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writeanapocalae · 4 years

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A Guide for Writing Trans People

Written by a Trans Man.

I’ve seen a lot of different posts on how to write trans characters (absolutely none on how to write cis characters and I am so lost on how to do that oh my goodness) but maybe I’ve got a different perspective and maybe I’ve got something you haven’t heard before. Let’s go!

Terminology

There are a lot of different genders out there, not just male and female. Some people think Trans men and women are some outside of the binary extra gender, which is very much not true. While many trans people do fall outside the binary, there are a lot who are strictly male or female. Therefore their genders are male and female. The trans part is not part of the word, it is a definer to state that the person is transitioning, that is all. So when you write trans man or trans woman the words are separate, not transman or transwoman.

A trans man is someone who is transitioning his appearance for society to view him as male.

A trans woman is someone who is transitioning her appearance for society to view her as female.

The reason I am wording it this way is because they were already their genders. They have always been their genders. Transitioning is greatly influenced by the way we are treated by society, the same way that beauty standards influence people to contour and get surgeries and whatnot.

Demi means mostly in terms of gender so a demi boy is someone who is male most of the time and a demi girl is someone who is female most of the time.

Agender is someone who has no gender

Genderfluid is someone who shifts from gender to gender

Genderqueer is someone who’s gender is nondefined by other terms

Two Spirit is a third gender that encapsulates masculinity and femininity (according to Wikipedia) that is only used by Native Americans

Third Gender is a gender that can encapsulate or be a completely different solid gender like male or female

Nonbinary is someone who is somewhere on the spectrum between genders and their gender is defined by them

Pangender is someone who has all genders

Androgyny is not something that actually relates to gender as much as it does presentation. Presentation does not inherently tell you someone’s gender. Being androgynous just means that someone fits right in the middle of societies expectations of male and female and their AGAB cannot be guessed by onlookers.

AGAB AFAB and AMAB mean Assigned Gender At Birth, Assigned Female At Birth, and Assigned Male At Birth. At birth someone will often assign a gender to a baby based on their genitals and parents tend to show off what sort of genitals their baby has with accessories and colors. Pretty creepy if you ask me.

FTM and MTF has been deemed problematic but many still use them. They mean Female to Male and Male to Female. The terminology states that the person’s AGAB is their initial gender and they are becoming the opposite when, as stated before, it’s more that they were always their gender and now society has to catch up.

Gender Nonconformity can be practiced by anyone regardless of gender. It just means that they do things that aren’t expected of someone of their gender like men wearing skirts (for some reason?) or women growing beards or a nonbinary person not being androgynous (for some reason that’s become an expectation)

Intersex is not a part of the trans umbrella, even though it is often lumped in and people who are intersex can also be trans. It is a sex (different from gender) in which different parts of genitals and chromosomes and hormones are produced in a way that deviates from the norm. Many intersex people undergo genital reconstruction or reduction surgery when they are infants (and can’t consent) in order to fit the mold better. Intersex people can be cis.

Cis just means that someone agrees with the people who assigned them a gender when they were a baby and how society treats them.

Slurs: Don’t use them. There are a lot. If you see it in a porn category you probably should stay away from it.

Pronouns

Pronouns are highly personal and can be a myriad of things so I will not be going over all of them. They do not always match presentation (a long haired man with breasts is still a man) and many people will use multiple sets of pronouns or fluctuate between them for what they feel most comfortable with.

Common pronouns are: they/them, he/him, she/her

Less common pronouns are: xi/xir, fae/faer, it/its, e/em, per/pers, ve/vir, zie/hir

Neopronouns: People make up pronouns all the time since they are personal and these new pronouns are just as valid as any others. Someone made up his and hers after all. When making neopronouns the main thing to be aware of is consistency. You want the different forms of conjugation to make sense and you want to spell them the same way every time.

Appearance

As has already been stated, there’s no correlation between gender presentation and gender and many trans people are unable to present the way they want to due to the economy, genetics, health, or community. Still, people do what they can to pass or feel comfortable in their body and these things need to be in mind during descriptions. People tend to think of the slight things that make people not pass are unattractive and will point out a woman’s 5 o’clock shadow or a man’s high pitched voice as flaws. These things do not necessarily need to be skipped over but they can be described in a way that doesn’t distract from the characters gender.

Try to stop thinking of an hourglass shape as an intrinsically feminine trait and height as an inherently masculine one. There are cis women with full beards and cis men with round jaws. Exploring different features, combining them, and seeing how they meld will give your characters more depth and help with differentiating them from one another. A good rule of thumb is, if you mention something that people don’t immediately clock as the characters gender, describe it as gender accurate.

Misgendering

This is another one that I would say don’t do but there are characters who the writers don’t always agree with. Misgendering is extremely harmful, puts trans people’s lives in danger, and can out them without their permission. The narrator should never misgender a character unless the character does not realize they are trans until the story is underway but this should be rare. The trans character would have no reason to ever misgender themself and may talk about how they presented in the past but will, most likely, still refer to themself with the correct gender. The POV character may misgender a trans character upon meeting them but after being corrected should fix their behavior unless you want your audience to dislike the POV character. Friends of the trans character should not misgender the character unless they are in a situation in which being correctly gendered would bring them harm, otherwise they’re not good friends. Family may misgender the trans character if they are not out or if the family members are terrible people.

