Hi! This video is me working through my own gender by seeking council and dialogue from trans people. If you object to the *content* of my words, by all means push back and tell me where I beefed it. But if you object to me *asking this question at all*, I'm not receptive to that opinion so keep it to yourself. Either watch the whole thing and comment on specifics or scroll on to something more to your tastes. Thanks!
Anyone who objects to someone asking a question has their own problems. And for the record, I don't think this question is weird. I think the question is completely normal and something that most people on both sides of the discussion should really consider more. You ask a lot of questions and do a solid (but very simplified) job answering most of them. If you would like me to weigh in on any specific question, I would be perfectly willing to answer it for you, but there are so many details that if I don't know what you are actually wondering about (now that you have done some more research) I will wind up giving you essentially an entire book, most of which either you don't care about or already know. -A woman who has/continues to transition
I think if I was dropped on an island after already living in society I would still see myself as female. I'm also Intersex and trans female. Before I understood what gender is I already kinda knew my gender is female. Now, if I was raised on an island without really being exposed to our society I feel like my gender wouldn't really be firm because I wouldn't have anything to base it off of. Probably be more like a tom boy. I like your channel. Been watching it for a month now. I was on acid one night and started watching police cam videos and suddenly your videos popped up ❤
@@RoxanneBarbelo I think you're on the right track when imagining being raised on an island without society. As I think once you've been raised around social constructs, it's difficult to view the world without those lens. You can remove the person from society but not the society from the person. You'd have to start off with a clean slate somehow.
@@wrackfuljackal I was just thinking what it would be like if I grew up on an island and some ship discovers the island and the first thing they see is me, a hermaphrodite eating an octopus out of a coconut. I could see that being a scene in a Mel Brooks film Lol
I’m trans, and I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I think that even on a desert island there is still an audience-myself. I still carry society in my own head, and I still have all the ideas about gender that I brought from the outside world. If I’d grown up on the desert island and never had any contact with society, that’s another matter, but in that case I’m not really me any more.
This. Precisely the answer that popped into my head after the first few sentences of watching the video. At nearly 50, and having been on HRT for a total of almost one year, I can say that my chances for an 'audience' that matters (ie. not just people that pass by/interact with me for a few seconds on a random day, positive or negative) are being pared down rapidly with advancing time, I can honestly and succinctly say that I'm transitioning purely for myself and to solve my issues primarily (perhaps exclusively, but I am not thrilled with using definitives), not others. I think that this question was something that I was addressing as part of my decision in the first place without overtly asking it of myself, but there we are.
Maybe you would do exactly the same, but without people classifying it... that's what I believe. Like you wouldn't know if what you're doing is classified as feminine or masculine, you would just do what feels more natural/comfortable to you. That's what I believe when I think about it
Positive and negative in this comment refer to relationship trends, in a statistical manner, NOT good or bad. This is a thing I studied in college, actually. The preservation of self and others in the case of being completely and utterly alone either relationally or literally. Society stops. That's the answer. If anyone has read the logs of Cabeza de Vaca, his name is Head of Cow, yes, you'll know that he underwent an overwhelming loss of self even in the company of a few of his comrades from Spain. His enslavement by the Natives of Florida really screwed his identity up and he became a prophet for them eventually. His entire sense of religious identity, a very strong piece of self at the time, and his sense of humanity altered significantly in inverse patterns. Other significant texts report the human condition becoming larger than ever before, humanity being first and foremost to survival of the mind. Suspect texts like the various Crusoe novels demonstrate an abandonment of self unlike anyone inside a society can ever undergo. If anything, I think being trans and being stranded would completely alter, in a positive effect, how much a person sees themself as whatever preferred state of identity. Of course, other mental degradations occur to affect that aspect of mental change, so who can say for sure whether the trans person's view of themself would be otherwise realistic or even possible in a healthy light inside a society. It could be either a vast improvement for mental health even in respect to mental decline or it could be a vast drop in self respect, leading to things like dysmorphia and internal shame. It's a complex question and answer because each party we talk to has a completely different result. It cannot be anything different because some people are more or less of any given identity than others. Even now I don't really count myself as non-binary or binary, somewhere in between man and non-binary. I think for myself I would keep going as I am and suffer only from the extended effects of being alone, eventually killing myself due to the expanded suffering of isolation. It would take years, though. For a gendered trans person though? Perhaps it would be a release from norms and the constant reminder that they don't *look* or *feel* right in respect to others, or perhaps the lack of ability to present visually would destroy their mental health. Much of our gender conformity is visual, which leads to mental conformity/non-conformity. I think the head comment is especially on point -- when isolated for extended periods of time, the person isolated stops being who they were before isolation irreversibly in many unhealthy ways. Are you trans if there is nobody to witness you but yourself? I think no but also yes, it depends. Trans just means transitioned from one identity to the another, but if we're real, many trans people were always who they were and transitioning just means presenting and acting how they want to in order to be more comfortable. But also, it's very hard to transition from hard-learned activities and thoughts, so maybe being trans is indeed existential in nature and will always be an identity marker for someone who transitions. Perhaps, hopefully, in the future transness will no longer be defined by mental aspects but by physical aspects alone when we let people be themselves without consequence.
I think trans people, by and large, have more practice explicitly thinking and talking about their gender than cis people. So most of them should be better equipped to answer this question than most cis people. And cis people and eggs have some catching up to do, so it's good exercise!
Tbh, as a cis guy, this is the first time I thought about actively performing a gender, probably because there is a general lack of gender expression especially among cis men. On the island, I would probably only start experimenting with my gender if I get bored, I'm not too attached to it. I don't think the concept of gender is necessary at all, at the end it's just whatever you do with your sex and wether you do a lot with it or not is just a matter of interest.
Enby here - the desert island does indeed sound like paradise! I could just be me and not have to worry about how others see me, or what they think about my outfit or whatever, or trying to fit me into one of two boxes that I don’t want to fit into!
@@HarkertheStoryteller mmmm dessert island… more cake and ice cream than your little heart could desire! 🤩 But I’d still take the island without the desserts. I’ll bake my own 😝
yeah to me the boxes are just obstacles, I dont really care what I am because my body is basically just a tool for me to do the stuff I like but people make a big deal out of it. Like seriously just call me what you want and let me get to the good part of life, the fact that its shoved in my face all the time makes is kinda annoying. Like imagine if people kept making you check one of two boxes you dont care about. Its like do you like the letter A or the letter B? What? why? let let to the good part already! its just a minor inconvenience for me personally but its one I would rather not have, it feels like im being forced to participate in something I genuinely could not care any less about.
