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Marvin

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[lots of stuff]

What's your definition of male and of female?

Erm, I guess just the standard biology textbook definition. Males have a penis, females have a vagina.

Ok sure. What about ambiguous genitalia? Where the genitals appear to be either or... Would you say chromosomes then?

I guess... would that be intersexed? Maybe I haven't seen enough pictures of genitalia. :P Are there really "ambiguous" cases? I know some people have both, but are there cases where you really can't tell if something is a penis or a vagina? :unsure:

There's someone on here who wants to be both, "biologically", so that they could actually have a penis between a clitoris and vagina. If/when they figure out a way to do that, what would you call them?

beutrois, maybe? From bi + neutrois (in between genders having both genders).

I think genderqueer or just "trans" (some people have suggested adding the "T" gender marking to legal documents and the like for non-binaries) is still fine. I just meant what would the poster call someone who's sex is neither male nor female, seeing as they don't have a gender-neutral pronoun they find acceptable.

Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

EDIT: Though, I do think we need more checkboxes for intersexed or no-sex. Left out that bit, somehow. :blush:

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Before I get into anything- How many of these people did you say "So, everyone who has these traits is male? Is that's what you're saying? I identify as female and have those traits". What did they say? How many went to arms about how you're wrong and you're really a guy? I'm assuming all of them, for you to be so insulted, but that would deeply surprise me. A lot of transgender are much more accepting of people who don't fit their assigned gender roles than the cis population is.

I've read most of the gender-related topics on here and don't remember anyone saying that having these traits means you are a man or woman whether you identify as it or not, so I'm curious who told you this.

I know you might not mean to, but that's basically what you're saying whenever you use that argument. It's... inconsistent, at best... for, say, a transman to say "liking cars isn't a male trait", and then turn right around and say, "oh, I always liked cars; that was one of the earliest ways I knew I was really a boy". It does nothing but cause confusion at best, and disbelief of the transgendered person's validity at worst. At best, if you use that kind of argument, you're going to get a bunch of cisgendered girls who like cars bristling, with a reaction of "Excuse me? All those freaks who say that girls have to like dolls and not cars, did she just agree with them?? And even worse, did she just try to use the arguments of those incompetent, backwards morons to attempt to prove her point?? At worst, and what's more often my reaction, is a response of, "Excuse me? You think that makes you more male? Oh, this person isn't transgender, she's just too stupid and vulnerable to (often imagined) peer pressure to realize that being female doesn't mean you can't like cars." It sorta... destroys the credibility of the transgender person, when speaking to people who are intelligent enough to realize that these traits are not inherently male or female, and with people who aren't that bright (fewer and fewer, I'm glad to say), it gives them ammunition to use to claim that gender roles must indeed be something people are born into.

I don't see why you feel your gender is being put into question. I mean, no, I don't see how anyone who's cisgendered can say with a straight face that they don't like people clinging to what little solid proof against the cold, unforgiving, cruel world of the cisnormative. No one is saying that these traits make you a boy or girl, they're just holding onto a glimmer of hope.

The problem, I think, is that it's not proof, and it's, well, a tad dishonest, almost, to use such an argument as though it backs up your point when you know fully well that it doesn't.

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thecynicalromantic
Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

I'm sorry, this is beginning to piss me off.

I'm an English/writing major. I read a LOT. I read about language a lot. I read about the English language a lot. I read a lot of feminist criticism, and pages and pages of sex/gender/gender-role breakdown of a new novel every goddamn week. I could have written my OWN fucking novel in the amount of time I've spent reading feminist criticism of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

You are the first person I have EVER met who thinks English doesn't have gender pronouns. EVER. And yet you also claim to be so grammatically well-educated that you don't accept anything that's not academically standard English as any sort of proper English at all. Please, read a bit more on how language ACTUALLY works before making arguments about it, because currently you seem to be making arguments based on "It'd be easier for my brain to wrap MY particular brand of logic around it if it worked like this..." which is nice, and would be valid if you were in charge of English, but you're not.

