LGBTAitp - Part Fifteen

[turkishproverb]

I just have trouble imagining how one could come to any other conclusion. I mean, have you ever SEEN society? It is dumb.

In the same way the ocean is "moist" maybe.

[Gardener]

As far as I'm concerned, a 'male' is someone with male reproductive organs, a 'female' is someone with female reproductive organs, and there are people who are not either (they may lack full reproductive organs, or have both kinds, or ambiguous kinds, etc). Further definitions just seem plain useless.

Sure. So you don't use the terms "man" and "woman" if you can avoid it? Because according to your definition of "female", a "woman" seems to be not just an adult female human.

[DeadManSleeping]

How exactly does my definition of 'female' change the definition of 'woman'?

Honestly, I use the terms when they help me communicate. Y'know, because that's what language is for. I just think it's silly to include "crushes beer cans on forehead" in the definition of 'male', for example.

[Gardener]

How exactly does my definition of 'female' change the definition of 'woman'?

Honestly, I use the terms when they help me communicate. Y'know, because that's what language is for. I just think it's silly to include "crushes beer cans on forehead" in the definition of 'male', for example.

How often do you check people's genitalia before you use gendered language about them? How do you know that man actually has testes and a penis?

[DeadManSleeping]

I guess based on more obvious secondary and tertiary and quaternary cues. If I'm wrong, then they can correct me. It's not like expanding my definition would make me impossible to be wrong. I've seen plenty of people who nobody can easily guess the sex of.

[Gardener]

My point was that you yourself don't use the words "male" and "female" in line with the definitions you laid out. Your definition and use broadly agree, but they're not the same thing - secondary sexual characteristics are much more controlled by hormones than sex organs, and the tertiary/quaternary stuff is almost entirely cultural. It seems pretty clear that more definitions are required so that we can actually talk about the social reality, instead of reducing it to a medical/biological discussion that misses the experience of the people involved.

It might explain why you can't understand how it could hurt to be misgendered - you've defined trans people out of existence before you've even started, so it's not surprising that you can't reconcile trans experience within these definitions.

[WarKitty]

As someone who feels roughly the same way as DeadManSleeping, I would say it's not just definitional. Imagine if people put you into social categories based on your hair color. Most people just accept this as a fact of life. A few people feel that their hair color is wrong and dye it. That's kind of what gender feels like to me. It's hard to understand it as being "right" or "wrong" because it just doesn't make sense as an intrinsic to me. It's just sort of there, like my hair color or eye color or height. The social ideas surrounding it may be troublesome (and I've written on here before about my struggles reconciling my identity with being perceived as female), but the attribute itself isn't the type of thing for me that can be a problem.

[Gardener]

As someone who feels roughly the same way as DeadManSleeping, I would say it's not just definitional. Imagine if people put you into social categories based on your hair color. Most people just accept this as a fact of life. A few people feel that their hair color is wrong and dye it. That's kind of what gender feels like to me. It's hard to understand it as being "right" or "wrong" because it just doesn't make sense as an intrinsic to me. It's just sort of there, like my hair color or eye color or height. The social ideas surrounding it may be troublesome (and I've written on here before about my struggles reconciling my identity with being perceived as female), but the attribute itself isn't the type of thing for me that can be a problem.

Height's a good example, actually. Imagine how weird it'd feel if your body was six inches taller than it felt like from the inside. You have to constantly remind yourself "I'm six feet tall, not five foot six." Clothes always seem to be the wrong size, and people are always commenting on how tall you are. If you don't pay attention, you end up banging your head into the ceiling, and everyone around looks at you funny. After a while, you get the hang of keeping track of your physical height. You try to avoid looming over people in conversation, to not move too quickly or quietly so you don't scare other people. But there's this constant, niggling feeling that your head is six inches too high off the ground. You can ignore it for a while, but whenever someone says you're tall, or asks you to get something off the top shelf, it drags out the feelings - that you're wrong, your body's broken, and you'll never be able to really fix it. Destructive, depressing feelings.

I hope that doesn't just sound ridiculous. And if any of you do have height-related body dysphoria, I'm not trying to make light of you.

