This is a really good post. I think the loss of the "transsexual" aspect from some of the discourse at least is counterproductive. I also think that the idea of *changing sex* makes intuitively more sense to most people than the "I've always been female/male" position. But naturalist bias is big in humans so I get why the "born this way" argument is rolled out so often.
This also reminded me of the "cis by default" essay and concept which I really like (I am one of those people who when asked "if you woke up tomorrow in a male body would you not still be a woman" is pretty sure that FOR ME the answer would be "no I don't think so, I'd be a bloke who used to be a woman -- but who knows, really -- the idea is certainly interesting in principle and not horrifying even tho I like running on estrogen).
But surely most of the conflict about sex vs gender based rights (legal/political), where it exists, is ultimately about the basis for permissible/not-illegal exclusion? And because most of exclusion that's legal is based on "sex based rights of women/females" it affects trans women much more than trans men? So what's argued is whether this permissible exclusion is going to be based on the original birth certificate, the "biological" gamete potential thing; current hormone levels; self identification; or (that's the terf elephant in the room that is rarely explicitly stated but I think very much drives many activists) being in possession of a penis.
A very British comment. It's very different in the US.
Here the penis thing is frequently mentioned! And here it's not so much about exclusion. Here it's not so much sex vs gender based rights as discrimination and hate against trans people in general, access to medical care, and of course the kids and schools.
I really disagree with the part about social transition:
> "Social transition is, at its core, a request that people stop applying the norms of some particular gender to you, and instead apply the norms of a different gender."
I'm not sure I'd agree with this at all. Social transition is, at its core, a request that people recognize you as your gender identity - but it's not about gender *norms.* For a lot of people, it's mostly about names and pronouns.
See, gender norms are *wrong.* They should not exist. They are evil. And they're still just as wrong or evil even if they give some trans people euphoria.
Ideally, people would be treated as people, regardless of whether they present as masculine men, feminine men, nonbinary, masculine women, or feminine women (or something else entirely)!
In reality, people treat people differently for a variety of reasons. Some relate to appearance, some to presentation, some to genitals, some to gender.
Not everything's about gender - sometimes people are treated based on sex or genitals (assumed, deduced, inferred, or known).
> "And, yes, even in liberal and feminist areas, women and men are treated differently."
Because they're not really "liberal" or "feminist." (Not to mention that a lot of supposed "liberals" or "feminists" support DEI / wokeness, that is, the idea that women should be given special treatment or advantages because of past sexism.)
Or because what looks like treatment based on gender is actually treatment based on something else.
For instance, many people divide people into two groups, not based on *gender* but based on their potential sexual interest vs complete lack of sexual potential. It makes sense that someone would, consciously or unconsciously, treat people differently based on potential sexual interest vs complete lack of sexual potential.
> "(If they aren’t, then social transition ought to be really easy, right?)"
No, not necessarily! Not at all.
Suppose you treat men and women completely equally, but you accidentally misgender a non-passing trans person, for instance.
> "But it’s the subtler differences that are, in my experience, most important to trans people. Trans women want to go shopping with the girls, or fangirl about the cute boys on the TV show, or form those no-you’re-beautiful-I’m-hideous hugboxes that I thought I left behind in middle school why are you people like this."
But cis men want all these things too! And it's not fair and not right to exclude people for these reasons.
And let's be real, girls include girls for these things based on popularity and appearance, not just being cis girls, and will include trans women as virtue signaling.
This made me sad to read. As a genderqueer/genderfluid/agender amab person with no desire to physically transition, I want all these things! So sad.
> Trans men want the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex.
See, all those things are open to cis women, if they're willing to participate in them the way men do! No need for any transition!
Another example of asymmetry - no cis women has ever been excluded from these things, whereas cis men are often excluded.
"gender norms are *wrong.* They should not exist. They are evil."
I'm not so sure about this. Gender norms work to solve coordination problems and provide meaning and a sense of identity for the vast majority of the population. One of the great problems of modernity is the stress of overchoice-- we are confronted at all times with thousands of different ways to express ourselves, causing us to freeze like a deer in headlights. At their best, gender and identity-based norms help to shine a light on a subset of these options that, statistically speaking, are more likely than average to fulfill the pursuit of happiness for that particular person.
Gender norms go wrong when they become gender restrictions-- when people are forced to act in particular ways because of their gender. This restricts human freedom and dampens dignity. But there's nothing wrong with society *suggesting* certain things for certain genders, as long as that gender actually does enjoy those things and as long as the individuals who don't are accepted.
I'm not sure it's possible to completely eradicate gender norms (pretty sure there's a biological reason gay male hook up culture is like it is), but it should definitely be possible to partake in them across genders.
This is a hot take, but actually I think a lot of current identity politics debacle would ease if more people had close friends and a stronger community. If you have three true blue friends and you go shake ass in the queer club with them every friday, would it matter as much if the clerk at the grocery store misgendered you? If most men at work assumed you to be masculine just because you're read as male, but you have your female friends that love that you're not gender conforming? We have the freaking internet now, the world is more urban than ever; we should use these opportunities to create communities that we sincerely enjoy being in. If you're reading this, you're probably not a medieval peasant stuck in one village for life anymore. Create a beautiful bubble or whatever Caplan said.
Also, yeah, as an overweight cis woman I've never gone shopping with the girls, because the shops don't have clothes for me. The majority of the population is not straight-sized now, so statistically most women must feel like me and are not going shopping with the girls. Thank fuck for online shopping.
> "I'm not sure it's possible to completely eradicate gender norms (pretty sure there's a biological reason gay male hook up culture is like it is), but it should definitely be possible to partake in them across genders"
It’s a testosterone thing - cis women sometimes take testosterone (it’s a good treatment for EDS); nonbinary transmasc people and trans men often take testosterone; and all of the above on testosterone still go on grindr and participate in hookups.
I know, because I go on grindr and hook up with them! I’m only into people with vaginas, of all genders.
Some do, but many... don't? I know most men say they covet the *intimacy* of female friendships but most I know would also not prefer to become extraordinarily emotionally expressive (probably part of testosterone making this more difficult for people on average) or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there. That's not me saying that these activities should be barred from men trans/cis or otherwise. I think everybody should be able to do what they want, which includes being treated "like one of the girls" when possible.
"Girls include girls based on popularity and appearance" + "no cis woman has ever been excluded from these things" is contradictory. Girls get excluded from general social activity all the time, which is associated with exclusion from things considered "natural milestones" for their gender. I think this is unfortunate. Based on how I talk you might be able to predict that I was one of such girls rarely fully treated like one of the girls. But it would be absurd to demand that women treat every other woman in a super "girly" fashion when that's not what everyone wants (some women genuinely enjoy this, some don't.) A lot of gendered activities cluster not just based on biological sex/attractiveness but also based on assortative personality similarities. Many people want to be included but not if it involves cheek kisses and hug boxes. I don't think that treating people differently based on preferences according to their individual (often gender-sculpted) personality is evil. "Treat everyone the same" in terms of basic human rights, sure.
I don't think gender is 100% about social norms either though.
"or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there."
I think men's lack of interest in shopping is exaggerated. If we're not interested in what's being shopped for we probably will be bored, but try turning one of us loose in a GameStop, or any other store relevant to one of our hobbles...
Well, when you make broad statements it's often easy to refute with the at least one person for which their gender identity IS partly influenced by social norms, similar to how "straight men don't want to sleep with Laith Ashley."
You've creatively refuted his point by saying "in a world in which the social stereotypes are gone, physical dysphoria would still exist." That's true. Some people think physical dysphoria only exists because of social associations, but I don't believe that. However, there are trans people who seem truly comfortable "not passing" or changing much about their physical bodies at all. With these people, in a world with no stereotypes, Yassine believes they would not be trans, and the trans people who do exist would define it ONLY as discomfort with their physical bodies (like phantom limb syndrome) rather than an "identity problem."