Enby here - personally I think it would be torture. I would have this person inside that I would never get to show anyone else. I wouldn't even know that my gender is different from anyone else's which would suck because then I wouldn't know that it's unique. Your rarity is what makes our internal experience of sex special.
@@The_Burber i think he means the drawing of lines between people. I tend to agree because if we all only saw each other as people I think we wouldnt have so many issues, but honestly its not that practical for everyday life. Either way, youre welcome for seeking to understand before being understand, though I dont believe you should have to thank people for that, I appreciate the gratitude nonetheless :).
@@gumbunch Hopefully that's what they meant. All the labels and us'ing and them'ing isn't helping anyone understand anyone else. Just be you while being a productive member of the society we share. News media is constantly broadcasting how we're all killing each other when we should know most of us are good people who just want to help each other live good lives.
I’m sorry but this makes me think that there must be a Palpatine of gender and I find that hilarious “Society will decide your gender” “I AM THE SOCIETY”
If you can’t think of yourself as something that won’t be perceived by others, gender will always be part of your identity. Otherwise, you could end up discarding your gender if you were alone on an island for the rest of your life, as it’s really just a social label.
@@holynder3181 That will only happen if you're agender. For me, I would absolutely remain male. Every time I'm alone, I find out again through firsthand experience. That's if you stay healthy though. Once you are psychologically starved enough, you won't have a sense of any kind of personal identity whatsoever, temporarily lose language and social skills, and become a pure observer. I also know this through firsthand experience.
FtM transman here. Remember that guy in Pulp Fiction who sells drugs to Vincent? The one with the long hair and beard and wears a bathrobe and eats cereal at 2AM while watching old movies? I turned into that guy during Covid lockdown (minus the drug dealing). I think he is my true form. So to answer your question, I'm definitely a man in both social and nonsocial settings, it's just the level of upkeep that changes.
I think we're all that dude given enough distance from other people. I was that dude for like 20 years, and only recently decided to try being awake during the day, sometimes.
i know a handful of women that tend to be like that. doesn't seem to be a gender thing, unless you make it out to be. maybe it's a cultural moment, like in some places it's considered gay to wear pink shirt to work, while in many others it's completely normal. i've also heard that wearing earrings makes you gay, but in some places many men wear earrings, doesn't seem like they have more gays.
sometimes being transmasc is less about being a boy and more about not being a girl. what's most important is being free from the constraints that hit me hard as a kid
This is interesting... in my own experience, before I started taking T and growing facial hair, I tried a lot harder to present masc. But after my beard came in, I started growing out my hair and wearing a mix of women and men's clothing. I identify as male and use he/him, but I am no longer worried about being called a woman or she/her pronouns even if I cross back over the gender binary. The best I can guess is the more man I saw in myself the more comfortable I became with myself and the less I felt I had to assert my gender to others. Now with just facial hair it's like it clicks in other people's head that I'm a man and use he/him. If there were no one around to perceive me, I'd still have a beard and wear a mix of clothes- the only difference is there would be no one else there to see me as a man. After transitioning, I no longer felt the need to run from feminity, as I began to accept and see myself as a man. And I think that I became more comfortable BECAUSE the people started to make assumption that I am male and that assumption (when right) can be very validating.
For me as a trans girl it is about being a girl. I think it depends on the person. You are the inverse of being a girl, while I am a girl, not the inverse of a boy, if that makes sense
I'm nonbinary, and I have the same realizations. I am unsure if this could be Caste as us being sexist, or if the dysphoria around sexism is what triggered the desire to escape girlhood.
actually in my pov this discussion here is the distinction between transgender and transsexual. TG is about leaving the constraints of the born gender. TS is about arriving in the constraints of the opposite gender. nonbinary trans people are TG. binary trans people are TS.
@ffh6795 that's an interesting take on it. I identify as a binary trans guy but honestly that's mostly for convenience. I want to be perceived as a boy by societies standards, but if there was no standards, I don't think I care as long as I also wasn't being held to the standard of being a girl
Growing up, | was a very feminine child. Constantly bullied by fellow children and parents. Usually just called gay or queer. Beaten for "Standing funny" I had no idea what that meant but I know I didn't want to be it. Height of this was having petrol thrown over me and set on fire aged 12. Aged 16, got thrown out of home. Was told that my parents didn't want to live with "My type". I got a job, went to the gym. I got big-"Manned up". Changed everything about myself to fir in. Lost my virginity aged 24 (my equipment didn't work until that point). Got married, had four children, became a success. Suddenly aged 37 and after an accident, I discovered I was wasn't the man I thought I was. Turns out that I was born with an open wound between my legs and had surgery to make me a boy as that's what my body resembled mostly- I was intersex and In one instant I understood what I was and why I constantly felt the way I did. After several mental health assessments, I'm transitioning, but I'm still a dad, partner to my wife and human in society. I now feel like myself. Being on an island wouldn't make a difference but do admit to having to look a certain way to fit in.
It's wild how vast and complex individual experience can be. Thank you for sharing ❤ that's pretty powerful. Been questioning myself on that actually, just putting off talking about my big hips and extrasensory perception plus the cost is a bit much atm. I also don't think knowing would change anything, but I could be scared of the answer. More accurately I probably fear *having* to explain it one way or another as opposed to being under the radar and not explaining. It's a bit existential, but I don't really want to invest in the answer without knowing either. Society is an asshole that way, we like our sorting boxes simple. Yet real life is rarely so.
Your whole story is horrifying, but the revelation that your parents KNEW you were intersex at birth takes it to a whole new level. I'm so thankful that you can live your authentic self now.
Being seen as my gender makes me happy because it means people see me how I want to be seen. My body being shaped how I want it to makes me happy because I like it when I look how I want to. Being treated the way that I like, or having the role in society that I want, makes me happy because it fits with how I view myself
@@ThatDangDad one way I like to explain being trans is like playing a symphony in the wrong key. Life kinda sounds OK, but doesn't quite resolve well. Transitioning sets everything in the right key and the symphony sounds right. Even if there's nobody else to listen it. The symphony still resolves well inside us and gives us great peace of mind.
