What are your thoughts on the trans movement? Is there merit and extremes?

[Lazuli]

I'm fully in support of human rights. I think one thing that is constantly forgotten by people is that those born as intersex often have forced gender assignment surgery as an infant even though it won't always match what the individual feels they are later in life, leading them to transition just the same. People who are happy and comfortable in their own skin that feel safe in public will tend to have better mental health and as a result be more productive members of society, I don't understand how anyone could have a problem with that.

This ESPECIALLY. one of my very good friends was born intersex and was assigned female at birth after getting an invasive procedure to "correct" his anatomy. Later on in his life he was able to get compensation for what the hospital did since he ended up having to transition.

It's so awful all around. Cis ppl have it so much easier than they realize.

[aymo]

The problem with bathrooms is there are giant gaps in the stalls! Make the bathroom stalls fully private with no GAPS!!!! Then we can just have a bathroom with toilet stalls that have actual privacy for anyone to freely use. Engineers giving us horribly built toilet stalls with big gaps to see through are the real enemy.

[Erik.]

The problem with bathrooms is there are giant gaps in the stalls! Make the bathroom stalls fully private with no GAPS!!!! Then we can just have a bathroom with toilet stalls that have actual privacy for anyone to freely use. Engineers giving us horribly built toilet stalls with big gaps to see through are the real enemy.

I count my blessings in Europe where bathroom stalls have normal doors. I never understood this (seemingly) American obsession with supplying toilet stalls with saloon doors like a Western

[birdies]

I have a trans cousin. She's 10 years old. She's been a girl for as long as she's been capable of communicating, essentially - she has three brothers and three sisters and a father who has extremely traditional masculine views, Her parents did nothing that affected her gender identity, she was given all her brothers hand me downs and toys meant for boys, but she was a girl. She always wanted to wear girls clothes and have girls toys, she always identified with the female characters on TV, she cried when her dad used masculine terms about her - eg calling her buddy and the girls princess. She always wanted to be the princess. She told her teachers she was a girl when she started school.

She's been bullied, had struggles with her dad accepting her, struggles with her teachers. There is no way that if there were any kind of choice she would not choose to be the gender she was born and avoid all the pain. But she's a girl, and it hurts her to be asked to pretend otherwise.

She's recently been given a passport showing her as a girl, and her dad and the rest of her family accepts and treats her as a girl now. She gets to be her dad's princess, too. Sure, it's possible when she's older something may change and she may decide to live her life as the gender she was assigned at birth, that would be fine. But if this is who she is forever, that's just as fine.

Renée Richards, a trans woman, was playing in the female category at the US open in 1976. There are a bunch of trans movie stars from history who never revealed they were trans during their careers. It's not new, it's not a fad, they're not a threat.

Trans people have always existed. They've always used the bathrooms for the gender they identify as. There have always been trans women using womens shelters, teaching school classes, living their lives. A trans woman won Big Brother in the UK about a decade ago and no one knew she was trans most of the time she was in there. There was no fuss about her, no one protested, no one said she might be grooming kids.

Hormone blockers have been widely prescribed to children for decades. Not to trans children but - mostly - to tall girls. Two girls in my school class were on them because their height was considered outside the norm. To be clear: it's been fine for decades to prescribe young cis girls hormone blockers to keep them an 'attractive' height, but it's not fine when trans teens need them to help with the trauma of developing physical characteristics they literally hate.

There is reason to discuss when trans women can compete equally with cis women and when that may not be possible, but that's not a reason to block them from competing. Almost all these decisions are being made without talking to trans people. Trans women have been blocked from competing in womens chess, and womens' fishing. Being fair is one thing, being punitive is another.

Thousands of top surgeries are carried out on under 18s in the US every year. 99 percent of them on young cis girls who are unhappy with how they look. Because it's fine for cis girls to get gender confirming surgery as long as it confirms the gender they were born as.

Kanye has changed his name repeatedly. Many people change their last names when they marry. Asking someone to use a different name or pronouns for you isn't an imposition on how anyone is living their life, it's just asking for some basic respect of their wishes.

Think about why there's such a furore about trans issues now. It's not because of trans people. Trans people are 0.1 percent of the population, and sure a few more kids are exploring their identity now: that's because they felt safer to do so. That should have been a good thing, but it's been turned into a bin fire.

Did you know that about 50 percent of school libraries in the US have stopped buying new books due to the protests and book banning going on right now? Scholastic recently removed all books with Black characters on the cover and all queer characters into a separate 'case' for its book sales, which schools could opt not to receive.