Dysphoria/Euphoria

Dysphoria is when there’s a painful discrepancy between mind and body, like when someone knows they are one way but they don’t look the way they feel. Misgendering can be a large cause of dysphoria, as can hearing a recording of their voice, reflections, binding and tucking not hiding what the individual may want to hide, height, muscle structure, bone structure, etc.

Euphoria is the exact opposite of this. It is an extreme sensation of peace and joy in personal gender presentation. This can be caused by hormone replacement therapy, correct gendering, presenting in a way that feels natural, and acceptance.

Dysphoria is not necessary for being transgender.

Social Groups

Look around your friend group. Notice anything eerie? Notice how most of your friends are similar to you in a lot of ways, especially IRL friends? They’re people that you trust and expect to keep you safe while having a fun time with because you share interests and experiences with. Same for trans people. This is why, if you look at my friend group there’s 2 genderfluid, 1 agender, 1 nonbinary, 2 trans women, 1 trans man, and 1 cis man (who’s a cousin). If you have just 1 trans character in a group of friends it is going to read as a need for diversity points and that character is less likely to feel safe with discussing trans issues due to no one around them being able to relate.

Outing

This is one that a lot of people have a hard time with and even trans writers mess up a lot. We all know the infamous scene of someone walking in on a trans person changing and, hopefully, we know that this is not only cliche but actually harmful as it tends to lead to the idea of “lying” when it’s really just not anyone’s business and that trans bodies must be on display. I would say that you shouldn’t have to out your character because coming out is dangerous for real trans people in a lot of situations and it normalizes the idea that trans people must doxx themselves at any moment but due to the lack of representation and the nature of novels, you pretty much have to out your characters. No amount of subtext will be as beneficial to a trans reader as cementing the fact that there’s someone they can relate to in canon. Luckily outing a trans character is a lot easier than people think.

Some of us can’t shut up. A lot of trans people will hint at it a lot and just flat out say it if they’re in similar company. If we see people who we feel confident are also queer we often drop hints that we understand we’re safe, they can come to us (especially in a retail setting), because we want a community. The amount I bring up my masculinity is very very often, to the point I’m surprised people aren’t annoyed with me. I don’t pass very well so I wear a lot of brightly colored buttons that explicitly state my pronouns. There’s also this very strong urge to correct people who use gendered language for things that don’t need gender (like sexual organs and menstrual cycles). There’s nothing wrong with just saying that a character is trans.

Resources

The best thing you can do for your story is research. The trans people you know are not google and they do not deserve to be treated like google. You can use google. Here’s some stuff I found on google:

Dummies | Transequality | EverydayFeminism | Scriptlgbt

But no matter how much research you do it’s not going to be as useful as a sensitivity reader. Once your story is complete ask people to read it as beta readers and sensitivity readers and listen to the people that fit your minority characters.

Some musicians to check out for inspiration

I have to recommend music. I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t.

Agender: Angel Haze | Mood Killer

Androgyne: Florian- Ayala Flora |

Genderneutral: Grimes |

Pandrogyne: Genesis P-orridge

Two Spirit: Tony Enos | Cris Derksen

#writing advice #transgender writing #queer writers #trans writeblr #trans writing

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mikhalsarah · 3 years

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The Emperor’s New Gender

How can you help a 3-year-old to stop misgendering family friends who are transwomen? She isn't trying to insult them deliberately, but just doesn't perceive them as women and won't remember being corrected the next time she sees them. -Quora

First of all, as per further information in the comments, this is not your child and it is NOT your place to be interfering in how this family handles the issue unless they have specifically ASKED for your advice. This is something for the offended friends and the parents to work out, and if you value your friendships you will back out of what isn’t your problem. The entire fact that you feel entitled to force your personal beliefs on other people’s children and intervene in their parenting and other social relationships is extremely disturbing. I suggest you get a good book on Co-dependence recovery.

Secondly, this is an “Emperor’s New Clothes” problem. There is NOTHING “wrong” with this toddler (who at 3 is actually a preschooler), so there is nothing the parents can do about it. You can’t fix what isn’t broken. This reminds me of medieval parents getting the idea in their heads that crawling was too animalistic and ungodly, and strapping their children to little roundabouts to force them to skip crawling and go right to “proper human” walking. Crawling is developmentally necessary for most children and they rarely skip over it, and their lower leg bones and muscles are not yet ready to bear their full weight, leading to possible bow-leggedness. You cannot force children to skip developmental stages because it offends people based on some ideology they have. It has consequences. It is grown-ups here who must accept the natural development of children however inconvenient it is. This is called ACTING LIKE AN ADULT.

This is a normal stage of neurological development. At a certain point in the developing brain it starts to categorize things as a means to understand them. The ability to understand who is biologically male and producing sperm and who is biologically female and producing ova is self-evidently crucial to the survival of every species on the planet that has sexual reproduction. Even for species that can literally morph from one sex to the other, it is still crucial to recognize which members of their species are in which sexual form, and to have that skill locked well down before puberty hits. Therefore that ability is hard-wired into us, just like our ability to acquire language is. This child has reached a stage where they can now identify key markers of biological sex in people’s body shapes (hip to waist ratio, shoulder to hip ratio) and faces (relative size and placement of eyes, nose and philtrum lengths, chin length and width etc) but they have no idea yet what “gender” is as a concept because their brain is not mature enough to entertain a concept that still confuses many adults, apparently.

