I am still very early in this whole process, and there is still a lot of self doubt, so I am reading a lot of literature on “Am I trans” and dysphoria.
One concept that people often like to propose in these ressources is the button that makes you the opposite gender, and, crucially, also makes everyone else believe that you have been that way forever.
I don’t really like this, because my time as a boy/man is part of who I am. I would not be me without it, and despite all of the problems I had and have due to my gender, it is still part of who I am. I fought through all of this and worked to find out who I want to be by myself. I wouldn’t wanna be cis, and I also don’t want to cease being the me born out of this struggle.
I think that question is more designed to cut through internalized transphobia. Our culture is still extremely transphobic, so I think it still has value. It doesn’t really seem to apply to you, which is fine, but I also don’t think anyone asking that question would hear your response of “well I want to be trans without erasing my own identity and past” and conclude that you are cis.
based materialist transition does not acknowledge liberal fantasists’ tautological propositions
seriously tho i couldn’t be prouder of a long-time user discovering yourself. you’re straight up my idol for actually going to central asia and you’ve gone even further and made me question my own gender expression
spoiler
sorry if this is weird but i just realized you made those central asian posts and i’d love to hear more from someone who’s actually been there. it’s just a dream to me here on the wrong continent. but i read about the MELONS and i can’t escape it
Oh thank you, that is very kind. I didn’t expect to be recognized as a longtime user. I don’t post much.
You can DM me for questions, if you want. Central asia does not only have melons, it also has giant lenin statues overlooking love themed (red hearts etc.) parks/wedding venues.
I feel this super fucking hard. Wanting to feminize my body is not the same as me wanting to be a cis woman. Like, NOT AT ALL. I do not want to be cis, that is completely irrelevant to my transition process. There’s cis women that look more masculine than pre transition me (which, btw, is completely ok, no shade here), the entire idea of linking transition progress to being more cis like is transphobic, mysogynist bs. I do not even care about passing anymore, i’m fine when people can’t tell if i’m a boy or a girl, it’s actually hillarious that some of the cissies break so easily that they need to know this. That i keep transitioning further is (apart from one procedure i have deeply personal and to a straight guy forever inscrutable reasons for), more of a quality of life update at this point, because HRT is fucking magic and has done things unimaginable to me, in spite of not making me the tiniest bit more cis. If i keep getting blasted with lasers on top of that is now a question of how often i need to shave and how much concealer i need to put on, no longer one of stalling the body horror that sprouted from my upper lip. None of that has anything to do with being cis, either. I could press the button and always have been a cis woman that is able to grow a beard that connects, something which i have never been capable off in this life. That’s a thing. That’s actually something some cis women have to put up with, i have cis friends who went through as much laser hair removal as me. The button does fucking nothing but giving you menstrual cramps, uncontrolled hormone levels and the risk to get preggers when your goth GF cums inside of you. As hot as my goth gal pal is, neither of us is fit to raise a baby, i’m sorry but that’s how it is. And let’s not even begin on the binary nonsense that is “the opposite gender” that has been sneaked into the wording of the question as the rotten cherry on top. My gender is and actually always has been something like “transbian mailbomber witch”, what is the opposite to that? Jordan fucking Peterson on dubious testosterone supplements? A gay frog? A new type of male somebody on 4chan just made up? Who fucking knows?
And yes, i feel you on my past being part of who i am. Surviving when people tried to break me and shoehorn me into the boy role, finding my gender nonconforming niches to weather the storm until my egg was ready to crack, going through the questioning process and understanding gender in ways that just aren’t accessible to cis people, living my wild and wonderful and weird experiences as a nonbinary transfem lesbian are what has made me the communist monster woman i am today and i’m fucking proud of all of that. It wasn’t the happiest life, but it’s mine and if i’m being honest, it’s cool af.
The button test conflates basic comfort and survival needs like not wanting to feel dysphoria or not being exposed to transphobic hate crimes with the asinine, unattainable and actually undesirable idea of wanting to be cis. It is the pure distillate of the conditions under which gatekeepers struggle to reconcile the clinical reality of us existing and sitting in their practice with their need to keep believing in the actual existence of two neatly seperated boxes named MAN and WOMAN. Fuck. That. Noise. Gender is made up nonsense, even biological sex is just the reification of a loose cluster of optional characteristics, we are just blessed by the accident of our birth as trans people to realize that and be free to live the way we want to.
