[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[bennyboy]

We're the stressor.  Though, this theory of stress turning a trans person into a child molesting bathroom rage monster might need some work.

I didn't say any of that now, did I?  I was talking about the intrinsic instability of a person facing an identity crisis.  But it's interesting that when I asked how you felt about a 300 lb, scary looking trans woman going into the bathroom with your daughter, you assumed I was talking about sexual molestation.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll just mention self awareness again, I guess? You're either stringing together random unrelated comments with individual dodginess...or you do think that they have some relationship to each other, and are instructive, in which case they represent a complex knot of unconfronted dodginess.

I've been there, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you (and many other people) find themselves there now. Maybe not about this particular issue...but the phenomena isn't limited to any particular issue.

[Jehanne]

It's a nonissue; when I am in a skirt, I use a single woman's restroom; other times I use the men's group or single, although, I do not pee standing up, unless I am in a hurry.

I don't sit down in a male urinal unless there is no other opportunity, that's disgusting . Peeing in a urinal, in a dress, does raise eyebrows (It did when I did it), but I'm just in there to pee and wash my hands (which takes all of 3 minutes) and frankly there not enough time to care about looky-loos, IMO.

I never pee in a skirt while standing up, although, women did just that for centuries on end.

[The Grand Nudger]

Right in the damned hallway, too.  No such thing as a bathroom. The explicitly sexualized separation of our biological necessities is a recent trend. These are the norms we're defending with bathroom purity laws, lol.

[bennyboy]

I'll just mention self awareness again, I guess?  You're either stringing together random unrelated comments with individual dodginess...or you do think that they have some relationship to each other, and are instructive, in which case they represent a complex knot of unconfronted dodginess.

I've been there, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you (and many other people) find themselves there now.  Maybe not about this particular issue...but the phenomena isn't limited to any particular issue.

I'm not pulling punches.  I think that gender dysphoria is related to anxiety, rage, depression, and a general psychological ill-being.  When you see a man in a dress, he may not be experiencing gender dysphoria, but you know that he's outside the normal psychological range in at least one area.  You could say the same thing with ANY display of atypical behaviors-- clenched fists, talking to oneself, or so on.  Maybe someone clenches his fists all the time and is a lovely human being in all other regards.

There are two reasons why people get that "creepy" feeling about people who behave outside the ordinary:
(1)  It's just superstitious nonsense, and they have to get over it.
(2)  The sense of creepiness is sometimes an indicator of danger, and the cost of ignoring it is potentially very high, evolutionarily speaking.

I'd say, on the whole, that the transition from first realization of dysphoria to its resolution by self-assignment of a new identity (with or without physical modifications) must be a very traumatic, and any expression of that trauma in facial expression is likely to make people uneasy.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think that you're pulling punches with your misapprehensions on the dangers of trans people or being trans..I'm certain that you're pulling punches on yourself.

If you were as critical of your own comments as you are with the very notion of being transgender, I think you might find yourself reaching an entirely different conclusion about transgender people and the nature of the relationship between normative constructs and psychological distress.

[tackattack]

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No I'm not trans, I've worn dresses and had bows in my hair at times in my life though.

So straight, sometimes cross-dresser?  Your profile pic looks pretty butch.  You aren't talking about a Halloween costume, I take it?

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No, for about 3 months straight (no pun intended) I pretty much only wore hammer pants or a tiered patchwork skirt and sandals with socks. I also had long hair and painted my fingernails when I wasn't biting them off.

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I'm not pulling punches.  I think that gender dysphoria is related to anxiety, rage, depression, and a general psychological ill-being.  When you see a man in a dress, he may not be experiencing gender dysphoria, but you know that he's outside the normal psychological range in at least one area.  You could say the same thing with ANY display of atypical behaviors-- clenched fists, talking to oneself, or so on.  Maybe someone clenches his fists all the time and is a lovely human being in all other regards.

There are two reasons why people get that "creepy" feeling about people who behave outside the ordinary:
(1)  It's just superstitious nonsense, and they have to get over it.
(2)  The sense of creepiness is sometimes an indicator of danger, and the cost of ignoring it is potentially very high, evolutionarily speaking.