Children are notorious for mis-gendering everyone, not just trans people. I was mis-gendered by two preschoolers yesterday when I appeared at work in a skirt instead of my typical jeans. There was even a story decades back in Reader’s Digest illustrating how they mix up and conflate sex and gender roles. It was submitted by a parent who allowed their 4 year old to go to JK wearing his sister’s barrettes, only to have the teacher overhear him arguing with another boy about whether he was a boy or a girl. The boy eventually became exasperated and pulled down his pants to show the other boy his penis to prove he was a boy, to which the other boy dismissively said, “Everyone has a penis, only girls wear barrettes.”

Here I will suggest that you also need some good books on child development and evolutionary biology.

This situation would not have been a problem even a few years ago, before “transsexual” was turned into a dirty word and transgender was foisted on us, instead. Once upon a time you could just tell a child that:

A) not everyone who is male or female fits neatly into the typical or average appearance for their sex (or behaviour, for that matter)

B) some people who are born into one sex are unhappy about it for reasons we don’t yet understand. They feel strongly that they are the other sex internally (in their mind/brain) and are much happier if everyone just lets them live as the sex they feel inside as much as possible, and they can have hormones and surgery to help them do so. Since most of those people don’t fully understand themselves until past puberty, they develop outwardly like their biological sex and it can take a lot of time and money to change that.

and

C) It’s impolite and unkind to make personal remarks, or to draw attention to physical features or other differences which people have no control over.

We don’t yet fully understand the biological working of things like gender development, gender identity, or sexual orientations, but there is more than enough evidence that they are “real” events with correlates in the material world. We know that people with conditions that are known to affect the structure and function of their temporal lobes are much more likely to be GLB (including sudden shifts in their sexual orientation after events like head injuries, strokes and seizures) and much more likely to identify as trans or otherwise not conforming to the gender binary (including again, sudden changes to their sense of self-identity in the wake of neurological events). Obviously the majority of people who are LGBT haven’t had a head injury, stroke or seizure, so being LGBT is not “caused by” those things, they’re just some of many things that can “flip the switch”; genetics, pre-natal hormone exposure, birth order, and developmental life experiences have all been tentatively cited as having a role to play.

*People on both the Right and Woke Left will be determined to misunderstand me here as saying that being GLB or T is evidence of a “sickness” of some sort…either agreeing and using this information as “proof” that it’s so or becoming angry at me for equating the two. So let’s just head off that nonsense at Go. ALL MANNER of changes can happen in the wake of neurological events in the temporal lobe or elsewhere. One man who had a head injury suddenly became a mathematical genius…do you think that’s evidence that being good at math is a “sickness”? One person finds they become more emotional, another less so (neither is a pathology unless taken to extremes that prevent the person functioning). Some people who develop Temporal Lobe Epilepsy suddenly take up writing or (less often) the visual arts. Is being a writer or artist a biological flaw? Obviously not. The linkage of any trait with an area of the brain is not evidence that the trait is pathological (it might be, it might not), it is merely evidence that one or more neurological substrates that control that trait resides in that particular part of the brain. As regards gender identity, it tells us that there is some part of our brains where sexual self-identity arises and therefore the person’s experience may be subjective (only they experience it, others cannot perceive it unless told of it) but is not imaginary.

In the past children gradually acquired the ability for more complex categorization and learned to differentiate between someone’s biological sex, their gender presentation (how closely they match others of their sex), and societal gender roles. Children are remarkably accepting of diversity and exceptions to rules when they are presented matter-of-factly. More so than adults who apparently can’t accept facts which don’t fit with their ideologies on the Left, any more than Evangelical Young-Earth Creationists on the Right can, and feel the need to tie themselves into mindless, slogan-droning intellectual pretzels as a result.

The fact that we now view even toddlers with suspicion of “transphobia” and seek to indoctrinate their natural neurological development out of them should be a GIANT F*ING RED FLAG that we are NOT becoming more aware of diversity and more accepting, we are becoming LESS able to see the full extent of how diverse humans really are and are being forced to pigeonhole them into categories that the average five year old is supposed to be outgrowing. What we are seeing is an extremely judgmental, rigid and abusive cult that denies an obvious reality that even a child can see, that biological sex is real and important, and cannot be replaced by or conflated with gender identity or roles, even if we also agree that gender presentation and gender identity are also important biological realities. It used to be only children who foolishly did so, but now we have adults telling children that everyone can have a penis and only girls wear barrettes.

In the original story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, the child’s lack of indoctrination into social hierarchies left them nonconformist, and free to state what they saw with their own eyes with impunity. The child was not punished because children are not expected to be politically correct. In fact, it led the adults to realize that they had let fear and desire to conform and be thought clever blind them to obvious reality. It is the adults in the end who feel foolish and ashamed, and change their ways. We’re not yet at the end of the story of The Emperor’s New Gender, but based on the current trajectory the “adults” are going to double-down and I will soon be looking for a new career, as I will be expected to throw away everything I know about child development so that daycares can be run like Orwellian indoctrination camps. I will not participate in the ideological and developmental abuse of children so that a tiny minority of adults can live in a fantasy world in which they deny an aspect of reality when it has the temerity not to give a shit about their ideology.

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unless-we-choose-to-reverse-it · 5 years

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Re: Contrapoints.

So Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, recently deleted her Twitter. And I’m going to state, up front, that if you are celebrating this fact, you are the problem. Inb4 y’all cancel my ass about this.

And to give the TL;DR up front: this is a post about what “cancel culture” actually looks like. Actual violent abusers being named and shamed is not cancel culture. Sex pests and people who are genuinely fucking hateful being accurately described as such? Not cancel culture. That’s a thing called “I don’t want to associate with these bastards, and I want other people to know that they are bastards.”

