Random question...

[conuly]

While I know this isn't the same as transgender-ism (transsexualism? transsomethingism?), it's certainly close enough for this question to pop into my mind.

In many societies, the gender roles and images are different from what they are here. For example, I remember reading in Jenn's anthro book that... some random society has the men characterized as being emotional, and the women as practical. Others have men devoted to makeup, while women disdain it, and so on. If you're somebody who in this society is placed in the wrong gender roles, would you still be transgendered if you had been born in a society where, say, the roles were very much reversed?

Yes, my terminology kinda sucks. Sorry. Feel free to correct.

And yes, I'm aware that this is all speculative, since there's no way for any of us to turn back the clock and try it.

Comments

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

I can see where you're coming from, but there just isn't any place like that now. (the whole men/women gender role flip place)

It would be a neat place to study though.

And Yes, I think that a misgendered (?) person in one society will be so in the next. I mean, it's perfectly possible to be a lesbian woman born a man. (This is important somewhere here..) Being misgendered, from what I know directly form a friend, has more to do with the self that other people.

You have these hormones, and these bits that don't fit, and you act in ways that are wrong to you, because of the hormones (this person I know is a guy -> girl one). The body one is in is wrong, not the culture around oneself.

[conuly]

I can see where you're coming from, but there just isn't any place like that now. (the whole men/women gender role flip place)

There's no place where they're completely flipped, no, but there are places where certain aspects are flipped. If enough of those aspects were flipped (or if just the ones that mattered to you were flipped), it might as well be all of them.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

true.

maan, gender is so complicated. I say we call everyone by the pronouns they want and cover the whole genderflipping process under insurance. and stuff.

[conuly]

Actually, I'm trying to work out a conlang where pronouns are based on relative age.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have seen a man dressed as a woman and a man wearing a dress. They were two totally separate things. And the motivations behind them are often different. I think some of them would be people who have a preference for the actions and some would be people who have a preference for the identity. As is the case now. We just tend to lump them together because most people don't care about subtle distinctions.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

huh.

never been good at that conlang stuff. I'm better at making the culture around stuff.

Still working on this pair of them; one is kinda germanic and plainsy, while the other one is somewhat like feudal Japan crossed with old-skool-,before-we-got-there Hawaii.

Mostly because I like those culures, but hey, they look nice so far.

[rho]

I used to know someone in exactly that situation: born intersex, had surgery shortly after birth to masculinise the genitals, wasn't informed of this by parents, had sex reasignment surgery in her early twenties over to female genitalia. And while it's true that she was a bit of an ass, it still pisses me off that people do that sort of thing to kids on a regular basis.

One of the arguments that tends to get used a lot is the claim that it's for the child's own good, as they'd get teased if they were different, and had genitalia that weren't concretely either male or female. Well yes. But in my experience kids will always find something to pick on other kids for. And if we're trying to get the little bastards to embrace diversity then trying to sweep all the people who actually are differnt under the carpet and pretend that they don't exist really doesn't seem the best way to go about it. Make people have to come into contact with the minorities, and they realise that hey, they're just people too, like everyone else, and that their gentials/the colour of their skin/the fifth letter of their surname really doesn't have a whole lto to do with anything. Yes, I know that abuse and discrimination would happen, but that's the only real way to fight it.

That's one of the reasons why I try never to pretend to be other than I am. That's why things like pride movements exist. When I was born, I had a penis and an M on a little bit of paper. I've since changed my name, have an F on a bit of paper, but still have a penis. And in general, I'm at least somewhat ambiguously gendered and I'm happy that way. I tend to drift about over the gender spectrum, with my identity shifting between "pretty much in the middle really" and "more female than male" and all over the shop.

When it comes down to it though, I tend to think that most of the baggage associated with gender is a load of crap. There clearly is some sort of inate quality to it, although I've never been able to put my finger on what it is, or hear a definition that satisfies me, but there's a whole lot more, particularly with gender roles that makes no sense. There are a bunch of character traits, and statistically some of them may be more common amongst people with penises, and some more common amongst people with vaginas. But that's all that it is. Statistics. Probabilities. And using probabilities to make predictions about a single event -- in this case an individual person -- is generally fairly useless.

A person is a person is a person. And an individual is just that: individual. I think that regardless of what set of bits between my legs I was born with, and regardless of what society I was born into, I still would have had gender issues, because I just don't buy into the whole system.

That said though, I also have body image issues, which are rather more difficult to explain. It can be an inate feeling, verging on an inate knowlege, that something just isn't right. "Hold on a second, my body isn't meant to be like this; the fat is meant to be distributed like that". It reminds me somewhat of the descriptions I've read of phantom limbs amongst amputees. It's the feeling that osmething isn't right, without the ability to explain why, and it's much more prevalent when my body is tending more towards the masculine (my hormones, typically, have been a complete up and down mess, due to various reasons which I don't feel like going into just now).

