Transgender AMA

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

Re: Transgender AMA

Sorry in advance if I use any ungood terms here

I've heard mentioned the idea of segregating pride events between sexuality and gender identity instead of having one all-encompassing event to celebrate both sides; do you have a stance on the matter? I've never attended a pride rally so I'm not sure if there's distinction already, and I also don't know if it's really important to celebrate both separately, but would be curious to hear your take on it.

you didn't use any terms incorrectly sexuality is who you're attracted to and gender identity is the gender you feel you are inside

i've never attended a LGBTQA+ pride rally but they do have different meanings; i think it's fine to celebrate both in the same rally and to celebrate them separately as long as people understand both terms and celebrate everyone; also i think wikipedia probably defines human sexuality better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sexuality

[mellonxcollie]

Re: Transgender AMA

Here's my question for Drizz (sorry if it's a hard question):

Is there anything you would do differently if you were able to start your transition completely over? As in, is there anything that didn't go as well as you had hoped or that you wish you hadn't done? If you were giving someone else advice, what would you tell to avoid doing?

[Hakulyte]

Re: Transgender AMA

i'm simply pointing out that it seems like a lot of discussion around gender ends up with semantic knot twisting and that's painfully obvious throughout this thread and that i personally do not understand why there isn't a more academic(oh no!!!!!) framework for discussing it and i want to know why

I think we just forgot to establish a common ground before discussing.

or

The point of the thread is to establish that common ground in the first place by asking questions.

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

Re: Transgender AMA

Here's my question for Drizz (sorry if it's a hard question):

Is there anything you would do differently if you were able to start your transition completely over? As in, is there anything that didn't go as well as you had hoped or that you wish you hadn't done? If you were giving someone else advice, what would you tell to avoid doing?

thank you; this is a really fun question

i would transition much earlier before i actually went through male puberty and i would tell all my family and friends and everyone in my classes in school including all my teachers because some friends i have still don't know i'm transgender since i haven't seen them in like 10 years and i want everyone i know personally to know i'm transgender

i didn't tell my dad and brother i'm transgender until 10th grade in 2009 or 2010 and even though i kept telling my mom i felt closer to girls she thought it was just a phase and didn't really believe me until after i started transitioning when college started

i just think things could have been different if i told my family earlier because my mom still mourns "the old me" because before i transitioned i used to be a lot more passive and antisocial and reserved on the outside except with my best friend and now i'm a lot more opinionated and expressive and i share my emotions more often so i'm a completely different person according to her and she said she had to accept me as a new person

my brother accepted me right away but he didn't want me to go near his friends or school after i started transitioning because he was worried they wouldn't want to be his friend anymore if they knew i was his sister and i still looked like a man back then and i was wearing feminine clothes; after a few years though he didn't care as much what other people would think and he let me go near his friends and school again

my dad thinks the hormones made my thought-process cloudy and i'm less logical and less able to understand what people are saying because apparently i used to understand him a lot more and was able to have intelligent conversations with him; maybe if i took hormones a lot earlier he wouldn't think that

also when i visited my high school after i started transitioning in college i told almost all of my teachers a teacher from high school said something like "you can be whatever you want to be" and some other teachers thought i was weird and a student from marching band and drumline made fun of me

i would also see an endocrinologist instead of a urologist because my urologist prescribes hormones and checks my levels but he's not a hormone specialist and he's a well-known doctor so i can only see him once every six months or even later

i would also be able to express myself and i wouldn't have to hide how i felt for so long

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Transgender AMA

I think we just forgot to establish a common ground before discussing.

or

The point of the thread is to establish that common ground in the first place by asking questions.

i mean it depends on your perspective

for op as best as i can tell the thread operates a mechanism by which she can force herself to deal with still unresolved inconsistencies in her subconscious

well i'm still having internal struggles because i haven't had the surgery yet ... but i'm a girl so having to choose that i'm a girl wouldn't be a struggle at all

this is a pretty clear indicator of that

the process of inviting questions from others is a substitute for questions she doesn't want to ask herself or doesn't know how to ask herself and the rationalized answers will serve to reinforce strong positions and correct internal conflicts or equivocations either through rationalization or emotional reaction towards one extreme or another

im not here to look smart- that would require that on some level i ascribe any value to the opinions of others, i'm here to reaffirm my own belief that you're all stupid

and i do that by telling you what i think and why i think it and gauging your responses

whatever else the rest of you do or don't take away from that is up to you

[SKG_Scintill]

Re: Transgender AMA

(...) i haven't had the surgery yet and i don't have periods (...)

first of all, neither my mother nor I knew that surgery has come so far as to give people periods.
does this mean that, when surgery is all said and done, you are given a functional womb and could give birth?

[komochii]

Re: Transgender AMA

Personally I think people just get bored and justify their struggles by sharing them with others because if we don't share our goals and accomplishmentments they're meaningless but they're meaningless anyways, I doubt there's some ulterior motive to this thread, maybe they're just bored.