But let’s talk about what actual cancel culture looks like. I’m going to put the rest of this under a “read more” so that I don’t put an entire goddamn essay on everyone’s feed.

For those who do not know, Natalie Wynn operates the YouTube channel Contrapoints, focused on discussing leftist politics with a particular focus on gender and sex. Natalie, being a trans woman, has a level of insider knowledge that a lot of performatively woke people online lack, and her work, true to her nom de plume, often deals with the fact that these are complicated issues.

She has a considerable following, and a good deal of her following consists of men who she has essentially saved from becoming alt-right shitlords. Her production values, knack for performance, and willingness to recognize complex issues when she sees them has a certain power with people who are not already involved in leftist circles, and while many of her takes are fairly pedestrian by the standards of people DEEP into left-leaning circles, she is one of the avenues for bringing people into leftist politics from outside. Go onto any one of her most popular videos, and you’ll see the comments filled with people talking about how Natalie made them change their minds. It’s a beautiful kind of thing.

Now, am I loading the conversation a bit because I am a fan of Contrapoints? Yes. Yes I am. Because I believe that her work is valuable to modern leftism. She is a propagandist, and what’s more, she’s a brilliant propagandist. Where so many people attempt to bring people into leftism through shame, she entertains and entices, and presents a force that reactionary shitbags seem incapable of attacking.

But where reactionaries find themselves wanting, the Puritans have plenty of ammo to destroy progressive spaces from within.

Fast forward to a few days ago. Natalie Wynn posts a tweet talking about asking for pronouns. Now, because she deleted her Twitter and I don’t have the tweet in front of me, I cannot quote it verbatim, but to paraphrase, she said that asking for people’s pronouns isn’t always the best idea, since it can make binary trans people feel like they’re being isolated and viewed as “less than” their gender.

Okay, have we read that? Good. Let’s consider that for a second.

This is a genuinely good point to make, and it mostly arose from her own feelings of discomfort re: being a trans woman and finding trans-inclusive spaces uncomfortable on that account. Perhaps the point was not elegantly made, but still.

Non-binary trans folk, binary trans folk who can “pass,” and binary trans folk who cannot; they all have different needs. For some people, asking about pronouns is an affirming thing, something which allows them to articulate themselves fully and prevents them from dealing with people misgendering them. For others, especially those who are interested in a more classically gendered expression, asking about pronouns can feel like misgendering, can feel like people regard you as less than your actual self.

This is a discussion that needs to be had. How can the community balance different needs from very closely linked groups of people? How can we reconcile the needs of people who are openly defiant of gender norms and who want their opposition to that recognized, with the needs of people who are more comfortable with traditionally gendered expression and who want to be recognized as such?

It’s a conversation that needs to be had. Unfortunately, subtlety is dead on Twitter dot com. And on social media in general.

When I talk about “Puritans,” I refer to a specific subset of Extremely Online progressives. Just as the IRL Puritans seemed to disdain any kind of Christian teachings of love, community, and acceptance in favour of control, guilt, and hating thy neighbour, the “Puritans” seem to derive their politics solely from a sense of guilt and control, and relish in attacking those who are not Woker Than Thou.

The average Online Puritan is far more concerned with cancelling other progressives than they are with opposing evil in this world. Opposing reactionaries? Nah, that might actually do something. Let’s just attack other progressives, and then wonder why people don’t seem eager to support our causes. Opposing people who are actually making the lives of LGBT people worse in tangible ways? Pfft, that would take work. Hey, let’s nitpick every form of art that displays anything remotely shitty, because clearly, depicting shitty things in art or consuming art with dark themes means that you actually want to do those things in the real world. Hey, let’s all dogpile this queer creator who is trying to convert alt-right shitlords to the good side of history! Surely, that’ll advance our cause!

Hell, I think there’s something to that comparison, because at the heart of both groups is the idea of the Elect and the Reprobates. An unfortunate aspect of modern western culture is that we tend to believe that people are good or evil at heart. This is a really dumb idea. Good and evil are not things that we are; they’re things that we do. We perform good acts and evil acts upon this world, and when I say “we,” I mean all of us. Sometimes, I see people who otherwise do really good things for the world do something really stupid. Sometimes, otherwise monstrous people do good stuff.

But if we believe that some are Elect and others are Reprobates, then that paradigm is impossible. The Elect cannot sin, and since it is a sin to not believe yourself one of the Elect, then you must enforce this law upon all others. If they sin, they are a Reprobate. Alternatively, you must work hard to explain why what they just did wasn’t actually a sin, so they’re still good, actually!

This, right here, is cancel culture. It isn’t accurately calling out people who have done legitimately evil things. It isn’t attempting to get predatory people out of the community. It’s this dichotomy between the Elect and the Reprobates, and the need to constantly enforce that We Are The Elect and that All Who Do Not Match Up Are Reprobates. No willingness to admit the recovering shitheads who might not fully grasp the issue without some help. No consideration that people who do minor stupid things might just need gentle correction to set them on the righteous path. Nope, none of that. Any sin makes you a Reprobate, and Reprobates Must Be Purged.

I should stop beating around the bush. The Online Puritans descended, because apparently, “we should consider how this makes people feel” means, “asking for a person’s pronouns is personally attacking me.” In other words, Natalie was now a Reprobate.