I am a trans girl MTF, I love this question because it gets to the root of me. Honestly, this applies to really anything political or ideological, I believe I was born trans and it would torment me if I interacted with society after not interacting with people for all my life. But yeah, I would do anything to transition, despite the circumstances, it would torture me if I didn't. I knew I was trans when all the girls around me were in my mind: "becoming beautiful and pretty" while I became more and more what I couldn't be satisfied with myself. But I think even without seeing other human beings I genuinely think a part of me would not be satisfied. When I say I was born trans, I do not mean in a bio essentialist way, I genuinely believe that there's a spiritual aspect to dysphoria, akin to a soul which to other people sounds Schizophrenic but I don't know it's some intrinsic part of me which I can't say is just a material expression of society or some genetic or biological difference, it's so much deeper than that. And I genuinely was reborn when I took hormones and blockers, it was like a religious experience without the let's say the dogma and pressure of it. But yeah that's just my ramblings, thanks to anyone who read this :)
I just wrote a similar thing. I see the dysphoria and my gender as two separate things. Gender is a part of who I am, while my dysphoria is the illness that needed to be treated for me to be able to live a normal life. My dysphoria started at around 11 when I realised I couldn't go out in swimsuits with the other boys. Cuz my body was a girl. At 30 I transitioned cuz the dysphoria, depression and anxiety was getting unbearable. Dysphoria doesn't go away when you go to a lone island. While it does let you experience with gender expression freely, it doesn't change the bodyparts allign with the gender of my brains.
I feel you on the soul part. I'm not spiritualistic in basically any manner, which is probably influenced by my strongly scientific and analytical mind. Yet, I feel that something huge is missing from our understanding of reality, our universe. That something is how we perceive things, qualia, but also the uniqueness of everyone's mind. The thought that our mind is just an amalgamation of the things we've seen around us and picked up, then further developed... that reasoning still falls flat in my experience. Either inside of, or adjacent to, the black box of our brain, there is something else immaterial that makes us all unique. I've had gender identity issues since I was a first-grader, maybe even before then. I cannot fathom that those problems could be a product of how we forge our minds. I choose to believe that it's something deeper that lies inside the question of who one truly is.
I think there's actually something to this. I'm still in my egg, and I wouldn't consider myself religious, but I definitely felt something very deep and spiritual when I finally realized I was trans. I don't know what it is but there's something there. Edit: Not sure why this posted twice lol
I think this is similar to asking “if you were raised seperated from society, would you still follow a 7-day work week?” like no, probably not, but I’d still follow some similar work schedule, probably one thats comfortable for me
I disagree. Mostly because my concept of gender is completely detached from societal norms and completely attached to my inate sense of internal sex, as a nonbinary person.
In isolation, I'd feel even more comfortable with my transition. Social pressure is a huge barrier to being who I see myself as, because that's the only pushback I ever get. I noticed this during Covid lockdowns most.
regarding disability and gender, often disabled people are so infantilized that their gender is an afterthought. This has resulted in laws restricting transition or gender affirming care in some places for people with cognitive differences like autism. The idea that someone can be so disabled that they barely experience gender is common for those with higher support needs where their gender expression and even their sexuality can easily be policed and limited by caregivers.
Yes! Although I would argue that the degendering of disabled people is actually a degendering tinted with a kind of failed femininity, like a sheer lip gloss with a hint of color. Disability itself, particularly in its more socially visible forms, has long been understood through a heuristic of ability as masculine (see "you kick like a girl" or "don't get hysterical," among others). In our binary society, to be incapable of masculinity is therefore to be shuffled into femininity, only for that category with its equally high standards of performance to also reject the disabled body. Because the masculine was impossibilized first, the feminine remains the lingering identity, but still one which doesn't want us either.
@@lunarmagpie619eugenics in a nutshell. Because like it or not America has spent the better part years of the late 19th and early twentieth century obsessed on the perfection of the human race and all that reminded them they were not perfect were in many ways rendered inferior and undesirable in as many ways as they could possibly get away with. That not only included people of other races they wished to rid the world of but also the many flaws in their own. Including disabled people mentally or physically or socially as sexual orientation and people who were poor. Many people these deeds were unique to Germany and Adolph Hitler. Oh no, that came straight out from the privileged white class of American society by 1890. Margret Sanger was a Eugenics activist. And many notable people in this country from Woodrow Wilson to Henry Ford were very fond of her. It included what the ideal woman measured. What the Ideal man looks like. How many kids should you have if any. They debated that marriage would be allowed the working class but not the privilege of making babies. That was their plan with the pushing birth control. It was never about equality or feminism. They sold it to workers that way to sell the idea that you can’t make it on this salary and grow a family on a wage of one wage slave. Mentally unfit were sterilized. The sexual deviant were jailed and castrated or sterilized. Now you can see the autistic, borderline personality disordered and gays and lesbians kids are suddenly being persuaded that they are something that leads them to want to castrate themselves. What a sell. Indoctrination. Why these groups in particular? They fit the Eugenics agenda pretty well doesn’t it? Now his is a social construct. You can tell because it’s promoted in University in Europe first where top Psychology in child development aka DSD used hospitals and psychiatric methods aimed at treating people with ambiguity of sexual development are also the same people that thought sense of self gender were fungible. They would assign a baby a sex and tell parents to raise such an altered child the sex that they created. They would never have the pleasure of sex, of child rearing or any real sense of themselves. They were sold a life that was not truly viable. Now out of the playbook script of f yesteryear these very same people are now indoctrinating youth to do for them what they can’t force on the public because it’s a human violation of human rights. Convince yourself that you are not what you are. A true Transexual didn’t need anyone to tell them “hey maybe you really are a girl or tell a girl you’re really a boy. We actually wake up and look in the mirror and see to our horror like reminded we are not in the right skin suit. And have a panic attack. That would a disorder not a fad, it’s a crushing feeling. Especially if you like me are also intersex and already medically altered and cannot be reversed. Radical acceptance behavior training is the only thing keeping me sane. Don’t let anyone get you down that dark path. These kids were experimental versions of transgender phenomena. All the verbal que. None binary, binary non conformity, sex assigned at birth. Gender fluid. Straight out of the box terms used back in the 30s and beyond when referring to people who it’s ambiguous sexual development.
As someone who is autistic, I have been told that I can’t know my gender because my autism makes me less mature than others my age. I was 18 at the time. It’s really fucked up how infantilized so many disabled people are, especially by parents, caregivers, and teachers. Even if my autism did make me less mature than others my age (which I don’t think it does), if I am capable of communicating about my gender, then I am capable of deciding my own identity. And there’s literally no harm in respecting a person’s wishes to go by a different name and pronouns. If it’s just a phase, then everything goes back to the way it was before eventually. If it’s not, then people are being assholes for no reason. People need to learn to let others live their lives the way they want to
yep, once had a friend that was forced to stop transitioning because "testosterone is making [them] have psychotic breaks" they had been diagnosed with schizophrenia years before medically transitioning. also have seen a lotttt of autistic kids be told that they just dont UNDERSTAND their gender bc theyre autistic (used to work for child & adolescent psychiatrists)
“May a thousand flowers bloom.” Is such a beautiful ending sentence, I find it very comforting as a trans masc person who’s not exactly binary but also not completely non binary.
i guess if i was alone on the island my identity would fluctuate a lot more and i might start performing plays with different versions of myself in various costumes
@@nuclearalchemy9220It’s realistic. If you want to live as a man you have to… live as a man. It’s a lesson I wish I learned 10 years earlier because denying it and dressing up for people on social media did nothing for me. Do not make my same mistakes.