I suspect that in many, if not all, transsexuals, and probably also in those intersexed people who follow similar paths, there will be a combination of the two factors. The inate "knowing that something isn't wuite right" factor, and the more conscious disilusionment with the societally prescribed gender role.

[rho]

And gosh, that got long. Sorry about that.

my take

[fascinoma.livejournal.com]

Course it's possible for these people to be the opposite gender from which they were born, regardless of cultural customs where they're from. The transgenderism itself is what makes them desire to do things that the culture says belong to the other gender.

[conuly]

Do you realize you're the fourth person on my Friends list to tell me you're trans... whatever? Even considering the number of Friends I have who comment in my journal, that's more than I expected.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

The only intersexed person I've ever known (http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/notice.htm) was someone who didn't have to deal with the ambiguous genitalia thing (having none of either kind), but who did have to deal with being assigned female at birth and later people trying to assign xem to male when xe said xe wasn't female. Xe was fairly steadfast in xyr assertion that xe was neither, which apparently has been controversial even in the intersex community. (But makes a good deal of sense to me.)

[rho]

I don't know about the intersex community, but I do know that a scarily large proportion of the transsexual community is scarily narrow minded, discriminatory, misogynistic, misandric, conformist and so on. This would be one of the reasons why I have pretty much nothing to do with them these days. I'd probably go with being neither gender if I could do, but it's generally far too much effort to try to explain to people, so I mostly don't bother. I do list genderfree</a as one of my LJ interests though.

[rho]

Blasted trannies. The little sods get everywhere. :)

[conuly]

*laughs*

Yeah, but I love you all. *huggles*

Though occasionally the strangely skewed population that is my friends list startles me. It's not normal (and normal here means normal/typical, not good, better, or any of the other stupid ideas people attach to it). That might, however, be why I love youse all so much.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I say we call everyone by the pronouns they want

Considering that I randomly forget what gendered pronoun to use _now_, that would rapidly confuse me, really badly.

Hey, I wonder if that would be the kind of thing one would have to ask along with one's name? And I wonder if I would remember any more easily than I remember names?

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*wanders in* *strikes out 'transsexual'*

I note that a scarily large proportion of every single community I've been involved with has a tendancy toward such things. I don't know why.

I think it's part of why I tend to not want to belong to groups.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

I ask when I'm using AIM, so as to not insult.

Well, I forget names chronically too, but I've been getting better.

Now, if only there was a way to ask that nicely...

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

I can see where you're coming from, but there just isn't any place like that now. (the whole men/women gender role flip place)

It would be a neat place to study though.

And Yes, I think that a misgendered (?) person in one society will be so in the next. I mean, it's perfectly possible to be a lesbian woman born a man. (This is important somewhere here..) Being misgendered, from what I know directly form a friend, has more to do with the self that other people.

You have these hormones, and these bits that don't fit, and you act in ways that are wrong to you, because of the hormones (this person I know is a guy -> girl one). The body one is in is wrong, not the culture around oneself.

[conuly]

I can see where you're coming from, but there just isn't any place like that now. (the whole men/women gender role flip place)

There's no place where they're completely flipped, no, but there are places where certain aspects are flipped. If enough of those aspects were flipped (or if just the ones that mattered to you were flipped), it might as well be all of them.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

true.

maan, gender is so complicated. I say we call everyone by the pronouns they want and cover the whole genderflipping process under insurance. and stuff.

[conuly]

Actually, I'm trying to work out a conlang where pronouns are based on relative age.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have seen a man dressed as a woman and a man wearing a dress. They were two totally separate things. And the motivations behind them are often different. I think some of them would be people who have a preference for the actions and some would be people who have a preference for the identity. As is the case now. We just tend to lump them together because most people don't care about subtle distinctions.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

huh.

never been good at that conlang stuff. I'm better at making the culture around stuff.

Still working on this pair of them; one is kinda germanic and plainsy, while the other one is somewhat like feudal Japan crossed with old-skool-,before-we-got-there Hawaii.

Mostly because I like those culures, but hey, they look nice so far.

[rho]

I used to know someone in exactly that situation: born intersex, had surgery shortly after birth to masculinise the genitals, wasn't informed of this by parents, had sex reasignment surgery in her early twenties over to female genitalia. And while it's true that she was a bit of an ass, it still pisses me off that people do that sort of thing to kids on a regular basis.

