I'm confused about the concept of gender

    • I'm confused about the concept of gender

      Hey everyone, sorry I am worried what I am going to say might be offensive and I know I wouldn't say this irl and I know I am hiding behind a screen. But I genuinely feel really confused about this and feel I am missing something. I am a bisexual girl. I feel confused about the concept of gender and transness and I feel like there shouldn't be a reason to change your gender, at least in an idealistic society. I think that it shouldn't matter what gender you are and it shouldn't dictate how you live your life and if you don't conform to the characteristics typically associated by your gender then that's great and not something that you should need to change your gender for and people should just do what feels natural and love whoever you want and do whatever you want and be friends with whoever you want and like what you like regardless of whether it is behaviour typically associated with your gender and I think gender shouldn't be important. I think that in an idealistic society then this wouldn't be important and people wouldn't care about your gender and wouldn't treat you differently. I recognise that we aren't in that society atm but I think we should be trying to get society towards that point and I think that normalising people changing their gender is actually reinforcing gender stereotypes and is making it harder to get to that point. I also think that people should just do what is natural regardless of gender and that there is a lot of content especially aimed at transwomen teaching them to be more feminine and its like you shouldn't have to look at that and you should just act like however you want regardless of your gender or sex. Also I know some trans people say they have a female brain when their sex is male or vice versa and what is a female brain and I find it a little bit sexist that people think that a female brain is different and I think transness has become quite accepting of this as gender norms are so engrained in our society and we should be working to get rid of gender norms and expectations. I know most people who disagree with this are religious people and they seem to think trans people should change their personality to suit the characteristics expected of their sex and it feels like trans people are changing their gender to meet their personality and I completely disagree with those religious people and think that is much worse and I am confused why everyone on the left wing seems to be completely ok with this.
      Also lots of trans people feel a lot of hatred to their bodies and I feel really confused by people saying things like they were born in the wrong body and I don't even know what that even means and why should your body dictate who you are. I know that trans people themselves do not always conform to gender norms and say that your gender shouldn't matter and that they are trans because they hate their body and know their body is wrong. I know one trans girl at school who is really clever and she has a bit of a breakdown everytime she goes to the toilet and sees her penis. But firstly I feel like most people are accepting of transpeople because gender norms are so engrained in them and if it weren't for this people would be a lot more confused like I am. Secondly I feel like if they where born on an island with only people their who had literally no reference to gender and nothing at all to do with gender norms or anything then I don't think they would feel like that and I still think it is caused by gender norms in society. Also I know most trans people say imagine you were in a body of the opposite sex and tbh I think about this and I honestly wouldn't really care. Obviously it would be a bit weird at first but I would try and do life basically as normal and I think I'd get used to it and wouldn't change who I am. I don't understand why someone would have a huge hatred of their penis. I know also that I don't conform to all of the characteristics of a girl and I have short hair and I know some of my hobbies and interests are typically masculine and sometimes I have had nasty comments on this and sometimes people have asked me if I am trans because of that and I don't understand that and I think that is quite sexist.
      Also if someone is having a hatred of their body then I feel like you should try and help them feel more confident in their body rather than change it. I feel like transpeople will always find something however much of their body that they change that will be different from other people of the sex usually related to their gender and this will continue to upset them. I also think that if someone had similar hatred towards their body for something else then people would think this was bad. For example if someone hated their nose and wanted to get a nosejob and said they didn't feel comfortable being themselves with that nose then this would be considered unhealthy and people would try to encourage them that their body is great and to make them more confident like that. Or if anyone had any body image issues or had an eating disorder caused by body dysmorphia they wouldn't have their belief that they should be 10lbs lighter when they were already under a healthy weight affirmed. Or if someone felt they couldn't leave the house without a full face of makeup. Yet if a trans person gets plastic surgery then this is empowering and I feel slightly confused about the difference. Also imagine if someone was 'trans racial' and was convinced they were a different race and were born in the wrong body that way. I think most people would think this was racist and offensive and they would certainly not affirm that person's beliefs. Yet I don't see how this is any different. Obviously your race shouldn't dicate how you live your life but I don't think your gender should either and I don't see how it really is different
      Sorry I have probably misunderstood something so tell me what I am wrong about and why and I am sorry for anyone I have triggered or offended as I am probably wrong but I honestly don't understand and I know also I am hiding behind a screen and wouldn't say this irl which is bad. But the more I think about it the more I think I am right which really confuses me

    • candyhaws wrote:

      ...Also I know some trans people say they have a female brain when their sex is male or vice versa and what is a female brain and I find it a little bit sexist that people think that a female brain is different...
      We do know that this is more than just a social construct and also more than early years conditioning. An experiment was done on new born babies and it was found that baby girls looked longer at faces and baby boys were more interested in things that did something.

      The mechanism behind this is believed to be the influence of testosterone on the fetal brain. While the fetus is developing the XY genotype causes the gonads to become testes rather than ovaries and the resulting testosterone causes all the other differences between a boy and a girl and it seems that includes the brain too.