If we want to argue from 'logic' instead of consensus (which is how language fulfills its function), try this:

Gender: in the mind, has to do with perception.

Sex: in your pants, or chromosomes, or something, has to do with biology.

Language: in the mind, shapes and expresses perception.

Which ones look like they match up best?

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That's when it's time to pull out the argument that's NOT stupid and explain the case in true and intelligent terms.

It is stupid. I don't remember the last time I used traits as an argument because they don't prove a damn thing, and most people who use traits against me make me pause and go "um... that makes no sense" so why would I use the same argument? I'm not saying it's smart, I'm saying it's understandable. Sadly, being transgendered doesn't make you any smarter than anyone else.

I just think it's stupid to think that other people using traits to justify things means they're saying you aren't the gender you are while fully understanding that people are morons. As you said, most people are stupid. They probably haven't given that much thought to it and never paused to wonder if it could be taken like that.

True... But you have just as little right to know a person's gender. Even less, I would think, because that's an internal thing. Sex, at least, can be told just by looking at a person (mostly, of course). That's why I see the pronouns as referring to sex, not gender. Sex you can tell at a glance, though there are always cases where you'll be mistaken and the person you mis-addressed will correct you. Gender you have no way whatsoever of knowing without outright asking someone, which would be rude, to put it mildly.

The entire point of passing is to get it so that people can tell what your gender is, not your sex, so while it's no one's business- you're trying to get them to be able to tell your gender, not your sex.

That's... um... ouch. :blink: I guess I would try very hard to always call them by their name, and not ever have to use a third person pronoun. As for having both, that would make them intersexed, right? I guess in both cases, since English definitely doesn't have a pronoun for people who are both/neither sex, I would just use whatever pronoun they told me to.

What's so ouch about it? And I'm not sure if either is intersexed or not, or if it's something you have to be born.

I see. Genderqueer is a subset of transgender, right? With the neutrois, and androgyne, and others that were mentioned earlier in this thread? And transsexual is also considered a subset of transgender? *nods thoughtfully*

Yup. Genderqueer, I think, includes all non-binaries, but is usually used by people who don't feel they fit into neutrois/androgyne/bigender/etc, because if you fit into one of those you might as well just say that.

So, it's really a very meaningless, and misleading argument. I just hate to see it used, is all.

Yeah, it's not lovely, but there is absolutely nothing besides traits that you can use to argue what gender you are, and most people assume traits=gender. Wouldn't surprise me if most transsexuals really do associate traits with gender, but I'd hope they're less likely to.

Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

Transman is FtM, everyone seems to confuse it. Just remember transman/transwoman are mostly used by people who accept them as the gender they are, so you use man to refer to FtMs because they're male, and woman to refer to MtFs because they're female.

And T wouldn't refer to transmen and transwomen, it's for genderqueers. As I already pointed out, you can get it so your sex isn't male or female.

By the way- you can can actually change your gender marks legally before getting lower surgery. The laws vary, but in my state all I have to do is get chest reconstruction surgery and have the surgeon give me a letter saying he did, and I'd be able to change every single piece of paper related to me to say that I'm a man. In some places you can even change your birth certificate. So, you can have people with "F" gender markers who haven't been able to/don't want to get lower surgery so still have a penis. I think in MA you can get it changed just with a therapist signing off that you're living full time and getting treatment, you don't even have to get surgery and might not have to start hormones or anything else. So if they really are asking for sex, why is that okay?

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metalgirl2045

So if traits don't define gender, what does? I have absolutely no indication of what my internal gender is other than careful observation of when I act in male and female ways. Or does that make me technically neutrosis (in which case I think people getting their knickers in a twist over people defaulting to physical sex to pick gender pronouns is a big fuss over nothing)?

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thecynicalromantic
So if traits don't define gender, what does? I have absolutely no indication of what my internal gender is other than careful observation of when I act in male and female ways. Or does that make me technically neutrosis (in which case I think people getting their knickers in a twist over people defaulting to physical sex to pick gender pronouns is a big fuss over nothing)?

