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Perhaps this is an insensitive question/comment, but do trans women feel like they have the wrong body or the wrong wholesale gender? In my experience with tran

Perhaps this is an insensitive question/comment, but do trans women feel like they have the wrong body or the wrong wholesale gender? In my experience with trans women I know, they still seem to relate primarily to men (they still gravitate towards male dominated interests) whereas many gay men I know seem to relate primarily with women, and gravitate towards women interests. So this reconciliation is hard, and the topic too sensitive for me to dare asking people I know in real life.

kunai 1y ago
Interests are not inherently gender-specific. I know many women who gravitate towards wargames, sports, and the like, typically male-dominated hobbies. We need to stop pursuing this notion that an activity is inherently male or inherently female. Most trans women I know are the exact opposite, they gravitate towards extremely feminine interests, like makeup, fashion, design, etc. Inherent attraction towards a particular interest only dictates your personality type, I don't think it's meaningful insofar as it relates to gender dysphoria -- I think that stems from a much deeper, much more subconscious phenomenon which is adjacent to body dysmorphia. But I digress. I proffer a question to those skeptical about gender transition: with the rise of GLP-1 blockers, many have found holes in the body positivity movement, in that a lot of formerly obese people who found solace in Ozempic and lost a lot of weight -- this accounts for a body transformation. Many report their symptoms of body dysmorphia disappeared entirely. Is this not the same for HRT and trans people? The other issue is that many are quick to compare the plight of a trans person to that of an anorexic -- but it's already established that anorexia nervosa is a special class of eating disorder that is multifactorial in origin and etiology. If you're content with GLP-1 blockers and Ozempic being used to combat obesity, then you should have no issue with HRT. It's essentially the same thing, being used to treat a very similar condition. A lot of obese people don't necessarily want to be skinny, they just want to feel comfy in their own skin, and that's a trait they share with trans people.
davmar 1y ago
don't forget that socialization plays a role. boys are guided to certain activities in their youth, girls to others.
PartiallyTyped 1y ago
The people I know couldn't relate to men at all, felt like completely different species. While they may have some interests from their "past" life, many of them felt that they could now enjoy things women did without judgement, and so they did.
Fraterkes 1y ago
I haven’t really found that to be true in my friend groups, but also it is really common for people on the spectrum to be trans, and a lot of autistic people in general tend to have interests that we view as male-coded.
antonfire 1y ago
> Perhaps this is an insensitive question/comment, but do trans women feel like they have the wrong body or the wrong wholesale gender? It varies. > In my experience with trans women I know, they still seem to relate primarily to men (they still gravitate towards male dominated interests) whereas many gay men I know seem to relate primarily with women, and gravitate towards women interests. For whatever it's worth, I think observations like this are as useful a cue to look inward for an explanation as they are to look outwards. For one thing, part of the whole "gender" thing is the way people's preconceptions lead them to parse information about others (and themselves!), and your sense of trends is probably influenced by that. (E.g. when a (gay) man gravitates towards "women interests" that may just be more salient than when a woman does, so you notice it more.) For another, you might be in a lot of male-dominated spaces (e.g. this one), so the set of trans women you know is probably not that representative. These might not be the whole story, but they certainly have a role to play in whatever reconciliation you're seeking. Gender is difficult to navigate: we're all swimming in it. For me personally: I'm "nonbinary", whatever that means. As I see it today, for me being trans feels like more of a "wrong wholesale gender" thing than a "wrong body" thing. (But I'm open to the idea that I'm just not in touch with my body.) Part of the "wholesale gender" thing is the realization at some point in my life that "gender" was playing a much bigger role in my life than I had realized, including how I relate to people, what interests I gravitate towards, and so on. Something I find deeply aversive. But I'm also averse to, like, rearranging my whole life to retroactively "fix the gender story" around it, just to make myself more legible. You might parse me as gravitating towards interests that line up with my assigned gender at birth (AGAB), and maybe even as relating to people primarily of my AGAB, and so on. I'm sure some people go further and functionally take this as an excuse to continue to relate to me through the lens of my "birth gender" or what have have you. I'm sure it's easier. From my perspective, I suspect those people are underestimating how much of a clusterfuck the whole "gender" thing is.
- mos_basik 1y ago