I am broadly in agreement with your post itself, that expression and gender differ in key ways and advising someone to just be very nonconforming while still being seen and treated as an incongruent gender by everyone around them is a suggestion no one would be happy with. I do however also see gender expression and identity as intrinsically linked, where if literally all stereotypes disappeared tomorrow, then the use of words like "him" or "her" would cease to carry much meaning (beyond physical characteristics.) Identity is assumed to be exist because we assume pure consciousness means something. But we can only conceive of "not-us" in terms of perception and guesses, or "stereotypes" (stereotypes are not inherently bad but just images and perceptions of categories in the world around us.) The point is that any category you lack direct experience with is "built from stereotypes" to some degree. So I do agree that you cannot *really define* gender identity without referencing something else that can be conceived as a stereotype. This is, however, not unique to gender identity, but a quality shared by all forms of identification.
This actually touches on some pretty difficult philosophical problems where when stripped of anything tangible or observable, basically EVERY identity is nonexistent. "Race isn't solely about social stereotypes or how you're treated or lived experience or genetics or appearance or..." but when you strip away every quality to get to the pure meaning of a particular race, you wind up surprisingly, with nothing. By default to describe anything you have to affiliate it with another thing. Hence "essence" of every concept is by default, nothing BUT itself. Even to call something a "race" associates it with other races (as opposed to some other thing like ethnicity/color/personality trait.) Words are tangible. (This is I believe first touched on in "Being and Nothingness.")
However many people find it breaks their brains to go "pure consciousness without a tangible touchstone has meaning to us but the meaning cannot be described in real terms and so essentially means nothing," so become essentialists. "That's absurd! Race has meaning! It's all genetics at the end of the day!" But nobody acts as if they truly believe that, as if their race-influenced behaviors are connected to a 23andme genetic scanner built into their brains.
At the end of the day some people don't like that highly abstract categories void of hardline or clear markers (stereotypes, looks, fixed patterns) exist, or they disagree with where the boundaries of the categories should be drawn. Or they just are disgusted and rationalize all this to deal with that.
> "most I know would also not prefer to become extraordinarily emotionally expressive (probably part of testosterone making this more difficult for people on average) or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there. That's not me saying that these activities should be barred from men trans/cis or otherwise. I think everybody should be able to do what they want, which includes being treated 'like one of the girls' when possible."
Aww thanks, I'm glad.
Interesting about T and emotional expression! I personally have very high T and am also very emotionally expressive, but that's probably unusual.
I think the big concern for men is that our value is reliant on how sexually attractive women find us, and many women will find men less sexually attractive for all these things.
I remember seeing a "Will and Grace" episode as a teenager that touched on these fears. Will is busy with something so Grace gets her husband/boyfriend (I forget which) to go shopping with her, and afterwards he says something like "you'll never have sex with me again." Cue laugh track. The "joke" is that shopping made him seem gay or unmasculine or girly or asexual or something less attractive.
Shopping is just so incredibly tiring! I like all the other girl stuff though.
> " 'Girls include girls based on popularity and appearance' + 'no cis woman has ever been excluded from these things' is contradictory."
I think you misread my last couple paragraphs. To clarify:
Girls include girls *in girl stuff* based on popularity and appearance.
No cis woman has ever been excluded *from the listed guy stuff* : "the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex."
I'm saying guys don't exclude cis women the way girls exclude cis men. In other words, women have the privilege of being able to be involved in guy stuff, whereas men don't have the ability to be involved in girl stuff.
I do think cross-gender activity is somewhat asymmetrical in that women can be tomboys, lesbian, etc. with less violence or discomfort than men can be feminine, cross-dress, etc. Some feminists have argued this is because "wanting to be treated like a man" is logical in a sexist society whereas men wanting to be treated by a discriminated group isn't, so must be sexual in origin or something.
This doesn't mean guys don't exclude cis women, though. There are certainly spaces/certain social energies that are less accessible even to women who want to be included. I am not claiming this is horribly oppressive, just that it is true.
So let's say you have a society where group X is above group Y. Some Xs want to be Y, and some Ys want to be X.
Without knowing anything else, you could make either of these two arguments:
1. Xs wanting to be Y would be more socially accepted than the reverse. After all, Xs are higher status and can be anything. But Ys trying to be X are trying to claim a status above theirs, which they are not entitled to.
2. Ys wanting to be X would be more socially accepted than the reverse. It's natural to want to be a "higher" group but weird to want to be a "lower" group.
Now it seems to me that (1) is at least as plausible as (2). And looking at other traits, like race, (1) seems more accurate in society.
So I'm skeptical of the claim that (2) is the explanation for why society hates feminine men and trans women more than the opposite. I think there are other, better explanations.
Ah, absolutely not. My social transition is about much more than pronouns and a name. It may be different for someone who is genderqueer. For example, my ex used all the right pronouns. Said she saw me as a man. And, what do gender norms mean, anyway? But no, I was her butch girlfriend. As soon as my voice dropped, it was over. I recognized this only in hindsight. I have undeniably gone from being treated as a woman with funny pronouns to being treated as a man. It is different. Some ways are problematic, sure, like being perceived as much more intelligent. But most of it? Truly, really is different.
The majority of straight men upon seeing someone who looks like a guy have no idea what's in his pants, so don't treat him as a sexual target. Ofc sexuality is fluid, but people who care primarily about genitals *and also not at all* about secondary sexual characteristics are pretty uncommon, and hence not how most gender constructs based on physical traits are maintained.
But many trans people aren't that passing. Perhaps even most trans people aren't. And of course there is the paradox that with greater awareness of trans issues it becomes much harder to pass.
I'm biased because I am one of those people who care only about genitals and not about secondaries, but there's a whole spectrum ranging from 100% primary to 100% secondary (and of course multiple other dimensions as well).
Agreed that social constructs aren't directly based on genitals, but they could be based on perceived sex (at birth) which is indirectly based on genitals, if that makes sense.
well said. little more infuriating than transphobes claiming with a that nothing actually counts as “biology” except genes and gametes — hormones? anatomy? physiology? disallowed! — and furthermore insist that this is, somehow, simply common sense. you really, really have to fuck with the definition of biology to get it to even approximate “immutability” (which is in any case a weak idea, entirely contingent on technology)
> the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex.
I think this is why I really struggle to *get* trans people, as a cis-man. See, I am biologically male. I'm also pretty mentally male: I have fairly high libido, I systemise things, I dislike sentimentality and overt displays of emotion. But I don't think I'm at all *culturally* male- none of these things you list appeal to me at all! I don't actually like male company much in general and I struggle to care much how other people perceive me. Obviously, as a heterosexual I'd like women to be attracted to me, true. But in other respects I don't really value being perceived as male.
This kind of social dysphoria is only one reason that people transition. It's also quite common for people to have strong preferences about their body types, or to go "I feel really distressed when people see me as my assigned gender for ??? reasons?????" (I normally don't have that second kind but had it, presumably for hormonal reasons, when I was breastfeeding. I assure you that experiencing it doesn't make it less philosophically confusing.)
Ozy wrote, on their old blog, about people that could be categorized "cis by default" - people who don't feel like a particular gender, and haven't transitioned.
It used to be really common to reassign male babies with absent, deformed or very small genitals as female. The thought was that it was psychologically easier to be a woman than a man without a phallos. Parents were told to keep this secret.
A very large percentage of those folks declared themselves male from a very early age, often without being told about their forced transition at all. They were also overwhelmingly likely to be attracted to women and to be masculine in interests and playstyle. Many were very angry and have said they always felt out of place - basically how regular trans people describe themselves and their dysphoria.
However... not all of them did! Some were fine and never transitioned back or indicated wanting to. There's a lack of really good studies on them, but some exist. It fell out of favor as a practice partly because of the very mixed results, partly because intersex activists have been so against it.
I think current research suggest that some people have a "gender identity", and some don't. You may not have one. Most trans activists will say everyone has one, cis people just don't think about ours because it's never challenged - I think this is probably wrong.
I am cis and I think I have a gender identity. The thought of having balls and a beard just makes me go "ewww" internally.
I love the cis by default post, and I'm sad Ozy renounced it.
I'd love to hear more about current research on gender identity - there isn't much out there! Links?
I agree, some people have one and some don't.
I would point out that your feelings about your body are a different issue than gender identity, and there are plenty of trans men who have a gender identity as a man, yet feel squicked at the thought of having balls and a beard!
