200 years ago, punk and metal didn’t exist, so the possibility to have your wish to be punk denied is something specific to the era where punk exist as a concept. Am I on the right way here? What I mean is… doesn’t that imply that being transgender is not inherent in a person, but a personal wish that can only exist in a time when gender exist?
Um… kind of. I mean, yeah, if people had no concept for what “man” or “woman” was, I struggle to imagine how they could be upset about it.
Dysphoria is just some kind of disconnect between the mind and the body, how the mind sees itself and how it perceives the body to be. Cis men, even, experience dysphoria all the time. Not being six feet tall, or not being muscular enough, or watching their hair thin out as they age. Some people, I know this is silly, are like suicidally dysphoric about their dicks being 5.5 inches long and not 6.
Speaking of men being too short, I actually have a personal example. A mild one.
My mom had a friend, another mom, she used to hang out with quite often. And you know, where mom goes, the kids go. So, I was often around like 6 or 7 other kids, some of them my siblings, and sometimes we weren’t all ignoring each other.
I was also the oldest, and therefore the biggest, the strongest, the coolest. And, I dunno, I guess my shoes were as well: I wore boots a lot. I promise that’s relevant.
Being a bit of a klutz, it was not uncommon that if something was knocked over, a stack of CDs, a child, I might have had something to do with it. And my mom, and her friend, bless them, would make fun of me for this. You know, my long monkey arms or my big clobber feet (heavy boots). And, the thing is, this made me self-conscious a bit. Kinda made me feel like a gentle giant, or a lumbering oaf. And I didn’t want that, I wanted to be small and agile and deftly acrobatic. I definitely did not want to kick children into any CD towers.
To this day, I actually wish I was a little shorter. Just aesthetically, I think I’d vibe with it. No surgeries, but if I could snap my fingers? I might consider it.
The point of this story, though, is that this is kind of a learned behavior. I could argue that this bothers me, the same as not being tall and manly enough bothers some other people, but if I hadn’t grown up with this story, would it matter to me? If I had grown up around people who were already much taller, would I have felt as small as I wanted to? Why do I want to be small anyway? Another version of this story is that I just accept the gentle giant identity as my own and roll with it.
I’m not going to pretend I know when and where the brain decides what it wants to be. But, I can tell you its desires are both very real and completely arbitrary; incredibly important and deeply silly.
I guess the corollary I’m drawing is that gender abolishment is like taking this story of mine, but which isn’t just mine, it’s actually everyone’s, and saying “you don’t have to grow up this way anymore. You don’t have to be sad about your genitalia not being what it’s ‘supposed’ to be because it’s no longer ‘supposed’ to be anything. 5.5 is just fine. You don’t have to be sad about not fitting in with the dress-wearing people because, well, I mean, just wear one if you want to. Like, why not. What’s the problem.”
And just as a final note, if we could abolish it right now, instantaneous K.O., people who are already who they are, like me, probably wouldn’t benefit much. As a gender abolishonist myself, I’m perfectly comfortable being a ‘guy’, whatever that continues to mean. That’s already part of my identity. It just wouldn’t matter so much to the rest of the world.
Also, sorry this was so long. I was struggling for a while about how I wanted to articulate this.
Thank you for writing that, I do appreciate long posts. I have thought about where my confusion comes from.
Earlier I have found it difficult to understand what appears to me to be two incompatible claims. One that says that gender is completely a social construct, and one that says that being trans is something inherent in a person, i.e being the case regardless of external expectations and beliefs. People may say “I am trans”, in a way that goes beyond “I would like to wear a dress but people expect me not to.” Do you know what I mean?
It’s inherent only while the construct exists, I think is the answer.
Like, let’s draw a picture: each gender is a box, girls on the left, boys on the right, and at birth you can be placed in either one.
If you’re placed with the boys, you’ll grow up expected to show strength, swallow sadness, have broad shoulders, work hard, be a leader, yadda yadda.
If you’re placed with the girls, you’ll grow up expected to show kindness, hide ambition, have wide hips, be pretty, show empathy, you get the idea.
To be trans, you have to be placed in one, but identify with the other. You have to move from the right box to the left box, or vice versa.
But if we start without the boxes, you can’t really be placed in the wrong one because they don’t exist. You can’t transition because you’re already wherever you wanted to be. And the phrase “I am trans,” which as you say resounds from deep within a person’s soul, is instead “I am me.”
In effect, we are just doing away with expectations. It’s just that the expectations we’re doing away with serve mostly to restrict and bind people. The expectations are what cause the suffering. You want to be a mechanic, but mom says that isn’t what graceful ladies do. You want to be motherly, but dad says you should be tough instead so you can defend yourself.
The inherent qualities are whatever makes a person who they are. The gender categories tell people who they should be.