  >For another, you might be in a lot of male-dominated spaces (e.g. this one), so the set of trans women you know is probably not that representative. Damn. I'm ashamed I didn't think of that framing myself. Yep, I'm cis het male. Yep, I studied stem and I program and video game and dabble in motorsport and have experience with in-person and online spaces for all of the above. And yep, most of the trans women I know or have interacted with have been in these contexts. And I've seen a lot of "why are there so many trans women in programming?" "why are there so many trans women in video game dev?" etc. But yeah, of course I (and the people asking the above questions) don't know how many trans women are in women-dominated spaces, cause we're not in those spaces. Heck, I don't even know enough about those spaces to posit a plausible example of the mirror phenomenon. Grad school? Fiction writing? uhhhh needlecrafts? Are there forums somewhere where cis women are posting "how come there are so many trans men running needlecraft content creation channels?"? Anyway, thanks for the food for thought.
brooke2k 1y ago
I don't think it's an insensitive question at all. To answer - As a trans woman, interests/hobbies are not really a marker of gender that I feel is important to me. I would say the same is true of all my trans friends, although ofc that is not a representative sample, so take it with a grain of salt. For me, in no particular order, these are the elements of sex/gender that I find important (and which were crucial for me to align during my transition): * My body. This was perhaps the single most important one. Hormones worked wonders here, as well as growing out my hair, shaving, learning to take care of my skin, etc. * Clothing/makeup went a long way towards making me feel better about myself. It takes a very long time and a lot of practice and skill-building to be "good" at fashion/makeup/etc, but it was worth it. * My personality. This one is the hardest to describe. I can only say that when my body ran on testosterone, I was miserable, antisocial, arrogant, and annoying, and after switching over to estrogen, I am much happier, better at conversation, more empathetic, and by all reports much more likeable. * My relationship to other women. It's hard to describe, but as I transitioned I became a lot closer to the women in my life, and grew apart slightly from the men in my life. I think in part this emerges from the negative side of being a woman in society (being leered at/catcalled/harassed/stalked/patronized/discriminated against/etc). It leads women to stick together and trust each other more implicitly than men. So as a trans woman, gradually being welcomed into this "club" was very gender-affirming (although the negative stuff still sucks :/) * Name and pronouns. At this point (~4 years) I pass enough in public that I am essentially never misgendered, but on the rare occasion I am, it certainly ruins my day. Pronouns matter more than cis people might think. * Relationship to my family. Being called "daughter" by my parents, doing mom/daughter stuff with my mom, etc. There are probably other factors that I'm not thinking of right now, but this is what comes to mind as I write this. And notably, my interests/hobbies aren't really included there. I do software development, I'm into skateboarding and punk music and videogames, I play dungeons and dragons. All "male-coded" hobbies for the most part, but I really just attribute that to the fact that I developed my hobbies as a kid, and as a kid I was a boy with friends who were boys and who did boyish stuff. I personally don't find that that affects my perception of my gender at all. Hopefully this helps clear up your confusion! Let me know if there's anything I can clarify further.
RebeccaTheDev 1y ago
I can't speak for other trans women, but is kind of how I describe my experience with this. And this is from someone who is a later-transitioner, talking about this specific type of social dysphoria [0]. It took me enormous effort to relate to other men, and I was never sure if I was doing it correctly. I would go out of my way to try to learn "how to man," including having typically male-coded interests (like sports, or home repair) that I really didn't actually care about but knew I had to because it was socially expected of me. I knew I had to, because I had to operate in that world, but I was never comfortable, none of it ever came naturally and all of it just felt wrong. I was desperate to relate to women. It would hurt that I wouldn't be able to participate in that world even though I longed to be a part of it. Often my wife and I would have grill out parties, and I would be at my expected place outside with the guys, talking stuff I hated, but I longed to be chatting with the other women inside. I feel comfortable as a woman, and much more comfortable relating to other women in my life. Do I still have male friends? Of course. I have men I worked with for decades and that I'm still friends with. Our relationships definitely changed a bit, but we still have shared experiences that bind us together. At the same time, with my female friends, our relationships definitely changed as well. Things felt different. Our conversations got deeper and more meaningful, and I feel like I "know" some of them better than I ever knew any of my male friends. I also kept some of my male interests because I'm interested in them.. I still love aviation and trains. Definitely male-coded interests (though there are quite a few more women than one might expect.) I also picked up, or in some cases learned to stop repressing, typically feminine-coded interests. I have far more fun with dress than I ever cared about doing as a guy. Or, now I proudly own that I read romance novels instead of sheepishly hiding my kindle. [0] https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/social-dysphoria https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/social-dysphoria