I’m in a similar place. Part of it is baggage rather than who I am, but that baggage was developed because enough of me really didn’t fit in with guy assumptions that I felt alienated from it. When I was in high school (when I angsted about this) I similarly got kinda confused about trans issues. (I speculate JKR is kinda in the same bucket but that’s another topic)
I think it’s pretty common across sex and gender to have this sort of “not like other X” feeling. From my convos w trans friends, it seems that there is a distinction between it and being trans, even if sometimes that distinction is quite slight, and some people have ofc experienced both.
As a woman who’s alienated by the kind of stereotypical femininity discussed in the article (shopping and gossiping does *not* sound appealing, I almost never cry, etc.) I instinctively share the fear that a lot of trans discourse ends up reinforcing these stereotypes.
Maybe it’s some level of “not like other girls” internalized misogyny, but I deeply, viscerally dislike the idea of being *assumed by default* to be stereotypically-feminine—even if it’s totally fine to prove myself an exception.
Granted—I sometimes wonder if I *am* gender-dysphoric on some level. I always really enjoy it when people online assume I’m a man—even when it’s done in the context of insulting me! It kind of does sound like the euphoria trans people report when successfully passing. But the idea of having a male *body* isn’t remotely appealing.
I mean you know yourself best, but it does sound a lot like my situation. I really enjoyed being feminine and wished I was moreso. But as I age I am finding my pretty masculine body agrees with me more and more. It’s corny language but the idea of “the feminine and masculine inside of us” really resonates with my experience. Like, it is specifically affirming to me when I can be feminine *in the context of being a man.* I totally agree re: bodies. For me, there is some lil part of this that is a sort of “take that” at kids who thought this was illegitimate. You may be trans! I think the gender swapped version would be being happy to be read as manly/masculine bc you’re secure in being a woman - or bc it affirms that this is a type of woman to be.
I think to a certain degree “old school” folks in terms of gender worry too much - like, in the discourse it’s contentious, but besides it being a joke, none of my trans friends have any issue understanding me as a man.
I think the concept of “non-binary” is a bit different, where you are actually seeing a shift in understanding or at least language. Zoomers definitely seem to parse my experience as NB
For one thing, with the mentality you have, you'd probably feel out of place if you were expected to abide by female social norms, yeah? Not just gossiping over boys or whatever, I mean, for example, the more general expectation for women to be more sentimental and overtly emotional, and the common tendency for female social groups to show affection this way and think you dislike them or something is wrong with you if you do not participate.
Some people just seem to develop preferences more in line with one or another mentality, and when that's extreme enough or bothers them enough cross-sex hormones can help somebody feel and act like themselves. For example, a lot of trans women talk about how, prior to taking estrogen, they hated that they were unable to cry, and being able to do so is a relief to them. (I experienced the reverse- crying constantly, with basically no control over it, when I absolutely did not want to and was mortified by it. This obviously isn't a reason to transition on its own and there are a lot of reasons why I am more comfortable crying rarely or never that have nothing to do with gender stuff, it's just an example.)
Well, let's distinguish "male" (sex) from "man" (gender).
Being seen as male is different from being seen as a man.
Do you feel like you're a man?
Would you care if others saw you as a man or didn't see you as a man?
What about "guy"? do you feel like you're a guy?
Would you care if others saw you as a guy or didn't see you as a guy?
> But I don't think I'm at all *culturally* male- none of these things you list appeal to me at all!
"culturally male" (really it should be "culturally a man" or "culturally a guy") is a really interesting way of talking about gender / manhood.
I think those things are more specific to different groups and subcultures, and plenty of "cultural men" wouldn't necessarily find those things appealing.
What do you make of people who don't identify as trans but just like opposite hormones? Many female bodybuilders like the energy and different emotional state they get from testosterone. Plus, obviously the strenght and atheleticism, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Also heard of cis men who like estrogen for various reasons, though it seems rarer.
I mean, I'm not sure I need to make anything of them at all! It's unsurprising to me that they exist and I think they should be able to have the hormones they prefer.
Who are you arguing against? Sure, phenomena like sex hormones and gonads are real. There are ~0 trans people and/or allies who are arguing that they aren't. The public debate about "biological sex" is 99% about stereotypes, transphobia, and transphobic interpretations of biology, like thinking human sex categories are a binary. The only reason "biological sex is real" is unpopular among trans-accepting people is because the phrase is loaded, not because any of the beliefs you're describing are taboo.
I am not sure you are right about there being ~0 trans people/allies who believe this. Things like trans woman claiming they are "biologically female" are certainly said online a lot, perhaps as a shorthand for your/Ozy's position, possibly not; we don't know.
But that's the point: we don't know. But because it is true, as Ozy said, that biological sex *is* real, and because it is bad to have only bad people say true things, it is really, really useful to have someone point out that you can say biological sex *is* real and still be pro-trans, and to spell it out.
To put it another way: I fear that the "biological sex isn't real" claim is like the "defund the police" slogan. In the latter case, some big chunk of the people using it meant it literally while the others were saying "of course we don't mean it literally". This is a really unproductive place for any political/social movement to be. So if it is true, as you say, that people say "biological sex isn't real" while meaning what Ozy said, then that's a *really counterproductive way of talking*, and you can see Ozy's post as proposing a different way of speaking (and IMO succeeding brilliantly).
I think he's arguing against you! At least, I would.
> "phenomena like sex hormones and gonads are real"
That's not the same as saying biological sex is real.
> "thinking human sex categories are a binary"
I think it's fair to say that they are a binary - in the sense that for roughly 98-99% of people, genitals, chromosomes, secondary sexual characteristics, gonads, internal organs, gamete sizes, and hormone levels all line up as "male" or as "female."
That's a very bi-modal distribution with two distinct categories.
You can of course change some of those things through active medical intervention, but not all, and you can't change your past development as an organism.
There is a fundamental difference between " a very bi-modal distribution with two distinct categories" and "a binary". A binary is where every single person can be divided, with 100% reliability, into one of two and only two categories with zero exceptions. A single person who challenges the categorisation system means that either you have to change the categorisation system or you have to accept that it is not a binary.
Not only that, you can't have a binary being "XX, X0 and XXX are female and XY, XXY, XYY are male". That's a six-way division, not a two-way division.
If your binary is based on gamete production that people who don't produce gametes are non-binary, which would probably surprise most post-menopausal woman.
A binary is a very specific and narrow statement: all the information that you need can be compressed into a single bit of data. If that is not true, then it is not a binary.
The reason this is relevant is that if you are writing laws or policies, most of the time is going to be spent on the exceptions. Saying "this is a binary" is absolutely equivalent to saying "there are no exceptions", which is going to create problems for those people who fall into the exceptions as there are then inadequate laws and a lack of policy to address their situations.
>I think it's fair to say that they are a binary
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "binary".
The vast majority of trans discourse argues that biological sex isn't real or important - in particular from trans women, who seem to get very upset at any suggestion they might be a different category from cis women.
The origin of this post is that I'm planning a longer post arguing that one of the primary causes of women's oppression is their biology, and I wanted something to link to when someone was like "isn't that TERF-y?"
This reply now receiving multiple replies from people who have quite likely interpreted Ozy's original post as supportive of their bog-standard transphobia, proving my point.
This is the sanest and best thing I have read on trans rights in years. I have gotten pegged as a transphobe because I said wait, I support trans rights but biological sex is real; now I can just point people to this essay, Thank you.
I wonder whether the OP would agree with the adoptive parent analogy. It’s socially acceptable to disagree with someone about whether they are a parent (“That woman who hit you was never your mother. She was just an egg donor”), but I think OP would argue it should be socially unacceptable to disagree with someone else’s gender identity (“you will always be my brother and you will never be my sister”). Adoptive parents are also subject to a lot of regulations and gatekeeping that I suspect OP would object to if applied to trans hormones.
I wouldn't have said it's socially acceptable to disagree with whether someone is a parent; I think in (nearly all) cases it's not, which is one of the things I like about the analogy!
It's not socially acceptable if the parent in question is a good one, but an abusive bio-mother who admits to giving birth for bad reasons (to compete with her sister, for example) still has a claim to being "a mother" in a way that a similar adoptive parent does not. Imagine a rich celebrity woman adopting a poor child and then immediately losing custody for abuse/neglect, and then claimed to "be a mother." I think most people who mock this claim quite strongly.
