rae
6mo ago
Some trans men don’t get dysphoric when it comes to pregnancy, or just want a biological child badly enough that they go through it anyway. Medical professionals should be aware of the fact that a person that looks like a man could be pregnant, as it’s a medical reality.
With regards to the emoji, current standard practice is to have a non-gendered, female and male version for every emoji. Given that pregnant trans men and non-binary people exist, why not be inclusive follow the standard? Although they did deviate from the usual, which is to make the default emoji non-gendered and have the gender be a modifier, for backward compatibility reasons.
rae
6mo ago
Tbh that sounds like a cool hook for a sci-fi dystopia story where the population is addicted to AR glasses that personalise reality to their own wants and desires. Basically one step below living in the Matrix.
I’m the opposite, I don’t understand why anyone would find feminine behaviour attractive. Why wouldn’t you much rather have a partner that’s strong, stoic, driven, ambitious, practical, able to provide for both themselves or for you, takes the lead, etc? Versus one that’s submissive, meek, relies on you for emotional and physical reassurance, is more anxious and stressed out, doesn’t have grand ambitions beyond their family, is more interested in people than concepts, and forces the relationship into artificially divided roles based on gender?
Now sure I’m not a straight guy so it’s hard for me to empathise, but I honestly can’t understand why men fall in love with feminine women when I hear them complain so much about how they can’t understand their partner, how they don’t share interests, how they’re [insert stereotype of women here], how they don’t initiate sex, etc. Why not go for an equal life partner who shares your drive, focus and interests, and is just as sexually motivated as you instead?
rae
4mo ago
That picture shows Buck next to Laverne Cox who’s quite tall and wearing heels, he’s actually the average height for a cis man in many countries at around 5’9. I personally wouldn’t use Buck Angel as the go-to trans man because he’s turned into a proto-TERF himself strangely enough, and far more physically impressive trans men absolutely exist, see Mitch Harrison who can stand next to the Rock and is 6’3 and is quite muscular.
How are you supposed to enforce sex-segregated bathrooms anyhow? Should you pepper spray anyone who you think doesn’t belong, like what happened to this tall biological female thinking they were in the presence of a biological male?
The sources I’ve looked up show no link between gender inclusive bathroom policies and crime rates, but if you have any that contradict that, feel free to share.
rae
6mo ago
Yes, though I was under the impression that cancer treatments are extremely potent, and dangerous, and are only prescribed when you actually have cancer, rather than given out like candy as a prophylactic?
There are many kinds of medications used as cancer treatment. Chemotherapy would probably fit the description of extremely potent and dangerous, and you don’t want to go on it unless you have cancer.
Meanwhile bicalutamide is a popular cancer treatment for malignant prostate cancer, but is also given out to cis women with androgen-dependent conditions like acne, hirsutism, hair loss; it’s also given to men who have overly long erections. It has very few side effects except rare liver interactions (so you have to get frequent blood tests).
Either "some form" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, or this is plain unlikely to be true? Even WPATH kept the 18+ age limit for female bottom surgery, even as they abolished limits for every other procedure.
I was talking about hysterectomy, which many cis women get for cancer prevention (or treatment). Removing the uterus and ovaries will obviously go a long way in preventing uterine and ovarian cancer. The 18+ limit seems sensible to me in any case.
Thanks!! The only thing I’d disagree with is that transition isn’t necessarily an irreversible all-or-nothing process. You can start by changing your presentation to something more feminine or masculine, transition socially, and even HRT is a very gradual process that leaves you with multiple months to decide and for MtF patients there’s one irreversible change and that’s breast growth, but they’ll rarely grow big enough that they would require double incision mastectomy should you detransition. FtM patients will get voice deepening, male pattern baldness, facial hair growth (although laser hair removal isn’t a big deal), and bottom growth, but it’s much easier for FtMs to socially transition than MtFs without hormones.
What made the gender dysphoria go away for you if I may ask? I was able to repress it for a while after adolescence, but it came back with a vengeance once the infamous “twink death” hit.
rae
6mo ago
For MtF patients, estrogen and anti androgens makes you risk of prostate and testicular cancer extremely low (did you know the medications trans women take for HRT are the exact same as those for people with prostate and testicular cancer?). Also, castration in animals tend to increase lifespan - Korean eunuchs lived an average of 14-19 years longer than other male aristocrats, and castrated mental asylum patients in the mid-20th century would live longer the earlier they were castrated.
Most likely, it would mean this effect is reversed for FtMs, unfortunately. But top surgery at least drastically reduced the risk of breast cancer, and some form of bottom surgery would do the same for various cancers associated with the female reproductive anatomy.
rae
6mo ago
I don’t understand or see the point of neo-pronouns. If anything I’d prefer if there were no gendered pronouns at all in English, like in Hungarian or Turkish.
