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What is it like to feel gender?
rugadd
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rugadd
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rugadd
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I think I might understand your viewpoint, rugadd. I thank you for the reminder.
Just for the sake of clarity, I ask the opinion of the group in a scenario we can imagine.
One person comes here and has their worldview challenged. When they leave the conversation, they are still seen as the gender they have always identified with. The entire world outside of this thread validates and confirms their gender. While they may never see it quite the same, the struggle is internal and not likely to affect their safety.
Another person comes here and has to defend themselves, or watch as a few well-meaning allies do their best to help, with mixed results.They return to a world that consistently challenges them to defend themselves, invalidates them, and even threatens their physical safety. They can become so exhausted with the struggle that they may not have any energy left to weigh in here, especially as they will be asked to defend every aspect of their identity, as well as provide references.
Do we truly see these two struggles as equal? I understand the need to mediate and find peaceful solutions. But if the peaceful solution is for a disadvantaged side to remain disadvantaged and not push back, then it is less a solution than a desire for them to suffer quietly. I cannot stand on the side of any who would ask that of a person struggling to survive as I have seen my trans friends do. Any who see meaning in the knight's code should understand my stance on this matter.
For this conversation to actually welcome voices and experiences outside what have already been expressed, consistently challenging the viewpoints that are new to everyone sends the very clear message that their voices and experiences are not actually welcomed. Thus my request that at the very least those here learn to use language in a constructive way. It may not show that someone can do more than parrot, but it does show that they are putting in the effort to build a space where all are truly welcome to share and be heard.
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rugadd
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Eqin Ilis wrote: My frustration comes from the fact I've repeatedly outlined how diverse gender identity and experiences can be. Transgender is an umbrella that includes anything other than cisgender. I very clearly shared a few of the types that are not interested in transitioning along a binary view. Your insistence on returning to a binary view is very concerning to me, because the typical experience of a trans person in a conversation with someone that returns to binary views as if they are the default is an attempt at erasure or invalidation. Experiencing a binary reality for oneself and insisting that it is the only way you understand the entire topic are two very different things.
You are correct that I do not believe that there is much (if any) connection between sex and gender. The more I learn about the variety of gender experiences and the complexities of sex characteristics, the less I see evidence that they are related beyond social expectations. From a scientific standpoint, assuming the relation of sex and gender is just bad science, since even gravity must be proven beyond just seeing it everywhere. From a social standpoint, it is also hurtful. Talking about the two as intertwined assumes there is proof to support it and puts the burden on trans people to prove their experiences deserve to be recognized.
Yes I was just answering the topic as I saw it, and not trying to define gender or sex (indeed I was using the same one as you probably). My reasoning is that a wide audience will only have so much in common ground for a question like this. And since the majority of that audience do consider themselves to be in those binary concepts it makes it easier to explain by using those terms. So I wasn't trying to be prescriptive by any stretch of my imagination, but rather exploring some how people can experience of feeling of gender. I never said it was the only way to feel gender, or that everyone can use that method to experience how other people experience gender. As you say its very diverse, likewise in that regard it seems unfair to say my experiences are wrong, and wrong to assert deliberate intimidation. But I get it's an emotional subject and I am not an easy person to make head or tail from (no pun intended). My writing style is a little hard to digest even for me at times. But rest assured I'm not being prescriptive about it and rather instead just exploring mechanisms that can address the topic in some way. Ways that work for me. I think it's rare that any one way will address a whole topic as big as this entirely with any simple prescription of methodology, which is why I never used language to describe it as prescriptive or authoritative.
Half the problem might be I start from the scientific objective information and then add the experiential that then together exists as the framework of my understanding which then I can apply to others experiences and thoughts. I just find it's a more effective approach to get results faster. As a result, I prefer to focus on the science because I find it more meaningful to me, and therefore interesting. But I don't assert those things as the limits of truth on the matter, its just how I think about it.
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Your very first post makes clear that you do not approve of trans individuals who wish to transition before adulthood.
Your second makes clear you see trans people fighting for a space to pee without getting physically attacked for it as "stamp[ing] their feet."
You want to fall back on "how you understand things" and a "scientific approach," but you repeatedly asserted that the binary is scientific (it's not) and that male and female bodies have differences that are only acceptably "scientific" to people who consistently target trans individuals.