The 'ok groomer' response was invented by a right wing political aide and was specifically designed to go viral as a way to smear political opponents. It caught on better than they ever imagined. They never really thought there was any grooming going on.

Trans people are a small, non-threatening and in fact highly vulnerable group who have been picked up as a culture war issue and the fear swirling around them has been entirely manufactured.

You can not understand being trans, you can think it's a little weird, but decent people are going to let others live their lives and offer them the basic respect they ask for. That's my opinion.

[Alister]

I'm nonbinary, and there's nothing you can say that will invalidate that or validate it. You can think whatever you want to think, but it doesn't change who I am. Trans people aren't asking anyone to make them feel good about themselves, or to be perfect allies, all trans people are asking is to be treated like humans, fairly and with the care they deserve.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions regarding nonbinary identities specifically!

May I take you up on the offer of questions regarding nonbinary identities? This is one area of gender identity in particular I don't feel I understand the way I should. Apologies up front if this comes across as judgmental. It's hard to ask questions without feeling like I'm inherently being judgmental and I don't mean to be. I have my own outlook on things and it may be different from other people's but I don't consider my perspective any more valid than someone else's.

For context, I'm a straight, CIS, conventionally attractive white woman. I have a brother 1.5 years older than me and we were raised by a single father with full custody. Dad treated my brother and I identically as kids. We shared the same toys, watched the same movies and shows, and played the same backyard sports together. We were Studio Ghibli kids, not Disney, so the princesses we grew up loving were warrior-scientists and military leaders, not damsels in distress. The concept of women being demure and weak wasn't presented to us until we were already old enough to find it laughable instead of internalizing it.

So nonbinary and gender fluid. I've never believed there is criteria someone has to adhere to in order to be a man or a woman. Subsequent I don't understand what determination one uses to assess themselves to be nonbinary because from an outside perspective, it seems built on the notion that there is a standard of what it means to be "a woman" vs "a man", so someone can determine themselves to be neither. I am very atypical from the stereotype image of femininity that exists in the rural, very conservative area I grew up in, but I don't consider personality traits gendered and therefore don't feel the component pieces of my own personality have any bearing on what gender I am. From the very limited impression I have of it, it seems like nonbinary identification is built on the conviction that people don't have to fall into the defined buckets of male vs female, which I agree with, but also feels like it falls short to me of addressing the true heart of the matter: There shouldn't be a definition of "male" and "female" personalities and personality traits should not be considered gendered in the first place. How does a nonbinary identification reconcile there not being a standard male/female classification? Wouldn't one have to have a perceived notion of what it means to be a man or a woman in order to determine themselves to not fit into either?

Gender fluidity to me reads like it's moods changing from day to day, which I definitely understand. Some days I do want to do stereotypically feminine things and wear cute dresses and makeup and whatnot, whereas 90% of the team I could give a fuck about dressing any way but neutral. So the drivers behind the gender fluid concept make sense to me, but I don't understand why it gets framed as being a type of gender instead of trying to normalize the concept that everyone's inclination toward how they feel about themselves can and does change from day to day and that's just how people are.

Last comment I'll make. Your line -

I'm nonbinary, and there's nothing you can say that will invalidate that or validate it. You can think whatever you want to think, but it doesn't change who I am.

that resonates with me a lot. Totally separate issue but same sentiment. I've had an abortion. I do not consider it amoral, I will never look at an embryo and consider it an actual human, but god knows there are people out there who would consider me to be a full on murderer for my actions. It took me a little while but eventually I realized I actually don't give a damn if people think I'm a murderer, it doesn't validate or invalidate my own self-perception.

[Reddokitsune]

there are cis women that have more testosterone in their systems than some cis men and that's never an issue...

I am a cis woman with a high testosterone levels, this caused me disconfort as I started developing secondary male sex characteristics. I've been taking hormones for six years and literally no single person seems to have an issue with that.

[Mothman]

May I take you up on the offer of questions regarding nonbinary identities? This is one area of gender identity in particular I don't feel I understand the way I should. Apologies up front if this comes across as judgmental. It's hard to ask questions without feeling like I'm inherently being judgmental and I don't mean to be. I have my own outlook on things and it may be different from other people's but I don't consider my perspective any more valid than someone else's.

For context, I'm a straight, CIS, conventionally attractive white woman. I have a brother 1.5 years older than me and we were raised by a single father with full custody. Dad treated my brother and I identically as kids. We shared the same toys, watched the same movies and shows, and played the same backyard sports together. We were Studio Ghibli kids, not Disney, so the princesses we grew up loving were warrior-scientists and military leaders, not damsels in distress. The concept of women being demure and weak wasn't presented to us until we were already old enough to find it laughable instead of internalizing it.

