How to get out of an uncomfortable egg culture situation with this one simple trick.
Real talk: Calling people eggs is a violation of the egg prime directive, and is considered invalidating as you are trying to say that a person is not the gender they identify as, that their identity is invalid. Don’t call people eggs, like ever, it’s extremely uncool.
I think you mean more than just what they’re wearing, but I get the point.
Right, my point is that it’s not hypocrisy because there are reasons to not be skeptical of a trans man femboy who has transitioned the way there are reasons to be skeptical of a person claiming to be cis but who engages in lots of transfem behaviors. The difference as I pointed out before is that lots of trans people actually do remain in denial and claim to be cis femboys to avoid acknowledging they are trans or having to go further with transition. This is not true for the trans man femboy, who has already taken the risk of transitioning and no longer has reason to be in denial.
It’s not that I don’t understand the setup and how it is meant to highlight hypocrisy - I’m just trying to point out that the reasoning is not great and there actually are real differences between a trans man femboy and a self-described cis femboy that give someone reasons to not be skeptical of the trans man femboy but to remain skeptical of the cis femboy.
This isn’t even theoretical for me, I know trans men femboys IRL and I of course have first-hand experience with transfem denial in myself and with others who struggle with denial.
Besides the differences between trans man femboys and cis femboys, there is also just the way that this flowchart is so aggressive and black and white, where any skepticism that a self-identified cis femboy is labeled as transphobia. It just doesn’t come across as reasonable, not only in the way it glosses over differences but the way it mislabels skepticism about a cis identity as “transphobic”. It’s not transphobic to be skeptical of a cis identity, if anything it is a kind of inverse bias that trans people in particular are going to hold. It is not stigmatizing or furthering hatred, violence, and bigotry towards trans people, but rather it is a common reaction trans people have to others they suspect are in denial (and often based on having been in denial and gone through those phases themselves).
It is identity-denying, certainly, but the fact that this is labeled as “transphobia” strikes me as not only inaccurate but aggressive against trans people. This is probably because it’s coming from a defensive posture, born from frustrations after having being denied an identity, and at this point pushing against a dominant trans culture that intuitively accepts concepts like eggs and denial in a way that invalidates cis femboy identities. But let’s be clear here, if you are cis, skepticism about your cis identity when you act much like a trans person in denial is not itself anti-trans.
I agree with you that when people over-reach and deny someone’s self-identity as a cis person, even when there seems to be adequate evidence that they are indeed a trans person in denial like Finnster, it is toxic or bad in some major way. Like you said, a trans person in denial has to come to terms with being trans on their own, otherwise there are all sorts of problems - like blaming others for being trans, or built-up resentment and anger for having been labeled trans by others. When I was a trans person in denial I certainly felt like the people who were closest to understanding my transness were influencing me and trying to encourage me to be trans, and it made me not trust that I was actually trans - that I was just being manipulated or subtly coerced into being trans. This is absurd of course, but this is the kind of psychology of a trans person in denial, and exactly why it’s good for people to come to terms on their own.
However, I do think there should be more education about the way gender dysphoria can look, and I do think there is some ethical obligation for experts who spot signs of transness to investigate and work with families to ensure trans children get the help they need, esp. since we live in a society so hostile to even the concept of being trans. Just from a harm-reduction perspective there is a reason to intervene and ensure that people have access to gender affirming care, therapy, and so on to help them understand and explore their gender since the consequences of going through the wrong puberty are so negative and so difficult to fix.
The idea that we should delicately avoid ever implying a person displaying signs of transness might be trans is I think a manifestation of anti-trans bias and stigma (we obviously wouldn’t do that for other possible endocrine conditions like hypothyroidism or diabetes, for example). That said, the internet community are not experts and there are no best practices, ethical guidelines, or other guardrails that would apply to a medical or therapeutic context. So I pretty much agree with you that lay people telling others they think they are trans generally violates the norms like the egg prime directive. Still, it is one thing to say one shouldn’t openly invalidate another’s self-identity (even when it is dubious), but it’s another to claim that skepticism itself is problematic, or that there aren’t grey areas that fall short of an obvious violation.