Non-binary can have multiple meanings. It could mean having dysphoria, but not enough to make you want to fully transition - plenty of butch lesbians are like that. It could mean preferring an androgynous presentation and not being comfortable with being/looking completely male or female. Some straight people also adopt the label to be trendy.
rae
6mo ago
How so? The changes from hormones and surgery are real, felt by your body, and perceived by others, instead of being an audiovisual illusion that only you can see. The parallel would be like having some sort of moderately advanced but not perfect prosthetic arm, versus superimposing a CGI limb that no-one else sees, and that you can't use for anything since it's just pixels on a screen.
Do note that I have a somewhat transmedicalist point of view, which is different from the mainstream leftist view or what conservatives call "gender ideology".
rae
11mo ago
I personally am for giving minors access to gender affirming healthcare if they have gender dysphoria, and I’d say you pass the ideological Turing test as I’m pretty much in agreement with those points. Can I ask why you’re against it?
rae
11mo ago
I like women, real women, that sounds somehow prejudiced or old fashioned but if you believe sex is real then it actually means something.
Sex alone doesn’t govern your attraction. You’re not attracted to ovary ducts or XX chromosomes, you’re attracted to the female phenotype. Otherwise you’d be attracted to the very good looking trans men I linked earlier.
I viscerally would not want to have sex with a man, and especially a man pretending to be a woman. This is just me and is no reflection on the other person.
Getting called a man, especially a “man pretending to be a woman”, is distressing for trans women. That is why many attempt to pass. It’s also a way to avoid the negative attention that being a visibly trans person can bring - many people are hostile towards trans women, but if they see you as a regular woman, you’ll be safer.
Personally, I’m hoping that one day we have the technology to have good enough sex changes that trans women are indistinguishable from cis women including in terms of reproductive capabilities. At that point, would you still say they are men pretending to be women, or would you agree that they are men who have turned into women?
But the body to me is not just a sack of meat, it is the primary link to reality and a failure to accept it seems to me like a failure to truly accept oneself. That probably sounds judgemental but it's how I orient to life.
Why should I accept it when I can change it? The option is literally there, it’s not perfect but it made a noticeable improvement in my life.
If anything, accepting being trans is what took the most courage. I tried to deny it for years, and tried to be something I wasn’t.
Be gay, be a feminine man, be gender non-conforming but why change your body drastically with all the attendant risks,
Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. I couldn’t stand my body before I transitioned, now I can finally stand to look at myself in the mirror. Life is short, and the option not to have a body I despise is literally right there. Why shouldn’t I take it? What’s the upside of being miserable?
Now, I can have real relationships, I can enjoy sex, I can be a lot more intimately fulfilled than I used to be. I’m grateful for all the physical changes I am experiencing, a marked difference from how I dreaded puberty (I may not know what it’s like to be a woman, but I certainly know what it’s like to become more of a man by going through male puberty and male aging, and that was an awful experience).
Some trans people would argue that such a “cure” would fundamentally change who they are as a person, as opposed to say, plopping the same brain in a new body of the opposite sex. It would be akin to having a pill to cure homosexuality when you could instead just accept people for who they are.
I’m somewhat ambivalent about it because going from one sex hormone to the other also changes who you are as a person (I’ve experienced this as someone who went on HRT), and there’s reports of dysphoric biological female teenagers going on testosterone blockers and that significantly reducing their dysphoria to the point they no longer need to transition.
But, given the two options, I would probably go with the perfect transition, because it’s a lot more interesting.
What kind of medical treatment has other people than the patient as targets?
Any cosmetic surgery to correct a deformed but otherwise functional appearance?
You seem to believe PCOS to be a symptom of gender dysphoria while it could very well be that gender dysphoria is a symptom of PCOS, or a symptom of another underlying cause causing both dysphoria and PCOS.
I only said trans people often have those conditions, I didn't say anything about the causal chain. I agree that gender dysphoria could be a symptom of PCOS or another disorder. How else would treating the patient with antiandrogens work? If you read the post, the FtM patients had elevated testosterone levels, took medication to reduce those levels, and the gender dysphoria went away.
Source? They gave placebo hormones to transists and they compared results to transists with the real deal?
That's hard to do since hormones have obvious physical changes and you could tell easily you're in the placebo group. This is unfortunately only self reports from people that transition medically, but not socially (including some of the famous "detransitioners" on conservative media - a few said they detransitioned but admitted to still being on HRT).
It is possible to learn how to break away from negative thought patterns (for example: this part of my body is male and I need to see a surgeon, instead of: I love how male this part of my body is!)
It seems to me that you are not your gender dysphoria. If you are a person who is bad at math, then you can study hard and get a to a certain skill level where you can be confident solving some math problems.
It appears to me that if you are a person who is bad at seeing herself in her birth sex, then this is something they can practice and grow more confident in, instead of lobbing off body parts and playing with disguises for their whole life.
I tried this, I tried seeing a therapist, I tried living as a gay male. I tried everything I could not to transition because I disagreed with the leftist trans movement, for many many years. Yet a few months after I started HRT, my quality of life hugely improved, and I finally had a decent dating life. If anything, refusing to accept that I was trans and telling people I was a gay male - that was the lie.
You're telling me I should stop HRT and go back to that state of suffering - what for? I already did break away from a huge amount of the negative thought patterns, compared to before, and I have no desire to go back.
What would that even look like? How would you know what the opposite sex proprioception feels like? Even if you took cross-sex hormones and then feel that your skin feels different, how would you know that this is the same feeling that somebody of the other sex feels?
Sexual secondary characteristics are a thing - trans women have differently distributed body fat, develop breasts, softer skin (others have confirmed this), trans men get hairier, develop deeper voices, larger muscles and grow a small sort-of micropenis. Spatial and verbal abilities also change following HRT (this is where the infamous brain scan study of transwomen comes from). Proprioception in terms of those characteristics is real - I don't care that this is the same feeling that someone of the other sex has or not, it's different from the feeling I had before and externally matches the opposite sex, and that's good enough for me.
I don't see in which version of 'gender-affirming therapy' you would not be aware that you had your bones shaved etc.
The point is that other people see it too. A more interesting point would be, what if everyone wore these glasses and could alter how others saw them? Cosmetic surgery would be pointless in those circumstances, that I agree with.
They could be surgically-implanted as well.
The glasses wouldn't change how others treated me beyond the superficial - which pronouns and intonations absolutely are.
rae
6mo ago
"Never" is a strong word when it comes to technological progress, uterus transplants exist and egg cells could be made from stem cells.
How is my current existence a lie? I'm very aware that I'm not biologically female, but my male characteristics are causing me pain, and I can correct them and have a superior quality of life. After transitioning I became functional both romantically and sexually, and much less prone to anxiety, depression, and despairing over my physical appearance. People close to me know I'm trans, and I don't particularly care to correct strangers about the pronouns they use with me.
Body dysmorphia is a tragic thing and often co-morbid with gender dysphoria. But you can absolutely reach the point where you pass in your daily life to average people, and then reach diminishing returns.
rae
6mo ago
I’m not sure there’s a difference between how the emotions from how interpret the experience vs. the experience itself? Mental issues are by definition intrinsic. Not all soldiers develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event - there seems to be many variables influencing its development, such as age, pre existing conditions, support network, even genes (I’m reading that PTSD is 30-40% heritable). And there’s depressingly large amounts of women that have PTSD from sexual assaults and physical abuse - while only a small minority of men become soldiers in the west.
I’m also not sure what you mean by women’s mental issues being more intrinsic? Anxiety, depression, addiction and abusive relationships would be common reasons the average westerner would go to therapy, and I don’t see how there’s a difference in “cause” there when it comes to gender?
rae
10mo ago
I think a lot more men would like those activities if it weren’t for social stigma. Fashion for men was historically huge in the West and is very prevalent in some countries still, make-up is getting more and more popular for men in Korea, and lots of men are addicted to shopping, just for “male-coded” things like video games or gear for their hobbies. And I know a lot of masculine gym bros who suddenly got obsessed with taking selfies the moment their physique became visible.
rae
11mo ago
How do you demonstrate that you suffer from gender dysphoria though? I guess it could be accessible to anyone who has transitioned for more than X time. But what’s the real point of having your gender marked on your driver’s license or birth certificate? On the driver’s license it should be obvious from the picture, and if it’s not, what is adding F/M going to do?
Mostly, I’m generally against dividing and discriminating anything by sex - it’s just as discriminatory as dividing by race or other physical characteristics, although I am aware of the impractical reality of removing some gender based discrimination (e.g. prisons). To me, any solution is a compromise until we reach a transhuman utopia where bodies can be changed at will and sex stops mattering. Probably won’t happen in my life time, but advances can still be made in that direction.
rae
11mo ago
They’re not those things because they’re women, they’re those things because they’re overly feminine. I’ve met gay men, trans women, even straight men who also fall into those stereotypes, and women who don’t. The point is why you’d want a more masculine partner vs. a feminine one regardless of sex.
rae
11mo ago
Yes.
For men who are attracted to femininity, wouldn’t submissiveness, being family-oriented, making the man feel strong by needing his protection, gender roles etc. be the point, not shortcomings?
