Printer-friendly version
Author:
Blog About:
Often while I'm driving I come up with a lot of thoughts. I've been thinking a lot about explaining transgender to people and this is what I came up.
The argument for those who don’t understand how a person can be transgender:
If I stripped you of your anatomy, would you still identify as a male/female?
(I assume the answer is yes)
A Transgender person is a person who when stripped of their anatomy they identify differently than the anatomy in which they were born. Just like your identity is independent of your genitals, so to the transgender person.
That is what I came up with. Any thoughts? Improvements? Am I completely off? I have another way of explaining it that is longer and more involved, but I thought this was a nice definition.
Comments
I understand what you are trying to explain
But many dont get it. They respond that even if they lost what they had, they were still born with it so thats what they are.
I understand that it isnt so, and transgender identify differently from what their body is. Verses if they lose what they have from an accident or whatever. Many still seem to have the idea that what you are born as, is what you are.
I cannot seem to break though that type of thinking for some people.
Then they bring god in, "This is the way God made you," or something. "You are going against God."
I try to tell them the story of my friends baby being born without a heart. "If God can forget to put a heart in a baby, what makes you think he doesnt make other mistakes."
God makes some very horrible mistakes. Still doesnt convince them.
Human stupidity, no way to get though that. Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity.
The big thing...
that I've had the most problem trying to explain to friends of mine is the innate sense of wrong! that I feel when seeing myself as male. It seems to be hard for most people to truly imagine what it's like to be in the wrong skin.
~And so it goes...
God doesn't make mistakes
I take a different approach about when people say "God doesn't make mistakes."
I agree, God doesn't make mistakes. God made me transgender. I may not understand why, but just like it wasn't Job's place to question why God has allowed something to happen, so too is it not my place to question why God has made me transgender. I don't understand how someone can claim that God created heaven and earth and all of creation in six days yet think it is beyond his power to place a female soul in a male vessel. His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. For his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God made me transgender and I think him for that blessing.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
My response to that stupid statement
When I hear that statement, I always reply with "so a child born with a clef palite isn't a mistake? Or born blind? Missing 1 or more limbs? Etc."
I believe that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, and I also believe that God is trying to expand our level of acceptance these days, hence the increase in different "abnormalities" for all of my PC friends. I don't consider them "abnormalities", I just consider us all a part of the human race, and that we are all different.
So much for me being PC today.
Red Dog
Religions are devil's way to defy God.
Basically any religion requiring regular prayer from congregation is performing DDOS attack where God receives so many requests per second that even supreme being will be overwhelmed.
As for mistakes... I've heard good sayng that God's actions lead to the ultimate good but in the worst possible way.
Another thing. Nowhere in Bible it is said that God does not make mistakes. We are created in the image of God. And making mistakes is one of the main indicators of being human. So logically it could mean that making mistakes is an important part of being God...
Anyway. Some time ago there was similar but in some ways better argument in the vein of "imagine that you are as you are now, but everyone around you insists that you are opposite gender, have to wear clothes of the opposite gender and so on..." I think it is a bit easier to comprehend.
Another argument is: "Do you believe in Jesus and that Jesus is our saviour? Yes? And had not Jesus said that he replaces Old Testament law with two simple commandmends: love God,... Love thy neighbour? Where there is a mention of neighbour's gender, sexuality, gender presentation?"
I tried this argument several times in some forums. It blows the mind of the bigots who try to ride Christian ideology.
(it does not mean I believe in any of the gods. But it is useful to know basics of Bible and Quran.)
More Likely Evidence of There Being No God At All !
Rather than seeing such "mistakes" as being caused by a fumbling, grumbling, forgetful old god, surely they are evidence of the working of Mutations and Natural Selection at work in a process called Evolution ? Mutations are random, and the few that are beneficial to the organisms that have them help them to survive and evolve further, the adverse ones assist the affected individuals to die early and not pass on their faulty genes.
No need to suppose a god is involved. If there was any god such a one would NOT be worth being prayed at or thanked for anything - truly sentient beings would seek to determine whether it existed or not and if however unlikely one did then seek ways to get rid of it !
The truth of such a matter is not to be found in any old book that has been badly mistranslated through so many languages that the original text and meaning has been lost completely. It is no longer useful to have old mythologies held in awe and used to define what laws and customs to follow - in a scientific age these old tales are just a nuisance. A mere glance at this world so full of wars and troubles should be enough to show one how harmful such concepts as gods and sacred old books are to humans.