Your last message was very nicely worded, and I may have believed it if I had been unable to reference your previous posts. I went back wondering how I misread them, and I found instead that the way you present yourself here is an attempt at an excuse for knowing the damage you might cause and going forward with it anyway. Before, I was going to try to educate you on intersex experiences and how you may have misunderstood biological sex, but in reading your previous writing, you are right. You already understand it, and yet you chose to exclude and contribute to harming others' understanding. I don't think I can continue this conversation further.
Rugadd, this is the best I can do, under these circumstances. I don't know how many more times I can be expected to keep an open mind while this is allowed to go on, as each of the times I have written, I have followed the same process. I would love to believe Adder has pure intentions, but he has repeatedly proven to me he does not. I cannot educate someone who already knows the information in question, and I can't keep putting myself in a position where he is allowed to hurt me "because I'm the only one." You got a trans kid? Ask them/him to help you spot the microaggressions. They're plentiful.
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Eqin Ilis wrote: Your very first post makes clear that you do not approve of trans individuals who wish to transition before adulthood.
I disagree. I said I wasn't going to comment on it, and that my comments were in regards to adults.
Avoiding something is not saying you disagree with it. Indeed the reason I stated that sentence was exactly for this reason, for the reason that my post's content could be taken to mean that very thing... but that those other aspects of the discussion were not included in my comment;
"For clarity to context of the above, me personally, I think gender for an adult is up to them! I'm not touching the kids though, that issue speaks to deeper science which would then go to inform a deeper debate about the definitions, which I find beyond the scope of this thread or my approach in this post."
Eqin Ilis wrote: Your second makes clear you see trans people fighting for a space to pee without getting physically attacked for it as "stamp[ing] their feet."
I was taking a different approach to explain a contemporary problem. How you define the problem might speak to how you interpret the discussion perhaps, but my approach was not saying that the problem was transgender people wanting a safe place to pee, but rather that systems should be (and perhaps originally were) designed for functions and then they became divorced from them as part of a culture (in this case sex and old fashioned models of gender). The stamping feet reference is to whomever clings to the inappropriate usage, in my case the old paradigms of mens and womens. I've seen men complain about women in a mens bathroom and vice versa, which is probably why transgender use caused confusion among some.
Eqin Ilis wrote: You want to fall back on "how you understand things" and a "scientific approach," but you repeatedly asserted that the binary is scientific (it's not) and that male and female bodies have differences that are only acceptably "scientific" to people who consistently target trans individuals.
Your last message was very nicely worded, and I may have believed it if I had been unable to reference your previous posts. I went back wondering how I misread them, and I found instead that the way you present yourself here is an attempt at an excuse for knowing the damage you might cause and going forward with it anyway. Before, I was going to try to educate you on intersex experiences and how you may have misunderstood biological sex, but in reading your previous writing, you are right. You already understand it, and yet you chose to exclude and contribute to harming others' understanding. I don't think I can continue this conversation further.
That's ok, hey I want to be wrong! Its how I learn (and why I’m here). So if you have any actual wrongdoing or 'microaggressions' by me to justify your feelings towards me, then please do post. Or not, its ok with me.
But yea I think your misinterpreting what I've wrote. Which (as I've said) is understandable given my writing style, and the topic, and the habit of people to naturally assume things about others and judge them based on those rather than having an open mind. The downside of emotional topics is that it tends to cloud an open mind with subjective bias. But that goes both ways, me included, so having an open mind about being wrong is important too.
To your points.... I do think most everyone accepts the sexual poles exist as, well poles!? Poles have a space between two points, and male and female sex tends to have well defined and accepted sexual differentiation and expression of the relevant chromosomes. That is not to assert that it can only be full and complete expression of them which denotes association or being of either pole, or indeed that mixed expression cannot create intersex conditions.
I never said that gender was limited to poles either, and as I’ve gone to lengths to explain didn’t assert that it had to be related to sex, but because rather that it often was and could be, that it was useful for this particular topic as a way to feel gender. But as you point out and I agree, gender is hugely diverse so it in no way was meant to suggest it was the only way to feel gender or even a way to feel all genders.
So yea, there is topics which are triggers which I touched on, but not trying to trigger. To me this is the difference between a support group and protected discussion group. I don't mind if its either, there should be no stigma associated with a support group, I just think they do the same thing but functional differently to achieve it differently which makes it more suitable for different audiences.
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