- aucisson_masque 1y ago
  Can’t you just be a man that loves spending time with women instead of a woman ‘trapped’ in the body of a man ? I have known several men, non gay, that just behaved more like women than men. that was fine, and as far as I know they didn’t swapped gender. Like you can be a duck, happy when around dogs but still be a duck.
heterodoxlib 1y ago
A slightly different but closely related question for those who are answering: what do you attribute the difference to? Is it biological in basis, spiritual/metaphysical, or cultural? I keep hearing people say "gender is a social construct" and those same people then go on to emphatically support transgender as a concept. This leads me to wonder: if gender is a social construct, is identifying as transgender the result of feeling pressure to conform to a cookie-cutter definition of what someone with male/female parts is meant to be like? If so, is being transgender also just a social construct that can and maybe should be addressed by loosening up our tight expectations for gender roles? Or is being transgender more biological than cultural for you?
- seec 1y ago
  Yes, I think there is a lot of social pressure that is driving all of this. I doubt it's only about body dysphoria, because after all you may alter it a bit but still you cannot deviate that much from what you were given in the first place. Extensives surgery procedure seems to be really hit or miss and it is largely impossible to fully rework the features that you were given at birth (especially facial or the pelvis). Some are luckier than others in these matters because they are "in the middle" but still, physically passing for one sex doesn't really alleviate the need to conform to that gender expectation. I think it's a losing battle because you cannot make people change their minds about who/what others are. The real solution is true acceptance of differences but that seems very hard to create culturally, people are still tribal no matter what. I am somewhat pissed off by all this gender culture ward around LGBTQ, trans and feminism because people constantly assume I am gay from my physical appearance and demeanor when I am definitely not. I am dumbfounded around the trans issue because they make it look like they are the only one being socially pressured into conforming to one cookie cutter identity or another. I believe that most people feel that pressure, just to differing levels and only the outlier at the extreme are considered a "true" man or woman. The political discourse obliviate the fact that we cannot all be that close to what is deemed the "ideal" in the current culture and everyone is worse off for it.
- ghushn3 1y ago
  You are asking a good question (it reads to me like a good faith question that comes from a desire to learn more about how others think). > Is it biological in basis, spiritual/metaphysical, or cultural? Personally, I view it as cultural leading to physiological -- what does it mean to be a man? What is "manly"? I think everyone can agree that "manliness" is different globally. Is Bill Gates manly? He's very successful, but is that something that's manly? Is Tom Cruise manly? Or Kid Rock? What about George Takei? Manliness has some multi-axis definition that exists in each culture around the world. We call that set of vectors "being a man", and we push people who are born with penises into it because it seems to fit most people who are born with XY chromosomes. Personally, I think it's useful to decouple the two ideas -- what my body is, and what the cultural expectations are in how I should behave because I have that body. This is what people mean when they say gender is a social construct -- they are saying, "The piece we call 'manliness' is a separate concept from the piece we define by bodies." Now, say I experience anxiety, fear, and revulsion about the set of vectors that define "manliness". I have a penis, but absolutely all the vectors for "womanliness" line up with my understanding of how the world works. Clothing, presentation, speech patterns, interests, activities, etc. etc. etc. What do I do in such a case? I could just live my life in pursuit of the 'wrong' set of vectors -- but socially that's quite dangerous. When people who are "supposed" to maximize one set of vectors try to live with another set, they tend to get bullied (if not violently attacked.) This puts me in a bind -- either live a miserable life pretending to be manly OR push my body to try and match the set of vectors associated with womanliness. (Or, change society to stop caring so much about people who fall outside of the traditional vector space, but that's a lot harder than either of the two other approaches.) > is being transgender also just a social construct that can and maybe should be addressed by loosening up our tight expectations for gender roles? For me, absolutely! That's the exactly the sort of ideal world I'd love to be in -- let people just... pursue what makes them feel happy. If someone with a penis wants to get way into makeup and the color pink, stop beating the shit out of them for it.