Maybe the example was too negative. What about a billionaire's wife who adopts from a foreign country, but the kid is raised by nannies and doesn't even recognize his mother? She did save the child from poverty, and did a good deed overall, but I would still roll my eyes if she began her sentence with "as a mother..."
I'm interested in the phrase "disagree with someone else's gender identity."
If I say, "I fully understand and agree that you personally identify as a man, but I personally do not see you as a man" is that agreeing or disagreeing?
What about "I fully understand and agree that you personally identify as a man, but I don't believe in men or women"?
Pregnancy, unmedicated birth, and breastfeeding collectively achieve a hormonal transition (matrescence) of similar magnitude as puberty. They really do rewire your brain. It's quite the life experience. 😊
In some ways, I now consider my gender identity to be "Mother." I don't usually mention that lest it be mistaken for trolling. But in more gender-expansive spaces where write-ins are common, sometimes I do.
That's totally fair! On the other hand, married mothers are the happiest demographic. It's more of a predictable personality change than an unpredictable one.
If the recent supreme court travesty has shown anything, surely it's that the bigots will happily deny the existence of intersex people if it lets them savage trans people.
We don't downplay sex for fun. We downplay it because of its blind, imperialist, enforced duality. If we want to talk true biology, we can't use that poisoned word, no matter how the adults in the room understand the true subtleties. Otherwise we will always find ourselves fighting the same fight, forever.
From where I'm standing, it's something perfectly natural to say, but there are a lot of people that think "sex" and "gender" are synonyms and that statements like "gender is a social construct" are obvious nonsense because male humans have penises and female humans have vaginas.
I think this happened because academia used "gender" as a technical term in a way that made "gender is a social construct" true by definition, much like how physical scientists use "work" as a technical term, and the academic definition started to filter into general usage among people who went to college...
The story goes that RBG pioneered the use of "gender" in legal writing instead of "sex" because she thought people would find it more acceptable.
When I first learned about trans issues back in the 90s, it was Trans 101 to distinguish gender and sex: gender is mental, sex is physical. Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs.
It's really important we explain this distinction and promote it, and also explain that both are important.
For instance, athletics (in the US sense) is about the body, the physical, so it should clearly be divided by sex, not by gender. So sports teams should be "male - all gender" and "female - all gender" in order to be inclusively named and still be sex-based. The female team would allow anyone with any gender identity, as long as they are female.
Sadly, these days some trans activists see it fit to blur the distinction or combine the two. You see this a lot with trans women in particular, who typically react very negatively (in a stereotypically masculine way) to any suggestion that they are anything other than female!
The article literally says "Laith Ashley—like other transsexuals and many detransitioned people—has an iatrogenic intersex condition." Go argue with Ozy about it being brought up. And go read about the recent UK ruling if you want to understand my comment. Don't ask people to do your research for you.
"Marty, you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally!"
My main disagreement here is that I think sex is 4-dimensional - it's about your past, not just your present.
That is, sex is **developmental.** It's about how you develop.
So I disagree that a trans person who transitions should be seen as intersex. Intersex is a congenital condition meaning that a person didn't have a normal fetal and childhood sexual development as male or female.
Trans people, though (unless they're also congenitally intersex) did have a normal fetal and childhood sexual development as male or female, just not the way they should have.
While the science of brain sex is complicated, it should be clear that this process of development does have some effects on the brain, as well as socially.
So I think there's a solid argument for considering amab and afab as real sex categories, and for the importance of assigned sex at birth, something that cannot be changed as a teenager or later on.
I'm all for recognizing trans women as women, but I don't see the case for recognizing them as female or intersex when they went through male bursts of testosterone in utero and male child development.
The transphobes hate me for saying trans women are women, and the trans rights people hate me for saying they're male. But that's what I think - trans women are women, and they're male.
It's a bit more complex for trans men, because the situation is not symmetric.
Trans women have gone through testosterone masculinization and are trying to undo it, which can't really be done.
Whereas trans men didn't get the testosterone masculinization at an early age that they should have gotten, and are getting it later in life instead, which can be done.
So masculinization and feminization aren't symmetric.
All fetuses start as feminine - they don't need to be feminized. When male humans are born, they are male because they got bursts of testosterone in the womb, which masculinized them. When female humans are born, they didn't get "feminized" - they just developed without testosterone, and so if they get testosterone later, they're just going through the masculinization process later.
It's true that female puberty, like male puberty, causes changes that can't completely be undone. But my point was about masculinization in utero.
> "Due to the limitations of present-day medical technology, if he had genital surgery he would have had to choose between having a micropenis and having permanent erectile dysfunction, a tragedy that really ought to make all cis men wince in sympathy."
I don't think the permanent ED is true! Trans men who get phallo have a number of options, including a pump that allows them to get erect at any time, and a rod that makes them always erect and can be bent at various angles. Seems like an improvement!
If a cis man prefers the rod or pump to his original anatomy, he can also get them! They were originally designed as treatments for erectile dysfunction in cis men. Since as far as I can tell no one does this, I am going to hazard a guess that this is not an improvement for most men.
If cise men with ED and trans men get the pumps, but cis men without ED don't get the pumps, then the trans men are the functional equivalent of men with ED.
1. Yes, but not *permanent* ED, which is what Ozy said.
2. It's not quite the same, because the expectations are different: cis men grew up with erections their whole lives and expect to have them without surgery, whereas trans men never did and know surgery would be needed to have a penis and to have erections with it. And if we're talking about trans men with phalloplasty, they've already had genital surgery, which is a huge hurdle for cis men to have to cross.
Whether it's "permanent" just depends on how you choose to verbally describe actively managed medical conditions.
Does a man who achieves erections by taking viagra "have" erectile dysfunction. You could say that since he has the erection, he doesn't have ED anymore. He used to have ED before he treated it with Viagra.
On the other hand, he's going to have to keep taking Viagra if he wants to keep getting erections. So there's some ongoing state of disability that imposes a behavioral requirement on him. He's taking the Viagra to treat some "condition" he "has," and we conventionally name that "ED." You could change the name of the condition from "ED" to "Viagra-dependent erectile capacity" or something once he's in treatment, but by convention we don't.
Thus by the same logic, I'd say anyone who gets a pump installed to facilitate erections had ED before putting it in, and *still has* ED insofar as they couldn't remove the pump and keep the function.
I'm in agreement that we recognize the importance of sex in a trans-inclusive way. I have a few disagreements with this post though.
I have a few comments, which I think I'll do as separate ones rather than make one giant mega-comment (is that better)?
I think sex is at least as important as gender, and that we should recognize both, which puts me in the middle - I don't really agree with the trans-rights people or the gender-critical people fully.
Biological sex is certainly real in some way, but I think it'd help if you clarified what you mean by "real".
For instance, does the concept merely hook onto a patterned distribution of real material particles out there? If so, are companies just as real, since underlying "Google" and "Apple" are similar operations which direct/manage material persons and goods? How about beliefs?
Going further, might such forms of material existence nevertheless be compatible with the idea of social construction, broadly understood as ways in which societies stabilize and organize the millions of processes and patterns populating the world? And what governs what gets constructed and what doesn't?
This is a really good post. I think the loss of the "transsexual" aspect from some of the discourse at least is counterproductive. I also think that the idea of *changing sex* makes intuitively more sense to most people than the "I've always been female/male" position. But naturalist bias is big in humans so I get why the "born this way" argument is rolled out so often.
This also reminded me of the "cis by default" essay and concept which I really like (I am one of those people who when asked "if you woke up tomorrow in a male body would you not still be a woman" is pretty sure that FOR ME the answer would be "no I don't think so, I'd be a bloke who used to be a woman -- but who knows, really -- the idea is certainly interesting in principle and not horrifying even tho I like running on estrogen).
But surely most of the conflict about sex vs gender based rights (legal/political), where it exists, is ultimately about the basis for permissible/not-illegal exclusion? And because most of exclusion that's legal is based on "sex based rights of women/females" it affects trans women much more than trans men? So what's argued is whether this permissible exclusion is going to be based on the original birth certificate, the "biological" gamete potential thing; current hormone levels; self identification; or (that's the terf elephant in the room that is rarely explicitly stated but I think very much drives many activists) being in possession of a penis.
A very British comment. It's very different in the US.
