this conception of gender seems wholly incapable of describing reality.

ETA: I think I'm going to stop posting for now because I've been informed that I am unwittingly perpetuating some racist ideas, so I tried to remove what I could but keep that in mind when evaluating what I'm saying. Peace.

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sovram said:

(As an aside, I have a hard time understanding identifying with a binary gender but foregoing accepted roles or adopting those of the other gender. I struggled with this when I identified as third gender. What purpose does it serve? No one cares about what I think except for the pronouns I prefer. It doesn't seem to shape interactions.)

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pathos said:

Er, I guess that was a bit confusing. Using 'they' when you don't know someone's gender is different from someone using it for themselves; in the first situation it's just sort of a filler pronoun until you know what to actually use, in the second it's the person's actual identity. A non-binary gender is still a gender.

I realize now agender exists, but I still feel that's sort of an identification more than a blank slate? I guess it depends on the person...



I think society cares a lot what gender I identify as, since that's what I'm read as mostly. I realize that's not the case with a lot of trans people, but, it's still relevant. Anyhow, it should be focused on how we identify...

I'm not really sure what you mean about the adopting or forgoing gender roles thing...? People don't usually choose what mannerisms they adopt; if they're more feminine or masculine, it's generally just who they are, regardless of gender. But I'm not sure if I really understood what you're saying.




Weren't you the one saying we shouldn't be pessimistic earlier? :p

Maybe a human alone in the wilderness would have no concept of gender, but humans don't live alone in the wilderness. When we live with each other we develop culture, and gender has always been a part of that. A single human alone in the wilderness is not a part of culture, it's just someone lost??

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Butterfree said:

Gender may be a societal construct, but that doesn't mean it just vanishes in a puff of logic as soon as you realize that. People grow up dealing with the societal pressures they're subjected to, including their assigned gender and gender roles, in different ways, but we all have to make something of it, and a lot of those possible somethings involve identification with a gender.

I've always been very unfeminine and hated female gender roles, but I strongly consider myself a woman anyway. I specifically relish being a woman and also a programmer and a ton of other things not traditionally expected of women. Being a woman informs how I expect other people to regard me and how I approach them. Being a woman plays a huge role in what societal issues affect me and how. Identifying with a gender has nothing to do with accepting its assigned gender roles - it's about how you ultimately end up feeling about the construct of gender and how you cope with the expectations society places on you.

In my case, rejecting sterotypes strengthened my sense of identification with my gender, because those stereotypes are used against women, and being a woman fighting them from the inside has a different meaning and context than being a man or some other gender fighting them from the outside. In your case, you seem to have been alienated from the entire system, and that's fine too. Others experience something entirely different. I get your anger with the system of gender, and I hate that people are put in boxes based on gender or anything else at all, but you've got to let people find strength and personal fulfillment in that system in their own ways instead of deciding based on your own experiences that they're just hopelessly indoctrinated into their own oppression.

This reminds me vaguely of a post here when Barack Obama became president where somebody complained that people were celebrating that he was the first black president when race should be irrelevant. Yes, race should be irrelevant, but it isn't, and in a society where non-whites are marginalized, people have every right to find joy in and be inspired by something like a black president.

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