Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think that if some were to know someone who went through the process of transition in their 20s, they might be rather shocked at the extent of what changes physically while a person is on HRT.
Muscle and fat distribution changes dramatically. And even one's skeletal structure can shift, in ways you would not believe unless you saw it for yourself. I know people who have gained or lost height and the shape of their shoulders and frame changed. And that doesn't even begin to take into account the difference between individuals across any spectrum you can imagine, that is tied to levels of athleticism and training or lack thereof.
There are people who state one thing and people who say the opposite. I get very tired of this thing of the internet where everybody, no matter how far removed or informed, has to form a judgment and make a stand.
Regarding privacy in locker rooms and public restrooms - I wish to ask why privacy is not afforded to people in those spaces regardless. I wasn't comfortable with my BOYS going into a men's room or men's locker room by themselves when they were little. I was not OK with being nude in front of any teachers or other students (no matter that they were female) when I was in middle school, or high school. I don't see any value in forcing vulnerable kids to take off their clothes in front of other people, besides possibly their immediate family or a doctor. I don't see why it's controversial, when we could just find ways to give kids a more universal sense of privacy for their bodies.
Regarding athletics. I refuse to have an opinion, because I have no involvement or training in sports medicine. I see no reason why we could not have sports that are ranked by something like skill ranking or weight class. It seems to me like there could be rational solutions, created and implemented by those who are directly involved with a high degree of understanding of the anatomy and biology and capability of the people involved. Not every bozo with a keyboard.
I'm not interested in clinging to traditions or fearing change. I want intelligent and reasonable solutions from experts. But this means not only setting aside politically or emotionally driven squawking coming from places of moral panic or provoked outrage...but also setting aside the knee jerk from the left that even if SCIENCE comes back with loads of evidence and answers that don't support the "official position" that folks have chosen to take, we need to hear that without shouting "Hate, hate!" and covering our ears. What I mean by that, is that if it is proven to medical organizations with robust and proven data, that medical interventions for gender affirming care (such as puberty blockers) cause irreversible changes that could be harmful to kids, then those measures may not be OK to do.
That would not be saying that trans people should not be "allowed to exist." It may mean finding ways to support them in it that do not involve medical intervention until they reach a further point of development, physically. I feel pretty confident that there could be ways to do that, that would be loving and healthy and validating. And as I have mentioned, I've known a number of people who transitioned in their 20s and I don't feel that they lost anything by waiting until then.
Well, here's a different point of view. Hopefully, not to be deleted as R&S one.
There is, in the East, a very old teaching, maintained and followed in modern times that, there is no differentiation between man and woman. There is only The Conscious Self in the body. For ease of terminology, call it "soul".
There are two types of bodies, male and female, with the genitalia designed for procreation.
The "soul" bears in it both male and female aspect. Male aspect is manifested in the male body, female aspect is manifested in the female body.
Modern psychology also clearly speaks of the male and female "brains" of the same person.
Sometimes, a female aspect of the "soul" is manifested in a male body type and vice versa. Those are the ones, who suffer in their bodies as inner and outer "do not match".
How and why this happens, I'd rather not say. No need to start an argument on that. But, that is an explanation from, say, Vedas or Upanishads.
I have no doubt, there is quite a few that, also, caught the wind into their sails, so to speak, and making good money, by joining the trand. As soon as the wind will change, they will re-identify themselves, as something, currently profitable.
I think same sex attraction and transgendering are different things. Same sex attraction is easier to understand even if one is not gay. In some cultures men having sex with boys is not even considered anything different from just having sex. It is the control over the female body and their sexuality that made same sex love forbidden.
Transgender is not attraction to same sex but wanting/needing to be a different sex biologically, their body does not feel right. One has to go to extraordinary lengths to get they want to be.
I don't have answers like I think you would want. I've seen people who claim to be biologists, experts in science, who claim that what most people think of as "biological binary sex" as in, the basics we all learned in middle school health class, are grossly oversimplified and that the reality of it is vastly more complex. That you cannot with 100% accuracy in the great variety of human existence, expect to see all individuals presenting with a matching gendered set of genitals, chromosomes and hormones, defining each as fully male or fully female. That any given criteria you could try to use to sort this out definitively, will eventually come up wanting for the mere fact of how many exceptions there will be to the so-called rules.
