JamiMacki

I don't really mind if people use the born with a penis = male thing as a baseline for their understanding of the male category, since it usually is the case and it's easy and useful to think using these kinds of abstractions. I'm simply pointing out that despite a strong correlation, it isn't true in all circumstances. Anomalies exist, and in reality the formation of genitals isn't as straight forward a process as one might assume. The difference between your desires as a child to be a girl and mine are in the causes. You wanted to be a girl because of some perceived social advantage, whereas I want to be a girl because there is a fundamental aspect of my biology that is female (brain structure), which intuitively manifests that desire. It's a strawman to characterize my argument as claiming to be a girl because I want to be a girl. That reasoning is obviously circular and it's not at all what I'm suggesting. It isn't always easy to tell the difference between the two of us, I do admit. Which is why I would also agree (and so would both the general trans and medical communities) that therapy is the first option and most important. But through therapy the difference can be reliably diagnosed. Your claim that therapy can cure gender dysphoria is something we can measure, and the claim is false. This has been tried for decades and doesn't work, and the fact that it doesn't work is why we've switched to medical transition in the first place. There are some cases where a boy will want to be a girl due to some past unresolved trauma in their lives, and for them, transition is not the answer, and will actually be harmful to their overall well being. But in cases where a boy wants to be a girl due to lack of androgen exposure during brain development in utero, transition is necessary to improve well being. Trying to separate gender from sex entirely is silly. A person's gender, or a persons behaviors and preferences that we can describe as masculine or feminine, are strongly correlated to our biology. You could even say that gender is an expression of our sexually dimorphic, biological nature. Saying that it's irrelevant in terms of biology is absurd. I'm not here to discuss whether or not I'm feminine. If you were to meet me I'm sure that'd be self evident. I'm actually challenging your definition of sex. The human body is filled with examples of sexual dimorphism in our biology. I don't see the justification to exclude parts of the brain from sex when it is just as biological as everything else, and clearly displays dimorphism.

Much like having healthy ribs, the body doesn't have any mechanism or sense to specifically communicate to you that you feel like a man. Just try and describe what your ribcage feels like right now without touching it. But then if one of your ribs was broken, suddenly you have an abundance of sensation being communicated to you that something is wrong with your ribs. I believe this is a decent comparison to gender identity. I don't "feel like a woman" but instead "feel awful" and have to break down the feeling by observing the context and measuring what relieves it. There is absolutely a way to isolate and identify feelings like this, in the same way that you can identify the acute pinching sensation in your fingers after sticking your hand in a bucket of crabs. Saying transgenderism doesn't exist in this way seems like saying cars don't exist because what they really are is a collection of aluminum, plastics, leather, and other metals. While this is technically true, we still use the word car because it's a useful term to describe a particular arrangement of these objects. The word car is a category, and so is transgender and male and female. I agree that the biological differences matter, but if we wanna get anywhere useful we have to evaluate them as such. The definition you've provided is pragmatically useful in the majority of circumstances, but the issue I have with it is that's it's not consistent. Some females do not produce eggs and cannot bear offspring, yet are nonetheless still considered categorically female. It simply doesn't make sense to draw a hard line and break down the definition to one single aspect of sexual dimorphism, when clearly many exist. Sex should be considered a product of our total biological makeup. It's the most consistent way to define the categories.

I'm defining girl/guy much in the same way you seem to be. They are categories based on patterns of sexually dimorphic traits involving phenotype and genotype. My own characteristics are something of a blend, with some male-typical such as certain bone structures, genitalia, and chromosomes, and some female-typical like soft skin, breasts, no hair on face/minimal body hair, estrogen dominant hormones, etc. My claim that I'm a girl has to do with the way I've assigned categorical value to those traits, and is predicated on an assumption that dysphoria and gender identity are both fundamentally linked to sexually dimorphic structure in the brain. I'm putting this brain structure at the top of the list above other male or female traits, because it relates most directly to the formation of our conscious identities, which I argue is the thing we actually care about when constructing the categories considering they have such a close relation to our concept of self. So I wouldn't say I know with absolute certainty that I'm a girl, but I believe there's strong evidence to suggest this is the case. I can say with certainty that the state of being perceived as a girl by myself and others, resolves an intuitive conflict going on in my brain. Here's the original study that first showed female brain structure in transexual women, and one of the many followups. That's not to say any of the characteristics you mentioned are unimportant. I wouldn't value medical transition if those things didn't matter. I'm just asserting that gender identity is a physical, sexually dimorphic trait just like genetalia or anything else, and giving it somewhat greater importance than the rest when deciding where to draw the line.

Hey everyone. I'm not a regular here and though I've listened to a fair number of podcasts, I'm not aware of Stefan's views on this topic, or of the general opinions of his listeners. I often find his views disagreeable yet well articulated, and I expect his audience would follow suit. That suits my purpose just fine, since I'm here mostly to find points of disagreement to challenge some of my own ideas about gender, and perhaps reach a greater mutual understanding of what it means to be transgender. I'm someone with (presumably, since I've never actually had it tested) XY chromosomes and that was raised as a boy, but has undergone a medical transition using means such as hormone replacement therapy and others, who currently lives and identifies as a woman. About myself and of people like me I make these assertions: -I'm a girl -I'm not a guy -I'm not delusional or denying science -Transition is the best option for those struggling with gender dysphoria in the vast majority of circumstances -Transgenderism is not a mental illness, but rather the state or process in which the actual mental illness (gender dysphoria), is cured -If I need to pee, the ladies room is the best place to do so Since I don't know what kind of opinions I'll find here I figured I'd make the claims first and the arguments later if there's disagreement. So if you find yourself opposed to any of the things I just said, please say so and why and I'll make my case for it. Also, if you have a specific 'anti-trans' argument that you believe is convincing or damning to one of my beliefs, I'd be happy to respond. And lastly, if you have any notions or assumptions about people who are transgender, and therefore me, that you'd like to test, feel free to ask. Keep it civil and I promise I'll do the same!