It's your sense/perception of yourself as a man, woman, both or neither. It's called gender *identity* because it's your sense of *identifying* with the concepts of 'man' and 'woman.'

If you don't have much of a sense of yourself as anything, including not having a particularly strong sense of neither gender being you, and would rather default to your physical sex because it's easier than making a fuss over pronouns, then that's perfectly valid. If gender is a social construct (which is a debatable point, unlike gender *traits* being social constructs, which is, frankly, obvious with proper education), it is (as I sort of mentioned earlier in the discussion somewhere) a mythic one. And different people relate to different myths in different ways. If this is a myth that holds no power or resonance for you, that's your right. But for some people, the myth of the concepts of "men" and "women" that have grown up around the differences between certain people are real and powerful, and their sense of their place as part of that myth can vary.

It's like how some people can really feel a sense of something in certain religious stories--something in it 'speaks' to them. Some people can feel a sort of inherent truth and power in, say, the story of Jesus, even when they're well-educated enough to know that the Bible's not literally true, and the Gospels were written way after Jesus died, and it's possible Jesus didn't historically exist, etc, but that doesn't actually matter. And they can do this without any of the rituals associated with Christianity (our allegorical equivalent to 'gender traits'). Other people can, in their heart of hearts, be atheists, and not get anything out of the Christian myth whatsoever, but they'll still put up a Christmas tree and buy presents and dye eggs at Easter and go to church on Sundays and fast on Fridays in Lent and bake a zillion cookies during the month of December and throw a party with stuff all decked out in red and green sometime in the middle of that month. And maybe even call themselves Christians. These are traditions and rituals that grew up around a certain belief, but you don't have to feel the belief to do them, and you don't have to do them to feel that belief.

So, just like how being a Christian isn't an average of how many Sundays you go to Church versus how many Jewish holidays you try to get off school from, neither is gender identity an average of how many 'feminine' traits you have versus how many 'masculine' ones. It's part of your sense-of-stuff.

Dithering about myths aside, there's also plain old body dysphoria (which, apparently, is a bigger part of transgenderism for some people than others--some people really feel they have the wrong body; others just feel that their body isn't all that relevant), which can also manifest itself for body attributes that aren't sex-related, which basically means you feel like your wearing a body that's not what your body is supposed to look like, as closely as I can understand it.

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Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

I'm sorry, this is beginning to piss me off.

I'm an English/writing major. I read a LOT. I read about language a lot. I read about the English language a lot. I read a lot of feminist criticism, and pages and pages of sex/gender/gender-role breakdown of a new novel every goddamn week. I could have written my OWN fucking novel in the amount of time I've spent reading feminist criticism of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

You are the first person I have EVER met who thinks English doesn't have gender pronouns. EVER.

Not gender as we're discussing here, cynical, which is about some private, internal sense of sex. Gender, when used with pronouns, refers to masculine or feminine. Why? Because the qualities of "masculine" or "feminine" are (or were, at any rate) seen as expressing the inherent maleness or femaleness of the object of description. Take away the preconception that a level of "masculine" or "feminine" can accurately determine sex, and you're left with just a bunch a pronouns still seeking to describe the maleness or femaleness of a subject. Gender (not gender traits, but identity, as we've been discussing in this topic), to an outside observer, is as indecipherable as a person's thoughts.

For example, if you saw a male walking down the street, your first impression, when speaking about him to your neighbor, would be to refer to him as "he". You don't know his gender. He might be a transgirl. Or he might even actually just be a very masculine-looking woman. But because he looks male, biologically male, the pronoun "he" would be used... pretty much universally. I can't think of anyone who would look at him and say "he" thinking they knew what sex he internally considered himself.

If we want to argue from 'logic' instead of consensus (which is how language fulfills its function), try this:

Gender: in the mind, has to do with perception.

Sex: in your pants, or chromosomes, or something, has to do with biology.

