glitchsoc - Link to source

Cis people sometimes demand #trans people rigourously define what "gender" means and explain what drives us to embody a gender other than the one assigned to us at birth. If we can't do that, they say, how can they believe us?

But trans people shouldn't have to be philosophers and psychologists all wrapped up into one to have our experiences believed. 1/

#trans

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in reply to Tattie

glitchsoc - Link to source

Tattie

I don't generally "feel like a woman". I feel like me.

But, like, do you understand that for decades before I transitioned I was fantasising about, pining for, the idea of having a female body, of being recognised as a woman, going thru life as one?

I tried to stoically accept that I was a man, I tried to embrace non-traditional masculinity, I tried everything to make this need go away. It didn't.

So I have to conclude, this is something real.
3/

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Tattie

I tried painting my nails. It brought me happiness. I tried feminine accessories. They brought comfort. I tried shaving my body hair. It felt calming.

I started dressing in femme clothes, around the house. It felt exciting at first, then just... right.

And then I went on hormones. And everything accelerated. My body itself began to feel like a home, like a friend. I hadn't realised how much or how long I had been suffering, because it had just felt normal.
5/

in reply to Tattie

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Tattie

This is fact: transitioning to be more female in body, more feminine in presentation, and taking on a female-coded social role, made me feel vastly better in myself.

I know this is true of me, and many like me. And the experiences of transmasculine people in the other direction inform me that it's not as simple as womanhood just being better for everyone. It was something about me.
6/

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William Pietri

Thanks! I appreciate you sharing this. It's lovely. Congrats on finding ways to feel like you.

I also think it's wild that cis people are expecting you to explain gender to them. My experience asking cis people to explain this whole gender thing is that either they flop around like a fish on a riverbank or they fall back on PLUTO IS A PLANET repetition of too-simple things that they learned when they were 7 and haven't thought about since.

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xorlou

thanks for writing this, it very much mirrors my own experience. I tried so hard to avoid transitioning. I lived as a femme out gay man for over a decade. I'm still just at the early stages and still terrified, but I've reached the end of the road of alternative options. We shouldn't have to rigorously justify our own existence, it's just unreasonable to expect this. There probably isn't a rational explanation for being trans, it's just life and it unfolds the way it does. Sending all my love 💕
in reply to Tattie

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Tanek Rune

A few people already said similar, but plenty of social sciences have already done all that work of defining gender so we shouldn't have to.

It's not that transphobes can't find the information, it's that they don't care to listen to it anyway because it doesn't validate their own hateful beliefs.

It'd also help if they stopped burning our studies, books, and science centers down then pretending it's a new idea to be a transgender person.

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Azuaron

I'm a cis guy. I've always been in favor of trans rights since I learned trans people were a thing, but I did spend a number of years not really getting why someone would be trans.

Then one day I just had the thought, "What if I woke up tomorrow with a female body?" And after the obvious jokes that immediately came to mind, I actually thought about being stuck in the wrong body, unable to get back, and I had to stop because I almost gave myself a panic attack.

I'm an on-again-off-again recreational author, so I frequently find myself in unusual thought experiments. Which is to say, I hadn't intended to have a moment of profound empathy for trans people, but as soon as I calmed down I thought, Oh, this must be how a lot of trans people feel all time.

All of that to say: I see you. It's real. I think most cis people, if they put just a few minutes into the activity, would be forced to admit that if they were suddenly body swapped, they'd be desperate to get back to their correct body. Most cis people just never seriously confront the thought.

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Tattie

@Azuaron do you know? You're the first cis person I've spoken to willing to seriously entertain this thought experiment.

Most cis men make jokes about boobs, and most cis women focus on the privilege aspect. But almost everyone seems to falter at the deep imaginative act of their body being wrong for them.

I'm really glad you commented, because it's heartening to know that this sort of empathy is in fact possible— and that it plays out exactly as I would imagine, panic and all.

Thank you.

@Azuaron
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Simon EI3JDB

He's not the only one. Another occasional author here, and another who has pondered waking up as/being polymorphed into a different body. Talking to friends (I also do TTRPG) I hear that the depth of dysmorphia people would experience would vary, but it is real body horror stuff.

Also useful for understanding and building empathy now I have a non-binary child.