For example, there was a post of a screenshot of a 4chan greentext describing a gay femboy who took estrogen and wanted to be treated as a woman by their lovers, etc. and one of the cis straight male commenters seemed to miss the trans subtext of the greentext (that there might be something else going on besides just being a gay man for the femboy, that they might be struggling with gender dysphoria), and the reaction to the suggestion that the femboy is actually trans in denial was met with such hostility because it violates the self-identity of the femboy in the greentext … well, this is a case where skepticism is I believe the explicit intent of the greentext, and where the story is likely fictional and regardless this is being shared so far from the original author of the greentext that it is not reasonable to expect the author to run across my comment explaining the trans in denial subtext, so nobody is being harmed by their self-identity being invalidated … and yet to introduce the idea that the femboy might be trans is met with a rigid and extreme hostility. I think the intentions of respecting self-identity are good, but when applied so rigidly and with such taboo, it in this context resulted in a trans person being shut down when trying to educate and share awareness to a cis person what common trans experiences look like.
We have to remember that trans experience is not understood or part of the mainstream. It is easy to forget this when we spend lots of time with trans people, but society is cis-dominant and most cis people do not understand trans experience. This constitutes a kind of cis hegemonic attitude, and creates a situation hermeneutical injustice, i.e. where the ability of trans people to even interpret or understand their own experiences is threatened. Much like a time before (cis) women had words or concepts to describe sexual harassment and even trying to describe those experiences were met with resistance, skepticism, or outright denial. The default and dominant situation in society is that trans people will be unable to recognize they are trans, communicate their experiences in a way that will be taken seriously, etc.
Hopefully you can see my point here that cis identity is truly not as vulnerable as trans identity, and society already creates immense pressure to conform to cis norms, even if you are not cis.
I just want to return to this and say that individuals don’t exist in a vacuum - someone being in denial absolutely impacts other people and while I would prefer a situation that focuses on the individual in terms of how rights like self-identification would work, I do think we have to acknowledge that a trans person in denial often causes harm not only to themselves but others in their life. This was certainly the case for me and every trans person I know. Denial is not good, and society bears a cost from the way the individual in denial suffers.
That said, I don’t think this invalidates the general principle that we shouldn’t tell others what they are, or that we shouldn’t respect a person’s self-identity when interacting with them. If we think a femboy is an egg, we probably shouldn’t say that to them unless they ask if we think they are (and even then, you have to weigh the consequences of the blowback if the person is not prepared to hear they are probably trans). I still stand by this principle for pragmatic and social reasons, even if I think there might be ethical issues in terms of the actual harm that a person in denial experiences and the problems with a society that prefers to respect denial rather than ensure people are correctly diagnosed and live healthier, happier lives.
I’ve gone too long, will wrap up my thoughts in a second comment 😰
The big problem when it comes to trying to help people who exhibit “signs” like what you’re saying is that the Venn diagram between signs of being Transfeminine, and Gender-Nonconformity is almost a complete circle. And when overlapping sections are used to claim someone is trans, or could be. It ends up coming across as invalidating not only to their identity, but it also comes across as enforcing gender stereotypes. As if wearing a dress, wearing makeup, presenting feminine, makes someone a girl.
CW: GNC invalidation
Like what this meme is trying to implicitly say:
Whenever people bring up signs, they sometimes bring up the ones that don’t overlap, but oftentimes they do not. Oftentimes they go for easy ones and roll with it, and that’s where the problems come from. Frankly we need less gender stereotypes in the world, not more of them. The overlapping sections of the Venn diagram should be considered radioactive.
Also like you said it needs to be done in a therapeutic setting where they are safe and can pump the brakes whenever they wish to stop. Something that isn’t afforded to them in egg situations online.
What I mean by this is that, for a person to think they can get between someone and themselves they have to break the cardinal rule about respecting people’s gender identity. I’m not denying the challenges of denial, it can be very hard for people. I’m saying that suspecting a person is in-denial has to be treated with care and isn’t and cannot be a provision to violate that cardinal rule of identity respect. They also need to be respected as a person and that means their thoughts and feelings need to be listened to. Something that doesn’t happen at all in situations of “egg cracking”.