Chasers aren’t gay, they’re GAMP (gynandromorphile), meaning they’re attracted to the combination of female and male traits, generally a standard female body + male genitalia. Genital arousal studies have been made on this.
Also this reflects my experience, the type of man I attract as a trans woman is different from the type of man I attracted as a gay man. The former type is genuinely attracted to femininity - they love when I wear make-up, lingerie, or otherwise act feminine, whereas gay men don’t care about that one bit and are often actively turned off.
I’m fine dating bisexual men so I don’t care too much, unlike some trans women who are absolutely obsessed with getting straight men to validate their femininity. But I couldn’t date a gay man.
rae
11mo ago
What exactly is the harm in a trans woman passing as a woman? I agree that you should disclose to your romantic partner and medical professional, but otherwise, why do you owe work colleagues, acquaintances, random service workers on the streets the need to know your biological sex?
But out of curiosity, why would you feel violated if you were attracted to a woman and found out she was trans? By a romantic sense, are you talking about just going on a date, or having sex? In either case, how exactly were you harmed? You were attracted to her, had a presumably enjoyable experience (assuming she is post-op)… so what pushes you towards wanting to inflict violence on her?
I personally would always disclose to a romantic or sexual partner, and would keep doing so even if I was stealth and post-op, both out of principle and desire for my own safety. But I still don’t see how you are harmed in this interaction. There’s certainly straight men out there who have no problem having sex with trans women and don’t let it impact their sexuality, and some who aren’t into it at all but just politely decline and move on.
rae
11mo ago
Men are also more likely to be abandoned to their fate if they are marginal (see the homelessness rates) and I don't see why I'd give men "privilege" for the ability to cooperate with each other unless I also gave them a malus for being more likely to violently assault one another and attribute the absence of that amongst women to "female privilege".
“Privilege” is a loaded word and I personally don’t like it.
My point is that maleness has intrinsic advantages. So does femaleness. Those advantages may be more or less relevant to you, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any drawbacks; an advantage in one area does not necessarily nullify a disadvantage in another.
Historically, men’s ability to co-operate in large hierarchical social structures was hugely beneficial, and the aggression was harnessed towards the “enemy”. That competitive streak can still be an advantage today.
In fact, they seem to do the opposite: men's heightened risk of assault and violence and longer prison sentences are the result of "toxic masculinity" (with the not-subtle implication that it is men's fault and issue, unlike problems that impact women) and women are privileged for avoiding it.
Men are generally more aggressive due to testosterone and a culture that perpetuates and encourages male aggression. Women tend to be hyper vigilant about the risks of being assaulted while men are the opposite - I had a lot of guys surprised at how I’m always paranoid walking alone at night or being suspicious of male strangers.
What if I, as a man, want to be a successful kindergarten teacher? A stay-at-home dad?
Women would be more likely to be successful at those, yes. Pros and cons.
And what about all of the benefits that can come from leveraging sexuality? Or just the general "women are wonderful" effect?
As I said, double edged sword. Not everyone is comfortable with leveraging their sexuality and there are risks; some men will blacklist you because you didn’t sleep with them, and sleeping your way to the top is a reputation hazard. Wouldn’t you rather be valued for your skills and abilities rather than your success be based on how much men want to have sex with you? The latter is quite dehumanising.
rae
11mo ago
I think the mistake is viewing categories as “real” things that exist outside of your mind. Categories aren’t “real”, they’re a fuzzy concept that humans invented. This doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless; they’re an abstraction through which to compress tons of information about a subject, allowing you to make decisions more effectively. Every category is like this, from species to planets to sandwiches to chairs.
So if you ask is “X a disease”, you should be aware that disease isn’t a thing that objectively exists outside of human interpretation. Most cases are clearcut so this doesn’t matter, but occasionally you do have ambiguities, like sickle cell traits which offer resistance against malaria at the cost of other health complications - it’s a disease in the western world, but in some African countries it can literally save your life.
I’m a bisexual trans woman so I got to experience some manner of both, but I do agree that the effect is greatly confounded by deeper issues like dysphoria.
My main experience would be that sex with men is a lot more variable, in that the bad is much worse but the good is a lot better, and the quality depends quite a lot on your partner, while with women it’s generally fairly average and depends more on your own state than the other person. So casual sex would be better for most men, but relationship sex would be better for women with the right partner.
The peak physiological pleasure is definitely greater when you’re a woman though, multiple full-body orgasms aren’t really a thing for men (trans men generally keep the ability to have multiple if they had it before, but they become otherwise closer to the male ones: brief and concentrated in the genitals). I certainly don’t miss the male sexual experience at all and see it as the equivalent of sexual fast food vs. going to a proper restaurant.
More options
Context Copy link