Briar
No
Because stripped of my anatomy is how I identify.
They can't fathom it because it isn't in them
How many would be able to give you the atomic number of gold? What it means and how many neutrons, protons, and electrons each molecule has?
So you explain it to them. Name: Gold, Symbol: Au, Atomic Number: 79, Atomic Mass: 196.96655 amu, Number of Protons/Electrons: 79, Number of Neutrons: 118
Do you honestly believe they now have a grasp of the physics of Gold and what it means or represents? Or do they agree or disagree hoping to change the subject or you will go away?
Let's make it simpler. You speak to them in Russian when they only know English. Think they grasp the concept of what you were saying?
IF they ARE NOT transgender, they have no starting point to grasp what we try to explain to them. Only a very tiny few of the non transgender will even try to understand; if for their own intelligence, sympathy, or love of that person.
Tell them if you feel you must. Explain if that is your bent. I for one prefer TG live their lives to the fullest. Accept who they are, loving themselves. Embrace God's gift instead of thinking of it as a curse or sadistic Karma. Show the world they are everyday normal people also.
Sure it's a hell of a ride but the best things in life come when we can taste all the ice cream flavors, looking at the heavens from the top of the ladder. God gave TG the chance to taste both flavors as a gift to a select few. Those other people haven't a clue. Now who is the disadvantaged in this life called the human race? Do you manage to drive and feel the thrill of the high performance race car or do you crash and burn because others said you weren't capable? And you believed them instead of faith in yourself and God. He gave you the keys and the car. The rest is your choice.
I pray you are successful at changing even just one mind. My concept of what you are trying is holding your arms out, running around the room, and telling them, "This is what flying is like." They won't understand unless they have been on a plane.
hugs hon
life is meant to be lived not worn until it is worn out
always,
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
I am not transgender
I am just a regular guy. I think I have a grasp of what it means to be transgender. The mind is totally female but the body is male, or the other way around. The body can be changed, fixed and otherwise that is why we have doctors to fix the many things that can go wrong with the body. The mind is something else. So telling a transgender female they aren't really female and should act like a man would be like telling my sister to act like a man. It just isn't possible and she couldn't comprehend the request. There is no way because she is female.
But to most people who cant understand that, because they cant see. They only go by what they see and in a transgender female, who has a male body. They see a man and refuse to consider anything else.
And it upsets them they they believe they must 'play into another persons delusions'
A slight disagreement
If you make your statement to be that the gender in the mind doesn't match the sex between the legs, then you are more accurate. The gender in my head is NONE, which doesn't match what my body is.
Too much emphasis on genitals.
I think I would be happier in a female social role. With female type friendships and interpersonal relationships. Yet I think I prefer my current plumbing and hormones. To my thinking, that makes me more transgender than cisgender, but I would be cisgender by your test.
It's Not About Preferences
I don't identify as transgender, but if I've learned anything during my time on this site it's that there's a hell of a difference between wanting to be a woman and knowing you are one.
Only when you've explained it to yourself...
...can you explain it to others.
I'm a cross dresser rather than ts and I prefer to wonder why evolution, rather than whatever God you believe in, made us what we are.
Lin Dale suggested in her stories why there are good evolutionary reasons why a heterosexual male would pretend to be female.
In hunter/gatherer tribes, hunting was dangerous for males, whilst the females remained in a relative place of safety, caring for the children. The cross dressed male would not only stay in a safe haven, but would have far more opportunity of impregnating many females.
In a harem culture, a man who could infiltrate the harem would have a field day.
And throughout the "civilised" millennia, men have been marched off to war and death in the hundreds of thousands, leaving the cross dressed males behind.
Three good reasons to explain why I evolved into what I am.
Evolution is a funny thing.
There is a species of bird that has 3 kinds of males. "Macho" males with harem of females, males who look like females to infiltrate "macho" male harem and procreate, males who look like females to infiltrate harem so that "macho" male will have sex with them...
That's one more argument: they are birds. They were created by God. They had not eaten an apple in the Paradise. So does God have a problem with different gender presentation and same sex relationships?
Assuming you are talking about the Ruff
Your description isn't quite accurate. But the actions are a bit stranger.
The first male has a typical male male bird showy plumage and defends a breeding area attracting a harem.
The second male is the size of the first male but not as showy. It hangs around with the first male, and occasionally allows the first male to mount it, because this attracts more females. (Who knew female birds were into guy on guy porn?)