Here the penis thing is frequently mentioned! And here it's not so much about exclusion. Here it's not so much sex vs gender based rights as discrimination and hate against trans people in general, access to medical care, and of course the kids and schools.
I really disagree with the part about social transition:
> "Social transition is, at its core, a request that people stop applying the norms of some particular gender to you, and instead apply the norms of a different gender."
I'm not sure I'd agree with this at all. Social transition is, at its core, a request that people recognize you as your gender identity - but it's not about gender *norms.* For a lot of people, it's mostly about names and pronouns.
See, gender norms are *wrong.* They should not exist. They are evil. And they're still just as wrong or evil even if they give some trans people euphoria.
Ideally, people would be treated as people, regardless of whether they present as masculine men, feminine men, nonbinary, masculine women, or feminine women (or something else entirely)!
In reality, people treat people differently for a variety of reasons. Some relate to appearance, some to presentation, some to genitals, some to gender.
Not everything's about gender - sometimes people are treated based on sex or genitals (assumed, deduced, inferred, or known).
> "And, yes, even in liberal and feminist areas, women and men are treated differently."
Because they're not really "liberal" or "feminist." (Not to mention that a lot of supposed "liberals" or "feminists" support DEI / wokeness, that is, the idea that women should be given special treatment or advantages because of past sexism.)
Or because what looks like treatment based on gender is actually treatment based on something else.
For instance, many people divide people into two groups, not based on *gender* but based on their potential sexual interest vs complete lack of sexual potential. It makes sense that someone would, consciously or unconsciously, treat people differently based on potential sexual interest vs complete lack of sexual potential.
> "(If they aren’t, then social transition ought to be really easy, right?)"
No, not necessarily! Not at all.
Suppose you treat men and women completely equally, but you accidentally misgender a non-passing trans person, for instance.
> "But it’s the subtler differences that are, in my experience, most important to trans people. Trans women want to go shopping with the girls, or fangirl about the cute boys on the TV show, or form those no-you’re-beautiful-I’m-hideous hugboxes that I thought I left behind in middle school why are you people like this."
But cis men want all these things too! And it's not fair and not right to exclude people for these reasons.
And let's be real, girls include girls for these things based on popularity and appearance, not just being cis girls, and will include trans women as virtue signaling.
This made me sad to read. As a genderqueer/genderfluid/agender amab person with no desire to physically transition, I want all these things! So sad.
> Trans men want the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex.
See, all those things are open to cis women, if they're willing to participate in them the way men do! No need for any transition!
Another example of asymmetry - no cis women has ever been excluded from these things, whereas cis men are often excluded.
"gender norms are *wrong.* They should not exist. They are evil."
I'm not so sure about this. Gender norms work to solve coordination problems and provide meaning and a sense of identity for the vast majority of the population. One of the great problems of modernity is the stress of overchoice-- we are confronted at all times with thousands of different ways to express ourselves, causing us to freeze like a deer in headlights. At their best, gender and identity-based norms help to shine a light on a subset of these options that, statistically speaking, are more likely than average to fulfill the pursuit of happiness for that particular person.
Gender norms go wrong when they become gender restrictions-- when people are forced to act in particular ways because of their gender. This restricts human freedom and dampens dignity. But there's nothing wrong with society *suggesting* certain things for certain genders, as long as that gender actually does enjoy those things and as long as the individuals who don't are accepted.
I agree with you.
I'm not sure it's possible to completely eradicate gender norms (pretty sure there's a biological reason gay male hook up culture is like it is), but it should definitely be possible to partake in them across genders.
This is a hot take, but actually I think a lot of current identity politics debacle would ease if more people had close friends and a stronger community. If you have three true blue friends and you go shake ass in the queer club with them every friday, would it matter as much if the clerk at the grocery store misgendered you? If most men at work assumed you to be masculine just because you're read as male, but you have your female friends that love that you're not gender conforming? We have the freaking internet now, the world is more urban than ever; we should use these opportunities to create communities that we sincerely enjoy being in. If you're reading this, you're probably not a medieval peasant stuck in one village for life anymore. Create a beautiful bubble or whatever Caplan said.
Also, yeah, as an overweight cis woman I've never gone shopping with the girls, because the shops don't have clothes for me. The majority of the population is not straight-sized now, so statistically most women must feel like me and are not going shopping with the girls. Thank fuck for online shopping.
> "I'm not sure it's possible to completely eradicate gender norms (pretty sure there's a biological reason gay male hook up culture is like it is), but it should definitely be possible to partake in them across genders"
It’s a testosterone thing - cis women sometimes take testosterone (it’s a good treatment for EDS); nonbinary transmasc people and trans men often take testosterone; and all of the above on testosterone still go on grindr and participate in hookups.
I know, because I go on grindr and hook up with them! I’m only into people with vaginas, of all genders.
As a cis man, I think all those stereotypically-female experiences sound awful.
"cis men want all these things too!"
Some do, but many... don't? I know most men say they covet the *intimacy* of female friendships but most I know would also not prefer to become extraordinarily emotionally expressive (probably part of testosterone making this more difficult for people on average) or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there. That's not me saying that these activities should be barred from men trans/cis or otherwise. I think everybody should be able to do what they want, which includes being treated "like one of the girls" when possible.
"Girls include girls based on popularity and appearance" + "no cis woman has ever been excluded from these things" is contradictory. Girls get excluded from general social activity all the time, which is associated with exclusion from things considered "natural milestones" for their gender. I think this is unfortunate. Based on how I talk you might be able to predict that I was one of such girls rarely fully treated like one of the girls. But it would be absurd to demand that women treat every other woman in a super "girly" fashion when that's not what everyone wants (some women genuinely enjoy this, some don't.) A lot of gendered activities cluster not just based on biological sex/attractiveness but also based on assortative personality similarities. Many people want to be included but not if it involves cheek kisses and hug boxes. I don't think that treating people differently based on preferences according to their individual (often gender-sculpted) personality is evil. "Treat everyone the same" in terms of basic human rights, sure.
I don't think gender is 100% about social norms either though.
"or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there."
I think men's lack of interest in shopping is exaggerated. If we're not interested in what's being shopped for we probably will be bored, but try turning one of us loose in a GameStop, or any other store relevant to one of our hobbles...
Shopping is really draining... even in a fun store.
But I think we were specifically talking about clothes shopping.
It's probably a sensory sensitivity thing, but I find trying on lots of clothing items to be incredibly difficult and draining.
Oh, gender *identity* is 0% about social norms. I wrote a post on this:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-160710141
I'd love your thoughts!
Well, when you make broad statements it's often easy to refute with the at least one person for which their gender identity IS partly influenced by social norms, similar to how "straight men don't want to sleep with Laith Ashley."
You've creatively refuted his point by saying "in a world in which the social stereotypes are gone, physical dysphoria would still exist." That's true. Some people think physical dysphoria only exists because of social associations, but I don't believe that. However, there are trans people who seem truly comfortable "not passing" or changing much about their physical bodies at all. With these people, in a world with no stereotypes, Yassine believes they would not be trans, and the trans people who do exist would define it ONLY as discomfort with their physical bodies (like phantom limb syndrome) rather than an "identity problem."
I am broadly in agreement with your post itself, that expression and gender differ in key ways and advising someone to just be very nonconforming while still being seen and treated as an incongruent gender by everyone around them is a suggestion no one would be happy with. I do however also see gender expression and identity as intrinsically linked, where if literally all stereotypes disappeared tomorrow, then the use of words like "him" or "her" would cease to carry much meaning (beyond physical characteristics.) Identity is assumed to be exist because we assume pure consciousness means something. But we can only conceive of "not-us" in terms of perception and guesses, or "stereotypes" (stereotypes are not inherently bad but just images and perceptions of categories in the world around us.) The point is that any category you lack direct experience with is "built from stereotypes" to some degree. So I do agree that you cannot *really define* gender identity without referencing something else that can be conceived as a stereotype. This is, however, not unique to gender identity, but a quality shared by all forms of identification.