[DeadManSleeping]

Height's a good example, actually. Imagine how weird it'd feel if your body was six inches taller than it felt like from the inside. You have to constantly remind yourself "I'm six feet tall, not five foot six." Clothes always seem to be the wrong size, and people are always commenting on how tall you are. If you don't pay attention, you end up banging your head into the ceiling

Actually, this sounds like the experience of every tall person I know. Maybe humans DO have an inherent height assumption that's closer to the average height.

My point was that you yourself don't use the words "male" and "female" in line with the definitions you laid out.

I most certainly do. I make incorrect assessments, but I use the words as befits my definitions based on my perceptions. You can't really do better than that for any word. I have a very strict definition for "cat", but if I saw a small dog with an odd face and called it a "cat", you wouldn't say I had suddenly changed my definition of "cat", would you? No, you'd say I made an incorrect assessment. Same situation, different words.

[Atsign]

I'm pretty sure that wasn't what was said there - it was more "conform to none" than "not conform to one". And it's not inevitable that gender dissonance leads to full-blown transsexuality, but in Al'izh'deg's case it did, and I'm not going to criticise them for writing a little from their own experiences when describing psychology. Even for people who don't identify as transsexual, the dissonance is still fundamentally the same - "I have <gender> parts, so I'm a <gender>. But I don't feel how <gender> are supposed to feel, so I'm not really <gender>. Help!"

I never said I believed it was inevitable. The quotation marks are there to distinguish it as my interpretations of the beliefs of Al'izh'deg based on Al'izh'deg's post. I'm also skeptical of the idea that anyone who doesn't totally conform to the expectations of what's "normal" for their assigned gender would necessarily experience dissonance about it.

There are countless ways to resolve this dissonance, and not all of them result in trans* identifications. Maybe you just decide that society is wrong about what defines gender. Maybe you check your desires a little and conform to expectations. And then again, a bunch of responses do lead to identifying atypically, either outside the binary or on the other side of it. These responses are not inherently better or worse than each other, but they are all addressing the same fundamental issue - the experience of gender dissonance to some degree.

And this is a large part of why I didn't like the explanation given in Al'izh'deg's post. It appeared to dismiss the existence of non-binary identification in addition to seeming to suggest that just liking things that your assigned gender isn't expected to like would lead to somebody identifying otherwise.

As far as I'm concerned, a 'male' is someone with male reproductive organs, a 'female' is someone with female reproductive organs, and there are people who are not either (they may lack full reproductive organs, or have both kinds, or ambiguous kinds, etc). Further definitions just seem plain useless.

This is one of the most infuriating things I have ever read. Ever.

[DeadManSleeping]

This is one of the most infuriating things I have ever read. Ever.

Please explain why. Seriously, I typed up a good three paragraphs explaining that I don't get what the heck's wrong with that. Surely you can bring something more to the table.

[Atsign]

Please explain why. Seriously, I typed up a good three paragraphs explaining that I don't get what the heck's wrong with that. Surely you can bring something more to the table.

How about the fact that it's nothing less than a colossal "screw you, no you aren't" directed at anybody who doesn't identify with the sex organs they were born with, no matter what they feel or what they've done to match up with how they feel barring expensive surgery?

[Viera Champion]

How about the fact that it's nothing less than a colossal "screw you, no you aren't" directed at anybody who doesn't identify with the sex organs they were born with, no matter what they feel or what they've done to match up with how they feel barring expensive surgery?

Now, now. I personally don't agree with DeadManSleeping either, but frankly, I think you are intepreting what he meant a little too harshly. He doesn't mean it like that (at least I hope not), and frankly just because it may not be the most polite way to go about things, it does make logical sense.

[CrimsonAngel]

My eyebrows hurt from all the raising they've had to do. Sex and gender and cats and pronouns and other things that are always being discussed when I visit. It all makes me feel very... Ignorant? Stupid?

[Coidzor]

My eyebrows hurt from all the raising they've had to do. Sex and gender and cats and pronouns and other things that are always being discussed when I visit. It all makes me feel very... Ignorant? Stupid?

