Hey all,
So I’m looking to take an active step here to understand better some things that my straight/white/cis/middle-aged male brain has had a tough time wrapping itself around, particularly in the gender identity front.
I’m working from the understanding of physical sex as the bio-bits and the expressed identity as being separate things, so that part is easy enough.
What’s confusing to me though is like this. If we take gender as being an expression of your persona, a set of traits that define one as male, female, or some combination of both then what function does a title/pronoun serve? To assume that some things are masculine or feminine traits seems to put unneeded rigidity to things.
We’ve had men or women who enjoy things traditionally associated with the other gender for as long as there have been people I expect. If that’s the case then what purpose does the need for a gender title serve?
I’ll admit personally questioning some things like fairness in cis/trans integrated sports, but that’s outside what I’m asking here. Some things like bathroom laws are just society needing to get over itself in thinking our personal parts are all that special.
Certainly not trying to stir up any fights, just trying to get some input from people that have a different life experience than myself. Is it really as simple as a preferred title?
Edit: Just wanted to take a second to thank all the people here who took the time to write some truly extensive thoughts and explanations, even getting into some full on citation-laden studies into neurology that’ll give me plenty to digest. You all have shown a great deal of patience with me updating some thinking from the bio/social teachings of 20+ years back. 🙂
rather than talk about my experience, i tend to think it’s more helpful to have cisgender people imagine themselves in similar hypothetical situations:
imagine everyone in your life started using she/her pronouns for you. how would this make you feel? how does this affect how you react to them? how does this affect how they react to you?
imagine you woke up in a female body. how would you feel? imagine you had to adjust to it for a week. then a month. then a year. then ten years. what adjustments to your life would you have to make? how does this affect how people treat you? how does this affect your behavior? how would you feel about this situation? what would you miss about your previous body?
the second experience is essentially what it’s like to be a transgender man, except it’s from birth and you don’t (necessarily) get to start with the knowledge you’re a guy (some people more intuitively figure it out than others)
these questions hopefully help you develop a sense of what gender means to you, which should help you understand what gender means to us (obv it’s not the same for everyone, and it’s pretty binary, but it’s a decent starting point)