      But just like most of our bodies are similar between girls and boys with more similarities than differences, so our brains are more similar than different but that doesn't mean we should pretend what difference there are, are not there. Then, sometimes, the differences are quite subtle. Humans are a very social species anyway, and it has been suggested part of the reason for having such big brains is to keep track of social connections, but there is a trend for girls and women to be more social than boys and men, i.e. back to that newborn baby experiment. Likewise there is a trend for boys and men to be more interested in how things work. So when we see more girls going into jobs and professions that have a high degree of contact with other people and boys taking up jobs and professions that are more technical in nature that is more than just the way society has pushed them. There is a trend for those to be the interests of those genders.

      Where we have to be very careful is that we don't allow knowledge of that general trend to cause us to discriminate against people who don't fit it, because there are always exceptions. Just like men are generally taller than women doesn't prevent there from being women who are six feet tall and men who are only a touch over five feet tall, so likewise there are excellent women engineers and male care workers so if a woman applies for a job in engineering or a man applies to be a nurse they should each should be given a fair chance based on their actual aptitude, not on some assumption based on their gender. The same applies in the choice of subjects at school so if a girl is more inclined to science or engineering rather than the humanities then she should be given every encouragement.

      So the point about brains having slight differences between the two genders is that part of the difference can be about how someone feels, i.e. the gender they feel themselves to be. So someone with a female body but a masculinised brain may well feel that they are in the wrong body and likewise someone with a male body and a brain that has not been masculinised.

      But, I can see you point about the reaction of society. We should absolutely not make people uncomfortable if they should show characteristics that we typically think of as female whilst obviously having a male body or vice versa. We all need to know, and accept, that the trend in how males and females behave differently is just that, a trend; it should not be an expectation and people should be accepted as they are, not forced into pigeon holes.

      What we can't do, as a society, is control how people feel about their own bodies. So, in the case of the person you know who identifies as female but still has a penis and is repulsed by it, we have to accept that her experience is what it is. I think it is very hard to understand when you're not in the same situation yourself and I am not, so I can't pretend to talk from experience. What we can all hopefully understand, though, is that we don't tell people that they don't feel as they claim to or that how they feel is not legitimate.

      There is a more general condition called body dysphoria where people's bodies don't match their own perception of what their bodies should be. I'm not talking about people thinking that they should have a smaller nose, a bigger penis or larger breasts, but people who claim one leg is not theirs and want surgeons to amputate it. We do at least have a clue as to a mechanism behind this because we know the brain has a map of the body such that sensations from particular parts of the body are relayed to particular parts or the brain. This map also tracks where the parts of our body are in space so, for example, we can walk through spaces without looking to check that our arms will fit through because we have feel for where they are. Likewise we can hit a ball with a bat without looking at the bat to know where it is - instead we look at the ball. While we're on the subject, this map seems a likely candidate for teenage clumsiness, i.e. because of fast growth, the map is always very slightly out of date and trying to catch up. But one of the others things associated with this map is called phantom limbs. When people have had limbs amputated for other reasons, e.g. injured beyond recovery, often they feel like it is still there when it isn't. That's because the map still has a place for it, even though it is physically not there. So in the case of the limb that someone says doesn't belong there and wants cut off, probably the issue is that it is missing from the map in the brain despite being physically there.

      I also think I broadly agree with you that surgery to alter someone's body to how they think it should be seems an extreme step and maybe one that would not be so common in we knew another way to resolve people's distress about their bodies. But I also think there is more to it than pressure from society so I don't think it will be solved by society being more tolerant, at least not alone as there is probably always scope for people to learn greater tolerance, and there maybe things at work we don't properly understand.

    • Ricard Cointreau wrote:

      As I said above.
      Why would it confuse you?
      If you’re comfortable in your physically obvious assigned gender, that’s great, like the vast majority of people you’re fine and nothing to question and can go about your day

      but whether it confuses you as to why someone would believe in such a thing, that they have a female body but feel male and vice versa or something different is completely irrelevant

      your opinion on it being confusing or why anyone would question their own self and nature doesn’t matter - your life experience as a male who knows he’s male does not matter in the slightest.

      simply there are people with different experiences to you who know what it’s like to be them and it not be the “normal”. Because not everyone is normal and it’s nothing new

      you not thinking it’s real doesn’t make it so

    • blah blah blah

      that you believe it exists doesn't make it so.

      If as a white guy I feel like I'm a black person, and not white, which is the colour that is my physically obvious assigned colour, and I put dark make up, it's not a concept of colour, it's called a blackface and racism. ROFL.

      If I feel lile I'm a pig, and not a human, which is my physically obkious assigned species at birth, I - thankfully - would end up in an asylum. ROFL.

    • Ricard Cointreau wrote:

      If as a white guy I feel like I'm a black person, and not white, which is the colour that is my physically obvious assigned colour, and I put dark make up, it's not a concept of colour, it's called a blackface and racism. ROFL.
      That's an interesting example to have chosen.