I am inclined to agree with you that there is a problem in that transfems are inclined to generalize their experiences and project them onto others, particularly people who fit certain characteristics like feminine boys. I think a good analogy would be the common way cis people assume feminine boys are gay, rather than that they are trans. Transness for cis people is often unthinkable or so stigmatized you shouldn’t suggest the possibility, while gayness is more common and “easy” explanation for a boy’s femininity.
However, I still tend to think that the flow here is wrong - a trans identity is much harder to assert in this society than a cis one, so I would think we should be more sensitive about creating an environment that is even over-corrective in its support of trans identities. The idea that what we really need to do is stop using a trans interpretive framework for trans-coded behavior seems like the wrong direction, people are already being denied that trans interpretation by everyone else in society.
This doesn’t mean that toxic or aggressive “egging” as you call it is justified, but I think it makes sense why so many trans people do this considering they are reacting to a hostile culture that tries to deny them trans experience and reality. I do think it does mean that we should at least have some tolerance for trans people who think from their experiences, from a trans lens that is. Particularly for less obvious or indirect forms of egging. I guess I am worried here that an extreme over-application of the egg prime directive would result in trans people being punished for their trans perspective and potentially reasonable interpretations, even if we agree that they really shouldn’t be projecting those things onto others.
I’m just not sure we can avoid that people see things in patterns and use generalizations - it makes communication more efficient and feasible even if it can be damaging at times. I guess my point is that we can’t take extreme positions on either side - we can’t and shouldn’t eliminate stereotypes entirely, even if stereotyping can obviously be problematic and damaging.
Yeah, I pretty much agree that etiquette online should include not directly telling someone they are trans. However, I think trans people in denial do need help sometimes accepting that they are trans, which is why I think egg communities exist online in the first place - the cognitive dissonance of the trans person results in seeking communities that will understand and affirm them even when they are not fully on-board with being trans yet. You see this in gay communities too, men who refused to admit they are gay and refuse to identify as gay, but who continue to engage in the gay community online. The cognitive dissonance doesn’t stop them from needing connection to the gay community, and it is not entirely wrong to interpret them as gay even as they refuse to identify that way. Sure, it might be rude or toxic to repeatedly and directly override their self-identity as straight, but it also wouldn’t be entirely right to deny their gayness either or to censor people who are engaging in any discussion that tries to help them see how they might be gay, etc. There is a big difference between telling someone what they are confidently and just giving a person your impressions and letting them determine their self-identity still, but both might be considered overriding or “egging” in the trans context.
I agree with you on this, but to be honest that’s not what I understood you to be saying, what you said was:
I certainly think I was in-denial of being trans to my partner, for example - and I did have a kind of responsibility to figure out my shit to reduce harm to them as well as myself. In a way we do have duties we cannot neglect when it comes to how we identify. I agree with you of course that this isn’t unilateral or extreme, again I keep noticing black and white thinking from you where there aren’t grey areas - either identity is entirely in a vacuum lest we are subject to toxic coercion - the reality is probably in-between. My partner could not force me to identify as trans and it wouldn’t be right for them to coerce me to help see that I was trans, even if I did have a kind of duty to not harm which I was doing by being in denial. It’s messy, not clean-cut.
I get what you are saying, but when one defines or perceives actions of gender non-conformity as being “trans-coded behavior” it validates and strengthens gender stereotypes, and undermines efforts to break down gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes which do indeed hurt the trans community, as this view often can turn on them very quickly. I’m not a fan of promoting gender stereotypes as something “trans friendly” which is what the idea that they are “trans-coded behavior” does. It makes them more valid than they are or should be. That’s why, like I said, the overlapping area of the venn diagram should be treated as a hazard zone.