A little funny to me, is that when some of us find out that history class in our education through high school left out a lot of things, and that so much has happened that has been deliberately kept from the knowledge of American citizens, we might get a bit upset about it, but we don't insist that the basics as taught by some guy in an ugly sweater were absolute and anyone trying to expand our knowledge now, must surely by lying to us...
I don't know. I am NOT that expert. But I can tell you, it is more important to me, to try and be open minded in how I treat friends, family, loved ones and even strangers, than it is to stamp my foot and insist that I have a right to tell them who or what they can or can't be. I have watched loved ones transform before my eyes, in ways you would not believe, given the will to do so and the medical tools to make it happen. We each have the task of doing our best to try and live a reasonably happy life. If that's how they do that for themselves, I haven't a right or desire to argue it with them. Why would I?
The only area where the matter of gender being a changeable thing, starts to get hairy for me (no puberty puns intended)...is when it comes to young people, kids. And that is not specifically ABOUT the question of gender. That is more this huge conviction I have, that teens and even very young adults, should be protected and cautioned against making moves that they will have to live with for LIFE. Even if a choice they want to make ends up being the right one, and yes, truly I'm on board if that's so...I really wish for young people to leave as many doors open to possibilities as they can, until they are nearing their mid 20s at least. And that's mainly just because I know myself and others have a lot of regrets about checks written by our younger selves that our older selves spent decades paying off. I feel exactly the same way about having kids and getting tattoos. I love tattoos! And I know that most parents adore and don't regret their children! All the same, a person could wait a little, just to be very sure...?
But all of the non-permanent stuff, like names, pronouns, hairstyles, fashion, any of that, I think it's great for a young person to have freedom to experiment with as they please.
And the idea of interests and toys and such for kids being segregated by concepts of gender has always annoyed me. I was born female and never had a problem being female. Never wanted to be a boy or a man. Yet I am not a very feminine person, don't care for the color pink, didn't like toys marketed for girls, sometimes buy clothing from the men's section not because I want to look masculine, but because it may be more comfortable or utilitarian for a specific purpose I've got in mind. I mean, cargo shorts with the most excellent pockets! I can put so much stuff in them! I like language and art and poetry, and ALSO, engineering, math and science. As a kid I loved building things, and craved an understanding of fire, magnets and electricity...now I have a career in data science and analytics. I am the breadwinner in my household and have always been the main decision maker. I'm a proven problem solver. I am not very emotionally demonstrative, and some consider me to be a dry and nerdy intellectual. Some of those things could SEEM "masculine" somehow? But for me they don't, because I just think of me as me.
So it goes beyond questions of gender and into whether social gender stuff really has to be such an important part of how a given individual shapes their concept of SELF? I just don't have a lot invested in gender conceptually, I feel like...out of all things that could be definitive about who and what a person is, that one seems like possibly the least interesting. And although I do want to be supportive of my friends who consider it, one way or another, to be a really important thing for themselves, sometimes I feel like I'm being asked to care a lot about a thing that just is not of great interest to me. I am "gender apathetic." Don't care what is in your pants or under your skirt, so long as ya keep in in there, and would much rather talk about what's on your bookshelf, besides.
Lately, I've been having thoughts along the same lines. I wonder HOW big a deal the concept will be in 15 or 20 years.
I know, that for me, it has all gotten confusing for me, but I am (mostly) all about "live and let live, and I will try to respect your choices"
I USED to be a big defender of allowing parents and children to halt puberty and thought that it was illegal to perform gender changing surgeries on anyone under 18...but then I found out that wasn't always the case, and then I found out that puberty blocking hormones weren't safe, and I came away from that thinking "that's a decision between parents, child and doctor" but THEN I found out that sometimes parents are kept out of the loop...so now I'm kind of suspicious of the whole process, when it comes to kids.
Just the other day, I was at the drive thru at a Taco Bell. I'm ordering my stuff, and the employee in the sqwuack box is confirming my order. I say "Yes sir" as the voice is reading back to me what I ordered. "3 Burrito supremes?" "Yes sir". "2 Chicken quesadillas?" "Yes sir" "Two Crunchy tacos?" "Yes si..." "I'm a ma'am." "Excuse me?" "I'm a ma'am." "Oh! I'm sorry!" "That's OK".