Let me tell you something: If i could choose between two buttons, one that instantly transforms my body into the likeness of Tailor Swift and one that instantly makes all transphobes shit themselves to death in agony, i’d immediately opt to live in a world with still just one Tailor Swift, but zero J.K. Rowlings.
The button test conflates basic comfort and survival needs like not wanting to feel dysphoria or not being exposed to transphobic hate crimes with the asinine, unattainable and actually undesirable idea of wanting to be cis.
Yeah, this is kickass, true, and also reveals the horror in those (CW: extreme transphobic language meant to hurt people)
spoiler
“you’ll never be cis” hate comments some people make. They’re trying to do the same thing and conflate being cis and feeling dysphoria, etc, and they are doing so specifically to threaten you with discomfort and dysphoria. Transphobes are literally physically threatening people, but because we’re so entrenched in this idea that cis is better, we don’t even notice it unless we’re both trans ourselves and have gone through all of this analysis. Sure, we can feel hurt and feel the pain of being told we’re never going to be cis, but the most malicious part of those statements takes so much digging to realize that most people probably never do
Also I’m scared??? Did my gf start using Hexbear and listen to my rants more than I thought?? Are you her account?
I don’t have a gf, just a (v. cute) gal pal, so no worries about that.
It’s a common feeling for a lot of us, some others wish they could have been born cis. Both are valid and have their reasons, both are beautiful. You don’t have to be or think a certain way for you to be valid. If you wanna be a girl just go be a girl, you don’t need to justify anything to anyone. If you want to explore these questions, do it for your own understanding of yourself.
A lot of thos sorts if questions and stuff are a holdover from a bygone Era of 10 years ago. Jokes aside things have changed so much so fast in the last decade that a lot of the legacy trans culture feels increbly archaic and wrong. This is because for a long time, for lots of reasons, there really wasn’t a “trans community” within which to have large scale dialogs. A lot of this stuff wasn’t meant to help other trans people, it was meant to try and justify ourselves to cis people. So yeah a lot of this stuff is just weird and bad, especially laden with transmedicalism. If you want a real laugh check out this stupid shit:
https://www.transsexual.org/cogiati_english.html And this was for trans women to help trans women. Can you rotate a cube in your head comrade? Lol
Thank you. That test is absurdly funny, didn’t expect to get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.
You are at a meeting. Everyone at the meeting is the same sex as you. The leader of the meeting announces that it’s time for hugs all around! How do you feel about this?
I would hate this
You are parking your car. You must reverse into a somewhat narrow space to park. What do you do?
Is this implying that driving skills are related to gender identity?
Yeah because only male brains have spacial reasoning dontcha know! Pink lady brains can’t do hard stuff like math or imagining cubes. Like this shit was what us closeted messes were interacting with back in 1999. And I must emphasize, this was 100% serious and meant to help trans women.
The sincerety and care shows, there is probably a lot of effort put into this. I can appreciate it for that. It is still very funny though. I like the question on HRT, like at that point the case seems pretty clear, especially if one managed to clesr the barriers that probably existed in the 90s.
Wait I thought that if you could rotate the cube it meant you were trans though. I’m pretty sure us trans girls are the best mental cube rotators, that’s why they banned us from competition
No see if ypu can rotate the cube you aren’t really trans because it’s proof you have a man brain.
Wowi fucking love scienc e
Trans men? Impossible
That’s trans people before they transition to women right?
god this is funny
i was a category 4 transexual, i assume because i am autistic and have a hard time remembering people and that’s feminine
category 4 transexual
“Your gender issues are real, and should not be ignored. Neither should you rush into acting on them”
me on diy hrt
Lol I also got category 4. My friend, who is definitely more trans than ne got androgenyne or something and I think it kinda messed with her. She was too good at math and parking
Question 1: Describe your relationship with mathematics.
That test rules. Hell yes I can rotate the cube-dumbbell in my head
Tests like this almost certainly delayed my transition. Shit has changed so quickly
I wish I had a slider where I can just change my gender from one side to the other, or somewhere in-between, through nano-machines that can rapidly disassemble and rebuild my anatomy.