      People absolutely do feel like they belong to certain groups and not to others, a concept known as the in-group and out-group. Desmond Morris, the zoologist, suggests this is because the instinctive part of our brain hasn't evolved much since our tribal past. In tribes people co-operate to ensure survival of the tribe and are prepared to fight neighbouring tribes if they threaten to take resources away from the home tribe. He then went on to describe football as "tribal warfare by proxy" and you could say the same of any similar team sport. We also see the same in people collaborating within companies who then compete with each other.

      Working out how, in modern society, these groups originate is much harder. Different physical appearance could be a cue in some cases and not just limited to back and white. But in many cases the differences will be entirely social, i.e. what language we speak, what religion, if any, we observe, and how we behave.

      Modern thinking is that there is no significant brain difference between black and white people of the same sex. Your genetically determined skin tone is simply a long term adaptation to the level of sunlight in the same way that tanning is a short term adaptation. If you're too dark for where you live you don't get enough vitamin D, though obviously in modern times we can solve that with a supplement. If you're too pale for where you live you get sun burnt and run a high risk of skin cancer, though again we can mitigate that with clothes and sunscreen.

      So I am suggesting that feeling back or feeling white is entirely a social construct, and maybe would not so be strong if there was less racism, whereas feeling male or female goes beyond a social construct and has some basis in the brain.

      We also need to be aware of the extent to which we view things from a particular perspective. For many, many years it was believed the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat. When we stand on the earth and see the sun appear to move around us, it is easy to come to that conclusion. It is now accepted that the earth revolves around the sun and that the rising and setting of the sun in the sky is due to the earth's rotation on its own axis.

    • Ricard Cointreau wrote:

      blah blah blah

      that you believe it exists doesn't make it so.

      If as a white guy I feel like I'm a black person, and not white, which is the colour that is my physically obvious assigned colour, and I put dark make up, it's not a concept of colour, it's called a blackface and racism. ROFL.

      If I feel lile I'm a pig, and not a human, which is my physically obkious assigned species at birth, I - thankfully - would end up in an asylum. ROFL.
      I kind of used to think like you.
      That if you're a guy and likes classical dance, skipping rope, cooking, and taking care of your baby brother, that doesn't make you a girl

      Then I saw a documentary about a little 8 or 10 yo boy who felt he is a girl and who wanted to commit suicide because he was considered a boy and not a girl, and had to act and dress as a boy
      His/Her negative thoughts went away after his parents and doctors took these suicidal thoughts seriously, and started to consider him as a girl. He/she's been feeling much better ever since

      That changed my mind about it

      I know it's confusing and I guess it's hard to understand if you dont live this yourself

      But hey, you said that believing that it exists doesn't make it so
      I'll reply that not understanding how this can exist doesn't mean it does't exist ;)

    • Ricard Cointreau wrote:

      What confuses me it that some people believe in such things.
      I am in that case and I certainly didn't chose it
      It's like why 90% of people are attracted to the opposite sex and a few people to the same sex
      There isn't a logical explaination
      I am the same I dont really know why I feel like a girl while I have a boy body
      Dont be afraid to come talk to me, I dont bite... :D

    • Starlord wrote:

      I kind of used to think like you.That if you're a guy and likes classical dance, skipping rope, cooking, and taking care of your baby brother, that doesn't make you a girl

      Then I saw a documentary about a little 8 or 10 yo boy who felt he is a girl and who wanted to commit suicide because he was considered a boy and not a girl, and had to act and dress as a boy
      His/Her negative thoughts went away after his parents and doctors took these suicidal thoughts seriously, and started to consider him as a girl. He/she's been feeling much better ever since

      That changed my mind about it

      I know it's confusing and I guess it's hard to understand if you dont live this yourself

      But hey, you said that believing that it exists doesn't make it so
      I'll reply that not understanding how this can exist doesn't mean it does't exist ;)
      Doesn't mean that was the right thing to do. One's desires doesn't mean they are the reality. Calling him a girl doesn't make him one. It will just make him happy. And in that it's sad because it's only in their mind it's like being a dreamer all day long about that.

    • Ricard Cointreau wrote:

      Starlord wrote:

      I kind of used to think like you.That if you're a guy and likes classical dance, skipping rope, cooking, and taking care of your baby brother, that doesn't make you a girl

      Then I saw a documentary about a little 8 or 10 yo boy who felt he is a girl and who wanted to commit suicide because he was considered a boy and not a girl, and had to act and dress as a boy
      His/Her negative thoughts went away after his parents and doctors took these suicidal thoughts seriously, and started to consider him as a girl. He/she's been feeling much better ever since

      That changed my mind about it

      I know it's confusing and I guess it's hard to understand if you dont live this yourself

      But hey, you said that believing that it exists doesn't make it so
      I'll reply that not understanding how this can exist doesn't mean it does't exist ;)
      Doesn't mean that was the right thing to do. One's desires doesn't mean they are the reality. Calling him a girl doesn't make him one. It will just make him happy. And in that it's sad because it's only in their mind it's like being a dreamer all day long about that.
      If it makes him happy rather than suicidal I definitely think it was the right thing to do !!