What's got you raising your eyebrows in particular? The conversation does have a tendency to wander at times, I'll admit. And, hey, questions being asked is like, between half and a third of what this thread is for.

And it's kinda natural to not always grok things in regards to those four subjects, as we really haven't gotten much grasp of them as a species, let alone in common society or popular culture.

[Viera Champion]

My eyebrows hurt from all the raising they've had to do. Sex and gender and cats and pronouns and other things that are always being discussed when I visit. It all makes me feel very... Ignorant? Stupid?

I actually quite understand. I feel much the same way. It is worse because I belog to a GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) Committee at my school, and this is like ALL we talk about. (okay so I'm exaggerating but still...)

[DeadManSleeping]

How about the fact that it's nothing less than a colossal "screw you, no you aren't" directed at anybody who doesn't identify with the sex organs they were born with, no matter what they feel or what they've done to match up with how they feel barring expensive surgery?

I call people whatever they ask me to call them. I will tell other people that someone is whatever sex that person asks me to say. If you get your hackles up just based on what people think about other people in their heads, then you will spend forever in hatred of the entire world, because everyone thinks something that you will hate violently.

It really is just a matter of what information is useful. If I see someone who has a penis, then I have a wealth of biological information about them, and put them in the appropriate category. Knowing that they identify as female (or whatever complex thing you want to throw out there) gives me a wealth of psychological and social information about them, but it does nothing to change the biological information. Thus, I see no reason to alter my mental category.

[rayne_dragon]

I call people whatever they ask me to call them. I will tell other people that someone is whatever sex that person asks me to say. If you get your hackles up just based on what people think about other people in their heads, then you will spend forever in hatred of the entire world, because everyone thinks something that you will hate violently.

It really is just a matter of what information is useful. If I see someone who has a penis, then I have a wealth of biological information about them, and put them in the appropriate category. Knowing that they identify as female (or whatever complex thing you want to throw out there) gives me a wealth of psychological and social information about them, but it does nothing to change the biological information. Thus, I see no reason to alter my mental category.

Somehow I don't see knowing that someone has a penis being even as useful as knowing that someone identifies as male, which is a rather vague statement that could mean many different things and varies widely with context.

I kind of think that the issue that makes such a stance objectionable isn't so much about what other people think as the ability to feel comfortable with one's own self-identity. The idea that no matter what you change you'll never "really" be what you percieve yourself as is incredibly depressing - having someone reinforce that idea by outright stating that they, essentially, don't really accept such a change is just... something that might make someone want to give up completely.

As much as I'm all for the scientific method and defined, objective categories the whole thing strikes me as rather insensitive and callous. Especially since what you're saying now isn't just in your head anymore, it's being shared somewhere with the people who are most likely to be hurt by such sentiments.

[DeadManSleeping]

Well, sadly, my brain isn't likely going to change in that respect. Dysmorphia doesn't make sense to me, and it never will, much like the ability to enjoy the taste of natto. Sorry if my thoughts hurt anyone. I just thought that this was the place to discuss thoughts on transexuality and transgender and such, seeing as I wanted some other thoughts on the matter.

But, to all those concerned, don't give up on being recognized as what you want to be recognized as. Giving up on what you really want is stupid and you shouldn't do it. I'm not exactly the sort of person whose opinion should be concerned with anyway.

[Al'izh'dheg]

My apologies for not coming back sooner to clarify. I've been busy at GenCon. :)

I can understand why what I typed may have been misconstrued despite my attempts to the contrary. My intent in the post was to simply explain to the people who had seemed to be stating they didn't understand how people could be gender confused how exactly somebody could be so.

From the single standpoint of cognitive dissonance (again, only one point of view), it is simply a matter of what you see/do does not match what you believe. I am not trying to make any kind of statement to the effect of "all people should or do feel this way," but simply, "This is one way of understanding this phenomenon." It happens to coincide with how I personally feel, but I also recognize this is not how everybody (or even most) people feel.

