I think the hard-distinction that trans people have as putting themselves in little boxes like ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are kind of harming the whole idea.
Having tea parties isn’t girly. Playing with dolls isn’t girly. Wearing pants isn’t masculine. Playing in the dirt as a kid isn’t masculine. They’re just kid things. There’s too much emphasis on what’s boy or girl like, and people are convinced they’re “a girl” because…they like pink? They like tea parties? They like the clothes that girls wear? You can still be a guy and like those things, those aren’t “girl things”, they’re just things. I hate this idea that everything has to fall into one of those two categories, and if you like something from the ‘other side’ you’re trans.
It’s perfectly acceptable to like/do things that the other sex does, without BEING that sex.
Yes. This is just gender stereotypes. Let’s abolish gender stereotypes instead. You do you, fam.
Yup. When I was a teen I had a lot of dark coloured clothing, I wasn’t a goth but my family thought I preferred dark clothes. I actually prefer bright colours, whether it’s pink, yellow or baby blues. The older I get the less of a shit I give with expectations of gender stereotypes. I’m 27 and had my hair dyed bright blue a couple years ago and I got comments from middle aged men telling me that there was something wrong with that. I still get comments from the guy who lives across the road too.
I’m a Cis, straight man. Know what my favourite colour was growing up? Magenta
Objectively the most lit color in the CMYK color process.
Yes it’s fine to do gender non conforming things, for both cis and trans people.
But being trans is not simply a presentation preference.
I’m all set up for the down votes, but in my experience as a non-trans individual, there are two common components to being trans. There is the masculine/feminine side of things, aka gender, which I find to be incredibly stupid because it’s a cultural construct that is largely self imposed in the adult world as long as you don’t have hair thick skin. I really want to do away with gender and gender roles entirely so no one is in a box and everyone can do what they want regardless of what they identify as.
Then there is the body dysmophia side of things, where you physically do not feel comfortable with the way your body presents. This I totally understand, despite not suffering from it, and is imo the only legit reason to transition.
If anyone wants to teach me anything about this, feel free to leave a civil comment and we can have a discussion.
I’m afab, but don’t feel like a woman. I recently immigrated to a country with a gendered language, and it feels almost like faking an accent to use feminine words to refer to myself- like I’m clearly misleading people, but in a mostly harmless way. I’m not sure if I’ll ever transition, but if I do, it won’t be because of me hating being inside my body, it will be because it feels more honest to those around me and I kinda feel like a scumbag “deceiving” them constantly.
I don’t really know much about trans theory, so I don’t know if there’s a good argument to convince you, but I think mine is a good reason to transition.
Afab? And yeah that’s kinda my point, I want to do away with gendered language because it seems kinda pointless. And can you explain more about what you mean by deceiving people?
and is imo the only legit reason to transition.
That’s actually a pretty contentious topic in trans circles (transmedicalism/truscum). Personally I don’t really see the issue with transitioning for whatever (well-informed) reason, as long as you’re not taking up resources for those with dysmorphia
Check out the Gender Dysphoria Bible online; it’s a very good resource. Or read the WPATH-8 recommendations if you want the actual scientific/medical consensus.
In my experience as a trans person with gnc tendencies, you cannot simply wish away gender for everybody. There are people who don’t really feel any attachment (“agender” people). But most people do, deeply.
As an aside, starting a conversation by gatekeeping how people in a group you don’t belong to are allowed to feel, then gatekeeping how they are allowed to express themselves, is generally not a way to get them to open up to you.
The equivalent for me might be “as a white person, in my opinion there are only two valid reasons for a black person to have their hair in locks (a and b), any black people who want to respectfully explain anything about that to me are free to do so…”
If I open the conversation like that, I’m not likely to gather much new information.
I think that may be why you’re not getting the polite interactions you’re looking for, your post was not particularly friendly.
which I find to be incredibly stupid because it’s a cultural construct that is largely self imposed
Oh please explain this more. We need your cis gender expertise to explain how gender doesn’t matter
and is imo the only legit reason to transition.
Wtf. First, why else would someone transition? And even so, who are you to gatekeep what reasons are legit?
As for the first part, I feel like I explained it fairly well. Literally just do what you want. It’s the equivalent of saying “I’m nerdy, so I can only do nerdy things.”
As for the second part, yeah I mean I shouldn’t be gatekeeping but I phrased it that way to show that I do understand that reason.
With that being said, I posted that with the hope of learning, and while your comment feels a little aggressive, I appreciate that you stayed civil. Can you explain why my understanding of gender does not work?
By simply mocking the person for saying gender roles are stupid, the naive conclusion is that you are for gender roles.
If there’s nuance there, it’d be great for you to tease that out, otherwise it just looks like you’re for gender roles, or gatekeeping the topic.
Having a tea party isn’t girly, though. Let kids play how they want.
I (cis male) used to have tea parties with my dog all the time. Had a little set specifically for it. Stop forcing fun childhood activities into rigid gender groups.
Disgusting! You should be ashamed of yourself!
Giving a dog tea like that. It’s bad for dogs!
That’s not a sign of being Trans, that’s a sign of liking tea parties. Fucks sake. Quit shoving activities into gender roles.
