I’ve read the for and against, and I still don’t understand what it could possibly mean to “feel” like a different gender than the one you were born as.
I tend to agree yet …. My sister's partner is a tall blond woman who really cannot think of herself in female gender terms. They have two daughters and she couldn't be their second mommy because she just had to put her foot down. She doesn't want a sex change, but she has never thought of herself as a girl in any other way than physically. Recently their older daughter, who is three, decided on her own that "Ellen is my father." I don't know how my sister responded to that. I abhor sex change operations, especially after hearing a man deny being gay because he's a woman in a man's body, but no one needs to get my permission to get one.
I was a teen during the waning days of L.A. hair metal, when most dudes looked like ladies. I had long hair halfway down my back and wore big hoop earrings and flowing shirts. But there was never any question to us that we were still guys. It wasn't seen as transvestism, let alone anything else. If anything, my peers and I thought of ourselves as expanding the boundaries of how guys could acceptably present themselves (though we didn't have any such pompous aims). We didn't have any sort of identity crisis, wondering if we were "actually" women. We were just guys making use of stereotypically feminine clothes and mannerisms.
The way the issue gets framed nowadays, though, seems to validate tendentious notions of gender essentialism as far as I can see.
I sort agree with you that is seems like gender essentialism is being reinforced in this debate. And yet….there are people who feel deeply that this is is the case.
I'm sure they do, but how come such feelings aren't treated as a pathology then? I don't mean it in a moralistic sense; I mean it as in, oh, say, phantom limb syndrome. They feel something is the case when it clearly isn't. If someone has a strong desire to remove their penis because they think it isn't really part of them, why isn't that seen as a brain-based delusion?
I'm concerned that transsexuals who claim they are not gay because they are really the opposite sex are motivated by shame. That would be very unfortunate and definitely pathological.
August 23, 2013 @ 6:36 pm
I tend to agree yet …. My sister's partner is a tall blond woman who really cannot think of herself in female gender terms. They have two daughters and she couldn't be their second mommy because she just had to put her foot down. She doesn't want a sex change, but she has never thought of herself as a girl in any other way than physically. Recently their older daughter, who is three, decided on her own that "Ellen is my father." I don't know how my sister responded to that.
I abhor sex change operations, especially after hearing a man deny being gay because he's a woman in a man's body, but no one needs to get my permission to get one.
August 23, 2013 @ 10:30 pm
I was a teen during the waning days of L.A. hair metal, when most dudes looked like ladies. I had long hair halfway down my back and wore big hoop earrings and flowing shirts. But there was never any question to us that we were still guys. It wasn't seen as transvestism, let alone anything else. If anything, my peers and I thought of ourselves as expanding the boundaries of how guys could acceptably present themselves (though we didn't have any such pompous aims). We didn't have any sort of identity crisis, wondering if we were "actually" women. We were just guys making use of stereotypically feminine clothes and mannerisms.
The way the issue gets framed nowadays, though, seems to validate tendentious notions of gender essentialism as far as I can see.
August 26, 2013 @ 9:42 pm
I sort agree with you that is seems like gender essentialism is being reinforced in this debate. And yet….there are people who feel deeply that this is is the case.
August 26, 2013 @ 11:11 pm
I'm sure they do, but how come such feelings aren't treated as a pathology then? I don't mean it in a moralistic sense; I mean it as in, oh, say, phantom limb syndrome. They feel something is the case when it clearly isn't. If someone has a strong desire to remove their penis because they think it isn't really part of them, why isn't that seen as a brain-based delusion?
August 27, 2013 @ 1:15 pm
I'm concerned that transsexuals who claim they are not gay because they are really the opposite sex are motivated by shame. That would be very unfortunate and definitely pathological.
August 28, 2013 @ 8:21 pm
It's not correct to ask these questions, Damian. 🙁
August 28, 2013 @ 11:45 pm
Are you going to report me to the Tumblr police?