This is an interesting article but it’s a little superficial. I wish it addressed where that internal gender originates from. It’s something I’ve been trying to understand. We know gender dysphoria is real and transgender is something that needs to be addressed through presentation (I hope I’m saying this right). But doesn’t that presentation ultimately conform to arbitrary societal norms on gender presentation?
Kinda? I dress feminine because it makes me feel attractive and it’s my style. But the dysphoria took hormones and bottom surgery to deal with. If I’m a woman in a suit, I don’t feel dysphoric at all unless people are misgendering me, meanwhile before transitioning I attempted crossdressing and I swear I never felt more dysphoric in my life than then. But also other people have different experiences.
Thank you for sharing your experience. This clears up quite a bit for me and I’m a bit surprised with myself it wasn’t obvious sooner. I think I’m just fascinated by societal norms about gender presentation and how it evolves over time. What you explained makes total sense to me.
Oh absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people see us and get a little stuck on the gender presentation bit. Hell, I did as a teenager.
In fact, for a long time (and still in some places) in order to medically transition you had to do something called “real life experience”, which was living as your preferred gender for however long the therapist wanted. Now theoretically that could be a frustrating roadblock that has notmal issues, but basically be come out, change your name, use your pronouns, etc. However this also caused problems of essentially forcing overcompliance to gendered expectations. In college a friend of mine was told by a therapist that she wouldn’t get approval to start hormones if she didn’t start wearing makeup and dresses to her sessions. It used to be a joke in trans communities that we’d basically ham it up for doctors then go home and put on jeans and a t-shirt like everyone else wears.
It’s a bit outdated but the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano deals with quite a bit around transness and feminism.
It’s because we are social creatures who are not entirely in control of our schemas, or conceptualisations. We can’t just decide to have logical opinions and have it work instantly. There’s always a difficulty, and the difficulty scales with personal relevance and importance. When we aren’t in control, society decides how we define things like “man” and “woman”. And the internal sense demands that we be able to categorise ourselves as the preferred gender, to the standards of not just our ego but also our irrational id.
This article may have some direct relevance to you: https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/so-you-found-out-youre-agender-because-you-don-t-understand-trans-people-886fdee6f178
This is an interesting article but it’s a little superficial. I wish it addressed where that internal gender originates from. It’s something I’ve been trying to understand. We know gender dysphoria is real and transgender is something that needs to be addressed through presentation (I hope I’m saying this right). But doesn’t that presentation ultimately conform to arbitrary societal norms on gender presentation?
Kinda? I dress feminine because it makes me feel attractive and it’s my style. But the dysphoria took hormones and bottom surgery to deal with. If I’m a woman in a suit, I don’t feel dysphoric at all unless people are misgendering me, meanwhile before transitioning I attempted crossdressing and I swear I never felt more dysphoric in my life than then. But also other people have different experiences.
Thank you for sharing your experience. This clears up quite a bit for me and I’m a bit surprised with myself it wasn’t obvious sooner. I think I’m just fascinated by societal norms about gender presentation and how it evolves over time. What you explained makes total sense to me.
Thank you!
Oh absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people see us and get a little stuck on the gender presentation bit. Hell, I did as a teenager.
In fact, for a long time (and still in some places) in order to medically transition you had to do something called “real life experience”, which was living as your preferred gender for however long the therapist wanted. Now theoretically that could be a frustrating roadblock that has notmal issues, but basically be come out, change your name, use your pronouns, etc. However this also caused problems of essentially forcing overcompliance to gendered expectations. In college a friend of mine was told by a therapist that she wouldn’t get approval to start hormones if she didn’t start wearing makeup and dresses to her sessions. It used to be a joke in trans communities that we’d basically ham it up for doctors then go home and put on jeans and a t-shirt like everyone else wears.
It’s a bit outdated but the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano deals with quite a bit around transness and feminism.
It’s because we are social creatures who are not entirely in control of our schemas, or conceptualisations. We can’t just decide to have logical opinions and have it work instantly. There’s always a difficulty, and the difficulty scales with personal relevance and importance. When we aren’t in control, society decides how we define things like “man” and “woman”. And the internal sense demands that we be able to categorise ourselves as the preferred gender, to the standards of not just our ego but also our irrational id.
Thanks for this