The truth of the matter is, the concepts of sexuality and gender are extraordinarily complex, and the simple labels we as humans have come up with to encompass these issues are sometimes insufficient to cover the entirety of population. And honestly, in my opinion, that's what seems to cause the most angst (at least for me). The simple questions of "Who am I?" "What am I?" and "Where do I fit in?"

And that doesn't even take into account external influences such as intolerance, ostracism, confusion, and (God-forbid) prejudice. I hope that helps clear some things up. Hopefully I didn't over-explain and bork it up again. :( Please, please understand that I am actually very open-minded and intend no disrespect to any sides of the gender and/or sexuality debate. In the end, I think we are all people who are worthy of respect and love.

[WarKitty]

So I guess this is as good a point as any to inject some stuff I've been thinking about for a while:

Not getting gender can be quite uncomfortable. For me, it's a fairly constant struggle. It's a constant attempt at putting me into a category that simply doesn't exist for me. Even the feminist movement is telling you that there's a way you are because you're a woman. And that whole celebrate womanhood stuff? Doesn't make sense to me. Even within the LGBT community...a lot of times the message seems to be "well we're ok if you're in the other category, but you have to be in a category." You can't just be you, you have to belong to one of the categories. One of the first questions you get asked everywhere is "what category are you in." It's an imposed identity, and I don't like living with an imposed identity, because it's people outside saying this is part of me when it's not, it has nothing to do with anything I consider myself.

[Gardener]

Actually, this sounds like the experience of every tall person I know. Maybe humans DO have an inherent height assumption that's closer to the average height.

I may or may not be roughly six feet tall, and have to constantly look out for low-hanging objects...

And I didn't mean to cause any trouble either, DMS. Your position is something of a sore subject for a lot of trans* people, but you're right that this thread is a place to discuss issues like this. I'd like to hope that we might change your mind on this, but I'm not going to do so by force. If you'd rather discuss this via PMs or simply drop the topic, that'd be fine.

As to why it might be offensive: You're saying that trans* people can never be real to you. You'll never actually understand them the way they want to be understood, just use the preferred pronouns to avoid causing offense. There's a long history of trans* people being defined away as crazy, as faking, as some sort of weird fetishists. And a lot of them are sick of other people telling them what their body is and who they are. Let me put it this way: You're claiming that your theoretical structure (penis = male = man) is somehow more important than their lived experience (as, for example, a woman born with a penis). Your theory is flatly contradicted by evidence, and you're refusing to modify the theory, so you must be somehow claiming that the evidence is illegitimate. That those lives, identities and experiences are illegitimate. And the people taking offense to your statement are asking you to stop treating trans* people as illegitimate people, as somehow less than other people.

Finally, giving up on your dreams can be hard, but sometimes it's necessary. If something's really not going to happen, you can be better off aiming for somewhere close than beating your head against the brick wall of reality. Of course, a lot more things are possible than most people think, so it's not a good idea to give up too quickly, either.

[Lissou]

How about the fact that it's nothing less than a colossal "screw you, no you aren't" directed at anybody who doesn't identify with the sex organs they were born with, no matter what they feel or what they've done to match up with how they feel barring expensive surgery?

I think DeadManSleeping has a view similar to mine, in that people can identify the way they want and we'll respect it as much as we can, but we don't understand what the "inside" male and female are supposed to be, what they mean, and since they seem to mean something different for everyone who identifies with one or the other it is very hard if not impossible to put a meaning to it. While "man" and "woman" are a collection of physical things much easier to observe, and therefore are a concrete thing we can understand putting a word onto.

It's true that I don't understand trans people. I can see that they struggle, but I always feel, for instance "but it's okay like X and doing Y while having [set of genitals]. You don't need to change anything!" and to me the idea that they feel the need to alter their bodies due to their personality because society put rules on what bodies have what personalities is more painful than DeadMan's statement. For me it means "society is such a pain in enforcing stupid random ideas about that "gender" thing and what people are supposed to be or do or not that some people have a deep disconnection between the way they're perceived and the way they are, and suffer their whole life" and that's very sad.

So I guess this is as good a point as any to inject some stuff I've been thinking about for a while.

Yes, I feel the same. It's very annoying to hear someone make a comment about how something is a "male" or "female" thing, when really, they aren't. To keep the hair colour discussion, but for the sake of simplification assuming there is only light and dark hair as two categories, it's like you went to play a videogame and someone made a comment about how it's a "light-haired" thing. Then you go buy food and depending on what you eat it's apparently "dark-haired" food. Then you go buy clothes and you're told you can't wear that because one piece of clothes comes from the light-haired section and the other comes from the dark-haired section.

And all the while you wonder how it's possible to feel something like hair colour inside, and why any of these tastes, preferences and personality traits have been associated with one or the other. And then you see light-haired people struggle because they feel closer to the way people portray dark-haired people, and you want to tell them "be who you are, that doesn't have to have anything to do with your hair colour" but if you do they find it insulting, they think you don't understand them and you minimise their struggle.

And from both side, cis-haired and trans-haired people, everyone is talking about how of course it's all true, even though not a single person matches all the things on the list, and people with the same exact checklist can end up on either side (in which case they push forward the things that do match).

And it's like, I don't really care if you dye your hair, and I'm not going to tell you not to if it makes you feel better about yourself. After all people have surgery for plenty of things, and I've seen people genuinely suffer from what their nose looks like, and how it's not "theirs" and after the surgery it's like suddenly they feel like themselves.
But then I wonder, how much of that is society telling you what you're supposed to look like? If that person grew up in a society that doesn't have such categorising, would they still suffer from their body being the way they are (without any gender thing coming into it) or would they be fine with it?

It's hard also because it's not just two things. I mean it's not, like "males like sports and female don't, and that's the only factor we use", which would make categorising easy. No, there are more factors than I can name and think of, making "male" and "female" a huge group of things so vague... And someone saying they identify as male might simply mean they feel strongly about a few of these factors, and not that they identify with more than half of them, so it's highly subjective.

So my point is, if you tell me "I identify as female", I'll use the female pronouns diligently and all of that, but I won't be able to treat you any differently because it doesn't make more sense to me than saying "I identify as ferglant". It's not a word that has a definition for me. It's not one I have been able to observe or understand.
I certainly don't treat all males or all females the same. I treat people based on what I know on them, and "I identify as X" can tell me some things about their emotional struggle or lack thereof, but I won't know what they like, what they want, what they do, any more than before. I won't have a better idea what movie to suggest or what videogame to play. Really, for the most part, it won't make a single difference to me.

And it can be hard to see it be such a major thing for most people, something they seem to find obvious, but that none of them can actually explain. I've read books, like the Mars & Venus books and that kind of thing, and for every thing they name I can think of males and females I know who possess that quality, and it makes it very hard to take anything about it seriously.

[Serpentine]

What Warkitty and Lissou said, for the most part.

Also, the fact is, "male" and "female" are biological terms, with solid basis in reality. It does get more complicated than merely "penis or vagina", especially when various varieties of intersexedness and birth defects and the like get involved. But it's still a biological fact, and for the most part a binary.
How do transexuals fit in with it? Well, I don't know. Is an MtF transexual a "male woman" or something like that? Or do they have a female brain and therefore are female (as for, say, an XY person who has a vagina and female physical characteristics).
The reason why the aforementioned MtF transexual is a transexual is because they're physically male. If they weren't, they wouldn't be transexual. Yes, it gets complicated, but to deny that "male" and "female" are clearly-defined biological terms... Well, that gets us into a Monty Pythonesque situation, really.

Now, applying "male" and "female", these biological terms, to cultural things... That, as for Lissou, is pretty much nonsense for me. More males than females might tend to like certain things, but that doesn't mean - or rather, it bloody well shouldn't* - only males do, nor that all males do, nor that it is desirable or required that males like it and females do not.

*rage-at-society moment

[Viera Champion]

Yeah... Maybe I should get Richard in here to help explain it... I really don't remember anything of what he said that day when he came back from so Quaker Youth thingy or something like that...

All I remember is that we talked about identities, orientation, and how gender was different from sex.

[DeadManSleeping]

To keep the hair colour discussion, but for the sake of simplification assuming there is only light and dark hair as two categories

Oh god I am interhaired.