So nonbinary and gender fluid. I've never believed there is criteria someone has to adhere to in order to be a man or a woman. Subsequent I don't understand what determination one uses to assess themselves to be nonbinary because from an outside perspective, it seems built on the notion that there is a standard of what it means to be "a woman" vs "a man", so someone can determine themselves to be neither. I am very atypical from the stereotype image of femininity that exists in the rural, very conservative area I grew up in, but I don't consider personality traits gendered and therefore don't feel the component pieces of my own personality have any bearing on what gender I am. From the very limited impression I have of it, it seems like nonbinary identification is built on the conviction that people don't have to fall into the defined buckets of male vs female, which I agree with, but also feels like it falls short to me of addressing the true heart of the matter: There shouldn't be a definition of "male" and "female" personalities and personality traits should not be considered gendered in the first place. How does a nonbinary identification reconcile there not being a standard male/female classification? Wouldn't one have to have a perceived notion of what it means to be a man or a woman in order to determine themselves to not fit into either?

Gender fluidity to me reads like it's moods changing from day to day, which I definitely understand. Some days I do want to do stereotypically feminine things and wear cute dresses and makeup and whatnot, whereas 90% of the team I could give a fuck about dressing any way but neutral. So the drivers behind the gender fluid concept make sense to me, but I don't understand why it gets framed as being a type of gender instead of trying to normalize the concept that everyone's inclination toward how they feel about themselves can and does change from day to day and that's just how people are.

Last comment I'll make. Your line -

that resonates with me a lot. Totally separate issue but same sentiment. I've had an abortion. I do not consider it amoral, I will never look at an embryo and consider it an actual human, but god knows there are people out there who would consider me to be a full on murderer for my actions. It took me a little while but eventually I realized I actually don't give a damn if people think I'm a murderer, it doesn't validate or invalidate my own self-perception.

Yeah for sure! Thanks for asking! I don't feel like you're being judgmental btw, and I love taking the opportunity to talk about gender.

I do personally think there is an element in nonbinary identity that is based on rebelling against those gender norms, but that doesn't apply to everyone. It's a very personal thing to each person and each person has a different reason they identify as nonb, so I can't speak for everyone in this. Also I'm really braindead today so if I repeat myself or sound goofy that's why, lmao

Me personally - I have clinical gender dysphoria. When people refer to me as a woman or a man, those terms simply don't fit me, in the same way that if I was a cis woman, male terms don't feel correct. I have areas of my physical body that don't match up with what my brain thinks is there, when I hear my voice it doesn't belong to me, just someone who is piloting my current body. In the case of physical traits, they can be changed! So I do - I (born female) take testosterone to lower my voice, etc. This aligns my physical form to my mental image, which makes it so that I don't feel the same distress when I look in the mirror or talk to people. That is one aspect of nonbinary identity, but not everyone experiences dysphoria around the same traits or to the same degree.

It sounds like you were able to grow up without those gendered expectations on you, which gives you a really clear look at the ridiculous gender binary that we find ourselves in. Those play a part in some people's identity that value it as a sort of protest of those rigid expectations. People have a natural desire to categorize themselves so they can communicate who they are - in a society that so highly values fitting into those gendered boxes, there is a clear need for an alternate label. I also personally don't believe that any behavior or trait is inherent to one gender or the other, so I think we are on the same page there... I think the ideal world of most nonbinary people wouldn't even include the nonbinary label in the first place, since ideally, we would live in a world that wouldn't assume anything about us as people. Just like you're saying, normalizing the breaking of the binary is the goal there.

Unfortunately we don't live in that ideal world. It takes a large amount of people that have an understanding of gender past those basic "traits" that are attached to male and female to break down the boundaries. If more people thought like you - not expecting certain things out of people based on gender, being curious about identity and truly asking out of a desire to learn - then we would be better off.

When you say:

"I don't understand why it gets framed as being a type of gender instead of trying to normalize the concept that everyone's inclination toward how they feel about themselves can and does change from day to day and that's just how people are. "

I think that people are simply doing both! Gender and sex are wayyyy more complex biologically than we as a society have thought in the past. There are so many ways to be a man, to be a woman, to be anything else, even biologically!

So I guess in summary: Dysphoria exists, it's not all based on feeling a certain way or being categorized publicly in a certain way. Looking at it that way discounts the struggle people go through internally. There is a binary that exists, whether we want it to or not, that affects the way people see us relating to our gender. Nonbinary people exist outside of that binary in different ways, but not to the detriment of trying to break down those binaries in the larger sense.