Video game character creation slider for real life
Boob sliderAn IRL personal boob slider is not only more reasonable than a full on character creation menu, it is a necessity. It is a travesty and disgusting that this obvious gender affirming tool has not yet been invented.
Removed by mod
turning a big dial taht says “Gender” on it and constantly looking inward to myself for approval like a contestant on Dr. Phil
And like… You could do it arbitrarily, you didn’t do it once.
Yeah, like one day I could be a sleek androgynous cyber ninja, and then the next day be a super cute and fluffy hybrid tiger-girl. That would be amazing.
Guess maybe vr will have a solution to this issue eventually 😔
With stuff like VRChat it already kind of does.
I would like a gender button, because ideally I would just switch genders at will. That would be dope as hell
I don’t really like this, because my time as a boy/man is part of who I am. I would not be me without it, and despite all of the problems I had and have due to my gender, it is still part of who I am. I fought through all of this and worked to find out who I want to be by myself. I wouldn’t wanna be cis, and I also don’t want to cease being the me born out of this struggle.
I felt this suuuuuuuper hard when I finally came to terms with myself after realizing I had spent years in denial. One of the reasons why I didn’t feel like I could be trans was that I felt like there was a lot of me I did like. That felt like it was in conflict with the narrative I grew up with, where you basically need to want to erase all traces of your past self to consider yourself trans. I spent quite a bit of time grappling with “what parts of me do I want to save” and I basically decided I would do whatever the fuck I wanted and not try to stress over being in some kind of binary. Honestly the only thing I have tension with now is my voice but I manage by flipping between a fem voice and masc voice in different contexts.
Replying again because I remembered a thought-
A sort of version of this question I’ve seen, that for me was a loooottt more helpful, but is more kinda aimed at sussing out if you’re nonbinary vs male/female, was:
If you had been born as the opposite sex, would you have felt the need to physically transition?
And like. No? If I’d been born with a penis I think my main body dysphoria would’ve been over the fact that (based on my family) I would’ve been circumcised. The only physical change I would’ve done would be foreskin restoration, lol (also I’d work way harder at taking care of my butthole and not having hemorrhoids, since I wouldn’t have the easier bottoming option I have now). Other than that I believe I’d just be a queer sometimes femme sometimes masc guy, I doubt I’d identify as any kind of trans.
But as is I was born into my body and have experienced decades of dysphoria and have been various states of egg for most of that time. I’m not a woman but living as a girl and then a woman has shaped so much of who I am, that to remove that, would fundamentally change me.
If there was a magical get a full sized uncut penis button I think I would probably (but like, I’m not even certain of that) press it?
But I’m not interested in any button that undoes my life. Because then I’m not me. And that line of thinking is confusing and gives me existential dread. No thanks.
I kind of relate to that. I also feel bad about myself whenever I think that I’m trans because it feels like I’m betraying my gender at birth. I’m in a male dominated field and part of my motivation to do well is because it feels like a ‘fuck you’ to the men that tried to undermine me. If I were to transition I would lose that motivation and part of my self worth in some way. So I feel like I need to choose between experiencing gender dysphoria and losing my self worth. Hard choice. I’m trying to change that situation slowly though.
This reminds me of a program I heard on Radiolab about the first “female” gondolier in Venice (a 900 year old tradition of men only) whose egg cracked after shattering the glass ceiling. He discusses the conflict between his pride and defiance to even attempt this and his newly recognized identity as another man.
It’s a good listen (or read, if you prefer to read the transcript)
Yeah those questions made me doubt my gender for over a decade
(I’m not trans myself so I have an outside perspective)
I remember watching a video that basically said that gender essentialism (“born trans”) is something you tell conservatives to accept you. The radical stance on the other side is “gender isn’t something you are but something you do” if that makes sense. So in your case, you did a lot of male and now you want to do female. There is nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to say that your former life was a lie nor that it defines what you are.
This isn’t against people who say they felt it since they were little. So they did the other gender without showing.
I hope that makes sense. It’s my outside perspective and I’m willing to learn. I can look up the video if you ask me to.