I get up to the window to pay and get my food...and I'm looking at a guy not displaying anything feminine.. A young guy. MAYBE 19. This is the "ma'am" I've been talking to. And you know what? I'm confused.
But in the long run, who cares if I'm confused? I'm 65. I'm sure things are going to get more confusing to me the older I get. Life moves faster and faster now, and I still don't know how my remote control works half the time. Let alone gender issues and questions.
So, back to the question at hand, Gender may be a social concept at this time, but one day science will inform us that it's just nature and, as the Beatles sang so many years ago, "nothing to get hung about."
The OP posits that gender is a social concept. I re-termed it a social construct. From Mike's post perhaps neither is not necessarily accurate.
A social construct or social concept might be thought of as society putting a role or identity onto a person or a people.
Perhaps gender is an individual expressing their identity. It comes from within, not from without.
My first exposure to transgenderism was in the mid-1970's when Dr. Renee Richards, who was born male, tried to play as a woman as the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Back then being transgender (or transexual, as it was known at the time) was a very rare thing.
I think the idea that many, many people today are transgender, is a social construct. What I mean is, you have clusters of (mostly girls) in the same schools who suddenly come out en masse as boys. To me, this is faddish and not unlike the clusters of teen suicides we sometimes see. I don't think the percentage of people who are actually transgender is higher today than it was in the mid-1970's, no matter how much we affirm the people who come out. It has not been "a thing" long enough to speak with 35 year old women who came out as transgender in high school 20 years ago and then realized it was just a phase, but I suspect that some day we'll hear from such women (or not, if they decide it's too much of a hassle to go public).
The OP posits that gender is a social concept. I re-termed it a social construct. From Mike's post perhaps neither is not necessarily accurate.
A social construct or social concept might be thought of as society putting a role or identity onto a person or a people.
Perhaps gender is an individual expressing their identity. It comes from within, not from without.
Gender is an artificial social construct and it acts as a barrier in accepting that gender can be transcended. Which is exactly what Trans people are doing, transcending gender and owning their own identity instead of what is being imposed on them by society.
It was the same construct that feminists resisted, that genders are distinct, with distinct roles, and distinct way of dressing, behaving etc. So they threw away their bras, wore pant suits, decided they may not want babies, and went to work.
Lately, I've been having thoughts along the same lines. I wonder HOW big a deal the concept will be in 15 or 20 years.
I know, that for me, it has all gotten confusing for me, but I am (mostly) all about "live and let live, and I will try to respect your choices"
I USED to be a big defender of allowing parents and children to halt puberty and thought that it was illegal to perform gender changing surgeries on anyone under 18...but then I found out that wasn't always the case, and then I found out that puberty blocking hormones weren't safe, and I came away from that thinking "that's a decision between parents, child and doctor" but THEN I found out that sometimes parents are kept out of the loop...so now I'm kind of suspicious of the whole process, when it comes to kids.
Just the other day, I was at the drive thru at a Taco Bell. I'm ordering my stuff, and the employee in the sqwuack box is confirming my order. I say "Yes sir" as the voice is reading back to me what I ordered. "3 Burrito supremes?" "Yes sir". "2 Chicken quesadillas?" "Yes sir" "Two Crunchy tacos?" "Yes si..." "I'm a ma'am." "Excuse me?" "I'm a ma'am." "Oh! I'm sorry!" "That's OK".
I get up to the window to pay and get my food...and I'm looking at a guy not displaying anything feminine.. A young guy. MAYBE 19. This is the "ma'am" I've been talking to. And you know what? I'm confused.
But in the long run, who cares if I'm confused? I'm 65. I'm sure things are going to get more confusing to me the older I get. Life moves faster and faster now, and I still don't know how my remote control works half the time. Let alone gender issues and questions.
Right? I mean, my main motivation here is just to be kind, that is more important to me than always being comfortable, or safe to make assumptions about people or whatever. I'm gonna try my best to be kind.
At the same time, boy do I get so tired of kids being used like a tug o war rope between people whose main priority seems to be proper membership of Team Red or Team Blue. Can we please just get some good science going on here? Please? And I'm sorry but no, not every thought that a five year old has should be treated as a declaration of fact in who they precisely are. I just can't believe that.
