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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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This is really cool stuff. I never knew how amazing the human body and mind is when discipline meets consistency.
This woman sounds like she was never born a man; her dead-voice is very masculine and her new voice is very impressive.
She wasn't born a man. Trans women don't "become" women. They stop hiding the fact they are
She was assigned male at birth, but whether she was born a man or a woman or neither is something only she can say.
The point being, being assigned male doesn't mean she was ever a man. It means people assumed she was.
Yes, I'm not saying otherwise that she personally was.
Both "biological sex" and "legal gender" are considerably more nebulous than you're assuming.
Let's say you define "biological sex" by genotype, seems unambiguous enough, right? It's a pretty good bet someone is 46,XX or 46,XY based on sex assigned at birth, but generally people don't actually know for sure.
Likewise, in many jurisdictions, you don't have a legal gender, you have a collection of gender markers. Ironically, trans people are often the only people who actually have an explicit declaration of their gender by a court or other legal mechanism. For cis people, the fact that it's a fractured mess generally doesn't matter.
It's true that I'm only familiar with two country's legal systems (and both are common law jurisdictions), but as I understand it, your "legal gender" in the UK is only well-defined if you acquire a GRC, which is something only trans people do, and plain old doesn't exist in the US. (To be fair, I imagine if you brought a discrimination case on the basis of gender in the UK your gender might be established as a result, but among the long list of things I am not is an attorney (anywhere, never mind in one of the UK's multiple legal systems).)
Amusing, the letter that comes with the GRC asserts that it should suffice to establish your gender for any interested entities, which is decidedly false overseas.
So, this take is based entirely on thinking that a person is their body, rather than their brain. Cut off a person's arm, and they're still the same person. Cut out part of someone's brain and they're not.
Some people have poor eyesight, and we have ways to fix that. Some people have curved spines, and we have ways to fix that. Some peoples' bodies develop the wrong genitals, which leads to developing with the wrong hormones, and we have ways to fix that.
People like BaroqueInMind are body focused: they think the person is what they can visibly see, not who they are inside, and I think that's just the result of a society that stigmatizes caring about mental health, but also a limitation of the human experience: we can't tell what's going on inside someone's mind, all we can see is how they present on the outside, and most people don't have the tools required to think about people any other way.
To break it down though, if you took me and a friend, and put our brains in each-other's bodies, which one would be me? My old body with my friend's brain, or my friend's body with my brain? To me, I am my mind, and to people like BaroqueInMind, I am my body. It should be easy to convince them otherwise, but people can be very stubborn when their beliefs are challenged.
Why are you entering the LGBTQ community and challenging a queer person? Your post is six words long. This doesn't garner a discussion. This shows no understanding of what modern science thinks. You're responding to everyone asserting a statement which is frequently used by transphobic individuals. Why are you here? What do you wish to accomplish?
I wasn't meaning to challenge anyone, I simply wanted to put in my understanding of how things work and try and better understand the life of a trans person. So I'm sorry if it came across as that as it was very much not intended, but if it's transphobic then prove it and ban me for it, because I am not transphobic of all things...
In addition I was looking to maybe be educated rather than yelled at by you. But I guess fuck me for trying to learn right?
I want to believe that you truly want to learn. I am writing this comment under the assumption you'd like to learn effectively and didn't mean any harm with your initial comment(s)
If you're entering into discussion on a topic you'd like to learn about, it may be more beneficial to you, and less negative for others, if you ask questions instead of posing statements.
The mod isn't trying to tell you that you're transphobic - they're just trying to tell you/give you a nudge that the thing you said is a very, very common transphobic piece of rhetoric.
As for the stern response in general - life as a trans person (or any member of the LGBTQ+ community, for that matter) at the moment is fucking scary. Several countries that were making huge steps toward better rights and equality and healthcare, are regressing at astonishing rates, and its putting our lives in danger.
Rhetoric along the lines of the sentiment you expressed is part of the general arsenal of the people spearheading action against LGBTQ+ folks' existences, and when we start seeing it entering our community/ies, it's so important to stamp that shit out fast, for one because we want the communities to feel safe, so swift, stern action must be taken, but also because if its allowed to take root in any way, that poses genuine threat to people's lives.
I hope you find this constructive and educational, and that it helps avoid future accidents 😊
They could have been a bit clearer and less hostile but I understand why, especially considering how common it otherwise is on the internet.
And so I can be educated, what was exactly wrong with what I said? I never denied that she was a woman in any way but I guess 6 words is probably way too few to get any of what I intended across in my initial comment. And thank you for taking me genuinely and being kind, it really means a lot to me right now.
I can't remember precisely what your wording was, only the sentiment it expressed, and I believe that sentiment was along the lines of "she was born a man".
The trans experience (in fact, the experience of gender for any human being) is varied, personal and unique to each person, and as such there is nobody on this earth who can say what gender she was when she was younger is her.
Doctors and other medical professionals could have taken a look at what sex characteristics she exhibited at birth, and decided that mostly fits into the bucket of "male". For the majority of people gender and sex line up neatly, and as such the two are often conflated as being the same thing.