What followed was Natalie clarifying her point and even attempting to throw her critics a bone, suggesting that she wasn’t as considerate as she needed to be about the ways that non-binary people would interpret her words. The response was unchanging. Other leftists came to her defense, but they were, of course, Cancelled as well, as I am sure to be the second that people discover this post. Eventually, Natalie deleted her Twitter, and the Online Puritans rejoiced at another Reprobate driven off of Twitter like it was any real victory.

Now, this is not the death of Contrapoints. She still has her channel, and a shitload of people who will continue to watch her content, like me. But a woman who, in my personal opinion, is a force for good in this shithole we call the internet, was essentially driven off of a social media platform because the Puritans decided that she was a Reprobate.

And to anyone who wants to declare me a Reprobate for making this post: go the fuck ahead. I am not perfect, and I am certainly not one of the Elect; hell, I’m no Calvinist, so I don’t even regard those as valid categories. And furthermore: you, the Elect, are as great a danger to progressive spaces as the reactionaries, because you force us to fight on two fronts. You force us to oppose each other, as opposed to standing together for the betterment of the world. And for fucks sake, is it too much to ask that the people who are getting fucked over the most by the current order should stand together in opposition to it?

So fuck it. I stand with Contrapoints. Puritans are cancelled.

#contrapoints #leftism #lefttube #cancel culture #cancelled #i had to get this off of my chest #and do not read this as me saying that people should not be criticized for doing bad shit #we absolutely need to criticize bad behaviour where we see it #but ffs #maybe we can keep the criticism proportional to the transgression #if i see one more Online Puritan calling natalie a bootlicker #i'm going to shit a mile of rage snake #swear to god

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theliterateape · 4 years

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If Non-Binary is the Goal, Why Fight So Hard for Binary Labels?

By Don Hall

Asia Kate Dillon (Billions, John Wick III) has a suggestion for the bloated motion picture awards season: do away with gendered categories.

"Separating people based on their assigned sex, and/or their gender identity, is not only irrelevant when it comes to how an acting performance should be judged, it is also a form of discrimination."

I love this idea. After all, the rest of the goddamned Oscars aren’t separated by gender—there is no Best Female Film Editing or Best Male Director—why should there be this random binary created for actors? It’ll also make the damn thing half as long.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a binary present. Male and Female. Men and Women. These labels exist and can be biologically demonstrated.

Recently, J.K. Rowling (she of the Harry Potter books) has been under attack for stating that simple fact. That there is, in fact, a biological Man and a biological Woman and the push for TransCitizens to co-opt those binary labels is, in her opinion, harmful to the issue of Women’s Rights. You can agree with her, you can disagree with her, but the attacks have been a blanket shrill cry of transphobia.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter–never, ever expect a nuanced conversation–and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags–because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter–scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

J.K. Rowling

TransWomen seem to be lobbying to be simply referred to as Women without the Trans and it pisses the most strident of activists to have that stance questioned. This without a pause when considering the bizarre and almost abusive practice of encouraging eight-year-old children to undergo hormone therapy and TransWomen (biologically imbued with denser muscle and thicker bone structure) dominating Women’s Sports at the expense of biological Women.

The argument is that the binary mode is more societal than natural and that we are hung up on the Men/Women thing far too much to be inclusive of those who do not fit that restrictive model. I (and it seems J.K. Rowling) agree. I suspect most TransCitizens just want to be left alone to be themselves without a lot of puritanical bullshit. Likewise, I suspect most biological Women want to hang onto the thin thread of gains they have fought so hard for.

What confuses me is the insistence, after so successfully arguing against binary labels, that TransWomen are Women and TransMen are Men. If non-binary is the goal, why fight so hard to keep these binary labels?

The journey toward gender-neutral pronouns has been a rough one—I’m still of the mind that if I don’t know your preference upon meeting you, and you don’t let me know right off the bat whether you are a him/her/they/it/symbol, then your offense at my misgendering is entirely on you. If I’m told and I ignore your preference, I’m a dickhead.

The pronoun thing is all about rejecting the binary. It’s a clean, unambiguous argument and, in my opinion, if you are that threatened by pronouns, perhaps you need to pull your head out of your ass. Or at least practice a bit. I find the need for preferences like that to be a bit precious but I’m an old man—I find most things when it comes to Gen Z to be a bit precious. Like trigger warnings, safe spaces, and TikTok.

No one is surprised at my confusion. So I rely on the stories presented to me by artists because activists are loud, generally one-note, and prefer I shut up and listen. I’m too old to obey the orders of a twenty-two year old unless she’s my manager and I’m working in the fast food industry. Artists have that way of telling a story that resonates with me that polemics do not.

Have you seen DC’s Doom Patrol yet?

Season One, Episode Eight is entitled Danny Patrol and features a sentient, queer-gender transporting street block known as Danny the Street. Effectively a floating haven for those whom society has deemed outcast, the place is filled with queers, queens, and so many of those who have been told they do not fit in with the Normals.

The show is pretty out there but one of the main characters is a sixties era Right Stuff sort of pilot. Married, kids, secretly gay. He is inhabited by a radiation creature that he does not communicate with because he has been trained since childhood to deny himself from being, well, himself.

In Danny the Street, he is slowly pried open by the existence of this special place/creation and there is a moment where he allows himself to sing on a karaoke stage. It is a moving and beautiful thing to behold and reminded me that while I and Rowling and all of these angry trans activists are abstractly intellectualizing these questions of who gets to own the binary and whether or not the binary is the point, the people we are talking around are... people. Some hurt, some frightened, some enraged, some just wanting go about their lives away from judgment and misunderstanding.

Speaking strictly as a straight, white, cisgendered dude in his fifties, when I see a TransWoman or TransMan, I do not see Male and Female biologies. I see people. I see people who are striving to carve out acceptance in a harsh and hateful world and are not some monolithic group of like-minded zealots. I also see someone different and unique. A new category of interesting and exciting. When they’re trolling someone on Twitter, I just see the petulant rage so well-learned from the Huckster-in-Chief.

Does questioning the logic of lobbying for the non-binary while craving the binary equal disrespect or harm to them? Only for the most troubled and wounded. Asking the questions and discussing the parameters of demanded social change should be encouraged. If the only answer one has to questions and counterpoints is to troll and threaten, the counterpoint gains merit. Some can’t handle that. The rest understand that questions, discussions, and dialogues about these exact issues is how we all find ways to progress.

As people.

#J.K. Rowling #Transgender politics #Asia Kate Dillon #Oscars #Biological sex #Doom Patrol #Danny the Street

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transwrongs · 4 years

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i wrote a dumb essay for my english class

It isn’t about becoming a different person. Trans people already know who they are. They have and always will be the same person as they’ve always been. This is about one’s willingness to see who they've always been.

Trans voices have increasingly become more prominent in mainstream discussions about gender and sexuality. It’s time people start listening. It’s time society recognizes trans people’s right to exist as themselves. An important aspect of such recognition is the ability to exist as a standard, not an abnormality. A revolution from cisnormativity to gender neutrality is crucial to alleviating the pain of existing in a transphobic, cisnormative world.

One must understand how cisnormativity does harm. Cisnormativity is the societal assumption that everyone is cisgender until stated otherwise. First, it is biologically false that gender is split into a distinct binary. Sixth grade biology is simplified for younger audiences just as everything is simplified in grade school. But as time goes on one must eventually learn that they were not told the whole truth by their elders. Human biology is a blurry, fascinating mess of complexities. It should be widely considered ridiculous to imply with such certainty something so simple and explicit as a gender binary. Gender and sexuality are a spectrum. But the world has created a culture that removes this fact from the general public. This culture breeds the circumstances that cause trans suicide/homicide rates to be disproportionately higher than cisgender suicide/homicide rates. A culture that assumes one’s assigned gender at birth(if you do not fit into one of two categories at birth you will be corrected against your will) being the default is what cultivates the rapes and murders of trans people and women specifically. Cisnormativity undoubtedly comes with a miseducation, or lack thereof, of trans existence and experiences. The general cispublic being uneducated about the existence of trans people causes confusion and ultimately harm. Harm that manifests in bullying, sexual and/or verbal harassment, assault, rape, and murder. Those manifestations lead to the unnervingly high rates of suicide and mental health issues in the trans community.

Education is a major factor in this cultural shift as thrusting trans people into uneducated cis society is extremely dangerous. Hence why some trans people choose to live in the metaphorical closet or, if they’re lucky enough, become what is known as “stealth” which is the practice of passing as one’s identity without being “out” as a trans person. However, stealth is neither healthy nor possible for many trans people. A comprehensive sex health education is crucial. Teaching cis people about the unique and varied experiences of trans people will help more than just the trans people who pass and/or have fully transitioned. Creating a culture that encourages an exploration into gender identity helps more trans people feel safe even beginning such a journey. Acknowledging trans existence throughout history is also crucial. Showing people that trans people have been here for centuries, in every culture. Teaching people that cis is not the default, the same way fair skin and/or heterosexuality is not the default.

Society needs to become comfortable with the idea of trans people existing as equals. Something as simple as using gender neutral language will eliminate the problems that misgendering(intentional or not) causes trans people. Eliminating the use of such bulky phrasing such as “he/she” and “him/her” because that’s not all there is. Or utilizing gender neutral bathrooms on campuses and in workplaces and restaurants will help trans people feel a little safer and more comfortable. The pain of choosing between safety and gender affirmation can be painful for binary trans people and near impossible for nonbinary people.

The intersection of race in the discourse about gender identity is something that cannot be ignored. It’s important to acknowledge the role racism and white supremacy plays in upholding gender roles, stereotypes, and standards. The social construct of race itself is not inherently racist but it had soon been weaponized to oppress people of color. Similarly, the idea of gender is not inherently transphobic but it too has been weaponized to oppress gender ‘non-conforming’ people of color. The standards western society has for gender expression work in tandem with racist, eurocentric beauty standards to alienate and dehumanize. Caster Semenya is a cis black woman who’s won multiple Olympic medals, but she has higher testosterone levels than her competitors so, naturally, she must take hormone blockers in order for it to be ‘fair’, right? No Specifically, in areas online where the harassment of trans women is most common, it is first and foremost women of color(sometimes even cis women) who are targeted. Demonized, dehumanized, and mocked for not checking the boxes ‘real’ women are supposed to check. Deliberately antagonizing overanalyzations of people's bodies, facial structure, posture, hand size, voice pitch, and more when in reality none of those things are perfectly separated by gender. Again, gender, and how one expresses it, is a spectrum; it is immensely diverse in its manifestations.