The third male, only recently discovered, was thought to be female. It has female coloration and is inbetween in size of the male and female. It hangs around in the harem pretending to be female, then will jump in and mount a female before either of the other two males can. if the female it has mated with tries have sex again, it will try to get the first male to mate with it, to increase its sperms chance to impregnate the female. Oddly this males testes are 2 to 3 times bigger than the other males.
While the article I read wasn't overly specific, it did state that about half of the third males chicks were of its type, and the second male also bred true to form. The species ratio is about 85% type 1, about 15% type 2, and the remaining type 3.
How Right You Are, Charlotte !
Particularly about the effects of making the males march off to war !
Look at present-day Germany, as an example. In 1914, in both Germany and in Britain, millions of young men, deluded by the popular propaganda about being patriotic and fighting "for king and country" or "for the fatherland", willingly marched off to war and only woke up to the living hell they had been conned into when they found themselves standing in the piss and water in the trenches, and periodically having to jump out and run forward into a field of exploding mines, bullets and shells to try and hit the other side's people with a bayonet. Many big, tough, masculine, brave men got killed off, most of them at a young age, before fathering children. The effeminate, cowardly, unpatriotic ones, who stayed home, married and fathered children. Before WW1 ended both sides were conscripting men to send to the fronts to die, having used up all the "volunteers".
In WW2 the people were no longer willing to be sacrificed for their government or their country, and on BOTH sides, but most effectively in Germany, the young men were made into slaves and it is true to say that world war 2 was fought with SLAVE ARMIES. Who were left were those who avoided being "called up", by being in a "reserved occupation" or who managed to move into a neutral country, like Switzerland or Sweden if German, or the Irish Free State if British. The obedient, the aggressive, the masculine, far fewer in numbers by then, still went willingly to their deaths.
In the years of the Cold War and a divided Germany, in both halves the Overlords insisted on Conscription, but in West Germany many refused to be conscripted, doing "Civildienst" in hospitals etc instead, and many young Brits found ways to get out of it. Germans after WW2 became the very least warlike, most peace-loving people in the whole of Europe. All the warriors had been killed off, leaving no offspring in most cases, and "Survival of the Meek" was made manifest.
Unfortunately the reverse happens too - those of Europe's Jews who survived and eventually moved to what became Israel lived to form the most aggressive and nasty little country to be found - as Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice said " it shall go hard but we shall better the instruction".
Briar
Shades of Grey
That is the problem in a nutshell.
People have a binary-induced blindness.
There is, they say, a simple choice - male or female, black or white, on or off.
I believe however that, if any Gods actually existed, then those Gods created a sliding scale.
100% male or 100% female are merely two, very far apart, extremes.
What if there was a person with 90% male and 10% female in their make-up (and I'm not talking cosmetics)? 80-20? 70-30? 60-40? 50-50? 40-60? etc etc etc
and then multi[ply this by infinity, to cover the other things that are demonstrably not binary - skin colour, eye colour, size of genitals, intelligence, and so on and so forth
The insistence upon a binary approach is what causes all the problems.
Acceptance of differences is a LONG way away.
Julia.
binary
Isn't your sliding scale buying into a binary by making the percentage of male and female always equal 100%? Why not 75% male and 75% female (this is assuming that each scale is independent of each other of course). or absolute 0% (agendered?).
The binary does not eliminate the existence of those things outside of itself. It is a system of convenience, not a system of reality. When you do wash you have whites and colors, a binary system, but we know there are knits and delicate and dry clean only etc.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
75% & 75%
Or maybe more like 70% & 70% that seem to be the way I test out.
( I take those tests with grain of salt, though they do have value. )*
So I am still not sure where I fit in. It's not clear cut & neither am I.
I wonder how many others that may go for to various degrees on this site.
>i< ..:::
.
* That is a whole other topic worth its own discussion some other time.
It's not my sliding scale
I think you missed my point.
It is the scale that the PEOPLE YOU ARE TALKING TO are applying.
On THAT scale there is no possibility of being more than 100%. Those people are incapable of making a percentage go over 100.
Hence my examples all add up to 100. It is not acceptable to them to have anything other than 100% one way or 100% the other way.
Which is why we get the shit we do.
The sliding scale is merely a way to get these closed minded people to stop for a brief second to consider the possibility that their BINARY view needs adjusting.
J
Why not 10% and 10%?
Why not 10% and 10%?
anything you want
you can be any number you want. Some people add a 3rd number and say they're 80 percent cat or dragon or unicorn. I have a lot of numbers. I'm 80% New Yorker 110% Cynical and 5 % Jabba the Hutt.