FatalLogic 1y ago
I guess (I really do mean 'guess') that they experience a disorienting sense of disassociation which is comparable, though much more shocking, to the situation of other people who realize, late in life, that their difficulties in relating and connecting to other people are not imaginary. Most commonly, this is comparable to people who realize that they have been having problems, for years, because they are "on the spectrum" or have Asperger's or autism-adjacent conditions or, perhaps, some ADHD/ADD challenges. I'm sure that there are many people in the HN community who have been surprised to discover this about themselves. For example, this man, who has been successful in very many ways: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57045770 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57045770 For people who discover challenges related to gender identity and dysphoria though, the great difference is that they're not only realizing that they have the "wrong" mind, but they even have the "wrong" physical body, too! [In that sentence, my opinion is that the definition of "wrong" is based more on the traditional viewpoints of conventional culture, and not so much on reality].
panic 1y ago
One possible resolution is that these interests are male-dominated not because of an inherent gender-based preference, but because women (or, more precisely, people who are perceived to be women) are excluded from them. Trans women who are still perceived as men are able to avoid some of these exclusionary processes, and they maintain their interest even after they start to be seen as women.
viamiraia 1y ago
I am a trans woman. For me it's closer to wrong body, as I do get a lot of physical dysphoria, but I'm always careful when talking about gender. I like to split it into three components - gender identity, gender expression, and gender roles. Currently, my gender identity and feminine expression feel (very) correct, but when I was repressing and thought I was a man, both my gender identity and masculine expression felt wrong. Gendered interests are gender roles. On this topic there seems to be a double bind applied to trans people. Conforming to roles is viewed as bad (see other comments in this thread), but not conforming to them (such as keeping "male" interests) is viewed as evidence our identities are invalid. A lot of trans people do retain the interests they grew up with, but to me, at least, that's just inertia. We are encouraged or often coerced into interests stereotypically related to our birth sex. I felt heavily restricted and unable to explore feminine interests growing up, due to a combination of society, culture, family, and other relationships. Feel free to ask more, I'm pretty comfortable talking about these things as long as I have the energy.
aaaja 1y ago
> In my experience with trans women I know, they still seem to relate primarily to men (they still gravitate towards male dominated interests) whereas many gay men I know seem to relate primarily with women, and gravitate towards women interests. Interestingly, this has also been observed and researched by clinical psychologists who study sexuality and gender dysphoria. A decent summary of the research can be read here: https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/ https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-on... Note the difference in presentation the authors describe between "childhood-onset gender dysphoria" and "autogynephilic gender dysphoria". The males you refer to as relating primarily to men and gravitating towards male-dominated interests are more likely to be in the latter category.
d6e 1y ago
I'm a transwoman who had dysphoria the moment puberty started. Before puberty I as fine with my body, but once it started it became complete body horror. The word dysphoria is used a lot, but I think body horror is a more relatable concept. Have you ever seen the movie The Fly? It's like that. It's not that I felt I had the wrong body, it's that my body was literally changing into something I did not want and did not fit me. When my voice changed it wrecked me. I begged the adults around me for hormones or blockers something to make it stop and they all refused. If I was born a girl, people would think it was fucked up if the adults forced me to take testosterone and develop male characteristics. But because I was born a boy, that means I'm forced to take testosterone even if I know 100% I'm not? I know they were trying their best and wanted to make sure I didn't make the wrong choice, but by doing that, they deprived me of being able to make the correct choice. I started estrogen at 18, the moment I had autonomy, and haven't once had a doubt and that was back in the late 2000s. As for male interests, I like computers and programming. I think of it as less of a "male interest" as a "nerd interest" since most of the males I grew up with were into sports, something I'm very much not. As for relating to men, I'm attracted to men. I like programming which is male dominated. But I wouldn't say I fully relate to them. I don't really understand a lot of things about men and I think outside of some interest overlap, I don't relate that much.
seethedeaduu 1y ago
This seems to be yet another one of the antitrans throwaway accounts that keep being created on this site.