Language: in the mind, shapes and expresses perception.

Which ones look like they match up best?

Eh, not quite. :P Gender's in the mind, all right, but it affects the perception of the person who has it in mind, not the perception of someone talking about him. You can't perceive someone's gender (without walking up and asking him, anyway), but you can perceive their sex. That's kind of the crux of my point, I guess. There's no way for an unaquainted outsider, such as the type of person who would be speaking about someone in the third person, to know someone's gender, so how can all the pronouns used to talk about that someone be about his/her gender? You might as well be attempting to assign pronouns based on a person's favorite cereal.

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That's when it's time to pull out the argument that's NOT stupid and explain the case in true and intelligent terms.

It is stupid. I don't remember the last time I used traits as an argument because they don't prove a damn thing, and most people who use traits against me make me pause and go "um... that makes no sense" so why would I use the same argument? I'm not saying it's smart, I'm saying it's understandable. Sadly, being transgendered doesn't make you any smarter than anyone else.

I just think it's stupid to think that other people using traits to justify things means they're saying you aren't the gender you are while fully understanding that people are morons. As you said, most people are stupid. They probably haven't given that much thought to it and never paused to wonder if it could be taken like that.

Just pointing out that it's not an excuse to use arguments you know are false, that's all. I ranted a bit about just how pointless and counter-productive I found such an argument above. :blush: But anyway, you don't need to use those arguments in the first place. You have much better arguments. When you started explaining the concepts of body dysphoria and phantom limb and all that, that's when stuff really started clicking for me. 8)

True... But you have just as little right to know a person's gender. Even less, I would think, because that's an internal thing. Sex, at least, can be told just by looking at a person (mostly, of course). That's why I see the pronouns as referring to sex, not gender. Sex you can tell at a glance, though there are always cases where you'll be mistaken and the person you mis-addressed will correct you. Gender you have no way whatsoever of knowing without outright asking someone, which would be rude, to put it mildly.

The entire point of passing is to get it so that people can tell what your gender is, not your sex, so while it's no one's business- you're trying to get them to be able to tell your gender, not your sex.

That's only if you dress according to some specific gender norm. And if you dress that well, you'll probably be mistaken for someone of that sex and addressed with that pronoun, anyway. :P

Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

Transman is FtM, everyone seems to confuse it. Just remember transman/transwoman are mostly used by people who accept them as the gender they are, so you use man to refer to FtMs because they're male, and woman to refer to MtFs because they're female.

And T wouldn't refer to transmen and transwomen, it's for genderqueers. As I already pointed out, you can get it so your sex isn't male or female.

By the way- you can can actually change your gender marks legally before getting lower surgery. The laws vary, but in my state all I have to do is get chest reconstruction surgery and have the surgeon give me a letter saying he did, and I'd be able to change every single piece of paper related to me to say that I'm a man. In some places you can even change your birth certificate. So, you can have people with "F" gender markers who haven't been able to/don't want to get lower surgery so still have a penis. I think in MA you can get it changed just with a therapist signing off that you're living full time and getting treatment, you don't even have to get surgery and might not have to start hormones or anything else. So if they really are asking for sex, why is that okay?

Just thinking in terms of those legal documents... does that mean, if, say, a transwoman was able to legally change his gender to female without getting surgery, that he would be able to marry another man in a state where homosexual marriages weren't legal? I know, that has nothing to do with anything, but it suddenly made me wonder. :unsure:

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thecynicalromantic
That's when it's time to pull out the argument that's NOT stupid and explain the case in true and intelligent terms.

It is stupid. I don't remember the last time I used traits as an argument because they don't prove a damn thing, and most people who use traits against me make me pause and go "um... that makes no sense" so why would I use the same argument? I'm not saying it's smart, I'm saying it's understandable. Sadly, being transgendered doesn't make you any smarter than anyone else.