During covid lockdowns (i.e., staying at home, not seeing other people for weeks on end), a a looot of trans people I knew got all jazzy with their gender in a way they hadn't before (myself included). I reckon those lockdowns are a great case study of "on a desert island": a social isolation for an extended period where people didn't need to worry about how people would react to their appearance. Food for thought. Thanks for the video :)
And while I had been questioning my gender before covid, that time period largely gave me more time to think about it and my place in gender! I'm a trans guy now, and proud of it.
For myself, not much would change because I've always been just who I am, rather fiercely so. I never fit the ideal female gender though I am female cis, and I identify as such, for the most part. As a child I felt equally or more male than female, to my mother's great concern. Today we would call such a young girl a tomboy, and leave it at that, never questioning her gender identity. This fits into the social aspect of gender. I have multiple medical issues, chronic pain, disabilities, and a genetic disease that takes up all of my time dealing with, besides living in forced poverty because I have Social Security disability, so I don't really have time to sit around and worry about my gender. If I were on an island, I'd still be dealing with the same issues, nothing would change. And as one other person commented here, not having social pressures, one tends to be more themselves than they might be, and when it comes to my neurological issues and my neurodivergence, I would have to agree with that. I would be more myself, masking wouldn't be an issue. I find how we perceive ourselves, be it sex, be it gender, be it anything, does not change that much. It may grow, develop and become more nuanced, but we are who we are for the most part, usually. The fact that transgenderism is now linked to a part of the brain that is different physically and can be identified in autopsy regardless of whether or not a person has taken hormones or had surgery, pretty much says everything that needs to be said about this issue. We are who we are because that's the way our brains are wired. ❤
Similar thing happened to me, it wasnt covid, but I had quit my job to destress and to do some skill training at home, and during that time I got smacked full-on by years worth of trans feelings I hadnt fully conceptuallized.
You saying "I'm somebody who feels that 'male' describes me perfectly fine but who is not otherwise attached to 'masculinity' as some stat that I need to min-max" helped me realise my placement in the gender spectrum. Thank you so much for kinda accidentally helping.
Haha yes that's kinda where I sit too. I identify as a trans guy and I've socially and partly physically transitioned to what aligns with my gender identity, but I honestly do not really care about being masculine. Masculinity does not necessarily equal maleness, which may sound confusing, but it makes sense to me lol
That's how I feel too, as a cis guy. I'm a guy, I identify as one, but I don't feel any strong attachment to masculinity as a concept. I just an what I am, not like I'm really GNC anyways but yeah
I am a trans woman. I spent a lot of time reflecting on your question. I realized that my main concern with having feminine attributes is not for my own sake, but for others to respect me as a woman. I discovered how amazing estrogen is after starting it, and how harmful testosterone felt after I blocked it. If it weren't for society's judgments about gender, I might never have transitioned and could have been content living as I am. The societal definitions and expectations of gender were the main reasons I felt depressed before, and transitioning has brought me happiness. The double standards that once made me miserable are now what contribute to my happiness. Society’s failure to treat everyone equally based on gender is deeply damaging.
I haven't spent a huge amount of time reflecting on the question, but other than that, I'm in a very similar boat. I absolutely hate the aggressive "feeling on edge" sensation from testosterone, and don't particularly enjoy the defensive version from adrenaline either.
On a deserted island, the socially constructed parts of gender would slowly start to crumble away leaving me with only my personal identity. An outside observer might still consider my actions to be gendered, but that would only be due to their socially constructed lens. I'm just a person, living as myself. Labelling myself as a woman and as transgender are both just shorthands to signal to others how to approach me.
Clothes don't matter except as shelter from the elements, roles don't matter as you do everything in pursuit of survival. Even cis people would experience this.
Yes, that’s really interesting. It’s the observer that makes the distinction, the classification, if you will. They apply their own definition of gender to you based on their observations and their preconceived definitions. But that doesn’t change you. If a person on a ship observed your behaviour through binoculars and decided you were male/female based on your behaviour, the only person that affects is them. It only changes when you reintegrate into that society. All it comes down to is whatever society deems you to be. It’s imposed upon you, rather than society making room for people outside of the norm. Anyway, big love n’ hugs to you. We can all use a bit more love and kindness.
For me, gender is simply what makes me comfortable. It wouldn’t matter if I was surrounded by one thousand people or ten. I will still want to be in a body I am comfortable in regardless of how people perceive me.
I'm trans and autistic. Gender, for me, is more like an aesthetic (I may be on the agender spectrum), in a similar way to how I decorate my room. I'd still present masculine, and decorate my room the same way if I could, because it happens to make me comfortable, and I like it.
As a cis dude I think that's a nice way to put it. I just like the thought and 'romanticism' of the "though big guy with an emotional soft heart" and feel comfortable living that way. Thinking of gender as an aesthetic is a nice new perspective.
Yeah and for me both aesthetics are irrelevant to me, if pressed I say my assigned gender purely because I dont care and want you to move on from this thing that has really only ever served to be an inconvenience. Like seriously my body is just a tool to me, I dont care what it looks like that much so long as it allows me to do the things I like. Gender is weird and feels made up, I understand the concept of biological sex but gender is more like a cultural or religious identity almost. The problem is I dont understand those either, like I dont need any labels I have a name for that purpose already right? I care about having a male body as much as I care about having brown eyes or being 5'3, its only relevant for practical reasons for me. If anything height is more of a a thing since being short can be annoying when I cant reach something. All I really know about gender is that it is important to both trans and cis people for some reason so I try to respect it, but I do not really get why it matters at all.
I'm also trans and autistic and this is fascinating because I totally agree. I was born male, and I am changing my aesthetic to be more feminine but don't want to get any surgeries or anything. I want to look like my perception of what a feminine aesthetic looks like because that would just make me a lot more happy about my appearance, not become a full-blown girl or have any expectations to look or act like what a girl is supposed to be. I've also struggled with not feeling like a "girl" 100% of the time, and I wonder if that's due to just not being anything but liking how one gender looks. Some gender experts should do a paper about this view point because I would really like to see what other people think on it. Like if this kind of gender identity is more agender or non-binary esc instead of what gender you want to look like.
Also as an Agender the only thing I would change is my chest. I find it physically annoying. It makes me get too hot and gets in my way. Things would just be easier with it gone, has nothing to do with everyone else.