kunai 1y ago

Interests are not inherently gender-specific. I know many women who gravitate towards wargames, sports, and the like, typically male-dominated hobbies. We need to stop pursuing this notion that an activity is inherently male or inherently female. Most trans women I know are the exact opposite, they gravitate towards extremely feminine interests, like makeup, fashion, design, etc. Inherent attraction towards a particular interest only dictates your personality type, I don't think it's meaningful insofar as it relates to gender dysphoria -- I think that stems from a much deeper, much more subconscious phenomenon which is adjacent to body dysmorphia. But I digress. I proffer a question to those skeptical about gender transition: with the rise of GLP-1 blockers, many have found holes in the body positivity movement, in that a lot of formerly obese people who found solace in Ozempic and lost a lot of weight -- this accounts for a body transformation. Many report their symptoms of body dysmorphia disappeared entirely. Is this not the same for HRT and trans people? The other issue is that many are quick to compare the plight of a trans person to that of an anorexic -- but it's already established that anorexia nervosa is a special class of eating disorder that is multifactorial in origin and etiology. If you're content with GLP-1 blockers and Ozempic being used to combat obesity, then you should have no issue with HRT. It's essentially the same thing, being used to treat a very similar condition. A lot of obese people don't necessarily want to be skinny, they just want to feel comfy in their own skin, and that's a trait they share with trans people.

davmar 1y ago

don't forget that socialization plays a role. boys are guided to certain activities in their youth, girls to others.

PartiallyTyped 1y ago

The people I know couldn't relate to men at all, felt like completely different species. While they may have some interests from their "past" life, many of them felt that they could now enjoy things women did without judgement, and so they did.

Fraterkes 1y ago

I haven’t really found that to be true in my friend groups, but also it is really common for people on the spectrum to be trans, and a lot of autistic people in general tend to have interests that we view as male-coded.

antonfire 1y ago

> Perhaps this is an insensitive question/comment, but do trans women feel like they have the wrong body or the wrong wholesale gender? It varies. > In my experience with trans women I know, they still seem to relate primarily to men (they still gravitate towards male dominated interests) whereas many gay men I know seem to relate primarily with women, and gravitate towards women interests. For whatever it's worth, I think observations like this are as useful a cue to look inward for an explanation as they are to look outwards. For one thing, part of the whole "gender" thing is the way people's preconceptions lead them to parse information about others (and themselves!), and your sense of trends is probably influenced by that. (E.g. when a (gay) man gravitates towards "women interests" that may just be more salient than when a woman does, so you notice it more.) For another, you might be in a lot of male-dominated spaces (e.g. this one), so the set of trans women you know is probably not that representative. These might not be the whole story, but they certainly have a role to play in whatever reconciliation you're seeking. Gender is difficult to navigate: we're all swimming in it. For me personally: I'm "nonbinary", whatever that means. As I see it today, for me being trans feels like more of a "wrong wholesale gender" thing than a "wrong body" thing. (But I'm open to the idea that I'm just not in touch with my body.) Part of the "wholesale gender" thing is the realization at some point in my life that "gender" was playing a much bigger role in my life than I had realized, including how I relate to people, what interests I gravitate towards, and so on. Something I find deeply aversive. But I'm also averse to, like, rearranging my whole life to retroactively "fix the gender story" around it, just to make myself more legible. You might parse me as gravitating towards interests that line up with my assigned gender at birth (AGAB), and maybe even as relating to people primarily of my AGAB, and so on. I'm sure some people go further and functionally take this as an excuse to continue to relate to me through the lens of my "birth gender" or what have have you. I'm sure it's easier. From my perspective, I suspect those people are underestimating how much of a clusterfuck the whole "gender" thing is.

