As a cis person, I think a lot of it is cis people freaking out that they don’t really have a basis for their core belief they are their gender. I suspect a lot of cis people have their gender as central to their identity. It is an immutable fact for them. These people find the thought that gender, as assigned at birth, isn’t immutable very disturbing. It shakes them. As usual, instead of just exploring that discomfort or deciding that they are who are and don’t need any justification to be themselves, they blame trans people. If it weren’t for trans people, the cis people wouldn’t ever be confronted by uncomfortable ideas like what is masculinity or femininity and can gender change over a person’s life time.
I tried to figure out why exactly I am a woman when I first started to really get to know some trans people. Thought long and hard about what being a woman means. Decided that my uterus/vagina/vulva/ability to get pregnant weren’t really why. I’d still be a woman if I’d had a hysterectomy or couldn’t have kids. In the end, I am a woman and that’s all I need to be a woman. Which then led me along another path to confirming: yes, it is perfectly good for a person who was AMAB to have that same conviction and, thus, just be a woman. She doesn’t need to prove it.* She just is exactly as I just am.
*I know lots of people think a trans person needs to somehow prove their gender. It’s bullshit
Precisely. This is one of the ways I try to get through to people who are vaguely transphobic but who aren’t purely bigots. If you were just a brain in a jar, would you still be a [man, woman]?
(They invariably say yes.)
Ok, then if your brain was implanted in the opposite body, how would that make you feel?
(Some shitty jokes, but ultimately Bad)
Ok, so if your brain in a jar could choose a body to inhabit, it would match your brain’s self perception?
(Yes)
At that point, I introduce them to the fMRI studies that show trans people’s brains match their trans identity rather than their birth body.
I learned a long time ago that lots of things that are generally simplified into two (or more) categories are really spectra. Life vs nonlife, etc. And that includes gender. It’s based on biology—and biology is rarely binary.
My mother had a hysterectomy when I was a teenager. A few months later, she said, in a small, broken voice, “I guess I’m not a woman anymore.” I knew she was wrong. I tried to reassure her, even though I didn’t know the right thing to say. I won’t say that experience enlightened me, but it did plant a seed of thought that I’d consider many times over the years.
I’ve been through menopause. But I’m still every bit as much of a woman as I ever was, I know that, even if my body doesn’t express it the same way it used to.
If the presence, absence, function or non-function of those organs doesn’t define our womanhood, then something else does. Maybe it’s our brains, maybe it’s something more ephemeral, like a soul. Either way-- gender is what we know ourselves to be, not biology or chromosomes. And gender is so much more than a binary either/or, yes/no.
Tl;dr, trans women are women, trans men are men, nonbinary is valid too. And whether we’re cis or trans, we’re in it together, and we need to fight for each others’ rights.
We make simplifications so we can understand the world, but in biology we should understand there are nearly always exceptions. I think it should be even more so for humans though. What strikes me as special about our species is how incredibly plastic and diverse our we are…and I’m not surprised sex and gender should be part of that.
There’s a very lovely video that goes into biological classifications and sexual development that you might enjoy. (I think I posted it over at TOP, but it’s very very good.)
A researcher at a heart valve conference reported he’d found muscle cells in valve leaflets. He said it meant that there was some muscle tissue helping the valve open and close.
I thought it was a bad conclusion. The forces of the heart contracting and the blood rushing out of the heart are far more powerful than a bit of muscle in a thin layer of passive valve tissue. It just meant that there aren’t absolute boundaries between one part of the body and the next. Cells migrate past the boundaries.
Especially the right… TO PARTY!! /silly (sorry, couldn’t resist.)
On a slightly different tangent; I had a good friend of many years privately come out to me a couple weeks ago, and today a person on FB that used to be a bully to me in high school* sent me a lovely picture of them in a dress, which threw me for a loop- I think their egg might have cracked.
I do have to wonder if it’s me, or if it’s something in the air.
That’s essentially what triggers and maintains a heart arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. The blood vessels that return oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart (pulmonary veins) have no clear demarcation between the vessel and the heart chamber they return to (left atrium). As such, the electrical activation of those transitions is messy and prone to what’s called a re-entrant circuit - essentially an electrical merry-go-round - that takes over control of the heart rhythm at a very fast pace.
Since there are four pulmonary veins and each has it’s own merry-go-round at a slightly different speed, the result is competitive control of different zones of heart tissue in what looks like complete chaos, even though each circuit is very regular and stable.
The result is that the upper chambers quiver rapidly and fail to pump, while the lower chambers pump irregularly like Elaine Bettis at a rave. Over time, this drastically changes the heart tissue itself (this is called remodeling - but if it just involved trashing rooms and not rebuilding them) and causes strokes and heart failure.
This is science that only came to be understood over the last couple of decades. Considering how much more complex the brain is and its interactions with hormones, development, and the rest of the body, how on earth do people expect that gender and sexuality are anything remotely close to binary!?!
Speaking from a slightly different perspective I’ve been through testicular cancer and, in the process, discovered I had a prosthetic inserted when I was four (my parents neglected to tell me about this until after I’d been through cancer treatment, but that’s another story). In spite of not being what generally seems to be considered “traditionally masculine” I’ve always checked the “Male” box on forms and such. It’s a label I’m okay with for me–though not one I’d impose on anyone else who didn’t feel comfortable with it. And I still feel okay with it even after everything I’ve been through.
One fallout from the cancer is I have to take prescription testosterone, and how that’s changed over the past few years worries me. Not so much for myself–for me the changes have been minor inconveniences but for trans people who need testosterone I worry the state is working up to bigger barriers. I used to be able to call my doctor and get multiple prescription refills. Then I started having to go in and see my doctor to get multiple prescription refills. Now I have to see my doctor for every single refill. And also hand over my driver’s license every time I get my prescription filled.
I worry that it’s going to become even more difficult.
Clouds and boxes applies to pretty much any and every characteristic that makes up a human. The only real answer is to abandon the whole concept of boxes and just be, and allow others the same. I do not understand why so many struggle with this concept.
“When you were a toddler did you ever get out of bed one morning, look at yourself and decide “I guess I must be a boy/girl. And therefore I will be attracted to girl/boy.” These are things you just know about yourself.
I frequent a Facebook (don’t ask) group on building/hacking historical sword stuff. Someone shared a project where they’re 3D-printing a ricasso (1) for their sword and they shared the WIP:
