I often see people arguing about gender identity, preferred pronouns, whatever, and getting into very heated arguments about it. These arguments ususally stem from someone saying something ignorant in response to someone saying they're trans*, or seeing a post where someone mentions trans people. But does it matter at all? I know that personally, I don't "identify" strongly with some sort of overarching "male-ness", I just view myself as who I am; why doesn't everyone just do this? Why does it matter which group you subscribe yourself to at all? Every other facet of who you are is ENTIRELY self determined/internal (how you dress, who you're sexually attracted to, etc), so why does "gender identity" matter whatsoever?
Is there a real reason for these debates/people getting extremely offended and/or being extremely offensive? Both sides of these arguments seem incredibly dumb to me.
It's easy to think it doesn't matter if you feel comfortable with your own sex.
But if you identify as a gender you're not biologically, it can be very distressing for you - many [url=http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/28/local/la-me-ln-suicide-attempts-alarming-transgender-20140127]attempt suicide[/url]. It's important to make sure people with this condition are not marginalised.
[QUOTE=Cabbage;45746221]It's easy to think it doesn't matter if you feel comfortable with your own sex.
But if you identify as a gender you're not biologically, it can be very distressing for you - many [url=http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/28/local/la-me-ln-suicide-attempts-alarming-transgender-20140127]attempt suicide[/url]. It's important to make sure people with this condition are not marginalised.[/QUOTE]
But the very core of their own argument is that gender is all psychological; therefore it has no bearing on physical attributes.
That aside, sex reassignment surgery does exist, and that's not really what I'm talking about. This is more about the social issue, or why I think there shouldn't really be one (my opinion, I wanted to hear what others had to say on the issue)
Gender Dysphoria can be biologically triggered. As-in you can develop GD due to hormonal exposure, too much of Female or Male and shit starts physically changing causing the GD. Still the fact remains it is technically a disorder, and people shouldn't really argue black-and-blue to prove that they [I]feel[/I] like a girl/boy/whatever when it could be diagnosed. It's finding out you are wrong and still avidly defending it.
Free speech grants people power to individualise themselves so they feel special, so nobody can argue with them. We don't (or shouldn't) treat people with autism like the world going to follow their whim because unfortunately they were born differently, it's not helpful and it would be untrue and the same applies here.
I'm similar to you, OP, in that I also don't particularly identify myself as 'male' in any significant sense of my personality. I was simply born biologically male, but the rest of myself has been decided through my actions. But I can understand how for many people, this is not the case, and what sex they may be does not necessarily correlate with how they feel. This can be a serious problem for many psychologically, and hence we've seen a lot of news surrounding this recently.
Now, I'm not sure as to what degree this recent social movement is because of a growing freedom for trans people to express themselves, or because it's become a sort of 'cool' thing to do. I'd say that the second possibility is at least part of the equation, I think that much is obvious.
But while thinking that, you can't forget that people are legitimately suffering because of this so-called Gender Dysphoria.
Personally, I don't know too many trans people. The few I do I just treat like normal people, because that's what they are, whether they're born male or identify as female or whatever.
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