Leelah Alcorn, transgender teen, commited suicide

[shuttlt]

In other words, feeling like a woman or man is invisible to cis people, because everything is consistent, from physical appearance to socialzation. When those things aren't consistent, though, "feeling like me" stands in contrast to physical appearance and socialization, and it then becomes noticeable.

Since Belz has commented on this, I wonder how universally true this is? There isn't the same pressure to think about this kind of thing if you're cis, but I don't think that's entirely the same as it being invisible. I don't believe I have always found it so.

 

[Belz...]

This is true. Personally I suspect that much of the fighting that goes on over whether a person is a 'real geek' a 'real gamer' a 'real man' or a 'real woman' essentially comes from the same place: a revulsion for the perceived erosion of the category the person feels they rightly deserve to belong to. Women being cruel to transgender women and men being cruel to transgender men is little different, IMO, to teenage girls and boys being cruel to nonconforming or poorly conforming members of their own gender at school.

Then I should be fine: the only "real" thing that I feel I am is a "real Belz...".

 

[shuttlt]

This is one question someone asked that I would like to see answered:

In pain. I think you could probably substitute anything where the word is referring to a subjective qualia type experience.

 

[Arcade22]

How do you explain mutation ?

Making mistakes require intent since something else was supposed to happen or should have happened. As far as I'm concerned anything that happens "should have happened".

 

[commandlinegamer]

How do you explain mutation ?

I could be wrong, but I took his statement to mean that everything that happens, is natural, mutation or not.

 

[Butter!]

Ohhhhh boy, here comes the philosophy train.


(I'm kidding, these are important things to define, of course.)

 

[Giordano]

I think you're right. Reading this thread I was thinking about gender identity and it occured to me that I never once thought about mine. I'm just what I am. I was born a man and that's it. My identity is the sum total of my preferences and ideas and goals, and it never felt out of place for me. I can't begin to understand the plight of someone for whom this isn't the case.

Funny, without really thinking about it at all, I subconsciously and faintly "felt" that you were female. Not due to anything that you posted or the language that you use; perhaps just a subconscious incorrect association of the name "Belz" with some female in my past? I absolutely cannot figure out why. Concepts of gender are truly weird! I've made the wrong guess the other way, too.

I tend to believe that the most aggressively conservative people on this forum are males. I sort of hope that some are females just to teach me to not have preformed opinions about anyone. And of course, what does it matter and why do I even try to create an image of a poster in my mind's eye? Probably avatars play a role in forming my mental images also.

 

[Belz...]

Making mistakes require intent since something else was supposed to happen or should have happened. As far as I'm concerned anything that happens "should have happened".

Then there was no point in your comment.

 

[The Atheist]

In particular, supporters of the idea that gender is determined by self identification seem to think it is important that the self identification matches the social identification. In other words, if a person calls themself a woman, other people should agree and also call them a woman. (Pardon the grammar there, but, well, pronouns can get tricky in this case. It seemed better than "himself" and "him") In this thread, the parents have been vilified, and prosecution has been suggested, because they refused to call Leelah by her chosen name and treat her as her chosen gender. It is apparently very, very, important that everyone agree with the self identification.

You've got it.

It doesn't matter to me at all, because I'm a bloke and identify as a bloke.

I do, however, know a number of transgender people of differing genders and it's important to them.

Maybe it's just an affirmation thing; maybe it's a little immature that they care, but I figure that it costs me nothing to give them that simple courtesy, why not do it?

 

[king catfish]

And that's clearly what it's about here. The fact that a transgendered teen was driven by depression and suicide isn't nearly as important as the fact that someone else was forced to witness the suicide of this disgusting little pervert.

Or maybe it's about the truck driver's being forced to participate in (not witness) someone's suicide being equally as important as the suicide of the mistreated, unfortunate, and depressed teenager.

I see two victims. Do we really have to choose one? My brother is a truck driver, yet I don't feel a need to take a side here. Only the parents (it seems) have a fault in this. I'm sorry (truly, I am) that your life was difficult, but just because it was doesn't automatically mean no-one else can have a valid point in this.

 

[king catfish]

This kid was seriously traumatized by her parents. She was told she was evil or sick or otherwise "wrong", that he didn't belong, that she was less valuable to her parent than their religious beliefs and social standing.

Then I revise my previous post to make the parents definitely at fault.

Also, in case I it needs to be stated for some reason, I think that people should be free to be whatever gender they identify with. I don't see why anyone should want to abuse or belittle them about it. Heartless and evil, to hurt someone over something like that. If a trans-person is not your idea of a potential mate, then fine. Then mind your business.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

A loss or a dysfunctional organ is not the same things as a total organ replacement with another.

I don't understand. Are you saying that you can only change gender if you have a complete organ transplant?

 

[Dessi]

In other words, feeling like a woman or man is invisible to cis people, because everything is consistent, from physical appearance to socialzation. When those things aren't consistent, though, "feeling like me" stands in contrast to physical appearance and socialization, and it then becomes noticeable.