I just think it's stupid to think that other people using traits to justify things means they're saying you aren't the gender you are while fully understanding that people are morons. As you said, most people are stupid. They probably haven't given that much thought to it and never paused to wonder if it could be taken like that.

Just pointing out that it's not an excuse to use arguments you know are false, that's all. I ranted a bit about just how pointless and counter-productive I found such an argument above. :blush: But anyway, you don't need to use those arguments in the first place. You have much better arguments. When you started explaining the concepts of body dysphoria and phantom limb and all that, that's when stuff really started clicking for me. 8)

True... But you have just as little right to know a person's gender. Even less, I would think, because that's an internal thing. Sex, at least, can be told just by looking at a person (mostly, of course). That's why I see the pronouns as referring to sex, not gender. Sex you can tell at a glance, though there are always cases where you'll be mistaken and the person you mis-addressed will correct you. Gender you have no way whatsoever of knowing without outright asking someone, which would be rude, to put it mildly.

The entire point of passing is to get it so that people can tell what your gender is, not your sex, so while it's no one's business- you're trying to get them to be able to tell your gender, not your sex.

That's only if you dress according to some specific gender norm. And if you dress that well, you'll probably be mistaken for someone of that sex and addressed with that pronoun, anyway. :P

Sex neutral pronoun. :P And I don't think adding a "T" gender option to legal documents and such would be very helpful, actually. They're asking about a person's sex, not gender. His current sex, not the sex he wishes he could be. I mean, thinking specifically of things like medical questionnaires, however much a transgender girl might wish they were male, it would make no sense to claim they were medically, since that could affect what procedures/treatments can be performed. (did I use that right? Or should that have been transgender guy?)

Transman is FtM, everyone seems to confuse it. Just remember transman/transwoman are mostly used by people who accept them as the gender they are, so you use man to refer to FtMs because they're male, and woman to refer to MtFs because they're female.

And T wouldn't refer to transmen and transwomen, it's for genderqueers. As I already pointed out, you can get it so your sex isn't male or female.

By the way- you can can actually change your gender marks legally before getting lower surgery. The laws vary, but in my state all I have to do is get chest reconstruction surgery and have the surgeon give me a letter saying he did, and I'd be able to change every single piece of paper related to me to say that I'm a man. In some places you can even change your birth certificate. So, you can have people with "F" gender markers who haven't been able to/don't want to get lower surgery so still have a penis. I think in MA you can get it changed just with a therapist signing off that you're living full time and getting treatment, you don't even have to get surgery and might not have to start hormones or anything else. So if they really are asking for sex, why is that okay?

Just thinking in terms of those legal documents... does that mean, if, say, a transwoman was able to legally change his gender to female without getting surgery, that he would be able to marry another man in a state where homosexual marriages weren't legal? I know, that has nothing to do with anything, but it suddenly made me wonder. :unsure:

*she would be able to marry.

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Huh, okay, I guess I can understand that. It just kind of rubs me the wrong way, I guess, when anyone, transgender, cisgender, or otherwise, points to some trait and tries to associate with a particular gender. While I can sympathize with the desire to have something solid to point to, I kind of see it as giving credibility to the idea that girls must be one way, guys must be another. And there's little that cheeses me off more than that. <_<

Yeah, but being transgendered can be difficult enough I don't think it's too bad

Eh, I really don't agree. I understand that being transgendered can be hard, but that's no excuse to be using false arguments. It does nothing but generate confusion, at best, and lead to an outright denial of the transgendered person's identity at worst. I mean, if someone tried to use the argument with me that "I knew I was a boy because even as a child, I liked playing with cars and not with dolls", honestly, I'd think that person was an idiot who had no idea about gender, and certainly wasn't mature enough to realize that she might be transgender.

I guess because after they got that surgery, they would actually be that sex, while before they got the surgery, their gender might be different, but their sex would still be the same. I almost don't dare ask, but what's gender nullification surgery? :unsure:

Well, as I'm hoping you can guess it's where you nullify the gender associated with your sex, so that you have neither a penis nor a vagina, in some cases, a sexual getting it can leave a clitoris (from either birth sex), but they are, biologically, neither.