@@dragonscale46 Fair point, though I'd argue that isn't really gender presentation because for you, it's not about fitting into a gender role and just about utility and comfort.
@@paperbird9817 I agree with that. But top surgery is often considered under the umbrella of trans. So I figured it would be nice to let people know how I think.
Another agender person here and I think my presentation would likely shift some based on a shift in priorities. The first thing that comes to mind is skirts, light flows skirts. They’re much more comfortable in warmer temperatures (DESERT island) and if all my physical needs were met and I didn’t have to concern myself over the safety of others (on account of there being no others) then yeah comfy light skirts it is. TBH most of my day to day presentation is structured around pragmatism
Ayo??? This legit feels like itcame straight out of my head, complete withparts I don't quite get, but with research I didn't do. I'm a cis guy with pretty much the exact same vibe to his gender as you described and the same want for all trans peeps to be fine to live their lives as they want
I went off of HRT for a month and became quickly depressed. The social aspect is honestly secondary to physically being able to transition. I think my behavior would change, but I already just kinda live how I want to so I don't think it would be too different from how I act now.
@@crystalvulpine2314for some people it is, me included, but for a lot of trans people it’s all about the social stuff. I personally think these are two different categories entirely but we’re all in this boat together
@@crystalvulpine2314 I was wondering the same thing. If it’s social then what folks are saying is that it’s bad to be perceived as a certain gender.
Similar feelings here. I went off HRT for a couple of months and it was terribly detrimental to my mental health; I went back to how I felt before I started HRT, and back then I was very unhappy. Regardless of whether “gender is a social construct”, my gender dysphoria is physically tangible. If I were on a deserted island, I’d still certainly be trans because regardless of societal expectations, not being able to medically transition would by far be the much more damning part.
I have no idea about the island question. But the island as a symbol really spoke to me. After 8,5 years on HRT and top surgery my dysphoria has shrunken and it feels like I am now able to take a break from swiming restlessly in the ocean. I have reached a shore and don't have to constantly worry about survival anymore, which is great but also weird. I ask myself "What kind of masculinity do I want to live? How do I want to live it? What do I reject?".
I remember panicking when I realized i was transmasc because i didn't want to be a beer-drinking frat boy type. I was really into my identity as a creative type. I blew my own mind when I thought "I'm already a guy, right? So I just.... keep doing exactly what I already want to be doing. I'll just live as a /male/ creative type." Basically, whatever you decide, whatever you experiment with, whatever you find joy in... by being masculine and doing a thing, you define that thing as masculine for others. My mantra was "Who I am as a man becomes what a man is."
Thank you for this video. I always wish cis people were trying to do more of gender retrospection and analysis on theirselves, like you did. When people start to analyze gender and reflect how the different aspects of gender affect them, there would be much more compassion to people, their identities and their expression be they trans or cis. I hope this encourages everyone to take a moment every now and then and just explore all these different ideas.
Man I love this. philosophical shit about gender with relaxing music and no transphobia, great! I'm still exploring wtf am I gender wise, so these sort of questions are really interesting for me.
How are you always so kind, mentally challenging and utterly gentle? I'm seriously impressed by the level of empathy you display. And I say that as someone who got labelled "The most empathetic person I know" by a coworker just this morning! Thank you so much for your work ❤
@@ThatDangDadbetter late than never! reflection & thoughtfulness are strengths that are difficult to maintain because they require so much effort (and lbr time). all i ever want from people is for them to think about things more deeply. the fact that you were an "asshole" for 2 decades and managed to pull thru gives me a lot of hope for the future
@@ThatDangDad So many people don't ever acquire the self-awareness, tools, or will to examine themselves to that degree. That kind of work is HARD and lots of people dip a toe in, realise how much effort it will take, and just... don't. Thank you for not only putting in that hard work, but also for being publicly transparent about your journey and bringing these conversations to your platform.
I have an interesting story about gender, especially as a masculine cishet dude. I grew a lot of facial and body hair early on (about 14ish). Well, in the 2000’s body hair and facial hair was very much out. Beards were for stoners and serial killers only, for the most part. The only beards any guy had was either a soul patch or line beard (at least until 300 came out). I even remember a popular guy at school walking by me and saying “ew, wax your chest, dude.” Unfortunately , I, being a teenager in the 00’s, called him a homophobic slur for it. But despite constantly being told to shave, I refused to because it made me feel masculine in a very animalistic and primal way. In the 2010’s the lumbersexual and Viking look became popular, and suddenly my aesthetic was considered hot. Even as a kid, I wanted to be a large beast man thing. I always liked orcs and beastly fantasy and Sci-fi races in tv shows and video games. I played as Donkey Kong in Mario Party and Smash Bros on the N64 and couldn’t wait to go through puberty so my physicality could match the beast man I felt like that my skinny childhood body couldn’t. Point is, even if you’re not trans, if you perform gender the “wrong” way, you get policed at the wrong time. Do what you are, because times always change. Be unmoving because you’re best at being you
Thank you for showing me that I have solidarity even with men. Why are people so crazy about other people's hair?? I'm a woman, and I was given unsupervised use of a BLADE in MIDDLE SCHOOL because my mom decided I should shave my legs. *_?????????_* The worst part is it actually opened the door for a SH addiction (don't worry, I'm long clean now). My dad is continually weird about my choice to let my body be fluffy on my legs and underarms. Why do people care so much? It's so weird. Feels borderline pedophilic to me :|
Yes, as a cis woman I never enjoyed shaving and it actually makes me uncomfortable (itchy and lots of ingrown hairs) to shave. Yet I am left feeling incredible pressure to properly perform my gender by shaving and every spring time as I stop wearing long pants I have to fight against my feelings of incorrectness for having leg, arm and armpit hair. It's ridiculous and intellectually I know it, but still I feel this annoying feeling that I am not female enough if I don't do what I am 'supposed' to.
The thing is, there is always an audience. Even if I was entirely isolated, when I look at myself in the mirror or feel my body exist in space, I feel wrong. My entire life, I couldn’t help but catch my reflection every time I came across it. It took me a while to understand that the reason why I did that is that my reflection always felt off. This was before I even knew what a trans person was. After discovering my identity, I realized that the “off” feeling was discomfort and a recognition that I associated with seeing who I was, and that I wasn’t who I envisioned in my mind. Whenever I envision my completed transition, I imagine looking at myself, feeling that finished body and image exist. How others view me doesn’t come into that vision. How others view and refer to me is always an afterthought, how I see myself is the primary concern. Now, this has also caused me problems, confusing my gender dysphoria for simple body image issues due to my weight. However, my doubts about my own “transness,” vanished when I had an eyeopening dream. It was a simple dream: I woke up, walked to bathroom, did my business, and looked in the mirror. I was a woman, inside and out. Not only that, but the body I inhabited had never been envisioned by me before, this was a wholly new image of myself, yet, I felt a larger and more profound joy and euphoria than I’d ever felt before and since. It is the peak moment of my life, and it was all due to my brief change what I looked like, the ability to look in the mirror and see myself looking back for the first time in my life.