When people say that adds up to a lot, I just open up my Psychology book and yell "Gestalt" before throwing the book at them, spreading my Pegasus wings and flying away.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Words are the software of the mind.
When I was young, I knew I wanted to be a girl. I wasn't a girl, I wanted to be one desperately. I hid it because I felt like I was a freak.
At 50 years old, I figured out the term transgender applied to me. I still wanted to be a girl, but I didn't think I could ever be one, and it was killing me.
At 55 I was done, I was ready to just end myself however I could. I had tried abusing my body to end myself prematurely, at one point I was 270 pounds. I still didn't feel I could be a woman, but it was that or leave my kids mourning me. That was the unacceptable part, what I would do to my family if I killed myself.
So even though I didn't think I could do it, I transitioned. I still carry around a butt load of depression, but it is much better. I am not suicidal. Once I decided to do it, I went on the fast track, as fast as the current standards would let me.
Labels are important. They allow use to define something that we may not be able to put words to otherwise.
I have not always been a girl, I had to allow myself to become one. I feel there is an element of political correctness that is doing real damage to people like me. You can not control language, it is done by common consensus. You can influence it, but if everyone else rejects your definitions then you have to accept you are the only one that uses language that way.
Some people were born knowing their gender was wrong. Some of us have to figure it out. But by trying to control how people think you will exclude many people who need help.
Metaphors
What analogies work in getting the point across depends on the audience you're addressing. People who can't grasp how it feels to be transgender probably lack the imagination to conceptualize how it feels to be "stripped of your anatomy."
No matter how you try to explain it...
some will grasp the concept of what you're trying to say, and with others... you'll have a better chance of explaining the color purple to someone who's been blind since birth.
For a long time, I couldn't
For a long time, I couldn't imagine what is to be transgender. How it is possible to feel that your body is wrong, if that is your body?! I knew that sex and gender are different things, it was making sense to me that they could differ, but how the hell that should feel? For without knowing the feeling, the rest is just a dry theory.
One day I asked myself, "Imagine that you wake up one morning in a female body. Your self-perception, habits, likes, tastes etc. haven't changed at all - just the form of your body. How would you feel?" I think that this gave me a good answer. :)
Really good debate! Thank you, Katie!
This has been fascinating... (I've come in where 20 comments already are here)...... Thank God we are all different, and this debate proves it. Some of us are feeling transgendered (a term I took a long time to realise I wasn't), and some of us maybe don't feel that so strongly, even though it's a powerful emotional state. I get that, but it's not "me"......... I'd love to be female, though born male too many years ago to contemplate. I never considered transitioning Why? ...... because my life has so many complications, relationships and simple "facts" (like I'd be truly unpretty if I lived as a woman.) Not for me... so what am I? I'm a crossdresser and I love being so - God didn't make a mistake with me.... She made me what I am. It's brought me some happiness and also a lot of pain. I am firmly back in the closet having tried to get acceptance from a wife who thought "it" a perversion. Does that change me? No, it means I have to adapt my behaviours, But inside, I'm still me..... and oh! how I wish I were prettier! I am no more transgendered than I am homosexual. I'm just me, with dreams and desires like - or different - to you all.
..... and whether or not it is clear to you, you are a child of the Universe, no less than the sea and the stars, and you have a right to be here.
xx Love, Ginger (and, again, thank you Kaite!)
It depends on your audience
Many people believe gender is a binary - you're either one or the other. WIthin this group are those who are closed minded and believe gender is defined by phenotype and is immutable - while you could try reasoning with these people, if they start mentioning their deity of choice, you might as well give up and let it go (and at least pretend their attitude never bothered you anyway [sorry, couldn't resist the reference!])
If, however, there's a chance they can wrap their heads around the concept of the brain being one gender and the body being another, then that can guide you towards one set of analogies.
The next stage is those that can understand the concept of a single sliding scale (with most cisgendered individuals being somewhere on the respective side of the centre point), where a different set of analogies would come into play.
If you're really lucky, you'll find someone open-minded enough to consider that gender is a whole bunch of different scales (with a few for self-identity, plus others for karyotype / genotype / phenotype / biochemistry [well, I suppose that's technically a form of genotype] / mannerisms / attitudes / preferred interests / hairstyle / clothing etc.).
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
There are only two kinds of people:
Those who divide people into two kinds only, and those who don't.
It's pretty simple really -
You are what's between your ears, not what's between your legs.