mos_basik 1y ago
>For another, you might be in a lot of male-dominated spaces (e.g. this one), so the set of trans women you know is probably not that representative. Damn. I'm ashamed I didn't think of that framing myself. Yep, I'm cis het male. Yep, I studied stem and I program and video game and dabble in motorsport and have experience with in-person and online spaces for all of the above. And yep, most of the trans women I know or have interacted with have been in these contexts. And I've seen a lot of "why are there so many trans women in programming?" "why are there so many trans women in video game dev?" etc. But yeah, of course I (and the people asking the above questions) don't know how many trans women are in women-dominated spaces, cause we're not in those spaces. Heck, I don't even know enough about those spaces to posit a plausible example of the mirror phenomenon. Grad school? Fiction writing? uhhhh needlecrafts? Are there forums somewhere where cis women are posting "how come there are so many trans men running needlecraft content creation channels?"? Anyway, thanks for the food for thought.

brooke2k 1y ago

I don't think it's an insensitive question at all. To answer - As a trans woman, interests/hobbies are not really a marker of gender that I feel is important to me. I would say the same is true of all my trans friends, although ofc that is not a representative sample, so take it with a grain of salt. For me, in no particular order, these are the elements of sex/gender that I find important (and which were crucial for me to align during my transition): * My body. This was perhaps the single most important one. Hormones worked wonders here, as well as growing out my hair, shaving, learning to take care of my skin, etc. * Clothing/makeup went a long way towards making me feel better about myself. It takes a very long time and a lot of practice and skill-building to be "good" at fashion/makeup/etc, but it was worth it. * My personality. This one is the hardest to describe. I can only say that when my body ran on testosterone, I was miserable, antisocial, arrogant, and annoying, and after switching over to estrogen, I am much happier, better at conversation, more empathetic, and by all reports much more likeable. * My relationship to other women. It's hard to describe, but as I transitioned I became a lot closer to the women in my life, and grew apart slightly from the men in my life. I think in part this emerges from the negative side of being a woman in society (being leered at/catcalled/harassed/stalked/patronized/discriminated against/etc). It leads women to stick together and trust each other more implicitly than men. So as a trans woman, gradually being welcomed into this "club" was very gender-affirming (although the negative stuff still sucks :/) * Name and pronouns. At this point (~4 years) I pass enough in public that I am essentially never misgendered, but on the rare occasion I am, it certainly ruins my day. Pronouns matter more than cis people might think. * Relationship to my family. Being called "daughter" by my parents, doing mom/daughter stuff with my mom, etc. There are probably other factors that I'm not thinking of right now, but this is what comes to mind as I write this. And notably, my interests/hobbies aren't really included there. I do software development, I'm into skateboarding and punk music and videogames, I play dungeons and dragons. All "male-coded" hobbies for the most part, but I really just attribute that to the fact that I developed my hobbies as a kid, and as a kid I was a boy with friends who were boys and who did boyish stuff. I personally don't find that that affects my perception of my gender at all. Hopefully this helps clear up your confusion! Let me know if there's anything I can clarify further.

RebeccaTheDev 1y ago

I can't speak for other trans women, but is kind of how I describe my experience with this. And this is from someone who is a later-transitioner, talking about this specific type of social dysphoria [0]. It took me enormous effort to relate to other men, and I was never sure if I was doing it correctly. I would go out of my way to try to learn "how to man," including having typically male-coded interests (like sports, or home repair) that I really didn't actually care about but knew I had to because it was socially expected of me. I knew I had to, because I had to operate in that world, but I was never comfortable, none of it ever came naturally and all of it just felt wrong. I was desperate to relate to women. It would hurt that I wouldn't be able to participate in that world even though I longed to be a part of it. Often my wife and I would have grill out parties, and I would be at my expected place outside with the guys, talking stuff I hated, but I longed to be chatting with the other women inside. I feel comfortable as a woman, and much more comfortable relating to other women in my life. Do I still have male friends? Of course. I have men I worked with for decades and that I'm still friends with. Our relationships definitely changed a bit, but we still have shared experiences that bind us together. At the same time, with my female friends, our relationships definitely changed as well. Things felt different. Our conversations got deeper and more meaningful, and I feel like I "know" some of them better than I ever knew any of my male friends. I also kept some of my male interests because I'm interested in them.. I still love aviation and trains. Definitely male-coded interests (though there are quite a few more women than one might expect.) I also picked up, or in some cases learned to stop repressing, typically feminine-coded interests. I have far more fun with dress than I ever cared about doing as a guy. Or, now I proudly own that I read romance novels instead of sheepishly hiding my kindle. [0] https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/social-dysphoria https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/social-dysphoria