Anyway, appreciations to WarKitty, Lissou, and Serpentine for explaining my views in ways that don't make people froth at the mouth. That's an ability I'm sorely lacking in.

[Serpentine]

Hey, don't get ahead of yourself. We haven't had any responses yet

[0Megabyte]

All this talk about gender is interesting. Forgive me for bumping in.

The first thing to remember is that for all the complications that arise with physical sex due to birth defects and things like that, the basic design is clearly and unambiguously two separate sexes, with a specific, obvious set of physical differences.

This is unlike the asexual bdelloid rotifers, which seem like they used to have two sexes, but now simply clone themselves. Or plants, many of which have both male and female parts.

I'm not dismissing such basic, physical things as not happening. I'm merely stating the physical fact that humans work this way. When a human being has only one x chromosome (XO), or two X's and a Y, or some other unusual combination, it causes mild to severe abnormalities, and most of the time sterility. Just like any birth defect, they just weren't put together correctly. (This isn't some moral judgment, either! Birth defects tend to suck, to varying degrees, but the people who have them are still human, and still worth every bit as much as everyone else.)

Whatever you can say about gender roles, the basic physical plan for humans is two sexes, in the same way we have hands with thumbs, or two ears, or walk on two legs. And the biggest difference between normal humans is, of course, something no human ever chose: That women are the ones who have the physical capability to bear children, while men don't. The other differences pale, and most of the myriad cultural differences probably (hypothesis time!) stem from that fact.

I have no intention of going evo-devo on you all, or speculating more than just did about the source or purpose of our cultural cues. But they aren't there for no reason. Men and women do have, in at least one respect, rather different things they'll experience. I'll never need to worry about getting pregnant. Ever. It is simply a non-issue for me. This sort of thing certainly shaped my psyche a bit differently than it would have gone if I had known that any time I had sex, I could have ended up with the potentially life-threatening, and physically unpleasant process of being pregnant.

In any case, just like every other set of cultural cues, these sorts of things, "gender," "what a man is supposed to be like," "what a woman is supposed to be like," and so forth are shorthand. Of course things don't fit them precisely. But the shorthand is necessary. We use such things all the time, because paying attention to every difference, or not being able to make the huge number of small decisions and inferences we make every day unconsciously, would really screw with us. Cultural shorthand means we can skip over things. "Oh, that's a woman, so I should probably not talk the way I would to a guy about subject x, y or z. Oh, this person is old, I should probably not do thing a or b, but SHOULD do things c or d should the situation be proper." Having to do this junk consciously all the time would drive us insane. We do it enough as is. But as long as humans lack external hard-drives and massive computer processor implants, we'll continue to cheat because we need to.

That's my take on the cultural things: It's convenient. That's all it is, and one should use conveniences for what they're worth. But not more than that. It's very easy to get caught up in cultural expectations of gender, and ignore the things that differ from it, or to try to force things to fit. So, cheating is a double-edged sword. But I'd rather keep my cliff's notes on hand anyway, even if they can be troublesome.

---

But what does all this have to do with trans-gender? Well, when it comes to this, the cheat sheet of gender fails to address it, which leads to confusion!

Okay, enough metaphor, but you get the point. Trans-gender isn't something in my normal range of vision. Like the blind spot in the human eye, my mind has trouble imagining how it might feel. It's like how you can forget that you're in water when you've been in it for awhile. You no longer notice it, because it's just there. That's how gender is for me personally. Something that, while there, I never notice. I'm a guy. I have male parts. I'm not bothered by this, and I don't even consciously think of it as "right." It just is. It's my body, it's part of me, and though there are things about my body I don't like, being male is to me what water must feel like to fish.

So, it isn't even something like homosexuality, where I have some sort of analogous feelings that I can compare with. I see women attracted to men. I've had women attracted to me. I've been attracted to women. So, a guy attracted to guys is something I can readily understand, even if only by analogy. "I feel this way about girls, they must just feel this way about this other set of people over there!"