Edit: I took the time to rewatch the video and it is worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4r0CoXsGmk
The radical stance on the other side is “gender isn’t something you are but something you do” if that makes sense.
This isn’t “radical”, it’s literally just an attempt to uphold the status quo by reinforcing gender norms as fixed things.
What is a gay femboy doing? Is he doing the female gender? In all ways in every aspect of his life he is behaving withing feminine norms, and having sex with men. All aspects of his behaviour, of his everyday life, are indistinguishable to others as the same actions that a transwoman might perform.
Is he doing female gender? No he’s not. He’s just being outside of typical social norms.
Gender is not defined by behaviour.
A woman can be a bodybuilder, that dresses masc, that behaves masc, and still be a woman. She’s not “being a man”.
The premise of gender being defined by behaviour is just a conservative attempt to reinforce social norms that they wish to uphold because they’re trying to preserve patriarchy and various other social pillars they view as essential to preserving the existing hierarchies of power.
Gender is not something you do. Gender is something you simply are, and it is incongruence with what you actually are and what you’re socially perceived as that produces feelings of discomfort. Which is precisely why acceptance is absolutely crucial to positive feelings, and why suicide and depression rates in trans teens pre-op and pre-hormones that have a fully accepting social and familial network (basically their whole lives) drop to essentially near cis levels. The social factor is extremely significant.
I rewatched the video and linked it in my first comment. Got watch it and let me say that this is not denying gender dysphoria. It is real and should be treated as such.
For me this viewpoint of “gender as a doing not a being” helps me to accept trans and non binary people. In the past, it helped me to think of trans people as “born in the wrong body” with a brain of their identified gender. But when I encountered more and more trans people, I felt like “would all of them pass the brain test?” and “is non-binary really a gender identity or a political statement?” If gender is a doing not a being, removes the burden of prove from trans people.
This doesn’t mean that there is no truth in the “born that way” narrative. The guy who made the video says that it still resonates with him. You are free to disagree with me and I guess “more radical” is the wrong word. These are different viewpoints that can simultaneously be true.
I felt like “would all of them pass the brain test?”
When I first read the mention of differing brain scans the first thing I immediately thought was, “I probably wouldn’t have those scans so I’m not genderqueer” or something along those lines. It’s an absolutely disheartening feeling.
This isn’t “radical”, it’s literally just an attempt to uphold the status quo by reinforcing gender norms as fixed things.
I think that’s only if you assume that the binary definition of “gender actions” is correct, which it isn’t. It’s actually doing the opposite in any other case, I feel, because it calls into question the idea that binary gender ever existed in the first place.
All of your examples involve an implicit “doing” of actively thinking of oneself as a specific gender. That’s a pretty big thing that doesn’t require a simplistic “born this way” narrative that also invalidates swathes of trans people to exist.
Have you heard of this theory of gender as behavior before this? The only context i’ve seen it brought up in is in trying to undo patriarchal norms by purposely changing one’s behavior. It’s not something a conservative would want to admit or argue.
Have you heard of this theory of gender as behavior before this? The only context i’ve seen it brought up in is in trying to undo patriarchal norms by purposely changing one’s behavior. It’s not something a conservative would want to admit or argue.
Yes it is. You’re just only applying your thought through the western lens.
Conservative liberals in several middle east and asia countries are the complete and total opposite. It is a virtue to them to change your behaviour to be in congruence with social norms if your internal view of yourself is not in line with your external presentation. Adapting and fitting into society by changing oneself is the conservative position. They rather view any deviant-from-norm expression as radical and something to oppose, such as anyone trying to be outside of strict gender norms like a feminine man or a masculine woman. Changing oneself to adapt to the collective and fit in is conservative to them because it preserves the social norms, it preserves the power hierarchies, and it does the opposite of challenge the existing systems. Rather than undoing patriarchal norms they see it as simply getting the trans person to fit into the existing binary and blend in.
It’s very important to get perspectives on this from more than just western culture. Viewing it through a single lens can and will blind us to what true liberation should look like. It becomes clearer that this isn’t clear cut when viewed from the international perspective rather than a national western one.
Why do you think Iran is cool with trans people at an official level and pays for transition and surgery? Certainly not because it’s un-conservative.