That pretty much nails it.

The best evidence that gender is something one experiences comes from the first-hand accounts of XY women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS). This is a condition in which, for some reason, a biologically male person does not respond to androgen hormones such as testosterone, and as such never masculinize. These people grow up phenotypically female, have a normal female gender identity, usually date men. I met a woman with CAIS who had no idea of her condition until her mid-teens when she became worried that she hadn't started her menstrual cycle; an ultrasound revealed that she had no uterus or ovaries, later a genetic test confirmed she had a Y chromosome. If not for her intersex condition, she would have had a male physical build and gender identity analogous to her male peers.

Although most people don't actively think about it in this way, perception of gender is something your brain does. Gender is something people feel, even if they aren't actively aware of it. It's comparable to one's sense of balance: it's always there, but you don't usually notice it. The brain takes care of keeping you balanced so well that we don't actively think about it... at least until something throws it out of place. A sudden rush of vertigo, a few too many drinks, Meniere's disease, or one of those spinning tunnel illusions will certainly jar your sense of balance to the forefront of your brain.

Most people don't notice their gender as a perception until something throws it out of place, for example an incongruity between one's gender and body. Cisgender men with significant gynecomastia often struggle with body dysphoria, which can be so severe that they have their breasts surgically removed to feel more comfortable in their own body. Cis women with polycystic ovaries occasionally have similar discomfort, as these conditions can result in production of androgens, resulting in facial hair, irregular or loss of menstrual cycle, and unwanted masculinization. The discomfort cispeople feel from their gender-body incongruities might be similar, although to a much lesser degree, to the kind of discomfort that untreated transpeople experience persistently.

 

[Meadmaker]

You've got it.

It doesn't matter to me at all, because I'm a bloke and identify as a bloke.

I do, however, know a number of transgender people of differing genders and it's important to them.

Maybe it's just an affirmation thing; maybe it's a little immature that they care, but I figure that it costs me nothing to give them that simple courtesy, why not do it?

And that makes sense, to a point. Last week I saw someone named "Sophie" running a cash register. The clothes said female. The jewelry said female. The breasts were small, but present. The biceps, voice, and general body and face shape said, nay screamed, male. Ok. Sophie it is, and she's fine as Sophie. Don't know what's in the pants at this point or how long it has been there or will be there, but don't really need to know either. Thanks for the Doritos, Sophie. If she wants to be female, fine.

But for me, the point at which I start saying no happens at the locker room door. If Sophie had the male equipment that I assume she was born with, I wouldn't want her using the girls' locker room at the YMCA.

For whatever reason, whether cultural or instinctive, women feel differently about taking their clothes off around men and around women, and if they can see a penis and scrotum, darned if those women aren't going to react as if that woman was really a guy. I'm not going to tell all of those women that they are narrow minded, or discriminatory, or wrong.

And I know, I know, "most transwomen" and all that. Hey, if you can keep it sufficiently secret that no one knows what's under the clothes, then no one will be the wiser and no harm done. However, you can't count on everyone doing that. Some women, who just happen to be equipped with perfectly functional balls, may feel like they have no need to hide their boy parts.

 

[Pup]

However, there's a third category and a serious problem. Maybe more as well, but I'll talk about this third category, partially because I'm in it. Maybe someone else will snot on me and tell me I'm missing the point, thus saying more about their mindset than mine.

There is something about the transgender talk that is quite in common with the cisgender talk. That is, that male is male, and female is female, and never the twain shall meet.
...

If I'm understanding correctly, I've seen this discussed in one or two essays, but it's a subject that's difficult to bring up.

Gender dysphoric people, the ones who insist on sex changes, are emphasizing that gender is binary. They're on one side of the fence, and they want to be on the other.

That contradicts other people, who want to point out that gender isn't binary and that there's room for lots of other in-between, non-conforming, new-and-creative kinds of gender. A transexual who goes from being an unhappy man to a happy female, one who feels all female now, is undercutting the idea that such non-conforming genders exist.

I can see the idea that some people don't strongly identify with one gender or the other, or don't want to bother with gender identification; they just want to be themselves.

I can also see, admittedly more easily, why a transexual person sees gender as binary and wants to cross to the other side, because gender feels binary to me, so that's part of my personal experience. My mind and body and socialization match and are all male, so if a transexual can reach that level of conformity, or close to it, he'll be comfortable too (if he's female-to-male; the opposite for male-to-female).

Am I understanding correctly what you're saying? Because I do think it's worth bringning up that transexuality undercuts other definitions of gender beyond binary male and female.

So how does one integrate it all? Maybe there are transexuals and contented cis people out at the far ends of the male-female scale, with other people closer to the middle. But if society has trouble redefining someone as the opposite gender after sex reassignment surgery or just hormone treatment, society is going to have an even harder time understanding those who can't be or don't want to be categorized.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

With me, man parts and girls parts are part of it, but not all of it. One could look like Angelina Jolie and if she was born a man, it would be a problem.... boy parts or no.

See, I find this intriguing. Why?