I really hope that makes sense! Let me know if I can clarify at all.


Also thank you very much for opening up about your experience - it's a thing that is so personal and I appreciate the transparency and support <3 I hope you are doing well.

[Crow]

I personally don't care how others choose to live their lives as long as it doesn't harm someone else's. So for those that are trans, i believe they should have the ability to live their lives without being discriminated against (employment, access to public spaces, etc.).

There are several issues which need to be addressed in society. The popular ones being discussed right now include the following:

- Biological males who have transitioned should not be competing in sports against biological females - the physical difference is a significant factor in the advantages it offers biological males who have transitioned. They should have an "Open" class in which these individuals may be able to compete in, whether that's the Men's division or not can be debated. The women's division should be dependent on biological sex, not gender.

- Access/guideline on which restroom to use. My opinion is that the unisex bathroom is best accommodated to fit the needs of the trans individuals. I personally don't care if i see a trans in the men's bathroom, but thinking on how society is to evolve with current/potential future identities/genders - i think it's only reasonable to have establishments provide for Male, Female, Unisex restrooms. Otherwise, where do we draw the line on what's practical?

- Age in which transitional consent is required. This is a major decision for any individual, especially since the effects are irreversible. I believe without parental consent, then the individual must have reached the age of "adulthood" with respect to their residing country to undergo any surgical transitional procedure.

I realize many have their own thoughts on the matter and would like to see what others think as well.

Well said.

I'm not gonna add much more but just say that I personally went through the whole gender exploration thing in college (like many do). I identified as panromantic/sensual greysexual polyamorous cis-woman. Having that long label meant a lot to me at the time--it really was a huge part of my identity.

Now? Nah. Whether or not that's my romantic and sexual orientation now, it doesn't matter. It's none of anyone's business. So I almost never talk about it. Only thing I care about is that I'm proud to be a biological woman.

I think the over-obsession with gender/sexuality as your main identity is really annoying and honestly cringe. Be more than just who you kiss/f*ck. If you want to be a man, be a man. If you want to be a woman, be a woman. You want to be something else? Cool. Stop telling us about it and shoving it in our face. Just go do it and be happy with yourself. Then move on.

[Mothman]

Well said.

I'm not gonna add much more but just say that I personally went through the whole gender exploration thing in college (like many do). I identified as panromantic/sensual greysexual polyamorous cis-woman. Having that long label meant a lot to me at the time--it really was a huge part of my identity.

Now? Nah. Whether or not that's my romantic and sexual orientation now, it doesn't matter. It's none of anyone's business. So I almost never talk about it. Only thing I care about is that I'm proud to be a biological woman.

I think the over-obsession with gender/sexuality as your main identity is really annoying and honestly cringe. Be more than just who you kiss/f*ck. If you want to be a man, be a man. If you want to be a woman, be a woman. You want to be something else? Cool. Stop telling us about it and shoving it in our face. Just go do it and be happy with yourself. Then move on.

It's a bit of a double standard to assert that you are a cis woman and proud of it in the same post that you tell others they are pushing it in your face by being out of the closet and proud of their identity, yeah?
For every loud and proud queer person "shoving it in your face", there are a dozen more that are doing exactly what you say - just living their lives. If queer people being visible to you bothers you that much, you may not be as cool with it as you say. Obviously I'm not trying to scold you or anything, but it's maybe worth examining why you feel the way you do.

[Crow]

It's a bit of a double standard to assert that you are a cis woman and proud of it in the same post that you tell others they are pushing it in your face by being out of the closet and proud of their identity, yeah?
For every loud and proud queer person "shoving it in your face", there are a dozen more that are doing exactly what you say - just living their lives. If queer people being visible to you bothers you that much, you may not be as cool with it as you say. Obviously I'm not trying to scold you or anything, but it's maybe worth examining why you feel the way you do.

Proud wasn't the right word. I'm glad to be a biological woman. I've always been comfortable as one, and I'm glad I was born that way and don't have to change at all. I don't think it makes sense to be proud of something you were born with/as. So I definitely picked the wrong word there, my b.

That said, you're definitely assuming a lot from my post. I'm only bothered by the over-obsession of sexuality and the intense performance of it. I don't go around screaming about how I'm a woman or showing off my womanly parts. Or talking about them. Or bragging about them. I'm just glad to have them, and to be a woman, that's all.

lol I'm not upset by queer visibility. I and the majority of my friends/family qualify as 'queer'. I just don't like it being "shoved in my face" as you say.