Honestly I think that might be a real concern and ultimately some very well might be. However in a lot of ways many already are. People who express transmedicalist beliefs are often barred from many trans communities and spaces, and this one isn’t an exception. People who express misogyny or transmisogyny as a form of gross euphoria, or ‘ewwphoria’ as it’s known colloquially, find themsleves excluded from spaces, again, this one isn’t an exception either. It is unfortunate that people who might very well need support just as much as the others are punished for their own views. However, in these cases they are expressing sentiment and behavior that is harmful to the others. Ultimately a line must be drawn to protect those who are vulnerable, and the moment others start getting hurt is where the hammer comes down.
I’m in agreement we can’t eliminate stereotypes entirely, but I do think efforts to eliminate gender stereotypes are noble and should continue. Ultimately gender stereotypes heavily restrict the way people are allowed to present themselves, and as I already said do bite trans people in the ass too. We might not be able to escape all stereotypes, but we should try to cut back on or eliminate the most harmful ones.
Actually I see this as just as problematic as egg culture in general. What you speak of is indeed very toxic and can be deeply hurtful to the people non the receiving end. The nail in the coffin being that it was the driving force behind a lot of biphobic sentiment in LGBTQ spaces, saying that Bi people are just gay-in-denial. Actually as an Ace person who used to participate in general LGBTQ communities I personally experienced some of this with people saying I’m a “Celibate” and gay-in-denial. It didn’t last, I told them to fuck off, but still that IS toxic. I’ve seen very similar fallout in egg communities with Nonbinary and Genderfluid people being casualties, in addition to people who are just Gender Non-conforming.
So while it is important to help people come out, it needs to be done in a way that isn’t hurtful, or worse, discriminatory. Enbyphobia and Biphobia are very often byproducts of this type of overzealous cracking.
I agree, real life is messy and not always clear cut. Which is a big part of why the egg prime directive exists. To stop it from getting even messier. Everything is a tradeoff ultimately, the question is whether the drawbacks are worth the gain. I and many others seem to think that the egg prime directive offers gains by making people feel safer to express themselves without having to worry about their identity being debated or challenged by others. Not everyone will agree of course but you can’t win them all unfortunately.
part 2 of my comment:
I tend to think of genderfluid as more a way someone is describing their experience of their gender rather than a genuine gender identity. We don’t really have any scientific evidence that gender identity can change or be fluid, and in fact we have plenty of scientific evidence to the contrary, that unconscious sex / gender identity is fixed and biological. This is part of why conversion therapy doesn’t work, you can’t make a trans person cis or a cis person trans - it just doesn’t work. It also means a trans person isn’t choosing to be trans, it is part of their nature and won’t come and go.
That said, in the interest of respecting someone’s experience, I try to reconcile the evidence against people’s self-conceptions, and it’s not really surprising to me that a person who insisted they were 100% a cis man first would use a label like genderfluid.
My own experiences could be labeled as genderfluid, I certainly have days where I think of myself more or less as a man or a woman, etc. - but careful observation has made it clear to me that my gendered self conception which seems so fluid is truly separate from my gender identity or unconscious sex, that there is something that will always be there deep down that causes me to be bothered by body hair no matter how I think of myself. I can’t actually observe or know my gender identity, I have to infer it. I don’t think most people are so introspective or careful about their self-understanding, so it does not surprise me when people create new labels and concepts to try to capture something about their experience and it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. I tend to think this is OK, and that it’s healthy and good to try to describe your experiences. The problem I see is only when people get extremely rigid about these labels being taken as inerrant objective reality, which I think naturally happens as our subversive gender experiences smash up against the wall of cis-normativity. Again defensiveness seems to lead to rigidity and black and white thinking.
Either way, you don’t have to characterize the egg crowd as thinking “Finnster was a girl all along”, you can simply say the egg crowd will say “Finnster was not a cis man all along” - that is true regardless of where Finnster lands ultimately.
Not to side with “intolerance,” but I do want to at least present some of the empirical evidence we have about gender actually being biological and “set in stone” (not that this means our self-understanding of gender is set in stone, or that the way we might identify can’t change). I still agree with respecting the way people identify in the moment and being respectful even when their self-conception seems dubious or contradicts evidence.