It's this "desert island" hypothetical that made me realize a couple years ago that I'm agender *and* on the aromantic-asxual spectrum. It changed my performance to be just "I'm wearing what I want to wear and doing what I want to do and doing who I want to do" without any guilt or reservations :)
Yeah this is a weird hypothetical for agender folks because the answer is so obvious. I'd just be me all the time. I wouldn't have to get anxious about formal events with dress codes. I wouldn't have to get stressed about people behaving a certain way around me because of my perceived gender. I'd just get to be me and not have to perform a gender because I have to in certain situations because society expects it or I have to in order to get a job or not be judged by family for 'not making an effort' etc I would love nothing more than existing in a world where gender didn't exist. I have a body. My body is not 'me'. I suppose I just don't do self-expression. Maybe it would be interesting to see if I was more comfortable doing this alone on a desert island. If I found a feather I'd probably stick it in my hair. But because it pleased me and it wouldn't be misinterpreted by an observer.
I've been identifying as non binary period for a few years now, and kinda felt like agender is kind of right for me as a label, but on the other eI love presenting in pretty gendered ways on some occasions (I love to do hyperfem makeup and outfits to combine with my weird androgynous hair and posture and personality), so I didn't think it was quite right either. But when it comes to this hypothetical my immediate answer was also "I'd just present the same ways I do now, be myself the same way i am now". And reading your comment I've felt pretty reflected on the label the way u explain it. Either way I don't care so much about labeling myself the perfect way anymore, but just existing howhever i please and trying not to project what i feel other people will gender me as on my own thoughts about who i am or how I can present to be "accepted" or read as non binary. To me, I'm CLEARLY that, and that's what ultimately matters.
It's refreshing to come across a "question for transpeople" that isn't trying to smuggle in anti-trans rethoric. My starter class was Male and I don't feel the need to multiclass out of it. I don't have the most min/maxed build, but that doesn't bother me. If I did end up on the island though, I would probably stop caring about my gender pretty quickly. Not because I would stop taking levels in Male, but because I'd lose myself without others to relate to. The increased isolation during the height of the pandemic, I believe, was a harsh reminder of how much people need other people for lots of folk.
God that is so true, I think the pandemic really affected myself and others in a way with gender of seeing less reason for it, as outside of the day to day of society, gender is kinda pointless to some extent. Also, as someone who is non-binary (and identifies under the trans umbrella), I am fully multiclassing, didn't need to mix/max or respec, just had to alter the build moving forward.
Yeah, I would think the same thing. I like being male as defensive... something people find oddly feminine, it lacks the rage needed to be male according to conservatives. The person who makes no aggression and is defensive holds the notion of the "Den mother" a bear or wolf that protects the cubs... a mom. It was what I heard as an AMAB guy, being the level head of people who could not act mature... a mom. It was literally my title. Very interesting, I lacked the rage and was too compassionate to perform as male, also being gay added to that. It was a group of far-left people but put on me by conservatives, we just all thought it was fun so it got adopted.
This is actually a great and profound question. I’m MtF, and a lot of the time I’m ONLY performing for myself. I’m 6’4”. no matter what clothes I wear, what parts of my body I shave, I’m not fooling the people looking for a man in me. I’m not even bothering changing my voice at all in casual conversation. But at home, I don’t like how I look if I’m dressing like a man, or if I have facial or body hair. I don’t really like how I sound, so I’m more inclined to try changing it. I don’t think any of that would change if I were left alone on a desert island.
Most people don't know this, but you can actually physically raise your voice over time by stuffing your body full of magnesium (as many different forms as you personally can tolerate in as many doses across the day as possible) and doing myofascial release (basically massage) on the front of your neck where vocal cords are. Testosterone and estrogen have vastly different impacts on bone density--T breaks down bones faster and causes minerals to accumulate in soft tissue all over the body faster than E. This breakdown of bone and accumulation of minerals in soft tissue is why testosterone makes your voice drop--it changes the frequencies that vocal cords resonate at by changing their density and mass. But when you take a bunch of magnesium and do a lot of massage on your neck, the accumulated minerals in vocal cords break down and are put back into bone, causing them to resonate at higher frequencies. You can also use the same techniques to de-masculinize your face (as testosterone does not actually thicken bones in the face but merely causes minerals to accumulate in the soft tissue on top of the bones) HRT doesn't actually redistribute fat itself--it redistributes the minerals that have accumulated in fat, with T and E causing minerals to accumulate more in different locations across the body. Detective Wiggles on youtube has a great video on this.
@@michaelajames99 i personally don’t need a mirror or a voice to feel how nice sheets feel on my freshly shaven body or enjoy the look of a skirt on myself, and i certainly don’t need the labels “man” and “woman” to describe the way i think about my body
I think you were spot on with your thoughts on nonbinary people. The only things dictating my appearance on that island would be my own comfort and sense of aesthetics. On a more metaphysical level, what I am would matter little to me as long as I knew I was myself, and I could reflect who that was as much or as little as I liked through physical characteristics.
Agender person here, I love this well thought out and researched vid. Right at the very start I was reminded of how I ended up realizing I was agender, which was in a sense in the closest real world equivalent to the hypotheticals: living alone stuck at home during the covid lockdowns. Having no one around to perform gender to for long stretches of time, I realized that for me, with the performance (and, as I now realize, much of the outside feedback) gone, there wasn't much gender left. Since that realization, as life started back up, it has become uncomfortable to perform the gender associated with my birth sex, but oh well, it did make room for experimenting with funky queer presentations :)
I kinda feel this. For me, I don't think I ever did a great job of performing my assigned gender, but there were a lot of masculine things that I was encouraged to do even if I didn't do a great job of them. For me, I realized I was agender not because I quit performing my gender and found that I liked it, but because I stumbled into LGBT stuff on youtube, and upon being introduced to the idea of gender euphoria, I realized I was supposed to like it and never did. Sadly, I still haven't fully shaken off the habits I built up while learning to perform gender, but I'm getting better, and becoming more myself every year.
