Choosing who you are

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nobody chooses who they are, that's the whole point of identity, and this applies whether you're trans, cis, genderfluid, agender or bigender.

That's the point we seem to have trouble getting across to the OP.  He's convinced that people 'choose' to be male or female, so he reinforces that wrongness be demanding that he be allowed to 'choose' to be Native American.

Boru

[SenseMaker007]

Yes. It's easy to make an unsound analogy when you start from an unsound premise.

[WinterHold]

If a person is born with a functional penis and testicles - then decides later in life that they are actually female - and surgically alters their body to appear that way - are they indeed female?

I sometimes wonder whether all the chemicals we use are messing with our hormones.  I can understand people being homosexual, but have a difficulty understanding trans people.

This is a very weird issue.

Personally; I think and believe it is not normal at all.
Having mental tendency to shift your gender into the opposite without any reason aside from "erotica and sex" is similar to somebody wanting to change their skin color; or somebody wanting to grow a third arm.

A man is not a woman -biology proves it-. A black person is not white -innate capacity proves it-. Chinese people are shorter than many -height measurements prove it-. And of course; women are not men -biology again confirms it-. A man is more than his balls; a woman is more than her vagina.

When it shows itself in nature; it's a disorder though:

http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/u...rmphdt.htm

Again; this is my personal opinion and how I see it.. If I was born this way; I would've considered it a genetic mutation that goes against what the normal population of humans go through.

[I_am_not_mafia]

A man is not a woman -biology proves it-. A black person is not white -innate capacity proves it-.

Well we can tell for a start that you're not arguing anything backed up by science.

[Shell B]

Without any reason aside from erotica and sex? Fucking hell. You have definitely never spoke to someone who is transgender, which really should be the very minimal standard for forming an opinion on the subject.

[no one]

What's normal for me, is all that matters. If don't like it, you can fuck off!

[Anomalocaris]

Nobody chooses who they are, that's the whole point of identity, and this applies whether you're trans, cis, genderfluid, agender or bigender.

I don't think that is either demonstrably true, or is likely to be true.   There is undoubtedly a range of flexibility to each aspect of identity that varies from person to person.   A powerful sense of an inborn leaning in a aspect of personal identity in one individual may be matched by near total malleability of the same aspect of identity in another.

It is also all together unclear how much of even the most powerful sense of apparently inborn identity is truly inborn, or merely developed through a combination of early and highly influential environmental circumstances.

It is also all together unclear just how unmalleable even the most powerful and seeming set sense of inborn identity really is unmalleable.

One should not assert a convenient supposition or preferred generalization as overarching fact merely because one believes having such a supposition or generalization taken to be facts would support an apparently good policy, or resort to thinking whatever appears to support an a priori determined "good cause" is as good as fact.  


Doing so lends (hopefully) only short term support for the apparently sound policy, but acts both to open up the policy to legitimate attack, and degrade the esteem held of facture rigor and decrease the comparative disrespectability of those who does the same for odious reasons.

[Shell B]

I think it's reasonable to assume that SenseMaker meant that nobody chooses obviously inborn traits, such as skin color, sexuality, gender, arm length, etc. The statement does just fine for a casual conversation. It only doesn't hold up when you start thinking about things people can choose to be, which are not typically to what people refer when they say that's what they "are." It's common enough vernacular that it can be understood to mean inheritable/inborn traits by most people in light conversation.

[SenseMaker007]

A powerful sense of an inborn leaning in a aspect of personal identity in one individual may be matched by near total malleability of the same aspect of identity in another.

But having a more malleable identity is just another aspect to identity. Some people have that more than others (and some people are more resistant to change than others). That still goes in favor of the point that we are who we are and ultimately we can't change it. Everything flows from our fundamental nature.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nobody chooses who they are, that's the whole point of identity, and this applies whether you're trans, cis, genderfluid, agender or bigender.

It's impossible to make a conscious decision to change who you are?