Reading Swaab’s work in particular was eye-opening, since trans women whose brains were autopsied were found to have structures in their brain that were like cis women and not like cis men, even without ever undergoing hormone therapy. While the picture that emerges with later research did not point to something as simple as “male” and “female” brains, it is particularly grounding to me to have empirical evidence like this that lends credibility to our experiences. It really is more accurate to say trans women have a “female brain” than to say trans women have a “mental illness” as though the gender identity were due to delusions or psychosis.
If reading scientific literature is challenging, the famous neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, has some talks that summarize the situation:
This science isn’t some kind of inerrant rigid belief system either, by the way - but that’s not to say it doesn’t provide solid evidence that has consequences in legal and political contexts. Ultimately I think it is important for policy makers, scientists, medical doctors, etc. to engage in inference to best explanation and lean on the body of evidence we have to do that. I think it is important to recognize that the evidence we have about gender identity (by which I mean the generally immutable unconscious sex that we are born with, likely due to the way our brains develop) is that it cannot be changed, that conversion therapy does not work, and that trans people cannot be made cis and vice versa. These are essentially “facts”.
None of these facts require that we invalidate others’ self-identity even when they contradict those facts, we can still hold the principle that we should respect others’ self-identity for pragmatic reasons even when there are reasons to doubt a person’s self-understanding or the way they have theorized or come to think about their gender. It is a matter of politeness and respect.
You are taking the science of neuro-correlates beyond what can really be said, especially for something as multifaceted as gender.
For example, how does one parse the causes of gender itself from dimorphic sex/gender differences?
There are numerous psychological traits that tend to correlate heavily with sex, and from what limited research exists on trans people, correlate based on identified gender as well. However, it would be totally false to say that these traits are determinant of gender, as many people don’t fit within those generalizations. In all likelihood, few people probably follow the trends aligning with their gender to the letter. Most women have a handful of things that they differ from other women on, and it is the same with men. These traits cannot be understood as the cause of gender with current data, and any theory that claims to do so would be speculation at best. So whenever you look at these neurocorrelates of gender, you must recognize that they might not be due to gender itself. The differences between different gendered brains is important, but it could actually be measuring dimorphic traits instead of gender itself.
Also, the way you dismiss genderfluidity as not a genuine identity is serious overreach. There are few studies on nonbinary identities in general, so saying things about them like that isn’t scientific. It seems more based on your own experience of gender than anything else. For all you know, there is a constant fluidity to everyone’s gender, with some having more than others. Maybe you never dip into another gender, but how can you say others don’t?
We also can’t say that gender truly does not change, only that we don’t know how it could change, and that all attempts to alter it carry near certain risk of serious harm. There aren’t many elements of our psychology or personality that can never change, as our brains are physical substrates that can change in countless ways. The fact that we’ve seen little evidence of gender changing with brain damage indicates that it is a more distributed phenomenon. This makes it similar to consciousness, which does not have clear correlates either.
We are at the infancy of understanding gender, and psychology in general is in its infancy. You’re missing the point in how you’re interpreting the evidence. It’s ok to simply not know. It’s ok to not have an answer. That’s a fundamental part of all science.
In the research I linked like the 2015 brain mosaic article, they actually find the situation is more complex than that, that most people actually don’t follow trends with their gender and the brain doesn’t fit a dimorphic model at all.
They are certainly trying to measure dimorphic traits and not the gender itself, I am not sure why you thought I believed otherwise. My statement that gender identity cannot be altered and that brain sex seems to be a reason why is not the same as claiming that we inspect gender in the brain directly or that you can’t be anything but what your brain tells you you are. Gender clearly has social as well as biological components, bioessentialism does not work as a theory at all.
If I came across as dismissive I think I failed in my communication, there is no such thing as a non-genuine identity so long as people genuinely identify that way. We have already established that self-identity is paramount and respected.
I do tend to think a lot of the labels and identities that are being created are early theorizing based on phenomenology, which is entirely reasonable.
Regarding non-binary identities and science, there are at least studies like the brain mosaic MRI studies that show that most people (>95%) have what might be characterized as “non-binary” brains. I think this is pretty compelling and “validating”, but no matter what the science shows we still hold the principle of respecting and validating self identification. That is fundamental and axiomatic.
