Narz
keeping it real
One question is how does one determine (and who gets to determine) who is legitimately transgender vs someone who is not legit transgender (maybe a troll or maybe just confused)?
[RD] I'm transitioning. If you've ever been confused about the T in LGBT, ask me anything
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That's one of those questions that just seems completely unnecessary, if you're talking about society in general, or a question with an easy and obvious answer if you're talking medically.
Moderator Action: In "Ask A..." threads, it is traditional (and expected) that only people in the same demographic actually answer questions and people outside that demographic limit themselves to questions only.
If someone says they're trans, they're trans.
Sometimes, that means people with mental illness or personality disorders latch on to the idea. I've experienced this more than once. Each time it's happened, I've told the person I couldn't help them, referred them to other trans resources, and cut contact. Just because I thought I was being screwed with by a teen with a nascent personality disorder didn't mean I was going to risk telling a trans kid I didn't think they were valid.
Who gets to determine that they're homosexual, or heterosexual?
Given the social stigmas and other negatives associated with being trans (at a similar level with being gay a couple decades ago, the difference being that being trans you pretty much have to display it for a chunk of time in which it'll be fairly obvious), it's difficult for me to imagine a significant percentage of people falsely claiming to be. So, I give the claimant the benefit of the doubt anyway nevermind that it really is up to them.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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This topic was touched on in the JK Rowling thread, but the thread had already moved on before I was able to respond so I decided to put it here.
The thread touched on minors transitioning and the use of chemical/hormonal injections. Doesn't putting a minor in the driving seat on an issue as complex and life-altering as hormonal/physical transitioning (as opposed to social transition) raise a whole host of issues? Teenagers are still trying to figure out large concepts like gender and sexual identity. Additionally, since minors are not considered legally competent, we have laws (at least in civilized societies, I'm looking at you Florida!) prohibiting child marriage, and laws prohibiting relationships with minors.
(Speaking personally, I certainly had no coherent sensation I was gay until very late teens/early 20's.)
Back in 2018 The Atlantic had a very good (and very long) article on trans minors and physical transitioning. I certainly don't expect anyone to drop what they are doing and read it, but it certainly seems to me it is a lot more complicated than expecting medical (specifically mental) professionals to only affirm the minor's requests.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/
EDIT: Fixed language that accidentally sounded super-insulting. My apologies.
The thread touched on minors transitioning and the use of chemical/hormonal injections. Doesn't putting a minor in the driving seat on an issue as complex and life-altering as hormonal/physical transitioning (as opposed to social transition) raise a whole host of issues? Teenagers are still trying to figure out large concepts like gender and sexual identity. Additionally, since minors are not considered legally competent, we have laws (at least in civilized societies, I'm looking at you Florida!) prohibiting child marriage, and laws prohibiting relationships with minors.
(Speaking personally, I certainly had no coherent sensation I was gay until very late teens/early 20's.)
Back in 2018 The Atlantic had a very good (and very long) article on trans minors and physical transitioning. I certainly don't expect anyone to drop what they are doing and read it, but it certainly seems to me it is a lot more complicated than expecting medical (specifically mental) professionals to only affirm the minor's requests.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/
EDIT: Fixed language that accidentally sounded super-insulting. My apologies.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
As has been touched in the JKR thread, the medical treatment for trans minor's are puberty blockers which prevent them from undergoing irreversible physical changes that would make a full transition harder than it already is.
I'm not terribly educated to tell that this or that country does or does not allow minors to undergo HRT but it would surprise me if any of them did.
I'm not terribly educated to tell that this or that country does or does not allow minors to undergo HRT but it would surprise me if any of them did.
Cis people experience dysphoria. There are medications that will cause breast development in cis males. There are hormonal conditions that will cause cis women to grow beards. Psychologists won't call the distress caused to the individual dysphoria... but that's dysphoria. It's not alien to cis people. To me, when these side effects happen, doctors accidently, temporarily, create a trans person. In cis men who grow breasts, they've temporarily crossed over into the experiences of trans men.
I bring that all up as a baseline to discuss deliberate hormone therapy. If HRT harms more people than it helps, then it's basically inducing dysphoria more often than it's alleviating it. I'd think as the most basic level of therapy, a treatment needs to help more often than it harms. At the most utilitarian, if HRT is being prescribed correctly 51% of the time, then it meets that criteria. But we do much better than that. It takes a lot to get minors on to puberty blockers or hormones. You're going to need a psychologist with a specialty in gender incongruence to rule out other conditions that could present like gender dysphoria (like a teen with personality disorder that has latched onto the idea of being trans). And you're gonna need to find a doctor who understands best standards of practice for dysphoria in minors to prescribe blockers / HRT.
Manfred Belheim
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Should that read trans women?
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
No. Trans women presumably welcome breast growth.
The "how do others tell if someone is trans", and the bottomline answer of "because the individual says so" brings up another question to me. I am active in a few fetish-related Discord servers that have a lot of people drawn to them because of the active feminization element. A common question tends to arise from them, at least the ones that aren't extremely gender dysphoric, which is "do I want to be a girl because I'm trans, or because it's a fetish"? My usual answer has included a variation of "there's a magic button, and when you press it, you become a girl, and everyone's life and memories adjust to you always having been a girl; do you press it?" It occurs to me though that the magic button doesn't necessarily 'weed out' the fetish-only types. So from you all that do not seem to have fallen victim to the fetish distraction (or maybe you have as well), can you help me sort out better question(s) to help them sort out their own thoughts about it?
I also have a question.
In the ancient greek-roman world, one reads in a few texts (eg about a nice trip to see the Aphrodite of Knidos statue) that looking feminine was not entirely what homosexuality was about for the passive participant (or in some cases for both), however there was often an element of that. So, here is my question:
-By "transitioning" does one actually aspire to be the gender, or just look like it? (or does this not matter?)
In the ancient greek-roman world, one reads in a few texts (eg about a nice trip to see the Aphrodite of Knidos statue) that looking feminine was not entirely what homosexuality was about for the passive participant (or in some cases for both), however there was often an element of that. So, here is my question:
-By "transitioning" does one actually aspire to be the gender, or just look like it? (or does this not matter?)
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
This is a difficult question, and it one that I'm somewhat struggling with. The issue with the fetishes is the fact that our patriarchal society is not well-equipped at all to engage with gender in an open-minded way. Therefore, fetishes, being taboo, become an avenue of exploration in this regard for many people. It goes without saying that they're chockful of harmful stereotypes and ideas, that can serve as brain poison in a developing trans person. To wit, that requires a certain level of investment into a disentanglement of the actually fetishistic elements, and what is actually, well, beneficial. Oftentimes it might mean that it really is just a fetish, but just as often, it isn't. I fear that this brings me onto my next point, which may or may not be unhelpful: There really isn't a magic query you can give to someone to resolve this. The 'magic button' and 'egg' metaphors are all somewhat fraught with certain issues and can lead into blind alleys that are not particularly helpful. It can be only through a deep conversation, I think, that you can direct someone on the path to self-discovery; everything else, I fear, risks going head-along into cliche territory or whatever. You need to, ah, struggle along, if you will, with the person alongside you through the self-doubt and all that.
It bears mentioning that sexuality and gender do not match 1:1, and there is relatively no connection between the two.
Furthermore, I have already answered at length the question that you essentially pose: it is about the dichotomy between essentialism and constructivism. Is gender innate to us? Do we have a 'feminine' essence within us all? Or is all gender a process of self-creation? You may benefit from reading the past two pages, as I've touched on the question. To sum it up: in my opinion, the transition is a process in itself, which essentially exists for its own sake. You alter your gender expression from one 'variant' to another. There exists no really inherent, pure, Platonic Gender expression of femininity or masculinity, even within cis people, much less trans people. This is not to say that you can just create gender at your own whim, they must be necessarily restrained within the material reality of patriarchal society. To paraphrase Marx, one creates their gender, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past
@Tolina, I didn't ask about the expression of femininity, I asked if trans people actually wish to be the other gender or just to look partly like the other gender.
For example, there were various cases of people in myths (and not just myths) who wanted to look feminine but identified with their existent gender (masculine*). The question was if that is in any way possible with trans people, or - if you want - if it can be seen as a possibility for some trans, without being there for all. Alternatively, if it is not at all describing something about trans. On its own it seems to not have to even include homosexuality.
*which, again, isn't theoretical: if, for one example, one is trans-female and wants to have female-looking breasts, they obviously don't identify as masculine.
For example, there were various cases of people in myths (and not just myths) who wanted to look feminine but identified with their existent gender (masculine*). The question was if that is in any way possible with trans people, or - if you want - if it can be seen as a possibility for some trans, without being there for all. Alternatively, if it is not at all describing something about trans. On its own it seems to not have to even include homosexuality.
*which, again, isn't theoretical: if, for one example, one is trans-female and wants to have female-looking breasts, they obviously don't identify as masculine.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Well, maybe then one can be transitioning without doing anything - if it is just a mental thing and requires no specific somatic change.
Sort of negates the "transitioning" part, though. Which is why I gave a very specific example, of a hypothetical person who is supposedly trans-female but doesn't want female breasts, to ask if they would actually be a real case of TG or not.
My own understanding, at least up to now, was that for someone to be TG they have to at least wish to alter their body to be like that of the gender they are transitioning to.
Sort of negates the "transitioning" part, though. Which is why I gave a very specific example, of a hypothetical person who is supposedly trans-female but doesn't want female breasts, to ask if they would actually be a real case of TG or not.
My own understanding, at least up to now, was that for someone to be TG they have to at least wish to alter their body to be like that of the gender they are transitioning to.
Gender dysphoria is an incredibly personal problem for anyone suffering from it to overcome, so yeah, you're not going to get a definition that matches neatly with what individuals want from their bodies. It's incredibly case-by-case. This makes it hard to discuss, but it also proves the argument that it's very hard for outsiders / cis people to put any kind of definition on who is "actually" a "real" trans person or whatever (and is easily offensive, to boot).
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Transition is, ultimately, a process that is superbly open-ended. It can take many forms - medical transition isn't even a necessity - but what one can agree upon is that, fundamentally, it involves a movement from one gender identity/expression to another.
I can accept that, of course, yet vagueness can be an issue regarding general acceptance of TG.
For example, if not all (or any?...) somatic aspects need to be changed, or need to be part of an aspiration for change, what exactly prevents other known categories like (eg) crossdressing* from being TG?
Cause, imo, it makes little sense to say they are TG, and will make TG identity vaguer than it needs to be.
*Not that all crossdressers are like that, but to use a known example, Eddie Izzard neither looks nor seems to be of the view he can look like a woman. How realistic would it be to term him as TG?
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