@@crystalvulpine2314 I do think my extended family is a little sexist, yeah, but the main reason I'm pretty sure I'm some flavor of nonbinary is that there's never been a single things that's given me that masculine gender euphoria feeling, and for the longest time I didn't really see any difference between men and women other than biology and societal expectations. Like, when I first found out about trans people, I didn't find it strange because I thought gender roles were important, I found it weird that anyone cared enough to bother asking people to use certain pronouns. When I was little, before my extended family bribed me to get my hair cut, I looked so much like my mom when she was my age, to the point that people would assume I was a girl, and rather than giving me the same sort of feeling of it conflicting with how I see myself that I've seen in both cis and trans people, young me's reaction was "Ah, yes, I'm so much like my mom, isn't that so neat?" Like, I was almost 18 when I realized that gender and gendered pronouns were anything more than sexist stereotypes and a way to sort people so people don't risk seeing the opposite genetalia in changing rooms and bathrooms. I support people doing whatever weird harmless things make them happy, and now I've seen how much most people care about their gender it's clear to me that supporting trans folks is more important than sorting people based on what their underwear covers, but it's still a little wild to me that anyone has such strong feelings about gender and sex. I'm just me, you're just you, and words like "he" and "she" are all just made up
Personally, if I had never been exposed to society in any way, I wouldn’t be transgender, since gender wouldn’t exist to me. I’d still want to have estrogen as my dominant sex hormone, since it makes me more comfortable in my body, and I’d still wear the clothes and makeup and wear my hair the way I want. If I were transported to an island now, I’d still be trans, because it is impossible to exorcize my conceptualization of gender from my brain. I might technically not have any more application of gender, but my transness and queering of the world is inherent to how i exist as a person.
I'll just second this instead of writing the same thing. If I were taken there now I'd still be a trans guy but if I were never introduced into a society with gender conceptions then I'd probably feel more comfortable in my skin compared to how I currently am but my mind and how I interpret gender, even as someone who considers themselves nonconforming, is largely dictated by how society broadly and collectively views gender.
I love the way you put this! I have a genuine question if you don’t mind answering it, otherwise feel free to ignore this. In my own exploration I also got to “I wouldn’t be transgender because gender wouldn’t exist to me”. But when it comes to self-expression (or what would, in our society, be called gender expression) such as taking hormones, styling yourself a certain way, or using certain mannerisms, how do we know that those preferences would remain the same? On one hand those things feel intrinsic to who I am but on the other hand they may be things I adopted in order to reinforce my gender identity and make me feel more aligned with that internal sense of gender. In case of the latter, if society had deemed things like testosterone (or the types of changes it causes in a body), short hairstyle, facial hair, suits etc as being feminine, then would those thing be what I was drawn to instead? As they would reinforce my femininity and allow me to feel more at home with myself as I embody it. I imagine that if gender as a concept never existed, then gendered styles, body types, mannerisms etc, would not either. There would be no clothes or hormones that would make me feel more feminine because it wouldn’t mean anything to be feminine. In our current reality, what is femme or masc is quite arbitrarily decided and under constant flux and redefinition. It them follows that those style preferences and performances as learned, things that may have been completely different if we were born in another culture, region or time period. We may be conditioned from birth to see some things as feminine so we do them to express that we are feminine people and vice versa. So do I prefer those things because of my gender identity, or do I have this gender identity because I prefer those things? It’s a chicken and egg type situation I guess. I hope this all makes sense. This is as much a question for other people as it is for myself and I’m really curious what you (& any others who have ideas about this) think.
I try to stay out of the trans discussions precisely because I don't understand the concept of gender identity. It's not something I've ever experienced, I have no sense of 'feeling' like a man, I just know I have a male body. So I get stuck on questions like this, and on the subject as a whole. I'm not so presumptuous as to think that since I have no sense of gender identity, nobody does. But I can't access their internal lives, so how do I even engage with questions that hinge on internal experiences of gender identity? It's an impasse.
This Trans-masculine person appreciates your sensitivity & intelligence on being something that you're not. I hope you continue to keep & open mind,...maybe even do some Trans research to learn about us. Google Gender Dysphoria to get a start, Thx.
I don't want to make things uncomfortable for you really, but I've been told what you describe is itself some peripheral part of the trans sphere... Basically being agender or gender neutral, or at least demi male. These things aren't hard and fast, there's a continuum if indeed not a spectrum. In contrast, the typical cis man or woman seems to have at least some innate feeling of being that thing and what it means, though it's hard to figure what of that is instinctual and what is accepting the social idea because it just fits OK with them and is at least vaguely in the same region as their natural feeling. Regardless, their sex and the way their hormones make them feel, their interactions with others of the same and of the opposite stripe, correlate with their inner workings and affirm their gender status to them. I'm in a similar boat where it's just, like... Whatever? I have a body that's of a particular shape and it has a name and expectations associated with it. I think i'd like it to be different but i don't know if that's just general life dissatisfaction and emotional dysphoria finding something to latch on to. But I've not found any particular pleasure in conforming with the expectations, but dot dot dot and at this point my phone keypad stops working properly and the voice recognition also proves to be faulty, I will leave this open and finishes up when it's behaving itself again
@@tahrey If they don't care it's probably because it's comfortable to them so they have no reason to feel any way about it. It's just normal. I can almost guarantee they're cis.
ok so i had further technological and then illness problems whilst trying to follow this up, including having something 90% written and then the phone freaked out again. Now I've found it with my laptop I'll have another go when my brain is halfway back to clear again.