What I said in my comment is that I do experience what I think people would classify as genderfluidity, i.e. I absolutely do experience fluctuations in my sense of gender. There are mornings I wake up as a “man”, and times where I feel completely like a “woman”. Sometimes it seems like those fluctuations match hormonal shifts. Other times it seems like it has to do with social situations and the way that I dress and whether I am wearing makeup.
My point about genderfluidity was not a dismissal but a distinction, that I tend to think people who identify as genderfluid are probably doing so based on the kind of phenomenology they are experiencing (and which I think I incidentally experience as well). This distinction is important because it separates what we have empirically established, which is that gender identity seems to be developmentally fixed, from what the phenomenology is, which is that our sense of gender can be quite complex and appear to us as not-fixed. I don’t think these two claims conflict at all, but I think some people might wrongfully interpret it that way.
I do think this is a meaningful distinction of sorts, I think what you are trying to get at is that nothing is truly “essential” and it’s just a limit of techhnology that keeps us from altering something like the brain’s role in generating unconscious sex. I agree with this, but I do feel like you are skirting around the context I was in, which was emphasizing that we should take a hard line that trans identities should not be seen as “choices” but respected as based in early developments of the brain which are not readily changed. This is a way that we can use the science to back a socially humanistic approach to trans identity, and to push against reactionary elements that wish to erase trans people by any means necessary, including forced detransition and conversion therapy to force us to align with our assigned sex. The fact that this has not worked historically and that we now have good working theories based in evidence as to why it does not work is pragmatic and useful, particularly in getting a medical establishment to recognize the importance of gender affirming care and establishing that conversion therapy is contrary to scientific evidence.
Yes of course, but skepticism will always be the strongest position to take, meanwhile we have to make inferences to the best explanation, and I think doing that based on the evidence we do have, even if early, is a good idea.
It’s exactly why the brain sex arguments are often generally considered transmedicalist pseudoscience.
Exactly, honestly the idea that it can’t doesn’t seem to add up, our brains are constantly changing. I wasn’t the same person 5 years ago, 10 years ago I was also completely different, and 15 years I was also different. If our personalities can shift and change throughout our lives who’s to say gender can’t either.
Keep in mind that traumatic brain injuries which completely reshape a person’s brain and mind are much rarer than one would believe reading neuroscience papers. Most people who suffer critical brain injuries like a bullet to the brain, a knife through the head, or even a steel rod through their skull succumb to them. They never live to tell the tale. Those like Phineas Gage are the lucky ones, they don’t say they cheated death for nothing. It’s very possible that specific brain damage could cause a change or diminishment of gender identity, or gender feelings, but we’ve never seen someone with that injury, or they had more than just that injury and died.
Brain injuries can change large parts of a personality, they can completely change a person. I think it’s naive to say that it couldn’t alter one’s gender perception. Especially when we just don’t know, there’s so much about the brain we don’t know.
I take issue with this line of reasoning because there are indeed genderfluid people who experience strong dysphoria that shifts and changes over time. Genderfluidity isn’t a presentation or choice it is very real for people. Also it comes off as bad faith to use the idea of brain sex to debunk it because conversion therapy doesn’t work. It’s a very VERY bad comparison because conversion therapy is other people trying to change a person by force. Genderfluidity is a person changing by themselves.
When I talk about denial of Genderfluidity in the trans community this is what I’m talking about.
Furthermore I do take a lot of issues when it comes to ideas about “brain gender” or “brain sex” because there are many situations where it falls apart when trying to describe gender, genderfluidity is a prime example there. How does that work then? One could argue that like you did that it’s simply a presentation or performative. However that doesn’t address the fact that there are genderfluid people who have gone through conversion therapy, and they haven’t stopped being genderfluid either. So the conversion therapy comparison isn’t a valid argument for brain genders and gender identity rigidity.
Other problems are that the brain sex theory doesn’t account for Nonbinary identities, like you said one could argue they are performative. Though once again that falls apart when they too experience strong gender dysphoria and also, once again can’t be converted by persuasive or coercive means.