Unlike that, there is nothing I can use as an easy analogy. The only thing I can go with is what they tell me. It's like hearing about an emotion you've legitimately never experienced. It's like having the difference between red and green explained to you when you're color blind. You understand that these other people see two colors there... but you don't. You can take them at their word, but you don't feel it.

So, when a transgender person says they feel like they're in the wrong body, that something about them is deeply incorrect, and it upsets them, then that saddens me. I wish I could be more helpful, or say something meaningful or relate-able the way I could if, say, someone was distraught that a loved one died. Instead, like with a person who has a mental illness issue I've never experienced (NOT saying transgendered feelings are a mental illness! Just that I haven't experienced either thing is all!) all I can do is take them at their word, and I support anything they wish/need to do to make themselves feel right, including surgeries. If that makes a person feel right, and they aren't making the decision rashly, then good! But that's really all I can do, and that's unfortunate.

Anyway, TL;DR: There are real biological sex differences, i.e. making babies. Gender as a construct is a convenient shorthand, and also one that shifts from culture to culture. Convenient shorthands are needed to navigate the human world. Shorthands are also double-edged swords when it comes to situations that don't fit. Therein the problem with transgendered issues, and part of why people don't get it. In addition, transgendered issues deal with something that has never applied to me, and so I can't grok it as easily as most social things, like a more standard emotion. Nevertheless, I take those who have these issues at their word, and wish to express support, because it is important, and it would really suck to feel like your body is truly wrong.

[Yora]

I think when discussing such things, all views have to be accepted as they are and should not be regarded as wrong or stupid.
Gender is a social construct that exist only in peoples heads. And if we attempt to understand gender, it's important to compare what concepts of gender do exist in peoples heads. When one person here mentions a concept we don't agree with, I see it as a valuable contribution, because there will most certainly thousands of other people out there who think the same.

The only thing I really expect of people contributing here is to be open to the idea that their concepts are not universally applicable, and that other concepts are valid as well. Which so far anyone who posted in these threads did.
In the unlikely event that we would come up with a conclusive theory of gender, it'd be useless if only queer people agree to it, but everyone else does not think it's any good. Straight men have to fit into such a theory just as much as a female-amorous intersexed person.
We're talking about a social construct here, which means everyone who shares how they see their own gender identity and how they see gender in others is making a valuable contribution.

Speaking of interhair:

Spoiler

Show

We assume that there are only two colors, black and white. Black is at the edge, white in the center. Where do you draw the line that seperates the two?
Or you say there are three colors. Red, Blue, and Yellow. what about green? Is green part of Blue and really just exactly like blue, or is it just the same as yellow? And teal? Is teal a shade of green or a shade of blue? You can go on like this for infinity.
That's how I see gender. There is an infinite number of possible traits a person can have and traditionally we assumed that there are only two groups in which all people are the same. Men and women. Everyone who did refuse to fit in either category was regarded as being "wrong", an aberration. Today we have a couple of more categories, but I think at the end all concepts of specific genders are randomly assigned. And the concepts do not remain the same in different cultures or times. In the end it comes down to every person taking a look at themselves and comparing it to the people around them. And then you can say "I am like these people, but I am not like those."
Could teal say "I am green, but I am not blue"? It could, but from a factual point of view, such a statement is nonsense. But it is our culture that draws lines all through this infinite spectrum of character traits.
Is an MtF transsexual really a female mind in a male body? Personally, I don't believe so. Rather a person looks at itself and compares it to the concept of men and the concept of women of the other people around and say "If I have to chose between those two options, then I pick the women", and I believe only then the mind starts to develop a desire to fill out this concept as much as possible. A person is not born with a desire to wear dresses and lipstick. But when a person has "decited" to assume a gender, we want to fill that role to the best we can.
And again, this oversimplefies it. There are much more models of "woman" than just one. Some in which dresses and lipstick are a part of the concept, and some in which it isn't.

In my own case, I looked at myself and compared it to the many concepts of "men" and the concepts of "women" and came to the conclusion "I don't want any of those!" But instead of saying "then I follow no model at all", I went through a great effort to find a model of which I can say "I am like this".

[Asta Kask]

Married lesbians save lives!