Trans woman and amateur writer.
Tumblr: ladyscarecrow
My free novel: https://archive.org/details/book_20240528
saying gender is not a construct is a strong/radical statement in the context of theory
To be clear, I’m saying gender identity isn’t a social construct (gender roles definitely are). And that’s hardly a radical statement given that there is a genetic factor to being trans, as evidenced by e.g. twin studies like this one which found a much higher amount of cases where both twins are trans among identical twins (who have the same genetic code) than non-identical twins. Also, like I mentioned before, a lot of trans people feel considerable relief to their own gender dysphoria upon seeking hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries, which is quite hard to explain on a social basis.
I can see why this idea would seem appealing to agender people. But that’s taking one’s personal case and turning it into a statement about gender as a whole. Gender having a biological component isn’t at odds with agender or NB people, but claiming gender is socially constructed is indeed problematic, like I said before.
The rationale that many people follow is that if gender is socially constructed, it can be socially changed as well (through conversion therapy) to make your kid align with their assigned gender at birth, which doesn’t work in reality.
I’ll just copy-paste what I said last time:
The idea that gender is entirely socially constructed is easily the greatest misconception about gender that gets repeated time and again – almost always by cis people, who never think too much about it because they’ve never had to reconsider their own gender.
Gender roles and gender stereotypes really are socially constructed, like the idea that some clothes are feminine and others are masculine, just to name one example. Gender identity, however, is not. If that was true, like the previous commenter was saying, conversion therapy for trans people would work, when it’s been shown it absolutely doesn’t. Gender dysphoria isn’t a social construct either. Many trans people see their own lives improve considerably after taking HRT (hormone therapy) and having gender-affirming surgeries – how can that be explained socially? Also, we know there is a genetic component to being trans as well, because of twin studies. All of which shows there really is a biological component to gender – just not in the “gender = genitals” way that transphobes think.
I bet the guy wasn’t sober when he did that. He probably still thinks that way – alcohol doesn’t make people lie, it makes them far too honest – but realized the next day that the way he had acted was screwed up.
I don’t want to come out to people, telling them that I feel like a woman, when I look and sound like a man.
I understand where that comes from, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think the same way when I started transitioning. I pretty much never corrected people when they misgendered me, because I didn’t want to get in their way. I felt as if I hadn’t earned being a woman yet. Now I understand that gender isn’t something you earn. You deserve being treated for who you are, despite how you look or sound like.
I’ve been on HRT for 7 months or so, and I just don’t look feminine.
HRT is basically puberty 2.0, and puberty takes many, many years to complete. I know how frustrating it is to wait for the changes, but that should also give you hope. Even if you don’t like how you look now, that can and probably will change over the years.
It’s nice to see more poetry around here
That phrase comes from people who are either stuck in the closet, or in denial about their own sexuality. It is just one of the many byproducts of a society that still insists on considering that being straight is the only “normal” way of being.
For the last time, girls don’t do this stuff for attention. People keep saying that because they don’t take sapphic relationships seriously.
Who cares about poetry.
/s obviously
We already have “trans pride” and “gender envy”, what about trans sloth?
Now it’s more important than ever to go. We need to show the transphobes and homophobes out there that we LGBTQ+ people and our allies are far more numerous than they think.
It’s depressing that the original one was changed in the first place – our existence can’t even be acknowledged in a video game without people collectively freaking out… Well, at least they fixed it now.
God I hate medical gatekeeping. Good luck to you
Thank you for your kind words.
I managed to get myself into a pretty ridiculous problem.
I wrote a short novel that I wanted to share on here (since it has plenty of trans characters), but there’s no way to upload a PDF to Lemmy, and I don’t want to use google drive or anything of that sort because of the privacy implications. Well, no big deal, I told myself, I can just upload it into that transreads.org site someone linked the other day. But I wrote it under a pen name, without any mention to this username, and the upload process is completely anonymous, so now I have no way to prove I wrote my own book.
At least the book is still being reviewed, so it’s not been released yet and there shouldn’t be any other mentions to it anywhere else. So for the record, the book is titled “The witches of Galree” and the pen name I used is Emily Mathison Lovelace. Hopefully that will be enough to prove I’m really the author when the reviewing is over.
Also, if anyone knows a way to share this PDF here, please let me know.
My female friends accepted me as one of them immediately, no questions asked. Nowadays I’d say anything less than that is disrespectful, but back then it meant the world to me.
I’m in awe that so much prejudice can fit in so few words.
Thanks for linking that transreads.org site, it seems very interesting.
I don’t think there were any bad intentions on OP’s end, but the highlighted claim that a person is female and therefore has this or that genitalia is indeed transphobic.
Someone’s probably going to show up and say “but it says ‘female’, not ‘woman’!” Well, “female” as an adjective referring to people already means woman. A female doctor is a doctor who is a woman. And “female” as a noun (e.g., “the females”) is a terrible way to refer to people, to begin with.