Some might say, however, that it’s dangerous to allow trans people to live normal human lives. To be completely fair though, cis people are more dangerous to trans people than trans people are to cis people. “But now men can dress up as women and assault women in the bathrooms.” Someone says. Considering the idea that men don’t have to dress up as women to get away with assault, because they do that fine on their own with the help of a judicial system and law enforcement that does not care about rape victims, it is already wrong and immoral to assault people. This isn’t a trans issue; it is another issue among the many that this patriarchal, sexist, rape culture exhibits. Men are not inherently violent creatures. Society is teaching men that they are dominant, violent creatures. Regardless of gender though there needs to be a change with how people navigate and utilize spaces. Namely, not keeping bathrooms tucked away in a secluded corner of a room and creating comforting powder-room-like spaces makes it safer for everyone. “But what about men competing in women’s sports?” No man has ever competed in women’s categories. If they did, what about them? Why are sports separated by gender? Why not by age, weight, height, shoe size, or perhaps some other arbitrary metric? So women athletes can continue to be paid less? So women can forever be regarded as weaker and incapable? The concept of ‘fairness’ is even more reason to abolish gender segregation all together. People feel threatened by women succeeding. They only allow women to compete against each other, because when a woman beats a man at something it’ll send the superiority complex tumbling down.

Living in this world isn’t easy and every social class tacked on to one’s person only hinders them more and more. So, is it worth it? Are trans people worth all the trouble? Should society as a whole aim to dismantle cisnormativity? Well, yes, nothing of good value is lost from eliminating cisnormativity. Gender neutrality should be the standard. It allows trans people and cis people alike to experience this world under equal opportunity, accomplish great things, and reach their full potential. It must be noted that trans people will be heard and remembered whether people want them to be or not.

#leo.txt #uh #this is bad lol #i literally hate this so much haha

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infiniteinjury · 7 years

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What Does It Mean To Assign Babies A Gender?

I’m posting this because I think it raises some interesting philosophical issues about what it even means to assign a child a gender at birth as opposed to merely assigning them a sex. I mean surely the article isn’t advocating that we stop observing which genitalia a child has at birth or even that we stop using those facts to make decisions1. So then what even does it consist of to assign a child a gender at birth?

It seems to have something to do with assuming they will fill a certain kind of societal role, i.e., will comply with the societal expectations we have for men or women. So, for example, merely having a doctor note the genitalia expressed by the child or passing that information on to others wouldn’t count but having a “It’s a boy” party, and thereby encouraging guests to give boy appropriate presents, would.

However, this raises interesting questions about whether it is meaningful to claim to have a certain gender (say one different than the usual one for your sex) but be non-conformist to the usual social stereotypes. Or, indeed, what it would even mean to claim a given gender identity in the absence of such gender stereotypes and whether one can coherently support the idea of someone being transgender (as opposed to simply gender non-conforming) while opposing the idea of expectations of gendered behavior, i.e., in order to support the idea of someone claiming a different gender must one in some sense assent to the idea that it is appropriate to have certain gender specific expectations of behavior?

Interestingly, if on accepts the analysis I offer below, on which gender identity is ultimately about a preference between various gendered societal roles it may be that the suggestion in this article is in a sense conceptually self-defeating since if society ever got close to the point of adopting this solution the very concept of gender as distinct from sex would dissolve.

Why we should stop giving babies a gender when they are born

Trans rights have burst into the spotlight in the past few years thanks to high-profile figures like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, with the former’s 2014 Time cover seen as a watershed moment for the movement. Now, the debate has turned to children and gender.

Before I go one I’d like to impress the importance of distinguishing theoretical considerations from more practical ones. For instance, one could believe that gender identity doesn’t really make sense because it rests on the inappropriate idea that we should have different expectations and social roles for men and women while believing that since, in the near term there is no practical means of eliminating those expectations/roles the best thing to do is to support people’s ability to change which set of expectations/roles apply to them (or make the effort of opting out). This isn’t quite the position I hold but I would like to stress that however the theoretical discussion turns out I firmly believe that, as a matter of simple human compassion and empathy, we should respect people’s requests to be referred to and treated as the gender they identify with. Regardless of whether the notion of gender is philosophically suspect or not it causes people real pain to be misgendered and doing so benefits no one. Even if you believe transgender identification is a mental disorder2 which doctors should try to cure rather than accede to refusing to gender colleagues as they request or let them use the restroom of their choice, like screaming at someone whose religious beliefs you disagree with, accomplishes nothing but making more people miserable.

Tentative Thoughts

These kind of questions push me towards the view that the only sense in which one can claim to have a certain gender (as distinct from sex) is insofar as one is announcing an intention to comply more with the social expectations of and fulfill the social role of your chosen gender and requesting others apply those expectations to you. Obviously, one need not intend to comply with all the stereotypes and expectations society has of your chosen gender or request they all be applied to you but by announcing a particular gender identity one is suggesting that in the main you intend to comply with or wish to be treated according to the stereotypes for your chosen gender more so than the other gender. Or in the case of a declaration of a non-binary gender identity that one doesn’t intend to fill either social role and doesn’t wish to be treated as if one belongs in either.

Ultimately, this means that there is a certain sense in which I don’t think it makes sense to ‘really’ be intrinsically male (female) despite being biologically female (male). There is no societally independent objective notion of gender relative to which one is really male or female. There are only certain societal roles, expectations and stereotypes about men and women and attitudes people have about how they wish to relate to those roles, expectations and stereotypes. Thus, its simply incoherent to claim that one’s gender is really female but that one doesn’t intend to play more of the stereotypical female role in social interactions nor does one want others to treat you more according to the usual social expectations we have of women. In other words, the only real concept of gender (as distinct from sex) which we have recourse to is the operational concept defined by way of society’s gendered expectations. As such, the common implicit assumption in discussions of gender identity that gender is some kind of intrinsic property of the individual must be rejected.