One of the arguments that tends to get used a lot is the claim that it's for the child's own good, as they'd get teased if they were different, and had genitalia that weren't concretely either male or female. Well yes. But in my experience kids will always find something to pick on other kids for. And if we're trying to get the little bastards to embrace diversity then trying to sweep all the people who actually are differnt under the carpet and pretend that they don't exist really doesn't seem the best way to go about it. Make people have to come into contact with the minorities, and they realise that hey, they're just people too, like everyone else, and that their gentials/the colour of their skin/the fifth letter of their surname really doesn't have a whole lto to do with anything. Yes, I know that abuse and discrimination would happen, but that's the only real way to fight it.

That's one of the reasons why I try never to pretend to be other than I am. That's why things like pride movements exist. When I was born, I had a penis and an M on a little bit of paper. I've since changed my name, have an F on a bit of paper, but still have a penis. And in general, I'm at least somewhat ambiguously gendered and I'm happy that way. I tend to drift about over the gender spectrum, with my identity shifting between "pretty much in the middle really" and "more female than male" and all over the shop.

When it comes down to it though, I tend to think that most of the baggage associated with gender is a load of crap. There clearly is some sort of inate quality to it, although I've never been able to put my finger on what it is, or hear a definition that satisfies me, but there's a whole lot more, particularly with gender roles that makes no sense. There are a bunch of character traits, and statistically some of them may be more common amongst people with penises, and some more common amongst people with vaginas. But that's all that it is. Statistics. Probabilities. And using probabilities to make predictions about a single event -- in this case an individual person -- is generally fairly useless.

A person is a person is a person. And an individual is just that: individual. I think that regardless of what set of bits between my legs I was born with, and regardless of what society I was born into, I still would have had gender issues, because I just don't buy into the whole system.

That said though, I also have body image issues, which are rather more difficult to explain. It can be an inate feeling, verging on an inate knowlege, that something just isn't right. "Hold on a second, my body isn't meant to be like this; the fat is meant to be distributed like that". It reminds me somewhat of the descriptions I've read of phantom limbs amongst amputees. It's the feeling that osmething isn't right, without the ability to explain why, and it's much more prevalent when my body is tending more towards the masculine (my hormones, typically, have been a complete up and down mess, due to various reasons which I don't feel like going into just now).

I suspect that in many, if not all, transsexuals, and probably also in those intersexed people who follow similar paths, there will be a combination of the two factors. The inate "knowing that something isn't wuite right" factor, and the more conscious disilusionment with the societally prescribed gender role.

[rho]

And gosh, that got long. Sorry about that.

my take

[fascinoma.livejournal.com]

Course it's possible for these people to be the opposite gender from which they were born, regardless of cultural customs where they're from. The transgenderism itself is what makes them desire to do things that the culture says belong to the other gender.

[conuly]

Do you realize you're the fourth person on my Friends list to tell me you're trans... whatever? Even considering the number of Friends I have who comment in my journal, that's more than I expected.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

The only intersexed person I've ever known (http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/notice.htm) was someone who didn't have to deal with the ambiguous genitalia thing (having none of either kind), but who did have to deal with being assigned female at birth and later people trying to assign xem to male when xe said xe wasn't female. Xe was fairly steadfast in xyr assertion that xe was neither, which apparently has been controversial even in the intersex community. (But makes a good deal of sense to me.)

[rho]

I don't know about the intersex community, but I do know that a scarily large proportion of the transsexual community is scarily narrow minded, discriminatory, misogynistic, misandric, conformist and so on. This would be one of the reasons why I have pretty much nothing to do with them these days. I'd probably go with being neither gender if I could do, but it's generally far too much effort to try to explain to people, so I mostly don't bother. I do list genderfree</a as one of my LJ interests though.

[rho]

Blasted trannies. The little sods get everywhere. :)

[conuly]

*laughs*

Yeah, but I love you all. *huggles*

Though occasionally the strangely skewed population that is my friends list startles me. It's not normal (and normal here means normal/typical, not good, better, or any of the other stupid ideas people attach to it). That might, however, be why I love youse all so much.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I say we call everyone by the pronouns they want

Considering that I randomly forget what gendered pronoun to use _now_, that would rapidly confuse me, really badly.

Hey, I wonder if that would be the kind of thing one would have to ask along with one's name? And I wonder if I would remember any more easily than I remember names?

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*wanders in* *strikes out 'transsexual'*

I note that a scarily large proportion of every single community I've been involved with has a tendancy toward such things. I don't know why.

I think it's part of why I tend to not want to belong to groups.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

I ask when I'm using AIM, so as to not insult.

Well, I forget names chronically too, but I've been getting better.

Now, if only there was a way to ask that nicely...