[RD] I'm transitioning. If you've ever been confused about the T in LGBT, ask me anything

Vincour said:
I'm not trans but did go through a bit of an identity crisis many years ago as a result of my upbringing and a general discomfort with being associated with my "bloodline". While it wasn't for an online persona, I did change my IRL name in order to take control of my own identity.
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I'd recommend playing Assassin's Creed. I'd even more recommend doing Assassin's Creed in real life. Become a badass.
 
But what about behaviours that are associated with particular sexes in some animals - like how the lionesses hunt and the male lions watch the cubs. Could that be construed as gender roles?
 
Gender is a social construct. Animals don't show evidence of having culture that developed. The closest analogs I can think of is that there are numerous animals that change sexes and there are animals born intersex. Both are understood to be purely biological.
 
I got asked about body development / if I had hips.

Potato-quality photo taken when my building's power.
 
Soooo jelly :)

My turn still seems so far away!
 
shadowplay said:
Do you think animals can be transgender?
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I was part of a long and extremely heated argument on this exact topic on facebook, which I will post an excerpt here.

Let me tell you a thing or two about sex and the animal kingdom. It's complicated, and its widely different between species. Bees, my favorite animal, is a great example. Instead of a male/female ditchotomy, their eusocial hives are really divided between a few males (drones, whose sole purpose in the hive is to breed, and either die in the act or are kicked out of the hive and left to starve if thr queen doesnt need them), a single fertile female (queen, although there may be some instances where two queens hang out in the same hive), and a shitton of unfertile females (workers). While there is only two sexes in beehives, you can make the argument there are three genders, and *none* of thrm have anything to do with how humans conceptualize gender in any form or fashiom.

You want to talk about lions? Yes, there is a phenonom where female lions grow manes and act like males. I am not sure if you were shitposting, but that is something actually observed in nature. You know why that happens? Hormonial imbalance likely from random mutation, given that all these maned females came from the same small region in Botswana. These maned females are also completely infertile and both try to court females and also let males court them. But the point is, these maned females didn't choose to have abnormal levels of androgens, it jus5 sort of happened at birth and they started to act like males once puperty happened.

And don't even get me started on other animals. There are fish whose sex changes depending on their indiviual size compared to the school they are in. Hyenea females have penises that are longer than their males counterparts (that is where we get the term hermaphrodite from: the Greeks thought hyenas were hermaphrodites). There is a fungus that makes infant male insects develop as a female (and just kills fertile males). Chicken hens can and often do randomly develop as a rooster while still having functioning ovaries /and no one knows why this happens/. And if you want to include plants here, we would be here all day.
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Basically, the concept of gender itself is a human construct. An animal's perspective on gender would be so alien and bizarre to us, that it is effectively meaningless to speculate on issues like this.
 
I don't see how animals can't have a gender concept, just at a level much simpler than humans.
But I think it would ends up being a pretty heated arguments, and I thought it wasn't the thread for this ? :p
 
I think Megan's already addressed your point, Akka - it's entirely possible that they have concepts of gender, but exceedingly unlikely that they are something that reflect our conception of gender.
 
I wouldn't look to insects or fish for anything remotely resembling gender among humans.

I cannot agree with the idea that gender is entirely a human or social construct. I do believe there are a lot of variations there among people who don't fit into a category but I don't think that means it doesn't exist at all.
 
Hyenas aren't noted for their fishy or buggy natures.

Just had my second appointment today. Went really well...it's looking like I may actually get the diagnosis allowing me to move ahead in the next few weeks. Then it's a matter of securing the endocrinologist appointment, which could take a few months.

It's terrifying in an awesome sort of way.
 
No they aren't but I feel like if we're using insects and fish as examples of highly atypical gender characteristics it's fair to point out the vast differences between them and mammals, let alone humans.

I don't think gender anomalies among mammalian species indicate the irrelevance of gender as a biological construct either. I'm not using this for any kind of anti-trans agenda. I just don't agree with the idea of gender as entirely a social/human construct. It doesn't mean we have to be tied down to it. If we followed biological instinct entirely then we wouldn't have civilization.
 
Oda Nobunaga said:
I think Megan's already addressed your point, Akka - it's entirely possible that they have concepts of gender, but exceedingly unlikely that they are something that reflect our conception of gender.
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I don't really see how it's widely different in nature and practice from mankind's early conceptions. I'd say the social construct is more about society becoming more complex than about a real difference in the gender concept.
 
Moderator Action: As always, remember that this thread isn't for debate and instead for asking questions. If you'd like to discuss the intricacies of gender identity and whether or not it may exist in other species, you're certainly welcome to create a thread dedicated to that idea. :)
 
variance is pretty large though, kate upton is a cis female too. So you could certainly get more hips than some cis females.
 