No, those countries are still buying into the binary, strict idea of “gender actions”, not to mention viewing the entire process as mandatory. My point is that they are wrong, not because gender is some sort off dualistic thing that you have to be fated to be or biologically predestined, but because it’s a simplistic and binary perspective on gender.
I think you’re confusing what we’re saying for the concept of transmedicalism. I am staunchly anti-transmedicalist, and also saying that it is something you “do” would probably be a bad way of describe what I think. I think gender is more of an affinity than a dualistic essence, and as someone who has felt that affinity far stronger than any sort of internal essence, that’s why I care about it a lot. I think most sense of internal essence can probably be explained as a affinity for one’s own internal identity.
I’m not calling you (or anyone here) a transmedicalist.
I’m just saying that gender isn’t what you do and that this perspective does come from the more conservative side of this topic rather than the more radical, because what you do is irrelevant to your material experience of gender.
The material experience of gender is actually quite simple because it is based almost entirely in how other people treat you socially. We treat men we meet different to women, we treat women we meet different to men, and we treat non-binary people differently to both.
The material experience of gender is fundamentally social and lies in whether others accept or deny a person’s gender. This is why mental health outcomes are so heavily tied to the experience of acceptance in a teen’s social groups rather than to their physical biological appearance, genital expression, etc.
The material experience of gender isn’t in what the trans person does, but in what other people do socially. The perspective that some have that gender is what you do is an error derived from social outcomes improving when someone conforms to gender expression that causes others to more readily accept their gender.
Oh that makes sense
There is nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to say that your former life was a lie nor that it defines what you are.
It does raise the question of where dysphoria would come from, but I think it’s possible to explain it in a non-invalidating way with this framework- I’m just tired rn
Maybe it is comparable with kids being conditioned to follow into their parents footsteps and at some point being like “I don’t want to a baker but a bus driver”. It’s not that driving busses or baking bread is a being but that doesn’t mean that people should be forced into it.
Anyway, I put the video I was referring to, into an edit of my first comment if you’re interested.
I dunno, I think dysphoria’s a lot stronger than that.
My theory is that primates ( among other animals, perhaps) have the instinctual tendency to imprint behaviors from their social group, which manifests as self-idendifying as a member of that group. Gender identity is a form of this instinct to self-identify, which primes people to imprint/identify with gendered subgroups within their group.
As “male” and “female” behavior groupings can serve the function of genetic propagation (e.g. “men and women fuck and have babies”) these identities appear to exist for most or all animals, and within every society. The complexity of human culture, and the indef-gtability of biological categorization, allow room for the development of genders beyond the two listed previously, giving rise to nonbinary gender identities. To put it another way, an individual may not have male-typical or female-typical imprinting tendencies, but something less common or even novel. Human culture can adapt to this, when recognized and acknowledged.
Most people, being cis, find this process as invisible as imprinting language. They have an internal imprint/identification tendency that readily aligns with the most common sexual categories (male and female), and this reinforces their senses of self-identity. Trans people must contend with the contradiction of being socially and sexually identified as one group while fundamentally primed to imprint, and therefore identify, with the other. Nonbinary people may find themselves trying to fit an existing social group that most closely matches their sense of self, or they may attempt to carve out their own categories, ideally with the endorsements of their social groups.
Its the fact that it will whitewash my identity as trans, so I would not. Just making me have betta gender body would be good. If i had to press the button that is.
There is a lot of variations of this question. One that helped me was about button that changes your body in the way you want it to be but doesn’t make everyone forgot your past instead it makes them accept your new presence. I would press the button in that case and this answer made me realise that i am not afraid of changes in my body and overall appearance, i am just afraid to be rejected. So my point is that those questions might not fit for everyone and that’s absolutely valid but it might help someone in exploration of their identity.
there were times in my life i would have pushed the button without hesitation. but now i certainly would not
Yeah I feel that too. Like would I press the button now? Idk maybe haha. But also I know I definitely wouldn’t press the “Be happy as a cis guy” button. The button question was helpful to me early on because it was my first inkling of “Ohhh shit I’m trans aren’t i” years ago, but I rationalized it away.
All in all it’s just a hypothetical, a tool to get to the heart of an issue. You don’t have to use it or like it