This actually touches on some pretty difficult philosophical problems where when stripped of anything tangible or observable, basically EVERY identity is nonexistent. "Race isn't solely about social stereotypes or how you're treated or lived experience or genetics or appearance or..." but when you strip away every quality to get to the pure meaning of a particular race, you wind up surprisingly, with nothing. By default to describe anything you have to affiliate it with another thing. Hence "essence" of every concept is by default, nothing BUT itself. Even to call something a "race" associates it with other races (as opposed to some other thing like ethnicity/color/personality trait.) Words are tangible. (This is I believe first touched on in "Being and Nothingness.")
However many people find it breaks their brains to go "pure consciousness without a tangible touchstone has meaning to us but the meaning cannot be described in real terms and so essentially means nothing," so become essentialists. "That's absurd! Race has meaning! It's all genetics at the end of the day!" But nobody acts as if they truly believe that, as if their race-influenced behaviors are connected to a 23andme genetic scanner built into their brains.
At the end of the day some people don't like that highly abstract categories void of hardline or clear markers (stereotypes, looks, fixed patterns) exist, or they disagree with where the boundaries of the categories should be drawn. Or they just are disgusted and rationalize all this to deal with that.
> "most I know would also not prefer to become extraordinarily emotionally expressive (probably part of testosterone making this more difficult for people on average) or develop a huge interest in shopping to get there. That's not me saying that these activities should be barred from men trans/cis or otherwise. I think everybody should be able to do what they want, which includes being treated 'like one of the girls' when possible."
Aww thanks, I'm glad.
Interesting about T and emotional expression! I personally have very high T and am also very emotionally expressive, but that's probably unusual.
I think the big concern for men is that our value is reliant on how sexually attractive women find us, and many women will find men less sexually attractive for all these things.
I remember seeing a "Will and Grace" episode as a teenager that touched on these fears. Will is busy with something so Grace gets her husband/boyfriend (I forget which) to go shopping with her, and afterwards he says something like "you'll never have sex with me again." Cue laugh track. The "joke" is that shopping made him seem gay or unmasculine or girly or asexual or something less attractive.
Shopping is just so incredibly tiring! I like all the other girl stuff though.
> " 'Girls include girls based on popularity and appearance' + 'no cis woman has ever been excluded from these things' is contradictory."
I think you misread my last couple paragraphs. To clarify:
Girls include girls *in girl stuff* based on popularity and appearance.
No cis woman has ever been excluded *from the listed guy stuff* : "the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex."
I'm saying guys don't exclude cis women the way girls exclude cis men. In other words, women have the privilege of being able to be involved in guy stuff, whereas men don't have the ability to be involved in girl stuff.
I did misread the end.
I do think cross-gender activity is somewhat asymmetrical in that women can be tomboys, lesbian, etc. with less violence or discomfort than men can be feminine, cross-dress, etc. Some feminists have argued this is because "wanting to be treated like a man" is logical in a sexist society whereas men wanting to be treated by a discriminated group isn't, so must be sexual in origin or something.
This doesn't mean guys don't exclude cis women, though. There are certainly spaces/certain social energies that are less accessible even to women who want to be included. I am not claiming this is horribly oppressive, just that it is true.
So let's say you have a society where group X is above group Y. Some Xs want to be Y, and some Ys want to be X.
Without knowing anything else, you could make either of these two arguments:
1. Xs wanting to be Y would be more socially accepted than the reverse. After all, Xs are higher status and can be anything. But Ys trying to be X are trying to claim a status above theirs, which they are not entitled to.
2. Ys wanting to be X would be more socially accepted than the reverse. It's natural to want to be a "higher" group but weird to want to be a "lower" group.
Now it seems to me that (1) is at least as plausible as (2). And looking at other traits, like race, (1) seems more accurate in society.
So I'm skeptical of the claim that (2) is the explanation for why society hates feminine men and trans women more than the opposite. I think there are other, better explanations.
Ah, absolutely not. My social transition is about much more than pronouns and a name. It may be different for someone who is genderqueer. For example, my ex used all the right pronouns. Said she saw me as a man. And, what do gender norms mean, anyway? But no, I was her butch girlfriend. As soon as my voice dropped, it was over. I recognized this only in hindsight. I have undeniably gone from being treated as a woman with funny pronouns to being treated as a man. It is different. Some ways are problematic, sure, like being perceived as much more intelligent. But most of it? Truly, really is different.
Whoa, a JC comment I'm roughly in agreement with! :P
Haha, are you not usually?
JC has been banned from commenting for 30 days for reliably taking up 30-50% of my comment section with takes that annoy me.
The majority of straight men upon seeing someone who looks like a guy have no idea what's in his pants, so don't treat him as a sexual target. Ofc sexuality is fluid, but people who care primarily about genitals *and also not at all* about secondary sexual characteristics are pretty uncommon, and hence not how most gender constructs based on physical traits are maintained.
But many trans people aren't that passing. Perhaps even most trans people aren't. And of course there is the paradox that with greater awareness of trans issues it becomes much harder to pass.
I'm biased because I am one of those people who care only about genitals and not about secondaries, but there's a whole spectrum ranging from 100% primary to 100% secondary (and of course multiple other dimensions as well).
Agreed that social constructs aren't directly based on genitals, but they could be based on perceived sex (at birth) which is indirectly based on genitals, if that makes sense.
well said. little more infuriating than transphobes claiming with a that nothing actually counts as “biology” except genes and gametes — hormones? anatomy? physiology? disallowed! — and furthermore insist that this is, somehow, simply common sense. you really, really have to fuck with the definition of biology to get it to even approximate “immutability” (which is in any case a weak idea, entirely contingent on technology)
> the affectionate shittalking of male friendship, or the camaraderie of gym culture, or the cheerful sleaziness of gay male casual sex.
I think this is why I really struggle to *get* trans people, as a cis-man. See, I am biologically male. I'm also pretty mentally male: I have fairly high libido, I systemise things, I dislike sentimentality and overt displays of emotion. But I don't think I'm at all *culturally* male- none of these things you list appeal to me at all! I don't actually like male company much in general and I struggle to care much how other people perceive me. Obviously, as a heterosexual I'd like women to be attracted to me, true. But in other respects I don't really value being perceived as male.
This kind of social dysphoria is only one reason that people transition. It's also quite common for people to have strong preferences about their body types, or to go "I feel really distressed when people see me as my assigned gender for ??? reasons?????" (I normally don't have that second kind but had it, presumably for hormonal reasons, when I was breastfeeding. I assure you that experiencing it doesn't make it less philosophically confusing.)
Ozy wrote, on their old blog, about people that could be categorized "cis by default" - people who don't feel like a particular gender, and haven't transitioned.
It used to be really common to reassign male babies with absent, deformed or very small genitals as female. The thought was that it was psychologically easier to be a woman than a man without a phallos. Parents were told to keep this secret.
A very large percentage of those folks declared themselves male from a very early age, often without being told about their forced transition at all. They were also overwhelmingly likely to be attracted to women and to be masculine in interests and playstyle. Many were very angry and have said they always felt out of place - basically how regular trans people describe themselves and their dysphoria.
However... not all of them did! Some were fine and never transitioned back or indicated wanting to. There's a lack of really good studies on them, but some exist. It fell out of favor as a practice partly because of the very mixed results, partly because intersex activists have been so against it.
I think current research suggest that some people have a "gender identity", and some don't. You may not have one. Most trans activists will say everyone has one, cis people just don't think about ours because it's never challenged - I think this is probably wrong.
I am cis and I think I have a gender identity. The thought of having balls and a beard just makes me go "ewww" internally.
I love the cis by default post, and I'm sad Ozy renounced it.
I'd love to hear more about current research on gender identity - there isn't much out there! Links?
I agree, some people have one and some don't.
I would point out that your feelings about your body are a different issue than gender identity, and there are plenty of trans men who have a gender identity as a man, yet feel squicked at the thought of having balls and a beard!
They renounced it?
When and why?
I’m in a similar place. Part of it is baggage rather than who I am, but that baggage was developed because enough of me really didn’t fit in with guy assumptions that I felt alienated from it. When I was in high school (when I angsted about this) I similarly got kinda confused about trans issues. (I speculate JKR is kinda in the same bucket but that’s another topic)
I think it’s pretty common across sex and gender to have this sort of “not like other X” feeling. From my convos w trans friends, it seems that there is a distinction between it and being trans, even if sometimes that distinction is quite slight, and some people have ofc experienced both.