To be clear I’m not suggesting that talk of gender identity is misguided or can’t be made sense of. The operational definition (or a precisification thereof) I gave above works perfectly well and makes sense of what is going on when someone makes a male or female gender identity claim. However, it does suggest a certain skepticism about claims of gender identities other than male, female and none of the above (if gender is understood as a desire to be treated as if you belong/don’t belong to certain societal categories it doesn’t really make sense to call categories that society doesn’t have gender identities) and suggests a certain degree of skepticism regarding the implicit assumption of intrinsicness often made about gender. Accepting this view, however, does limit one’s ability to simultaneously claim to have a male/female gender identity while resisting the idea that gender specific social norms and stereotypes should be applied to you.

Gender As Personal Identification

I suspect a common response to my suggestion above is that I’m ignoring the very real sense in which some individuals strongly identify as a given gender. I fully accept the fact that some people simply feel male or female and are more comfortable thinking of themselves in that way. For those of us, like myself, who are cis by default such feelings certainly seem puzzling but I’m very much convinced they are real. But if I’m convinced these feelings are real why not just accept that the concept of gender merely refers to the sense of personal identification as male or female?

For one thing, the discussion of personal identification (driven by a noble desire to be inclusive) elides the fact that this can mean very different things to different people. I found the answers to this question I asked on quora about the experience of gender dysphoria quite illuminating. In particularly, it suggests that while some people’s experience of gender dysphoria is best described as a desire to be socially treated as a member of the other gender other individuals feelings were directly related to a feeling of discomfort with the genitalia they were born with. However, the focus on social role seems both more common and more faithful to the idea that gender is something distinct from biological sex (or even desired biological sex) and the operational definition above seems to capture the primary ways people want to use the term.

But why not go further and simply accept the claims of strong personal identification with a gender as defining the concept of gender? This, after all, seems to be what most transactivists seem to favor and would allow one to make sense of both the variety of non-binary gender identification and those individuals who want to both claim a given male/female gender identity while rejecting the operational aspects, i.e., the request to be treated according to gendered societal expectations or desire to fit into gendered roles.

Unfortunately, this approach has several serious flaws. First, it seems unable to cope with the phenomena of cis by default as such individuals lack any particular feeling of personal identification but we don’t want to deny they have the default cis gender. One could offer a disjunctive definition of gender but such unwieldy theoretical constructs should generally be avoided. Even more problematic is that such an approach fails to pick out a clear concept as what feelings count as identifying as a particular gender will vary from person to person. Of course, one might try and offer some kind of objective yardstick of male/female identifying against which various feelings can be measured but that just pushes the problem of choosing a conception of gender back a level. More broadly, it still leaves us in want of any sense in which we should regard a particular kind of feeling of identification to be a feeling of gender identification rather than some other kind of psycho-sexual identification.

Besides, as a purely practical matter it might be best if the transrights movement, at least temporarily, disassociated themselves from the idea that one can simply choose a word that describes how you feel about your `gender’ and call that a gender-identity. Even if you don’t share my conceptual concerns about calling such identifications, no matter how sincerely felt, gender identities it may be a necessary tactical move just as it was tactically necessary for gays to disassociate themselves from other non-traditional relationships like polyamory in the pursuit of gay rights.

Philosophical Work

Yes, I’m aware that there is some philosophical work on this subject. Unfortunately, while there are a few interesting papers in the analytic tradition far too many are nothing but ideologically driven continentalesque concept association. Of the papers that are worth reading the only one that I’ve found which directly tackles these hard conceptual issues is “Science Fiction Double Feature: Trans Liberation on Twin Earth” but even this paper doesn’t, to my mind, give enough weight to how these terms are actually used and (perhaps motivated by understandable3 concerns about harmful effects on the trans rights movement or perhaps the authors simply don’t share these intuitions) avoids bullet biting when such bullets would conflict with transpositive ideology. However, It’s quite likely I’m unaware of some good work on this subject and would appreciate being pointed in the direction of other good analytic philosophy papers dealing with this subject.

For example, parents who are perfectly balanced between choosing to relocate to an area with far more boys than girls or an area with far more girls than boys could presumably consider the fact that the balance of probabilities favors their child being attracted to individuals with the other kind of genitals when they grow up. ↩

Personally, I think even phrasing it this way is to miss the point. Of course transgender individuals are suffering from a mental disorder as is anyone experiencing mental anguish. The only relevant question is whether things like gender reassignment surgery or claiming a different gender identity are effective means to reduce that suffering and I believe the evidence suggests they are. ↩

Understandable and well-intentioned perhaps but still, in my opinion, a mistake. It’s my view that people can sense when certain conclusions or arguments are being avoided out of concern for their harmful impact and this works to push many readers towards a generalized skepticism of such work. At least in the context of an academic philosophy paper where there is little risk of being quoted out of context in the mainstream media, far better to defang the best arguments that can be raised against a position (or at least the public rhetoric associated with a position) and bite any required bullets while showing that need not force one to take an unsupportive or uncompassionate position regarding the vulnerable group in question. ↩

What Does It Mean To Assign Babies A Gender? was originally published on Rejecting Rationality

#gender #gender identity #gender studies #philosophy #trans #transgender

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