I want your opinion on this:

I think we should just do away with 'cis' as a vocabulary term, for the following reasons:

1) anyone who identifies as female should just say female. Period. no 'cis' or 'trans'. Ditto for male. This simplifies things.

2) I've been informed 'cis' as a terminology was actually invented by trans people. The problem I have with this is cis people themselves should be allowed to come up with our own term. Cis people use to use very offensive terms to describe the trans community, that is no longer socially appropriate. As a 'cis' person I hate the word 'cis', I want something else. What I'd really like is no 'cis' or 'trans' at all, but at the very least, something other than 'cis'.

3) because of points 1) and 2), these terminologies only draw people apart instead of bringing them closer together. Contre, I don't see you as 'trans female'. Just female. How does that make you feel?
 
We didn't invent the term. It comes from latin, where 'trans' means 'on the other side of' and 'cis' means 'on the same side of.' When you're discussing trans-related stuff, it's a helpful term. 'Cis' is value neutral, unlike alternatives you might use to differentiate (eg: "normal female"). Outside of a trans-related context, I don't use the term.
 
caketastydelish said:
1) anyone who identifies as female should just say female. Period. no 'cis' or 'trans'. Ditto for male. This simplifies things.
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The old "I can't be racist if I am colorblind" routine.

Firstly, when we say that gender is a social construct, that doesn't mean to say that gender and gender idendity isn't real, but merely that gender and gender idendity is artifical, or has no naturalistic origins or bearings. This is an important distinction, because I feel well intentioned people, like you, think that if they act as if the social construct didn't exist, then it will naturally go away. The problem with that methodology, however, is that society is built upon generations of systemic oppression of various minority groups, including trans people, to the point where the status quo is completely founded on the superiority of the in group to the exclusion of the outgroup. If you just pretend that the distinction doesn't exist, all you end up doing is silencing the out group's real problems, making that much harder to actually adress them!

The experiences of a trans and cis women are different; I have to go through so many additional loops and hurdles that even ciswomen get to take for granted (and in return, I get a few free passes that ciswomen don't get; I don't pay the pink tax for instance). These sort of difficulties, of having to learn how to socialize as female, of having to "pass" as female (but not too well for people like mouthwash!), of having my mental health dependent on both medical procedures outside of my financial capabilities and on society's acceptance to me, these are problems that set me quite apart from the typical ciswoman. While I love and ultimately want to be just recognized as female, the fact of the matter is that we are not currently at the technological state where you can just zap me as a woman and call it a day. It's a long process filled with many hardships, and thusly we have our own subidendity to the larger female idendity. Pretending the divide doesn't exist doesn't adress the issues to get them actually solved, particulary on health care.

2) I've been informed 'cis' as a terminology was actually invented by trans people. The problem I have with this is cis people themselves should be allowed to come up with our own term. Cis people use to use very offensive terms to describe the trans community, that is no longer socially appropriate. As a 'cis' person I hate the word 'cis', I want something else. What I'd really like is no 'cis' or 'trans' at all, but at the very least, something other than 'cis'.
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Firstly, you have been informed wrong. As I have said earlier in this thread, cisgender (as cissexual; the change to -gender is more of a recent and unrelated phenonom) as a term originates from 1998, coined by a cismale sexologist in his academic work. It serves purely to be an opposite of transgender; as emzie pointed out, it uses the oppossite latin root word as transgender does.

Secondly, while it is definitely not my place to tell others what they can and can't be offended by, I am really confused why you object to the label of cisgender? We object to terms like tranny and trap because they are often used as hateful slurs (particularly trap is a really hateful word if you understand the etymology behind it); there is a lot of emotional baggage behind those words. In effect, they are extremely dehumanizing and we want to be treated with respect. I am failing to see how cis in any ways stacks to slurs of those calibers.

3) because of points 1) and 2), these terminologies only draw people apart instead of bringing them closer together. Contre, I don't see you as 'trans female'. Just female. How does that make you feel?
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See point one.

---

Arguments aside, news dump for you all!

On monday, I went clothes shopping yet again, for formal wear in specific. I had to get a suit for my mock trial class, and my professor encouraged me to go get a female suit, and one of my partners offered to help me pick clothes out. So I did, and I ended up not only getting a suit, but I even also got my first dress. I just wore said dress for the second time (I also showed it off for my political science class on wendsday) yesterday, as part of working as a witness for mock trial, and I have to say I feel super femme and adorable. It's like a dream come true for me. :3

I was supposed to get a pair of heels from a friend, but I slept through when I was supposed to pick them up. I will see if I can get them next week. >_>
 
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