aucisson_masque 1y ago
Can’t you just be a man that loves spending time with women instead of a woman ‘trapped’ in the body of a man ? I have known several men, non gay, that just behaved more like women than men. that was fine, and as far as I know they didn’t swapped gender. Like you can be a duck, happy when around dogs but still be a duck.

heterodoxlib 1y ago

A slightly different but closely related question for those who are answering: what do you attribute the difference to? Is it biological in basis, spiritual/metaphysical, or cultural? I keep hearing people say "gender is a social construct" and those same people then go on to emphatically support transgender as a concept. This leads me to wonder: if gender is a social construct, is identifying as transgender the result of feeling pressure to conform to a cookie-cutter definition of what someone with male/female parts is meant to be like? If so, is being transgender also just a social construct that can and maybe should be addressed by loosening up our tight expectations for gender roles? Or is being transgender more biological than cultural for you?

seec 1y ago
Yes, I think there is a lot of social pressure that is driving all of this. I doubt it's only about body dysphoria, because after all you may alter it a bit but still you cannot deviate that much from what you were given in the first place. Extensives surgery procedure seems to be really hit or miss and it is largely impossible to fully rework the features that you were given at birth (especially facial or the pelvis). Some are luckier than others in these matters because they are "in the middle" but still, physically passing for one sex doesn't really alleviate the need to conform to that gender expectation. I think it's a losing battle because you cannot make people change their minds about who/what others are. The real solution is true acceptance of differences but that seems very hard to create culturally, people are still tribal no matter what. I am somewhat pissed off by all this gender culture ward around LGBTQ, trans and feminism because people constantly assume I am gay from my physical appearance and demeanor when I am definitely not. I am dumbfounded around the trans issue because they make it look like they are the only one being socially pressured into conforming to one cookie cutter identity or another. I believe that most people feel that pressure, just to differing levels and only the outlier at the extreme are considered a "true" man or woman. The political discourse obliviate the fact that we cannot all be that close to what is deemed the "ideal" in the current culture and everyone is worse off for it.
ghushn3 1y ago
You are asking a good question (it reads to me like a good faith question that comes from a desire to learn more about how others think). > Is it biological in basis, spiritual/metaphysical, or cultural? Personally, I view it as cultural leading to physiological -- what does it mean to be a man? What is "manly"? I think everyone can agree that "manliness" is different globally. Is Bill Gates manly? He's very successful, but is that something that's manly? Is Tom Cruise manly? Or Kid Rock? What about George Takei? Manliness has some multi-axis definition that exists in each culture around the world. We call that set of vectors "being a man", and we push people who are born with penises into it because it seems to fit most people who are born with XY chromosomes. Personally, I think it's useful to decouple the two ideas -- what my body is, and what the cultural expectations are in how I should behave because I have that body. This is what people mean when they say gender is a social construct -- they are saying, "The piece we call 'manliness' is a separate concept from the piece we define by bodies." Now, say I experience anxiety, fear, and revulsion about the set of vectors that define "manliness". I have a penis, but absolutely all the vectors for "womanliness" line up with my understanding of how the world works. Clothing, presentation, speech patterns, interests, activities, etc. etc. etc. What do I do in such a case? I could just live my life in pursuit of the 'wrong' set of vectors -- but socially that's quite dangerous. When people who are "supposed" to maximize one set of vectors try to live with another set, they tend to get bullied (if not violently attacked.) This puts me in a bind -- either live a miserable life pretending to be manly OR push my body to try and match the set of vectors associated with womanliness. (Or, change society to stop caring so much about people who fall outside of the traditional vector space, but that's a lot harder than either of the two other approaches.) > is being transgender also just a social construct that can and maybe should be addressed by loosening up our tight expectations for gender roles? For me, absolutely! That's the exactly the sort of ideal world I'd love to be in -- let people just... pursue what makes them feel happy. If someone with a penis wants to get way into makeup and the color pink, stop beating the shit out of them for it.