 

[Lithrael]

Without going too far into the definition of "gender" (or needing to), I can say that there are an awful lot of people who aren't really happy either with being male or "masculine" or being female or "feminine." Such people are getting tossed under the bus by the very context of the discussion.

The thing is that there used to be at least a little cultural leeway, from Jung's idea of the anima inside every man and the animus inside every woman, through the Kinseys, through concepts like "tomboy," through the androgyny of the 1970s and 1980s. Patti Smith said something that sticks with me, "Being any gender at all is a total drag." OK, so not everybody is going to be David Bowie, but still, there was some cultural lassitude for a lot of people.

It seems pretty much gone in this gender essential, pick-a-side, brave new world. Of course, a pure cisgender world would also suck, but that doesn't mean the the one alternative that seems to be in vogue doesn't also suck.

Completely agree. I've seen a little bit of niche appreciation for people who have found comfortable places of their own, but these days, there's usually an air of unexpectedness about the idea. The recent tone seems overly binary. Heck, twenty fifteen years ago guys who were clean and fashionable got their own word, metrosexual, to make sure everybody knew it was OK, they were still real men, just, you know, clean.

ETA: Looking at the wiki for the term, it looks like it was coined to include the stereotypically fashionable gay man, and it was the marketing teams that got ahold of it who decided it should mean manly straight guys who weren't afraid of no shopping mall.

 

[Donn]

But for me, the point at which I start saying no happens at the locker room door. If Sophie had the male equipment that I assume she was born with, I wouldn't want her using the girls' locker room at the YMCA.

Recognize that this is a bias so that you can isolate it. Do this so that you don't vote and influence the world for gender apartheid.

After a while, the protocols of locker rooms and such will adapt to fit all genders who use them.

If you divide, all you have left are the divided.

 

[Slowvehicle]

If I'm understanding correctly, I've seen this discussed in one or two essays, but it's a subject that's difficult to bring up.

Gender dysphoric people, the ones who insist on sex changes, are emphasizing that gender is binary. They're on one side of the fence, and they want to be on the other.

That contradicts other people, who want to point out that gender isn't binary and that there's room for lots of other in-between, non-conforming, new-and-creative kinds of gender. A transexual who goes from being an unhappy man to a happy female, one who feels all female now, is undercutting the idea that such non-conforming genders exist.

I can see the idea that some people don't strongly identify with one gender or the other, or don't want to bother with gender identification; they just want to be themselves.

I can also see, admittedly more easily, why a transexual person sees gender as binary and wants to cross to the other side, because gender feels binary to me, so that's part of my personal experience. My mind and body and socialization match and are all male, so if a transexual can reach that level of conformity, or close to it, he'll be comfortable too (if he's female-to-male; the opposite for male-to-female).

Am I understanding correctly what you're saying? Because I do think it's worth bringning up that transexuality undercuts other definitions of gender beyond binary male and female.

So how does one integrate it all? Maybe there are transexuals and contented cis people out at the far ends of the male-female scale, with other people closer to the middle. But if society has trouble redefining someone as the opposite gender after sex reassignment surgery or just hormone treatment, society is going to have an even harder time understanding those who can't be or don't want to be categorized.

For SOME individuals, gender is so binary that the thought of accepting another who fails of their definition of gender is so repellent as to be unthinkable.

For SOME individuals, gender is so binary that they feel dysphoric, or dysmorphic, and the thought of the conflict between their physical sex organs and their binary gender self-identification is equally repellent.

For SOME of us, self-experiencing non-binary gender (and, to one degree or another, not fitting the role others expect, given our sex) is just one more way we don't "fit in". I (for one) am comfortable with the way my "expected" gender rôle (and the supposed gendernormativity implied) is not orthogonal to much of my self-expression.

Consider that "tomboy" and "sissy" are common terms.

Listen to Dar WIlliams' When I was a Boy:


But it's complicated, and that's (one of) the problem(s).

 

[Dessi]

This is one question someone asked that I would like to see answered:

Okay... but can you name any other examples of situations where someone's beliefs about what they are trump what others can observe scientifically?

The answer you're looking for is mu.

The question is meaningless for the same reasons that asking "why can't gay men see that other men don't have breasts or vaginas" is meaningless.

In other words, the presumption that trans people suffer from some persistent error of fact about their biological sex is incorrect. Trans people are very much aware of their biological sex and its immutability.

The issue is that all people experience their gender and have a subjective sense of masculine or feminine sense of self. People sense and feel their gender analogously to the way the sense and feel their equilibrium, the position and orientation of their limbs, the sensation of fullness, the preference for one hand over the other, etc. Gender perception is something the brain does, often times without one being aware of it at all.

For a small percentage of people, their gender perception may not be congruent with the expectations of their biological sex. Some biological females may have a distinctly masculine sense of self, while some biological males may have a distinctly feminine sense of self. Colloquially, they identify with the sense of being a man or a woman.

These kinds of perceptions are not, as you imply, incorrect belief's about one's biology.