What I think is the biggest problem when it comes to these studies, is that they seem to imply that having gender identity is related to gender dysphoria. These studies are the basis of transmedicalism. Many ignore the fact that there are trans people who lack gender dysphoria, they also do not acknowledge the conditions that are problematic for their theories like nonbinary or genderfluid people because they ultimately do not have an answer for those, even though many of them have gender dysphoria as strong as binary trans people do.
Conversion therapy is wrong, it’s very easy to prove why it is wrong without promoting lies about how gender identity works that invalidate or misrepresent the experiences of nonbinary and genderfluid people, who very much do share the same experiences in terms of dysphoria and euphoria as any binary trans people. Saying that gender is locked in that is doing exactly that. Maybe instead of overthinking to the extreme and finding a reason based on biological existentialism for why conversion therapy is bad and wrong we should just point out the fact that one cannot change who someone is through coercion and abuse. It’s that simple. There is never a place for that kind of “treatment” not in gender or sexuality, not outside of it. I can’t believe that people would even consider that okay if there was even the possibility that a person could choose. If they could, it would be just as wrong or evil to try and force them.
You are absolutely right about this. These studies do have consequences in legal and political situations, and they also have frightening implications for those who are genderfluid, nonbinary, or non-dysphoric.
Agreed. It is paramount that we respect the identities of people whether or not they fit these rigid definitions. However like the ones I highlighted, we should also take the time to scrutinize these conclusions because there are plenty of situations that are wildly incompatible. Like a genderfluid person who may feel strong dysphoria towards her penis, yet after a shift he may feel perfectly comfortable with it, or even possibly miss it when it is gone. Such situations don’t just “not fit” they challenge the merit of it altogether. These situations really need to be taken seriously, not brushed aside for acceptance, but actually looked at to re-evaluate the conclusions that were drawn otherwise.
part two of my response:
Gender dysphoria absolutely does have to do with having a gender identity, it seems likely that dysphoria is caused by incongruence between gender identity and assigned sex (which even if we lived in a utopia where no sex was assigned, some trans people would still experience dysphoria).
I think what you mean to say is that a trans gender identity does not require dysphoria to be present to be valid, which is of course true. The brain studies don’t contradict this, at all, and are entirely consistent with this understanding of trans identity.
Transmedicalists wish to deny someone like Jacob Tobia is a trans person, and I think that’s silly and obviously false. I don’t know why we’re talking about this - I don’t endorse transmedicalism, neither do you - we agree, can we move on now?
A lie is a falsehood with the intent to deceive, what I have shared is peer reviewed research and reproducible findings about brain sex which are not only false but represent the best current body of evidence to understanding how our brains relate to unconscious sex and gender identity. The fact that this evidence accords with studies that find conversion therapy is clinically ineffective only furthers the legitimacy of the working theory that gender identity (including genderfluid and nonbinary identities) is fixed and biological.
To characterize what I have said as a lie is honestly confusing to me, and again it feels like you aren’t responding to what I wrote, and maybe you are unfamiliar with the actual research and evidence?
Again, people engage in conversion therapy in earnest and not under coercion. Many forms of conversion therapy are essentially talk therapy to help patients try to be more comfortable with their assigned sex/gender.
Your claim that conversion therapy can be dismissed off-hand because it’s coercive and abusive would not address cases where conversion therapy is not coercive or abusive, where it is engaged with earnest consent and a desire by a patient to alleviate gender dysphoria.
Nobody is suggesting we brush them aside, and at this point I take offense that you mis-characterize what I have written as dismissive, debunking, or invalidating genderfluid and non-binary people. I engage in this discussion assuming that the conversation is grounded in good-faith on both sides, and I am starting to feel I can no longer carry on a conversation with you based on your responses.
I admit there were ways I should have worded things better to avoid miscommunication, so this is not entirely your fault, but I have tried to be patient and carefully parse what you have written and it feels like you are not offering me the same treatment at this point.
I do appreciate your willingness to engage with me, I think a lot of people feel communication with me is tedious and exhausting - it is a lot to read and think about, and these are not easy topics to discuss for lots of reasons, including that they impact us personally and we have stake in the outcomes.