200 years ago, punk and metal didn’t exist, so the possibility to have your wish to be punk denied is something specific to the era where punk exist as a concept. Am I on the right way here? What I mean is… doesn’t that imply that being transgender is not inherent in a person, but a personal wish that can only exist in a time when gender exist?
Um… kind of. I mean, yeah, if people had no concept for what “man” or “woman” was, I struggle to imagine how they could be upset about it.
Dysphoria is just some kind of disconnect between the mind and the body, how the mind sees itself and how it perceives the body to be. Cis men, even, experience dysphoria all the time. Not being six feet tall, or not being muscular enough, or watching their hair thin out as they age. Some people, I know this is silly, are like suicidally dysphoric about their dicks being 5.5 inches long and not 6.
Speaking of men being too short, I actually have a personal example. A mild one.
My mom had a friend, another mom, she used to hang out with quite often. And you know, where mom goes, the kids go. So, I was often around like 6 or 7 other kids, some of them my siblings, and sometimes we weren’t all ignoring each other.
I was also the oldest, and therefore the biggest, the strongest, the coolest. And, I dunno, I guess my shoes were as well: I wore boots a lot. I promise that’s relevant.
Being a bit of a klutz, it was not uncommon that if something was knocked over, a stack of CDs, a child, I might have had something to do with it. And my mom, and her friend, bless them, would make fun of me for this. You know, my long monkey arms or my big clobber feet (heavy boots). And, the thing is, this made me self-conscious a bit. Kinda made me feel like a gentle giant, or a lumbering oaf. And I didn’t want that, I wanted to be small and agile and deftly acrobatic. I definitely did not want to kick children into any CD towers.
To this day, I actually wish I was a little shorter. Just aesthetically, I think I’d vibe with it. No surgeries, but if I could snap my fingers? I might consider it.
The point of this story, though, is that this is kind of a learned behavior. I could argue that this bothers me, the same as not being tall and manly enough bothers some other people, but if I hadn’t grown up with this story, would it matter to me? If I had grown up around people who were already much taller, would I have felt as small as I wanted to? Why do I want to be small anyway? Another version of this story is that I just accept the gentle giant identity as my own and roll with it.
I’m not going to pretend I know when and where the brain decides what it wants to be. But, I can tell you its desires are both very real and completely arbitrary; incredibly important and deeply silly.
I guess the corollary I’m drawing is that gender abolishment is like taking this story of mine, but which isn’t just mine, it’s actually everyone’s, and saying “you don’t have to grow up this way anymore. You don’t have to be sad about your genitalia not being what it’s ‘supposed’ to be because it’s no longer ‘supposed’ to be anything. 5.5 is just fine. You don’t have to be sad about not fitting in with the dress-wearing people because, well, I mean, just wear one if you want to. Like, why not. What’s the problem.”
And just as a final note, if we could abolish it right now, instantaneous K.O., people who are already who they are, like me, probably wouldn’t benefit much. As a gender abolishonist myself, I’m perfectly comfortable being a ‘guy’, whatever that continues to mean. That’s already part of my identity. It just wouldn’t matter so much to the rest of the world.
Also, sorry this was so long. I was struggling for a while about how I wanted to articulate this.
Thank you for writing that, I do appreciate long posts. I have thought about where my confusion comes from.
Earlier I have found it difficult to understand what appears to me to be two incompatible claims. One that says that gender is completely a social construct, and one that says that being trans is something inherent in a person, i.e being the case regardless of external expectations and beliefs. People may say “I am trans”, in a way that goes beyond “I would like to wear a dress but people expect me not to.” Do you know what I mean?
It’s inherent only while the construct exists, I think is the answer.
Like, let’s draw a picture: each gender is a box, girls on the left, boys on the right, and at birth you can be placed in either one.
If you’re placed with the boys, you’ll grow up expected to show strength, swallow sadness, have broad shoulders, work hard, be a leader, yadda yadda.
If you’re placed with the girls, you’ll grow up expected to show kindness, hide ambition, have wide hips, be pretty, show empathy, you get the idea.
To be trans, you have to be placed in one, but identify with the other. You have to move from the right box to the left box, or vice versa.
But if we start without the boxes, you can’t really be placed in the wrong one because they don’t exist. You can’t transition because you’re already wherever you wanted to be. And the phrase “I am trans,” which as you say resounds from deep within a person’s soul, is instead “I am me.”
In effect, we are just doing away with expectations. It’s just that the expectations we’re doing away with serve mostly to restrict and bind people. The expectations are what cause the suffering. You want to be a mechanic, but mom says that isn’t what graceful ladies do. You want to be motherly, but dad says you should be tough instead so you can defend yourself.
The inherent qualities are whatever makes a person who they are. The gender categories tell people who they should be.