Agree, that’s why OPs pov really tracked with me.
maybe they just where tired of being taxed by the british without any representation in the british parliament?
Yeah, I always found it interesting that society is in general headed for sex-(and IMHO also gender-)correlated roles ceasing to exist, and trans folks absolutely push that forward by unearthing the idea that gender or identity should have anything to do with what’s in your pants, yet they also are often some of the biggest perpetrators of gendered identities.
Like, when a trans lady finds her identity and has come out, they often really enjoy the lady identity, so it’ll be skirts and pink and all that jazz.I guess, maybe it shouldn’t matter. Maybe those aren’t necessarily gendered identities, but at some point just an identity, which you can find neat. Like, we’re giving up the male vs. female categories, but more in the sense that we’re opening up the whole rainbow, and if your identity is hot pink, that might look like the traditionally female identity, but this time around, it rather just happens to be your identity.
Will still be interesting to see, if maybe some hot pink trans ladies will one day decide that actually this new purplish-green identity is my jam, whenever we work out what that looks like.
Did you know that a lot of ex-jahovas witnesses will go over the top to celebrate holidays? Most of them will even have one holiday they will pick as a favorite, and just go ALL OUT on that holiday. Holidays are considered a sin in JW society, and celebrating one is a good way to get shunned.
The same applies to trans people. If you’ve spent your whole life identifying with a certain thing, but been denied that thing because of some arbitrary reason, you’ll almost reflexively ‘overindulge’ when you’re able to finally just enjoy what you like.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation. If society just never cared, and let boys enjoy ‘girly’ things and vice versa, the situation would almost certainly be completely different. For one, they may never develop any kind of dysmorphia to begin with, but even if they do, they haven’t been denied the things they want, so there’s not the overcorrecting we sometimes see now.
I love that gendered toy sections in stores are totally gone. There are just categories now. There’s still usually a Barbie aisle because there’s a million barbies and an action figure aisle because there’s ten times as many action figures, but they’re not separated into girl’s toys and boy’s toys like they were when I was a kid in the 80s. There was a boy in my elementary school who had a Cabbage Patch Kid and got made fun of for playing with a girls’ toy. I hope getting rid of those barriers in stores has helped that sort of thing. My daughter didn’t really seem to get the concept of ‘this was a toy boys played with’ and ‘this was a toy girls played with’ until she started enjoying going to antique malls.
I think if someone defines certain items or activities as celebrating their gender, whatever those items or activities are, I think it’s fine! I don’t think Trans folk are doing any harm by gendering things, it’s an expression of them and their gender identity.
We don’t need to tells boys not to have tea parties because it’s girly, but if a boy or girl decides that their tea party is boyish or girly, then good for them.
yet they also are often some of the biggest perpetrators of gendered identities.
You’re reading too much into it. Society says that tea parties are feminine. Whether that’s inherent to gender, or entirely a social imposition doesn’t really matter. Trans people are NOT saying that if you like tea parties then you’re a girl. But if you like tea parties, wished you could wear dresses, wanted sleepovers with the other girls instead of the boys, then that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re trans, but it might be something to consider.
Think about it this way. Trans people were denied the opportunity to participate in these stereotypically feminine things without feeling weird. And I don’t mean weird because people tell you it’s wrong to like that stuff. That’s definitely part of it. But it also just feels like you’re an alien. You may be participating in tea parties, and wearing dresses, etc. But even if that was totally normal, it would still feel wrong to be doing that as a boy.
I don’t know if any of that made sense. But I think you see trans people wanting to be able to experience stereotypical femininity and misinterpret that as a desire to impose those stereotypes on others
And I wore dresses because I wanted to look fabulous. Who doesn’t want to look fabulous?
Straight cis dude here. Nana brought out the special cookies and some bitchin dress up clothes (including a top hat). Tea parties rock no matter what your orientation.
Also straight and cis. I loved playing dress-up as a kid. And playing house.
My daughter has a room decked out in pink, loves Hello Kitty and collects Raggedy Ann dolls. She also loves The Ramones and The Dead Kennedys and wears a leather biker jacket and spiked collars. And I love it all.
Fuck societal norms. Being who you are and doing what you want because you enjoy it is awesome.
Tea parties are awesome.
I remember one time, there were these sweet cookies made out of fat and flour and I ate a lot of them. Two hours later I vomited like crazy because of the fat.
Another time, instead of tea and those cookies, it was milk and jam. Same thing really, different flavours. Also the vomit was more pleasant to look at.
There wasn’t an another time after that. I still wonder why sometimes…Based Kanamori profile pic
I totally get that. My childhood sign was thinking that my genitals were definitely of the wrong sort and there’s no cisgender explanation for that
In retrospect I generally see my childhood experience as far more similar to that of a tomboy. My problem was my body, not gender stereotypes
Ok, my youngest identifies as a trans boy and honestly I was so very surprised when he told me, because my concept of womanhood is so broad that it didn’t cross my mind that anything they were doing was boyish. I just thought he identified as a 40 year old lesbian with dumpy style. I still can’t quite see it, just a beautiful androgynous person with bad taste in clothing, and reasonably good taste in girlfriends.
I read this in the voice I use in my head for Lift.
Anyone other cosmere fans feel the same?