I don’t doubt this, but I think it would also be helpful to list paradigmatic examples of genderfluid people so we can base our discussion in something shared and understood, rather than establishing separate assumptions about what is or isn’t genderfluid, which I think is happening here.
I think this might be poor communication on my part, I would like to make a distinction between “changes in unconscious sex” and claims of genderfluidity, which I essentially think are not the same thing. I think the findings on unconscious sex likely mean that genderfluidity is caused by the unconscious sex which is fixed, which means that I agree with you that it’s not a presentation or a choice.
I don’t mean to “debunk” genderfluidity at all.
Conversion therapy is only sometimes by force, often it is an earnest attempt by the trans person to conform with their assigned sex for religious or cultural reasons. My point is that even when people attempt to change their unconscious sex through conversion therapy, it fails and does not resolve the incongruence between their unconscious sex and their assigned sex.
We don’t know, but the brain studies find that brain sex is extremely complicated and not at all simple, there is no real way to separate brains into two slots, male and female. What do you think would account for a genderfluid identity given the evidence?
I never argued genderfluidity is performative or mere presentation, which makes me think we are beginning to no longer communicate at all. I don’t blame you entirely for this, but it is happening regardless, and I am sorry for that.
It sometimes seems like you are arguing contradicting statements, e.g.:
Do you think conversion therapy ever works, for example when people really put their minds to it and try to change themselves?
I am hostile to performative theories of gender, and it’s amazing to me that you think I am arguing for them. I can’t help but think you aren’t even reading what I write.
Also, you are wrong about the brain sex studies, they find that 95%+ of brains are neither male nor female, which gives ample evidence of non-binary gender identities.
You are arguing my point at this point, which is ironic considering you think it’s a gotcha against me.
I have to go, I will finish responding when I can.
NO. I know that the idea that some people who hear that gender isn’t fixed think is that they think it means that conversion therapy works. This is a transmedicalist talking point though, as if the idea that gender shifts and changes over time somehow validates conversion therapy or invalidates gender fluidity.
Genderfluid people cannot coerce themselves into being different by force of will alone. That’s kind of the idea of gender including dysphoria shifting and changing randomly.
That’s way more than I hoped out of these studies, however they seem to fall short of genderfluidity.
Honestly I think you should really think over if brain sex or brain gender has any merit, because to me and many others, it is for the most part transmedicalist garbage and biological existentialism.
Do you mean biological essentialism, rather than existentialism? Just so you know, I strongly oppose gender bioessentialism, and I think a lot of this conversation has been futile and frustrating because you assume that is the position I am taking.
Transmedicalism tries to gatekeep trans identity based on the presence of gender dysphoria, and they might point to the studies on brain sex to explain the source of dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean the studies on brain sex are transmedicalist in nature, it just means transmedicalists use that evidence to try to support a view they have, which ultimately is a view that doesn’t make sense.
Ultimately I think transmedicalists are just another form of respectability politics, it is no different than previous movements within gay cultures to assimilate as much as possible to straight culture and to assert the notion of “we are just like you, except this one thing”. These movements always seem confused about the way power works, the problem is that the oppressors aren’t going to respect you just because you think you are more like them than others in your community. Trans people like Caitlyn Jenner or Blaire White aren’t effective in achieving trans rights precisely because they want to capitulate as much as possible to the people who are most invested in denying trans rights. Not that “respectability” isn’t entirely irrelevant, certainly moral panic can be more easily whipped up when a group behaves in a way that is alienating to the majority of people, but trans people for the most part aren’t even guilty of the things anti-trans activists claim - like that trans women are sexually preying on cis women in bathrooms, there just is no evidence of this and yet lots of people believe there is real harm being done and bathroom bans are the only way to stop it.
So I don’t think respectability politics will be that effective and is probably more of an emotional response than a pragmatic praxis, even if I can understand the fear about the trans community not taking seriously the need to be careful and not lean too much into anti-trans panic, which will happen regardless, even if the trans community does nothing wrong. Facts and reality matter little to the anti-trans movement.