There's someone on here who wants to be both, "biologically", so that they could actually have a penis between a clitoris and vagina. If/when they figure out a way to do that, what would you call them?

That's... um... ouch. :blink: I guess I would try very hard to always call them by their name, and not ever have to use a third person pronoun. As for having both, that would make them intersexed, right? I guess in both cases, since English definitely doesn't have a pronoun for people who are both/neither sex, I would just use whatever pronoun they told me to.

*Damn it. This using singular "they" isn't as hard as I thought. Ya'll have corrupted my perfect English!*

EDIT: Though, I do think we need more checkboxes for intersexed or no-sex. Left out that bit, somehow. :blush:

I quess I've always wanted an intersex body instead I got a distinctly female one. I suppose being a post-surgical intersex might mean that I could be fertile whereas most natural ones, cisintersex, are not. At the same I can understand that most people would see it a crazy way to want to live. At the same time, it's how I feel traits or not. Even when I behave in either a typically male or female or a non-typical female or male, and I know gender stereotypes are a bunch of nonsense, I feel a strong discord. I'm not female or male, I'm both. I don't mean just behavior wise I mean identity wise.

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So if traits don't define gender, what does? I have absolutely no indication of what my internal gender is other than careful observation of when I act in male and female ways. Or does that make me technically neutrosis (in which case I think people getting their knickers in a twist over people defaulting to physical sex to pick gender pronouns is a big fuss over nothing)?

It's your sense/perception of yourself as a man, woman, both or neither. It's called gender *identity* because it's your sense of *identifying* with the concepts of 'man' and 'woman.'

If you don't have much of a sense of yourself as anything, including not having a particularly strong sense of neither gender being you, and would rather default to your physical sex because it's easier than making a fuss over pronouns, then that's perfectly valid. If gender is a social construct (which is a debatable point, unlike gender *traits* being social constructs, which is, frankly, obvious with proper education), it is (as I sort of mentioned earlier in the discussion somewhere) a mythic one. And different people relate to different myths in different ways. If this is a myth that holds no power or resonance for you, that's your right. But for some people, the myth of the concepts of "men" and "women" that have grown up around the differences between certain people are real and powerful, and their sense of their place as part of that myth can vary.

It's like how some people can really feel a sense of something in certain religious stories--something in it 'speaks' to them. Some people can feel a sort of inherent truth and power in, say, the story of Jesus, even when they're well-educated enough to know that the Bible's not literally true, and the Gospels were written way after Jesus died, and it's possible Jesus didn't historically exist, etc, but that doesn't actually matter. And they can do this without any of the rituals associated with Christianity (our allegorical equivalent to 'gender traits'). Other people can, in their heart of hearts, be atheists, and not get anything out of the Christian myth whatsoever, but they'll still put up a Christmas tree and buy presents and dye eggs at Easter and go to church on Sundays and fast on Fridays in Lent and bake a zillion cookies during the month of December and throw a party with stuff all decked out in red and green sometime in the middle of that month. And maybe even call themselves Christians. These are traditions and rituals that grew up around a certain belief, but you don't have to feel the belief to do them, and you don't have to do them to feel that belief.

So, just like how being a Christian isn't an average of how many Sundays you go to Church versus how many Jewish holidays you try to get off school from, neither is gender identity an average of how many 'feminine' traits you have versus how many 'masculine' ones. It's part of your sense-of-stuff.

Wow, I actually really like that analogy. I'm not trans, but I do have a strong sense of gender identity (which luckily matches the body I was born into) and I've been at a complete loss as to how to explain it to people who don't have that feeling. Because it really doesn't have anything to do with stereotypicall feminine traits a la how much I like dolls and pink frilly things (the answer to both being "not very much" anyway), it has to do with being certain that I am a woman. If I were a floating intangential invisible blob, I would damn well be a female intangential invisible blob. "Woman" is written into my mind. Of course, to people who don't have that sense of gender identity this makes no sense whatsoever - so I think this works really well as an explanation.

