How to get out of an uncomfortable egg culture situation with this one simple trick.
Real talk: Calling people eggs is a violation of the egg prime directive, and is considered invalidating as you are trying to say that a person is not the gender they identify as, that their identity is invalid. Don’t call people eggs, like ever, it’s extremely uncool.
I don’t doubt this, but I think it would also be helpful to list paradigmatic examples of genderfluid people so we can base our discussion in something shared and understood, rather than establishing separate assumptions about what is or isn’t genderfluid, which I think is happening here.
I think this might be poor communication on my part, I would like to make a distinction between “changes in unconscious sex” and claims of genderfluidity, which I essentially think are not the same thing. I think the findings on unconscious sex likely mean that genderfluidity is caused by the unconscious sex which is fixed, which means that I agree with you that it’s not a presentation or a choice.
I don’t mean to “debunk” genderfluidity at all.
Conversion therapy is only sometimes by force, often it is an earnest attempt by the trans person to conform with their assigned sex for religious or cultural reasons. My point is that even when people attempt to change their unconscious sex through conversion therapy, it fails and does not resolve the incongruence between their unconscious sex and their assigned sex.
We don’t know, but the brain studies find that brain sex is extremely complicated and not at all simple, there is no real way to separate brains into two slots, male and female. What do you think would account for a genderfluid identity given the evidence?
I never argued genderfluidity is performative or mere presentation, which makes me think we are beginning to no longer communicate at all. I don’t blame you entirely for this, but it is happening regardless, and I am sorry for that.
It sometimes seems like you are arguing contradicting statements, e.g.:
Do you think conversion therapy ever works, for example when people really put their minds to it and try to change themselves?
I am hostile to performative theories of gender, and it’s amazing to me that you think I am arguing for them. I can’t help but think you aren’t even reading what I write.
Also, you are wrong about the brain sex studies, they find that 95%+ of brains are neither male nor female, which gives ample evidence of non-binary gender identities.
You are arguing my point at this point, which is ironic considering you think it’s a gotcha against me.
I have to go, I will finish responding when I can.
NO. I know that the idea that some people who hear that gender isn’t fixed think is that they think it means that conversion therapy works. This is a transmedicalist talking point though, as if the idea that gender shifts and changes over time somehow validates conversion therapy or invalidates gender fluidity.
Genderfluid people cannot coerce themselves into being different by force of will alone. That’s kind of the idea of gender including dysphoria shifting and changing randomly.
That’s way more than I hoped out of these studies, however they seem to fall short of genderfluidity.
Honestly I think you should really think over if brain sex or brain gender has any merit, because to me and many others, it is for the most part transmedicalist garbage and biological existentialism.
Do you mean biological essentialism, rather than existentialism? Just so you know, I strongly oppose gender bioessentialism, and I think a lot of this conversation has been futile and frustrating because you assume that is the position I am taking.
Transmedicalism tries to gatekeep trans identity based on the presence of gender dysphoria, and they might point to the studies on brain sex to explain the source of dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean the studies on brain sex are transmedicalist in nature, it just means transmedicalists use that evidence to try to support a view they have, which ultimately is a view that doesn’t make sense.
Ultimately I think transmedicalists are just another form of respectability politics, it is no different than previous movements within gay cultures to assimilate as much as possible to straight culture and to assert the notion of “we are just like you, except this one thing”. These movements always seem confused about the way power works, the problem is that the oppressors aren’t going to respect you just because you think you are more like them than others in your community. Trans people like Caitlyn Jenner or Blaire White aren’t effective in achieving trans rights precisely because they want to capitulate as much as possible to the people who are most invested in denying trans rights. Not that “respectability” isn’t entirely irrelevant, certainly moral panic can be more easily whipped up when a group behaves in a way that is alienating to the majority of people, but trans people for the most part aren’t even guilty of the things anti-trans activists claim - like that trans women are sexually preying on cis women in bathrooms, there just is no evidence of this and yet lots of people believe there is real harm being done and bathroom bans are the only way to stop it.
So I don’t think respectability politics will be that effective and is probably more of an emotional response than a pragmatic praxis, even if I can understand the fear about the trans community not taking seriously the need to be careful and not lean too much into anti-trans panic, which will happen regardless, even if the trans community does nothing wrong. Facts and reality matter little to the anti-trans movement.