FatalLogic 1y ago

I guess (I really do mean 'guess') that they experience a disorienting sense of disassociation which is comparable, though much more shocking, to the situation of other people who realize, late in life, that their difficulties in relating and connecting to other people are not imaginary. Most commonly, this is comparable to people who realize that they have been having problems, for years, because they are "on the spectrum" or have Asperger's or autism-adjacent conditions or, perhaps, some ADHD/ADD challenges. I'm sure that there are many people in the HN community who have been surprised to discover this about themselves. For example, this man, who has been successful in very many ways: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57045770 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57045770 For people who discover challenges related to gender identity and dysphoria though, the great difference is that they're not only realizing that they have the "wrong" mind, but they even have the "wrong" physical body, too! [In that sentence, my opinion is that the definition of "wrong" is based more on the traditional viewpoints of conventional culture, and not so much on reality].

panic 1y ago

One possible resolution is that these interests are male-dominated not because of an inherent gender-based preference, but because women (or, more precisely, people who are perceived to be women) are excluded from them. Trans women who are still perceived as men are able to avoid some of these exclusionary processes, and they maintain their interest even after they start to be seen as women.

viamiraia 1y ago

I am a trans woman. For me it's closer to wrong body, as I do get a lot of physical dysphoria, but I'm always careful when talking about gender. I like to split it into three components - gender identity, gender expression, and gender roles. Currently, my gender identity and feminine expression feel (very) correct, but when I was repressing and thought I was a man, both my gender identity and masculine expression felt wrong. Gendered interests are gender roles. On this topic there seems to be a double bind applied to trans people. Conforming to roles is viewed as bad (see other comments in this thread), but not conforming to them (such as keeping "male" interests) is viewed as evidence our identities are invalid. A lot of trans people do retain the interests they grew up with, but to me, at least, that's just inertia. We are encouraged or often coerced into interests stereotypically related to our birth sex. I felt heavily restricted and unable to explore feminine interests growing up, due to a combination of society, culture, family, and other relationships. Feel free to ask more, I'm pretty comfortable talking about these things as long as I have the energy.

aaaja 1y ago

> In my experience with trans women I know, they still seem to relate primarily to men (they still gravitate towards male dominated interests) whereas many gay men I know seem to relate primarily with women, and gravitate towards women interests. Interestingly, this has also been observed and researched by clinical psychologists who study sexuality and gender dysphoria. A decent summary of the research can be read here: https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/ https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-on... Note the difference in presentation the authors describe between "childhood-onset gender dysphoria" and "autogynephilic gender dysphoria". The males you refer to as relating primarily to men and gravitating towards male-dominated interests are more likely to be in the latter category.

d6e 1y ago

I'm a transwoman who had dysphoria the moment puberty started. Before puberty I as fine with my body, but once it started it became complete body horror. The word dysphoria is used a lot, but I think body horror is a more relatable concept. Have you ever seen the movie The Fly? It's like that. It's not that I felt I had the wrong body, it's that my body was literally changing into something I did not want and did not fit me. When my voice changed it wrecked me. I begged the adults around me for hormones or blockers something to make it stop and they all refused. If I was born a girl, people would think it was fucked up if the adults forced me to take testosterone and develop male characteristics. But because I was born a boy, that means I'm forced to take testosterone even if I know 100% I'm not? I know they were trying their best and wanted to make sure I didn't make the wrong choice, but by doing that, they deprived me of being able to make the correct choice. I started estrogen at 18, the moment I had autonomy, and haven't once had a doubt and that was back in the late 2000s. As for male interests, I like computers and programming. I think of it as less of a "male interest" as a "nerd interest" since most of the males I grew up with were into sports, something I'm very much not. As for relating to men, I'm attracted to men. I like programming which is male dominated. But I wouldn't say I fully relate to them. I don't really understand a lot of things about men and I think outside of some interest overlap, I don't relate that much.

seethedeaduu 1y ago

This seems to be yet another one of the antitrans throwaway accounts that keep being created on this site.