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

Re: Transgender AMA

first of all, neither my mother nor I knew that surgery has come so far as to give people periods.
does this mean that, when surgery is all said and done, you are given a functional womb and could give birth?

it hasn't

they're just things i feel sad and left out about and don't accept so that's why i included not having periods and not being able to become pregnant as part of my internal struggle

[SKG_Scintill]

Re: Transgender AMA

well that is what we expected, thankfully we're not grossly behind with the times.
it was still a point of discussion here to think how we would/could/should react *when* science gets to that point.
I see that most of my confusion and perhaps even disapproval of the notion of transgenderism still revolves around sexual reproduction, but I suppose that's only a matter of time for science to improve to that point, which may well be in our lifetimes.
so for my own acceptance, better start early?

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

Re: Transgender AMA

well that is what we expected, thankfully we're not grossly behind with the times.
it was still a point of discussion here to think how we would/could/should react *when* science gets to that point.
I see that most of my confusion and perhaps even disapproval of the notion of transgenderism still revolves around sexual reproduction, but I suppose that's only a matter of time for science to improve to that point, which may well be in our lifetimes.
so for my own acceptance, better start early?

i would be overjoyed if that was possible and i think it would be a wonderful thing

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Transgender AMA

Personally I think people just get bored and justify their struggles by sharing them with others because if we don't share our goals and accomplishmentments they're meaningless but they're meaningless anyways, I doubt there's some ulterior motive to this thread, maybe they're just bored.

i didn't say it was conscious, and i didn't say it was nefarious

[SKG_Scintill]

Re: Transgender AMA

i would be overjoyed if that was possible and i think it would be a wonderful thing

well my mom did ask "why on earth would you want periods?"
so at least from her perspective it doesn't look like a wonderful thing :P

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Transgender AMA

I see that most of my confusion and perhaps even disapproval of the notion of transgenderism still revolves around sexual reproduction

1) The social concept of gender is based on biological differentiation in the species that allowed for specialization in activities in nomadic tribes, increasing survival rates
2) Technology obsoletes the need for biological differentiation because it shifts the onus for survival to factors external to human physiology
3) It would be illogical to assume that gender roles based on biological differentiation would be efficient appropriate or healthy when the underlying factors that determined them no longer apply
4) Since gender is a social construct we are free to evaluate it at any time and determine how and if it can be adapted to best function within whatever current social framework we have
5) We should be able to do that

which leads me to
a) we can't do that if you refuse premise 1 because the functional justification for change is now obviated. You're back to we must change for the sake of change versus we must not change for the sake of not changing which goes nowhere.
b) we can't do if people revert to the "gender is whatever your mind says it is" argument because that premise denies the purpose of gender in the first place as well as any discussion of it, which is more or less the same argument as "because the bible said so" which again leads you nowhere
c) we can't do it if people skip steps 1-4 and jump right into what gender should or shouldn't be because it's illogical to construct a framework for something without understanding what it is or what it should do which you would think would raise a few red flags except it just leads to
d) everyone ends up with a nebulous, individualized rationales for what they want or what they want to see happen which results in personalized definitions of terms and then personalized constructions of concepts based on those terms and then more personalized terms based on those concepts, then they extend those concepts, terms, definitions, and ultimately their perspective to everyone around them without considering how other perspectives might be different resulting in
e) a distribution of thoughts and definitions that collapses into groups with the most commonality and sequesters dissenting thought into other similarly homogeneous spheres which means
f) the major shifts in the distribution occur not from members of each sphere being convinced to move, but by differential population growth within each sphere until one reaches a critical mass and can impose its ideology on the others; basically the dumbest possible way to effect any change in society which brings me back to
g) we need a formal, consistent, agreed upon set of definitions and rhetoric and be able to tie our viewpoints and perspectives to a rational justification that extends beyond the existing barriers which we can't do if
h) we don't have any rational justifications and our perspective is based on tautological semantics which anyone can poke an infinite amount of holes into that you refuse to acknowledge

im not going to sit here and link mit articles on how social change is most efficient bottom up instead of top down because that should be inherently obvious

it doesn't matter what the purpose of the thread is or whomever's perspective coming into it is but if the rest of you can't discuss the topic in a way that someone like scintill who is open to persuasion but can't find the thread of logic to be not only convinced, but capable of convincing others like himself then you're complicit in effecting circumstance f) by refusing to entertain g) by holding onto h).

In other words you're placing individual feel-good emotional expeditiousness and affirmation in front of societies affirmation of people like you, which stymies the progress of the latter, which drags out discrimination and bigotry against the former, which reinforces the barriers that everyone puts up which disproportionately damages the population seeking affirmation which ultimately ends up damaging you.

Which is stupid.

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: Transgender AMA

qed

[drizzleRomanceGirl]

Re: Transgender AMA

well my mom did ask "why on earth would you want periods?"
so at least from her perspective it doesn't look like a wonderful thing :P

well i want a period because most girls have them and because it's healthy and cleans out your system (except for girls who have serious health problems with their periods)