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That makes sense. I feel the same way except I have bigender, androgynous, neturois. i.e. "man" and "woman" written in my mind or that amorphous cloud thingie. I could also in gender, be the 4 armed 4 legged creature of Plato's symposium where my gender never separated into a two armed and two legged female. Instead it got stuck in mental bind of two female and male bodies stuck into one. Two spirit indeed.

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Just pointing out that it's not an excuse to use arguments you know are false, that's all. I ranted a bit about just how pointless and counter-productive I found such an argument above. :blush: But anyway, you don't need to use those arguments in the first place. You have much better arguments. When you started explaining the concepts of body dysphoria and phantom limb and all that, that's when stuff really started clicking for me. 8)

Sorry if I used the trait ones, I don't remember doing it and I *really* try to avoid doing it because, as you said, it's stupid. It's also hard to avoid, though. Even though logically I know feminine activities aren't limited to females, tehre's a laundry list of things I can't do because I feel too much like a girl for doing them, which is incredibly stupid.

That's only if you dress according to some specific gender norm. And if you dress that well, you'll probably be mistaken for someone of that sex and addressed with that pronoun, anyway. :P

That's what most transsexuals intend to do. Most transgendered tend to try and go for an androgynous look, the amount of effort they put into it varies, of course, and some transsexuals are happy with just trying to look a bit more androgynous as well. But typically the ones who expect you to use the right pronoun in public are actually trying to pass.

Just thinking in terms of those legal documents... does that mean, if, say, a transwoman was able to legally change his gender to female without getting surgery, that he would be able to marry another man in a state where homosexual marriages weren't legal? I know, that has nothing to do with anything, but it suddenly made me wonder. :unsure:

She would be able to marry a man but would not be able to marry another woman. Okay? She is a woman. She would like it if you'd use female pronouns. The law agrees that she is a woman. You would have no way of knowing that she was trans unless she told you herself as even her legal identification would say she is.

Now then- it depends. In my state marriage is based on how you're born, so a woman would be able to marry another woman so long as one of them is transsexual. I think if you get the birth certificate changed they would accept it, but it's still shaky legally. So, it really depends on your state's laws.

That makes sense. I feel the same way except I have bigender, androgynous, neturois. i.e. "man" and "woman" written in my mind or that amorphous cloud thingie. I could also in gender, be the 4 armed 4 legged creature of Plato's symposium where my gender never separated into a two armed and two legged female. Instead it got stuck in mental bind of two female and male bodies stuck into one. Two spirit indeed.

What does two spirit mean? I understood it when it meant a 2 person multiple system, but just in terms

Just pointing out that it's not an excuse to use arguments you know are false, that's all. I ranted a bit about just how pointless and counter-productive I found such an argument above. :blush: But anyway, you don't need to use those arguments in the first place. You have much better arguments. When you started explaining the concepts of body dysphoria and phantom limb and all that, that's when stuff really started clicking for me. 8)

Sorry if I used the trait ones, I don't remember doing it and I *really* try to avoid doing it because, as you said, it's stupid. It's also hard to avoid, though. Even though logically I know feminine activities aren't limited to females, tehre's a laundry list of things I can't do because I feel too much like a girl for doing them, which is incredibly stupid.

That's only if you dress according to some specific gender norm. And if you dress that well, you'll probably be mistaken for someone of that sex and addressed with that pronoun, anyway. :P

That's what most transsexuals intend to do. Most transgendered tend to try and go for an androgynous look, the amount of effort they put into it varies, of course, and some transsexuals are happy with just trying to look a bit more androgynous as well. But typically the ones who expect you to use the right pronoun in public are actually trying to pass.