As a woman who’s alienated by the kind of stereotypical femininity discussed in the article (shopping and gossiping does *not* sound appealing, I almost never cry, etc.) I instinctively share the fear that a lot of trans discourse ends up reinforcing these stereotypes.
Maybe it’s some level of “not like other girls” internalized misogyny, but I deeply, viscerally dislike the idea of being *assumed by default* to be stereotypically-feminine—even if it’s totally fine to prove myself an exception.
Granted—I sometimes wonder if I *am* gender-dysphoric on some level. I always really enjoy it when people online assume I’m a man—even when it’s done in the context of insulting me! It kind of does sound like the euphoria trans people report when successfully passing. But the idea of having a male *body* isn’t remotely appealing.
I mean you know yourself best, but it does sound a lot like my situation. I really enjoyed being feminine and wished I was moreso. But as I age I am finding my pretty masculine body agrees with me more and more. It’s corny language but the idea of “the feminine and masculine inside of us” really resonates with my experience. Like, it is specifically affirming to me when I can be feminine *in the context of being a man.* I totally agree re: bodies. For me, there is some lil part of this that is a sort of “take that” at kids who thought this was illegitimate. You may be trans! I think the gender swapped version would be being happy to be read as manly/masculine bc you’re secure in being a woman - or bc it affirms that this is a type of woman to be.
I think to a certain degree “old school” folks in terms of gender worry too much - like, in the discourse it’s contentious, but besides it being a joke, none of my trans friends have any issue understanding me as a man.
I think the concept of “non-binary” is a bit different, where you are actually seeing a shift in understanding or at least language. Zoomers definitely seem to parse my experience as NB
For one thing, with the mentality you have, you'd probably feel out of place if you were expected to abide by female social norms, yeah? Not just gossiping over boys or whatever, I mean, for example, the more general expectation for women to be more sentimental and overtly emotional, and the common tendency for female social groups to show affection this way and think you dislike them or something is wrong with you if you do not participate.
Some people just seem to develop preferences more in line with one or another mentality, and when that's extreme enough or bothers them enough cross-sex hormones can help somebody feel and act like themselves. For example, a lot of trans women talk about how, prior to taking estrogen, they hated that they were unable to cry, and being able to do so is a relief to them. (I experienced the reverse- crying constantly, with basically no control over it, when I absolutely did not want to and was mortified by it. This obviously isn't a reason to transition on its own and there are a lot of reasons why I am more comfortable crying rarely or never that have nothing to do with gender stuff, it's just an example.)
Well, let's distinguish "male" (sex) from "man" (gender).
Being seen as male is different from being seen as a man.
Do you feel like you're a man?
Would you care if others saw you as a man or didn't see you as a man?
What about "guy"? do you feel like you're a guy?
Would you care if others saw you as a guy or didn't see you as a guy?
> But I don't think I'm at all *culturally* male- none of these things you list appeal to me at all!
"culturally male" (really it should be "culturally a man" or "culturally a guy") is a really interesting way of talking about gender / manhood.
I think those things are more specific to different groups and subcultures, and plenty of "cultural men" wouldn't necessarily find those things appealing.
What do you make of people who don't identify as trans but just like opposite hormones? Many female bodybuilders like the energy and different emotional state they get from testosterone. Plus, obviously the strenght and atheleticism, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Also heard of cis men who like estrogen for various reasons, though it seems rarer.
I mean, I'm not sure I need to make anything of them at all! It's unsurprising to me that they exist and I think they should be able to have the hormones they prefer.
Do you think that they are not fully biologically female, but have a self-caused intersex condition?
Who are you arguing against? Sure, phenomena like sex hormones and gonads are real. There are ~0 trans people and/or allies who are arguing that they aren't. The public debate about "biological sex" is 99% about stereotypes, transphobia, and transphobic interpretations of biology, like thinking human sex categories are a binary. The only reason "biological sex is real" is unpopular among trans-accepting people is because the phrase is loaded, not because any of the beliefs you're describing are taboo.
I am not sure you are right about there being ~0 trans people/allies who believe this. Things like trans woman claiming they are "biologically female" are certainly said online a lot, perhaps as a shorthand for your/Ozy's position, possibly not; we don't know.
But that's the point: we don't know. But because it is true, as Ozy said, that biological sex *is* real, and because it is bad to have only bad people say true things, it is really, really useful to have someone point out that you can say biological sex *is* real and still be pro-trans, and to spell it out.
To put it another way: I fear that the "biological sex isn't real" claim is like the "defund the police" slogan. In the latter case, some big chunk of the people using it meant it literally while the others were saying "of course we don't mean it literally". This is a really unproductive place for any political/social movement to be. So if it is true, as you say, that people say "biological sex isn't real" while meaning what Ozy said, then that's a *really counterproductive way of talking*, and you can see Ozy's post as proposing a different way of speaking (and IMO succeeding brilliantly).
i think it's a performative argument aiming to provide a statement of beliefs to transphobic cis people
I think he's arguing against you! At least, I would.
> "phenomena like sex hormones and gonads are real"
That's not the same as saying biological sex is real.
> "thinking human sex categories are a binary"
I think it's fair to say that they are a binary - in the sense that for roughly 98-99% of people, genitals, chromosomes, secondary sexual characteristics, gonads, internal organs, gamete sizes, and hormone levels all line up as "male" or as "female."
That's a very bi-modal distribution with two distinct categories.
You can of course change some of those things through active medical intervention, but not all, and you can't change your past development as an organism.
There is a fundamental difference between " a very bi-modal distribution with two distinct categories" and "a binary". A binary is where every single person can be divided, with 100% reliability, into one of two and only two categories with zero exceptions. A single person who challenges the categorisation system means that either you have to change the categorisation system or you have to accept that it is not a binary.
Not only that, you can't have a binary being "XX, X0 and XXX are female and XY, XXY, XYY are male". That's a six-way division, not a two-way division.
If your binary is based on gamete production that people who don't produce gametes are non-binary, which would probably surprise most post-menopausal woman.
A binary is a very specific and narrow statement: all the information that you need can be compressed into a single bit of data. If that is not true, then it is not a binary.
The reason this is relevant is that if you are writing laws or policies, most of the time is going to be spent on the exceptions. Saying "this is a binary" is absolutely equivalent to saying "there are no exceptions", which is going to create problems for those people who fall into the exceptions as there are then inadequate laws and a lack of policy to address their situations.
>I think it's fair to say that they are a binary
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "binary".
I disagree.
The vast majority of trans discourse argues that biological sex isn't real or important - in particular from trans women, who seem to get very upset at any suggestion they might be a different category from cis women.
There was a recent UK court decision which might have influenced this post.
The origin of this post is that I'm planning a longer post arguing that one of the primary causes of women's oppression is their biology, and I wanted something to link to when someone was like "isn't that TERF-y?"
It was a real eye-opener for me when I discovered just how much time the average pre-modern woman spent pregnant.
This reply now receiving multiple replies from people who have quite likely interpreted Ozy's original post as supportive of their bog-standard transphobia, proving my point.
What replies? Were they deleted? I don't see them.
This is the sanest and best thing I have read on trans rights in years. I have gotten pegged as a transphobe because I said wait, I support trans rights but biological sex is real; now I can just point people to this essay, Thank you.
(For what its worth, the previous most sane thing I read was this: https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/07/20/trans-women-men-and-adoptive-parents-an-analogy/ by philosopher (and trans woman) Sophie-Grace Chappell)
I wonder whether the OP would agree with the adoptive parent analogy. It’s socially acceptable to disagree with someone about whether they are a parent (“That woman who hit you was never your mother. She was just an egg donor”), but I think OP would argue it should be socially unacceptable to disagree with someone else’s gender identity (“you will always be my brother and you will never be my sister”). Adoptive parents are also subject to a lot of regulations and gatekeeping that I suspect OP would object to if applied to trans hormones.
I wouldn't have said it's socially acceptable to disagree with whether someone is a parent; I think in (nearly all) cases it's not, which is one of the things I like about the analogy!
It's not socially acceptable if the parent in question is a good one, but an abusive bio-mother who admits to giving birth for bad reasons (to compete with her sister, for example) still has a claim to being "a mother" in a way that a similar adoptive parent does not. Imagine a rich celebrity woman adopting a poor child and then immediately losing custody for abuse/neglect, and then claimed to "be a mother." I think most people who mock this claim quite strongly.