To assert that she was "born a man" you must make this incorrect assumption that gender and sex assignment are the same concepts - but this is false (and harmful to propagate)
She was assigned male at birth (presumably) and she may have experienced gender as a boy/man for quite some time growing up, or she may have always felt something wasn't quite righ, or she might have had some completely unique experience of gender that I could never even dream up as an example for you. The only person who can say if she was born a man is her. Doctors can say if she was born with male sex characteristics.
I know I'm repeating myself somewhat, but I hope this helps.
Edit: I knew I'd forget something as well.
Even if your sentiment had been "she was born a male" (which, god, you'd have to know her quite privately to be able to know that!), its not a particularly useful thing to bring to the conversation, and allusions to trans folks expressed sex characteristics that may not align with the gender they identify with is generally a bit of a dick move. Like a more intense version of telling a cis woman they have a manly face, I guess. And, a more appropriate way of expressing it if it is relevant to the conversation, is simply, "assigned male at birth".
It seems that's part of where I got confused, I thought all of you were talking about sex assignment, rather than gender.
And thank you for explaining so throughly, I'll use this knowledge going forward.
I'm glad I could help - thanks for being open to learning :)
Apologies I don't always have a ton of time to explain to everyone exactly what they did wrong. In this case you entered a thread about minorities and made an assertion about their lives to challenge a narrative they presented. If you had educated yourself on this issue first, you would quickly find this is a narrative often imposed on transgender individuals, one which directly effects their lives and one in which the person being discriminated against is often having to explain to the majority why their assumption is incorrect and how they are being harmed by it. If you are not the person being effected by a system you need to educate yourself before engaging with someone who is effected by the system. If your goal is to come and gather info, you should be on your best behavior- this means thanking them for engaging with you, realizing you're asking for their valuable time and energy and experience, asking questions in a very polite manner, and never attacking or making any assumptions about them.
With that being said, the general statement asserting someones sex or gender was an assumption about their life. You don't know what their legal papers say or even what country they are from. You definitely do not know their genetic information and it seems like you're not particularly knowledgeable about intersex individuals or the nuances of genetics and expression. If your intention was to reflect upon what society likely did to this person, the language needs to reflect that- for example you can state that they likely received a gender on their paperwork because a doctor decided it based primarily on the person's external appearance at time of birth. That's a very different statement from 'they are genetically this gender/sex'.
You're right, and it wasn't what I intended even though that's how it came across as. And you're right that I am assuming things about their life, but given the information I or the rest of us have that's kind of the only option available to a degree, and then learn from people commenting in reply to me when I attempt to start a discussion. Are assumptions not allowed at all here? If so that should be outlined in the rules clearer. And thank you for the thorough explanation,
It's not explicitly not allowed but you'll find it's a lot easier to come off as nice if you don't assume things.
If you're looking to be educated, don't make assertions about someone else's life - instead, ask questions.
I will make sure to do that in the future then, my apoolgies again.
No worries! The fact that you're willing to engage shows your good faith. I'm glad you're around 💜
Different people use different words about their transition, and I think you're imposing your own experience onto others. To say that trans women categorically weren't men in the past totally invalidates how I have always described my transition. I don't share your experience, and I don't describe my past self the way you seem to think I should.
I was comfortable with my gender, and I don't think it was invalid for me to have identified as a boy. That's not who I am now, but that doesn't invalidate my identity for the first 16 years of my life. And I think if speaking, behaving, or filling the social role of a male doesn't make it valid to say that I used to be a boy, then that feels invalidating to everything I thought made me a woman. :/
But I think all of this is heavily philosophical and subjective, so I'm not saying your feelings are wrong either. But to say that the only way for trans people to be is the way you perceive them to be is not just silly, it runs the risk of invalidating everyone else who doesn't share your feelings on the matter. Our identities are our own to express, not yours.
If a gender diverse person tells me that their gender changed, then their gender changed.
If a cis person is assuming that a person's gender has changed just because they transitioned, I'm going to correct them, because when held in ignorance, that's a position that is generally based on harmful ideas about the trans experience. And if they're interested in discussing it further, we can have a discussion of the nuance of how it all works.
Letting a cis person assume that all trans people's gender changes when they transition does more harm than good IMO.
I am quite explicitly not saying this. If your gender changed, it changed :)
The problem is that you're assuming the past gender of trans women categorically.
You said:
I'm trying to tell you that this claim is not just wrong, but it's a harmful over-generalization. I was not a girl for the first ~12-16 years of my life, and that's why I'm telling you our identities (past and present) are ours to determine, not yours. I was a boy, I did become a girl. I was comfortably cis for a long time, but things changed as I grew up.
Reading this stuff today only serves to drag those anxieties back up, because if we assume your claim is true then I either wasn't a boy back then, or I'm not a trans woman now. I have to sit here and think about how you're wrong, and why trans people don't have to have always been trans in order to transition and be valid.
That's what motivated me to respond to you. Whether or not you're willing to grapple with the idea that you may be hurting people is your prerogative, I'm just telling you those claims have done harm to me in the past and may be harmful to others now, specifically young cis people.