Just thinking in terms of those legal documents... does that mean, if, say, a transwoman was able to legally change his gender to female without getting surgery, that he would be able to marry another man in a state where homosexual marriages weren't legal? I know, that has nothing to do with anything, but it suddenly made me wonder. :unsure:

She would be able to marry a man but would not be able to marry another woman. Okay? She is a woman. She would like it if you'd use female pronouns. The law agrees that she is a woman. You would have no way of knowing that she was trans unless she told you herself as even her legal identification would say she is.

Now then- it depends. In my state marriage is based on how you're born, so a woman would be able to marry another woman so long as one of them is transsexual. I think if you get the birth certificate changed they would accept it, but it's still shaky legally. So, it really depends on your state's laws.

That makes sense. I feel the same way except I have bigender, androgynous, neturois. i.e. "man" and "woman" written in my mind or that amorphous cloud thingie. I could also in gender, be the 4 armed 4 legged creature of Plato's symposium where my gender never separated into a two armed and two legged female. Instead it got stuck in mental bind of two female and male bodies stuck into one. Two spirit indeed.

What does two spirit mean? I understood it when it meant a 2 person multiple system, but just in terms

Just pointing out that it's not an excuse to use arguments you know are false, that's all. I ranted a bit about just how pointless and counter-productive I found such an argument above. :blush: But anyway, you don't need to use those arguments in the first place. You have much better arguments. When you started explaining the concepts of body dysphoria and phantom limb and all that, that's when stuff really started clicking for me. 8)

Sorry if I used the trait ones, I don't remember doing it and I *really* try to avoid doing it because, as you said, it's stupid. It's also hard to avoid, though. Even though logically I know feminine activities aren't limited to females, tehre's a laundry list of things I can't do because I feel too much like a girl for doing them, which is incredibly stupid.

That's only if you dress according to some specific gender norm. And if you dress that well, you'll probably be mistaken for someone of that sex and addressed with that pronoun, anyway. :P

That's what most transsexuals intend to do. Most transgendered tend to try and go for an androgynous look, the amount of effort they put into it varies, of course, and some transsexuals are happy with just trying to look a bit more androgynous as well. But typically the ones who expect you to use the right pronoun in public are actually trying to pass.

Just thinking in terms of those legal documents... does that mean, if, say, a transwoman was able to legally change his gender to female without getting surgery, that he would be able to marry another man in a state where homosexual marriages weren't legal? I know, that has nothing to do with anything, but it suddenly made me wonder. :unsure:

She would be able to marry a man but would not be able to marry another woman. Okay? She is a woman. She would like it if you'd use female pronouns. The law agrees that she is a woman. You would have no way of knowing that she was trans unless she told you herself as even her legal identification would say she is.

Now then- it depends. In my state marriage is based on how you're born, so a woman would be able to marry another woman so long as one of them is transsexual. I think if you get the birth certificate changed they would accept it, but it's still shaky legally. So, it really depends on your state's laws.

That makes sense. I feel the same way except I have bigender, androgynous, neturois. i.e. "man" and "woman" written in my mind or that amorphous cloud thingie. I could also in gender, be the 4 armed 4 legged creature of Plato's symposium where my gender never separated into a two armed and two legged female. Instead it got stuck in mental bind of two female and male bodies stuck into one. Two spirit indeed.

What does two spirit mean? I understood it when it meant a 2 person multiple system, but just in terms

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That makes sense. I feel the same way except I have bigender, androgynous, neturois. i.e. "man" and "woman" written in my mind or that amorphous cloud thingie. I could also in gender, be the 4 armed 4 legged creature of Plato's symposium where my gender never separated into a two armed and two legged female. Instead it got stuck in mental bind of two female and male bodies stuck into one. Two spirit indeed.

What does two spirit mean? I understood it when it meant a 2 person multiple system, but just in terms

Sort of. It goes back to the native Americal Indians idea that some people, who are considered special in their society, don't fit the gender binary system. They sort of have both genders in their body so to speak. Hence 2 spirits, i.e. a female one and a male one. I was taking to mean that some time it's like I'm a man other days I'm a woman so I sort of have two people in me.

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