Thank you for putting it so well. 😀

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Azuaron

Yeah, that doesn't entirely surprise me. The problem of the privileged is that they're very rarely confronted with this kind of thing--hell, as I said, I stumbled into it accidentally.

But, when I'm not being too nihilistic for my own good, it gives me a bit of hope. I am, generally, a somewhat unusual person, but I don't think I'm particularly "special" or "good" in this regard, and that means other people could get there.

I feel like I could speed run most guys. Not that I could necessarily turn guys all the way around, but, so much of man culture is, "Look how not-feminine I am! I am not weak and feminine!" (Unhealthy, yes, wrong in so many ways, yes, but that's what it is.) I could be aggressive enough walking them through the scenario that we'd quickly get past, "Haha, boobs," to, "Oh no, my body's wrong and I'm not myself," just by leaning on their existing fears.

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Alberto Cottica

@Azuaron "same self, différent body" is a trope in #sciencefiction . Have you read "Call me Joe"? by Poul Anderson (1957!).

In sci-fi that can go in different way. In Anderson's story, having an alien body suits the protagonist just fine. Either way, if you read a lot of it you are almost bound to come across though experiments like yours.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of…

1998 novella by Ted Chiang

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
#sciencefiction @Azuaron
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Alberto Cottica

@Azuaron none of this is to deny the experience of actual trans people, I assure you. I have tried to imagine what it would feel like to be in different bodies (female, disabled, alien, robot, spaceship...). But then it goes back to Daniel Dennett's old argument: you can perhaps imagine what it would feel like to YOU to be, say, a bat. But you cannot imagine what that feels like TO THE BAT ITSELF. You do the thought experiment and it is interesting, but it only goes so far.
@Azuaron
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Court Cantrell does not comply

@Azuaron
This feels so relatable!

What finally opened my eyes to the desperate need for trans rights to be encoded (is that the correct verb?) permanently into law was my one and only full-term pregnancy.

Long story short, my body did not like being pregnant. It was not a pleasant experience. And then my tailbone fractured during delivery.

For the next few years, I felt like I'd been ripped from my true body & transplanted into someone else's. Wholly surreal, dysmorphic experience.

@Azuaron
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Court Cantrell does not comply

@Azuaron
It was truly horrible.

Gradually, I became aware of the realization that this is what trans folk experience ALL THE TIME, at least until they can transition to the point of finally feeling like themselves. That was the tipping point for me: knowing how horrific it would be if there were a law against my doing everything I could to heal my body to the point of feeling like me again.

I'd been empathetic to trans people before, but this experience unlocked a whole new level.

@Azuaron
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Tormod

I'm also a CIS man, and I was on hormone therapy as part of cancer treatment. I got meds that reduced my natural testosterone to close to zero. Had to get radiation in order not to develop breasts at 55 yo. My mental state changed considerably, enhancing all the traits generally associated as female. Physically, I went through menopause - hot flashes, joint pains, the works. A most interesting experience. After the treatment ended, I drifted back as my own hormones picked up again and had many experiences I recognized from puberty.

All this to say that I certainly can't explain this either, but I know from experience that gender is fluid. I lived it, if only for a very short time. Being stuck at the wrong end of that spectrum must be super hard, and I'm happy to hear you seem to have found your way "home" now.

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Jess👾

I think even more fundamentally - there's been entire books and a million blogs of personal narratives, lots of them. Medical research studies, medical associations, entire international interdisciplinary organizations of people who are the world experts in gender diversity. They all say trans people are real, valid, and who they say they are. If someone isn't willing to accept those piles of evidence, then challenging an individual trans person is just hunting for some gotcha.
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Ed Neal

When you put it like that, one thing really stands out to me, even as a cis man.

That letter on the birth certificate is made based on physical presentation at birth, with a presumed link to development years later and an assumption of generalized characteristics therefrom, barring lesser-seen phenomena.

(Verbose in an attempt to avoid loaded terms)

Although it fits for me, if someone feels mismatched, the question you describe being forced to face is a reversal of the onus of proof.

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derptron

Sorry, I've only started to read but it seems to me right off that if there's anyone responsible for defining "gender" it would be the ones who insist we rigorously abide by whatever the fuck it is.

It's literally not on you.

Seriously, would you care enough what gender you are to call yourself "trans" if nobody gave a fuck what "gender" is? Be who the fuck you are, who cares? Except these people demanding YOU define it???

OK, I'll finish...

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