It's still seen as an insult and an attack to dispute someone's claim to be a parent.
It's just that you're insulting and attacking someone who clearly deserves it.
Maybe the example was too negative. What about a billionaire's wife who adopts from a foreign country, but the kid is raised by nannies and doesn't even recognize his mother? She did save the child from poverty, and did a good deed overall, but I would still roll my eyes if she began her sentence with "as a mother..."
But you probably wouldn't say out loud in front of her and her friends that she's not a mother, in that instance.
At least, I would consider doing so to be highly socially unacceptable and insulting.
Which OP, Ozy or Chappell?
I'm interested in the phrase "disagree with someone else's gender identity."
If I say, "I fully understand and agree that you personally identify as a man, but I personally do not see you as a man" is that agreeing or disagreeing?
What about "I fully understand and agree that you personally identify as a man, but I don't believe in men or women"?
Am cis and had never cried at a movie until I had kids - babies rewired my brain.
Pregnancy, unmedicated birth, and breastfeeding collectively achieve a hormonal transition (matrescence) of similar magnitude as puberty. They really do rewire your brain. It's quite the life experience. 😊
In some ways, I now consider my gender identity to be "Mother." I don't usually mention that lest it be mistaken for trolling. But in more gender-expansive spaces where write-ins are common, sometimes I do.
This is one of the reasons I’m afraid of having children—unpredictable radical personality changes are an alarming prospect.
That's totally fair! On the other hand, married mothers are the happiest demographic. It's more of a predictable personality change than an unpredictable one.
If the recent supreme court travesty has shown anything, surely it's that the bigots will happily deny the existence of intersex people if it lets them savage trans people.
We don't downplay sex for fun. We downplay it because of its blind, imperialist, enforced duality. If we want to talk true biology, we can't use that poisoned word, no matter how the adults in the room understand the true subtleties. Otherwise we will always find ourselves fighting the same fight, forever.
Explain this please?
I'm frustrated at trans people trying to argue based on intersex issues when that's a completely different situation.
Why is sex a poisoned word? If I say your gender is "woman" and your sex is male, what's wrong with that?
From where I'm standing, it's something perfectly natural to say, but there are a lot of people that think "sex" and "gender" are synonyms and that statements like "gender is a social construct" are obvious nonsense because male humans have penises and female humans have vaginas.
I think this happened because academia used "gender" as a technical term in a way that made "gender is a social construct" true by definition, much like how physical scientists use "work" as a technical term, and the academic definition started to filter into general usage among people who went to college...
The story goes that RBG pioneered the use of "gender" in legal writing instead of "sex" because she thought people would find it more acceptable.
When I first learned about trans issues back in the 90s, it was Trans 101 to distinguish gender and sex: gender is mental, sex is physical. Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs.
It's really important we explain this distinction and promote it, and also explain that both are important.
For instance, athletics (in the US sense) is about the body, the physical, so it should clearly be divided by sex, not by gender. So sports teams should be "male - all gender" and "female - all gender" in order to be inclusively named and still be sex-based. The female team would allow anyone with any gender identity, as long as they are female.
Sadly, these days some trans activists see it fit to blur the distinction or combine the two. You see this a lot with trans women in particular, who typically react very negatively (in a stereotypically masculine way) to any suggestion that they are anything other than female!
The article literally says "Laith Ashley—like other transsexuals and many detransitioned people—has an iatrogenic intersex condition." Go argue with Ozy about it being brought up. And go read about the recent UK ruling if you want to understand my comment. Don't ask people to do your research for you.
"Marty, you're not thinking fourth-dimensionally!"
My main disagreement here is that I think sex is 4-dimensional - it's about your past, not just your present.
That is, sex is **developmental.** It's about how you develop.
So I disagree that a trans person who transitions should be seen as intersex. Intersex is a congenital condition meaning that a person didn't have a normal fetal and childhood sexual development as male or female.
Trans people, though (unless they're also congenitally intersex) did have a normal fetal and childhood sexual development as male or female, just not the way they should have.
While the science of brain sex is complicated, it should be clear that this process of development does have some effects on the brain, as well as socially.
So I think there's a solid argument for considering amab and afab as real sex categories, and for the importance of assigned sex at birth, something that cannot be changed as a teenager or later on.
I'm all for recognizing trans women as women, but I don't see the case for recognizing them as female or intersex when they went through male bursts of testosterone in utero and male child development.
The transphobes hate me for saying trans women are women, and the trans rights people hate me for saying they're male. But that's what I think - trans women are women, and they're male.
It's a bit more complex for trans men, because the situation is not symmetric.
Trans women have gone through testosterone masculinization and are trying to undo it, which can't really be done.
Whereas trans men didn't get the testosterone masculinization at an early age that they should have gotten, and are getting it later in life instead, which can be done.
But you can't completely undoe feminization either?
So masculinization and feminization aren't symmetric.
All fetuses start as feminine - they don't need to be feminized. When male humans are born, they are male because they got bursts of testosterone in the womb, which masculinized them. When female humans are born, they didn't get "feminized" - they just developed without testosterone, and so if they get testosterone later, they're just going through the masculinization process later.
It's true that female puberty, like male puberty, causes changes that can't completely be undone. But my point was about masculinization in utero.
> "Due to the limitations of present-day medical technology, if he had genital surgery he would have had to choose between having a micropenis and having permanent erectile dysfunction, a tragedy that really ought to make all cis men wince in sympathy."
I don't think the permanent ED is true! Trans men who get phallo have a number of options, including a pump that allows them to get erect at any time, and a rod that makes them always erect and can be bent at various angles. Seems like an improvement!
If a cis man prefers the rod or pump to his original anatomy, he can also get them! They were originally designed as treatments for erectile dysfunction in cis men. Since as far as I can tell no one does this, I am going to hazard a guess that this is not an improvement for most men.
I don't understand - plenty of cis men do get the rod or pump for ED, as an addition to the original anatomy, not a replacement.
What do you mean no one does this?
If cise men with ED and trans men get the pumps, but cis men without ED don't get the pumps, then the trans men are the functional equivalent of men with ED.
1. Yes, but not *permanent* ED, which is what Ozy said.
2. It's not quite the same, because the expectations are different: cis men grew up with erections their whole lives and expect to have them without surgery, whereas trans men never did and know surgery would be needed to have a penis and to have erections with it. And if we're talking about trans men with phalloplasty, they've already had genital surgery, which is a huge hurdle for cis men to have to cross.
Whether it's "permanent" just depends on how you choose to verbally describe actively managed medical conditions.
Does a man who achieves erections by taking viagra "have" erectile dysfunction. You could say that since he has the erection, he doesn't have ED anymore. He used to have ED before he treated it with Viagra.
On the other hand, he's going to have to keep taking Viagra if he wants to keep getting erections. So there's some ongoing state of disability that imposes a behavioral requirement on him. He's taking the Viagra to treat some "condition" he "has," and we conventionally name that "ED." You could change the name of the condition from "ED" to "Viagra-dependent erectile capacity" or something once he's in treatment, but by convention we don't.
Thus by the same logic, I'd say anyone who gets a pump installed to facilitate erections had ED before putting it in, and *still has* ED insofar as they couldn't remove the pump and keep the function.
I'm in agreement that we recognize the importance of sex in a trans-inclusive way. I have a few disagreements with this post though.
I have a few comments, which I think I'll do as separate ones rather than make one giant mega-comment (is that better)?
I think sex is at least as important as gender, and that we should recognize both, which puts me in the middle - I don't really agree with the trans-rights people or the gender-critical people fully.
Biological sex is certainly real in some way, but I think it'd help if you clarified what you mean by "real".
For instance, does the concept merely hook onto a patterned distribution of real material particles out there? If so, are companies just as real, since underlying "Google" and "Apple" are similar operations which direct/manage material persons and goods? How about beliefs?
Going further, might such forms of material existence nevertheless be compatible with the idea of social construction, broadly understood as ways in which societies stabilize and organize the millions of processes and patterns populating the world? And what governs what gets constructed and what doesn't?
refreshing. thanks.
Attitudes toward transgender issues are far too polar and the reasonable moderate voices get drowned out.