Various things I had as some temporary kind of "identity" as a little girl...a wild creature who would one day vanish to live in the forest alone, who would befriend animals to help me hunt and survive. Future wife of the Goblin King, or possibly Michael Jackson specifically as the version of him who was in Thriller, which I briefly was obsessed with. A bipedal cat, or Cat, as in, from the musical, CATS. I guess that would be some sort of "furry" thing now? No one looked at that and said, "this kid, next we'll be putting a litterbox in her room!" I was a mad scientist for a while, I was an undercover space alien, I was a spy.
Funny though, at no moment did I think of it as being imaginative or playing pretend. I would try on this identity like a coat and wear it around a while and when I did, I believed in it, like it was REAL. But the moment I got bored with it, I shucked it right off.
I want kids to have that freedom, to try identities and ideas on. With zero commitment. We should stop imposing adult seriousness on children. Let a little boy paint his fingernails, without it MEANING SOMETHING. Let a little girl play with trucks.
I think that a lot of the social stuff that we attach to a concept of binary gender is nothing but construct though and also it is a deliberate thing that was pushed throughout the 20th century in America particularly (can't speak to how things have been in other countries) to promote a way of life that is most suited to the needs of capitalism. The isolated nuclear family, products marketed to boys/girls and men/women...the attempted enforcement of rigid ideals of masculinity and femininity...it was all to try and control people and keep the herd laboring, consuming, breeding, serving our masters. The healthiest food for you to feed your families, ladies, you won't find out for decades was simply what we had a surplus to sell to you! Men, it is most honorable to go and fight those dirty communists overseas! Hasn't anything to do with your leaders' financial interests, no of course not! Buy cosmetics or you'll never get a man! Buy a gym membership or you'll never get a woman!
Sometimes I wonder, honestly, if all of this boom in gender related subversiveness isn't just more recent generations blowing a gasket after decades of all ^that^ craziness. Like every time some sort of strict social control is trying to be pushed on people from positions of power, eventually there is a kind of backlash to it, I think. Americans want to be happy and free, and any time anyone is telling us who we can or cannot be, what we can or cannot do, there will be some faction leaping up to shout, "You're not the boss of us!" and maybe that's part of what makes this country so amazing. I would think over time we would realize, though, that the easiest thing is just to let them, because it is never really long before whatever was edgy before is eye-rollingly blasé... I mean, no one is concerned about unchaperoned dancing. We all know that D&D is just nerdy people rolling dice and arguing rules and painting tiny toy figures, it's not skeery, skeery devil worship. Bands like KISS are sellouts, not a threat to the souls of your Midwest town, but a threat to your wallet more like. About as soon as people just start shrugging their shoulders and getting bored with the outrage, the young folks will need to find something new to shock people with. Every generation finds something.
And now I'm in my 40's I've had to remind myself when I get worried about my kids...every generation of middle aged adults worries about whether the kids are OK or not. Feels pretty sure they'll never be strong enough or capable enough to make it. And yet, they find a way.
Trans is a social concept, and biological sex is male XY, female XX and in rare cases there are variations of the chromosomes.
One can change on the outside to fit their "social" being, but cannot change their chromosomal makeup. I have always been confused about "feeling like" the opposite sex that their biology has dictated. I do not "feel" like a female, and couldn't describe the "feeling", as it is just a biological reality. My husband agrees that he doesn't "feel" like a male, it is just his biological reality. There has always and forever all the decades of my long life been more feminine males and more masculine females, and that was accepted as just who they were.
Gender is more on the outside, biology more on the inside.
Just the other day, I was at the drive thru at a Taco Bell. I'm ordering my stuff, and the employee in the sqwuack box is confirming my order. I say "Yes sir" as the voice is reading back to me what I ordered. "3 Burrito supremes?" "Yes sir". "2 Chicken quesadillas?" "Yes sir" "Two Crunchy tacos?" "Yes si..." "I'm a ma'am." "Excuse me?" "I'm a ma'am." "Oh! I'm sorry!" "That's OK".
I get up to the window to pay and get my food...and I'm looking at a guy not displaying anything feminine.. A young guy. MAYBE 19. This is the "ma'am" I've been talking to. And you know what? I'm confused.
Are you aware that the person on the squawk box taking your order most likely is not the person that you're dealing with at the drive thru window? The fast food restaurants can have multiple people on headsets taking orders, and a different person handling the money at the window.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