I'd say, on the whole, that the transition from first realization of dysphoria to its resolution by self-assignment of a new identity (with or without physical modifications) must be a very traumatic, and any expression of that trauma in facial expression is likely to make people uneasy.

---

I think this is where I'm seeing a problem with your reasoning. I didn't wear a dress, or stop wearing a dress, based on my gender identity at all. I simply thought it would be utilitarian and a fun experiment and socially express my individualism and attention seeking aims. I stopped because of Bermuda shorts and then cargo pants/shorts became more utilitarian. I didn't see myself identified by what clothes I wore or even hold any importance on clothes outside of their weather value. I knew what a man was to me and I had a peepee, and I conformed to both of those.

You have gender expression, gender identity, and gonadal gender. Clothing only plays a part possibly in expression. You can't tell by what someone is wearing whether their gonadaly or internally gendered as; you can only make suppositions based on your definitions of "what is a man/woman" what they're expressing to you. You observe, voice, behavior, mannerisms, body structure, peer interactions, attire, etc. and form a supposition on what the object you're observing is presenting as their gender. The problem is that you're still making automatic instinctual observations of what someone's gender "is" to you, and ignoring that the name tag attached to the person says steve. I believe the counterargument surfacing is that you should see that person as an individual and as steve, and not give 2 shits about their expression, identity or gonads.

[Jehanne]

I'll just mention self awareness again, I guess?  You're either stringing together random unrelated comments with individual dodginess...or you do think that they have some relationship to each other, and are instructive, in which case they represent a complex knot of unconfronted dodginess.

I've been there, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you (and many other people) find themselves there now.  Maybe not about this particular issue...but the phenomena isn't limited to any particular issue.

I'm not pulling punches.  I think that gender dysphoria is related to anxiety, rage, depression, and a general psychological ill-being.  When you see a man in a dress, he may not be experiencing gender dysphoria, but you know that he's outside the normal psychological range in at least one area.  You could say the same thing with ANY display of atypical behaviors-- clenched fists, talking to oneself, or so on.  Maybe someone clenches his fists all the time and is a lovely human being in all other regards.

There are two reasons why people get that "creepy" feeling about people who behave outside the ordinary:
(1)  It's just superstitious nonsense, and they have to get over it.
(2)  The sense of creepiness is sometimes an indicator of danger, and the cost of ignoring it is potentially very high, evolutionarily speaking.

I'd say, on the whole, that the transition from first realization of dysphoria to its resolution by self-assignment of a new identity (with or without physical modifications) must be a very traumatic, and any expression of that trauma in facial expression is likely to make people uneasy.

I have never been happier and more at peace than I am now.

[The Grand Nudger]

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So straight, sometimes cross-dresser?  Your profile pic looks pretty butch.  You aren't talking about a Halloween costume, I take it?

---

No, for about 3 months straight (no pun intended) I pretty much only wore hammer pants 

.....was it hammer time?

[bennyboy]

I don't think that you're pulling punches with your misapprehensions on the dangers of trans people or being trans..I'm certain that you're pulling punches on yourself.

If you were as critical of your own comments as you are with the very notion of being transgender, I think you might find yourself reaching an entirely different conclusion about transgender people and the nature of the relationship between normative constructs and psychological distress.

"Normative constructs."

The fact is, that most people are normal, and some people aren't.  There's no construct involved.

Most people are clearly identifiable as male or female-- both by the sex or by their "gender."  They are, in fact, the norm, and they cover 99% of the population.  If you include sexual preference, then male or female heterosexuals still fill up over 90% of the spectrum.  Look at the Bell curve, and there they all are, going about their breeding lives.

As a social species, we are uncomfortable when we are abnormal in some way, and not only by gender.  We don't like to be at the tail ends of the Bell curve, where things get lonely and cold.  People who are very tall or short, fat or thin, who do not interact with others socially well, and so on-- these people are all outside the norm, and all feel very uncomfortable.

None of this is a construct-- it's intrinsic to the nature of our species.  What IS a construct is value judgments.  You'll note that at no point in any of this have I said that it is bad to be trans or anything else.  I've never said we should enforce that feeling of isolation by rejecting people's humanity.