To me, the flaw with the desert island question has always been the lack of establishing context. It comes down to two basic possibilities: was I born there, or was I sent there? If I, at some point in my life after having lived many years in ✨️society✨️, suddenly found myself on a desert island and could live however I wanted to, I would still come to the conclusion that I'm trans (if I didn't know already) and I would still want to transition. I would know what "being a woman" looks like to me, and I would still want to find and live out my own version of womanhood based on that prior knowledge. On the other hand, if I grew up on that desert island, with no other human contact and no learned concepts of gender physicality and performance... I have no idea what I'd want! I can't even begin to imagine that. I know that in present day, in the real world, I desire more than anything to be physically "female" by many common (and oppressive) definitions, even though I don't believe that's a requirement for anyone's womanhood. I find joys in the way I have become more "female", and pain in the ways I yet haven't, or never will -- even in things no one else can see. But how much of that is innate? If I didn't grow up around any other women, or females, or humans in general, how would I even have a concept of that? How much of it is burned into our very being from conception? It's impossible to know. There's a relevant theory (I say theory because I believe studies have been done but I don't remember whether anything has been "proven") about how the body's concept of gender develops in utero. It's been awhile since I read up on this so please take it with a grain of salt (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong). As I remember it, it's believed that for many people, our sense of gender is in part based on the primary sex hormone our brain expects to mainly function on. The theory is that for most people - and indeed, practically all cis people - the brain develops to expect the same hormone that is produced by the gonads they end up developing. While for trans people, the brain decides that it wants one hormone, but then the gonads develop into the set that produce the other one. Thus creating a natural sense of incongruence which becomes painfully apparent during puberty. This explains why trans teens, even if they never had an inkling they could be trans (and still don't), usually begin to experience dysphoria and/or dissociation during those years, whether they have the words for it or not. That theory does get pretty muddy as soon as you start thinking about anyone other than cis people and binary-trans people. Not that it still can't be relevant, but it's a lot harder to rationalize, unless there are rigorous scientific explanations for every case outside of the binary. (There aren't, and that's beautiful.) I just think it's interesting to consider as one piece of the larger puzzle that is ✨️gender✨️ as a whole. To paraphrase one of the quotes from the video -- sex isn't gender. Gender is the apotheosis of the dimorphism that sex started. Anyway, that was a long tangent. This whole topic is incredibly fascinating, and I appreciate that your healthy curiosity is met with enthusiastic allyship. I will say though, that I think the root question is mostly only useful as a philosophical thought experiment. It will never be relevant for the vast majority of people to know how they'd live out their gender in true isolation. _Especially_ people with internet access, whose algorithm feeds them this video. We live in society, with millions of other people, most of whom we'll never meet but all of whom have the power to influence our sense of self and who we want to be. Cis or trans, almost every human can and does experience dysphoria and euphoria related to their experience of gender. (And those who don't are also relevant to the discussion.) I think what's most important is respecting people's sense of self, and respecting how our own projections of our experience can affect others, without restricting who we can be. I feel like I was gonna say something else but I can't remember it, so that's all for now. :p Thanks for the video ^^💜
I'm someone who spreaks to your words a lot. I am 42, trans, and non-transitioned. My specific situation when it comes to gender is that I have mental conditions outside of anything related to gender dysphoria, and it's caused me to be analyzed many times in my life for many reasons. It's also had me equipped with a lot of techniques for calming anxiety, introspection, and self-discovery. I have two symptoms of my transgender that I don't find a lot of other trans people seem to talk about, so I think they might be unique representations with my list of conditions, but they tell me some things. The first is limb-ghosting. I feel parts of my body differently on a physical level than they appear. I can feel a different shape to my fingers, the top of my head (of all places) the shape and size of my torso, and so on. The feeling I get isn't "it feels male vs female" I simply feel those things 'different shaped' than they really are. It represents as a numb or 'itchy' feeling in places where my feeling of my body lies inside the bounds of my physical body. I've had this phenomenon studied with tests under EKG monitoring. The feeling of my body lines up with the second different... I dream in female and the shape my body 'feels' when I'm awake lines up with the body I 'get' when I"m dreaming. In dreams I appear always as a female half-fox furry hybrid thing. Get all the laughs out, we can deal with the gender dysphoria because the furry thing is a whole other can of worms. But I have had this 'form' in my dreams as young as 4 years old... and I know this because I also suffer from night terrors that caused PTSD in me as a child. The earliest dream I can remember is burned into my memory because it is the cause of a deeply-rooted trauma. But in that dream I was a 4-year-old girl. This is before I should have 'formed a gender identity' and before I have been 'tricked by doctors into believing I'm trans.' I've been a curiosity to a few doctors in my life, and have become pretty phobic of seeking medical care for worry that I'll want to be examined more. I donated my brain to science, so hopefully that'll help people enough in the future figuring out why my brain is different or whatever. But for me, on a daily basis... it's the exact antithesis to this question. I'm basically a hermit, outside of my wife and 2 cats. I have friends that I hang out with on the internet, but it's a very small circle. But I isolate myself because I feel LESS like myself in public. It's the reaction of other people that is the reason I doubt myself, or hate myself so deeply. So I AM on a 'desert island' scenario, or as close to one as can reasonably exist. Being alone is how I feel NORMAL about my gender... how I get to feel female. I feel more masculine every time I step outside my door. That feels oppressive. If I display an inch of myself in public I am ridiculed instantly... so I've learned to stop burning myself.
this is exactly what i was thinking. If i was born there i would not care because those social gender norms wouldnt have ever been built in my mind to cause me to want to follow them.
@@KitZunekaze Childhood trauma before your personality has fully formed can cause a fracturing of self perception, development of an "inner world", multiple personalities independant of each other, disphoria, and a host of other things. Your self perception does not match reality.
I think for me in that scenario, it would largely stay the same. I would probably lose the need for others to affirm my gender identity, but aside from that id still wanna look the way i imagine myself as. That can change, sometimes i want bottom Surgery and other times i dont. Sometimes i want a flat chest other tomes i want Breasts. To begin with my gender has always been a chaotic mess and prone to change over short periods pf time.
Trans man here! Firstly, I've just gotta say, thanks for asking this question. Gender is so interesting and complex, and it's really refreshing to hear these questions being asked with curiosity and openness. It's not too often that I encounter cis people asking these questions in good faith, and it genuinely means a lot to me to hear this perspective. My thoughts on gender have evolved so much over the course of the past decade or so since I first began transitioning, and I'm sure that those thoughts will continue to evolve as I age and grow as a person. From where I currently stand, I see gender as less of a spectrum between male and female or between intrinsic truth and social construct, but rather as somewhat of a buffet that offers a little bit of everything. You get handed a plate at the front of the line, and what you do from there is partially a matter of personal preference, partially a matter of socialization, and partially a matter of factors entirely beyond your control. For instance: Maybe you grew up eating a lot of mashed potatoes, so you throw some on your plate without even thinking. No one in your family really likes broccoli, but you love it, so you put it on your plate despite the playful jabs that come your way. And, man, you /really/ wanted that piece of pie for dessert, but the person in front of you took the last slice, and the chef says they're out of pie for the day, so you settle for cheesecake instead. The island thought experiment was, funnily enough, the exact thing that forced me to admit to myself that I was trans all those years ago. I'd been agonizing over whether or not to transition - whether I could stand the judgment of my family and friends, whether I was willing to put myself on such public display, whether I'd end up looking and feeling like myself at the end of it all - and I realized that if I was on a deserted island facing no social pressures, if I had all the resources needed to transition, I'd press that button in a heartbeat. I knew that it would make me happier in my skin, that it would bring me closer to some truth I had always known yet was always running away from. I didn't know why I was trans, or what that meant - but I knew what my body needed in order for it to be mine. But gender is more complex in reality than just answering a yes-or-no question. I don't know that any two people truly ever experience gender in the same way, and part of the joy that I've felt in transitioning has been figuring out exactly what kind of a man I want to be. Am I a man who likes football and beer? No, not really. Am I a man who likes drag shows and pop music? Absolutely. Does any of that change the fact that I'm a man? Nope! Those things are totally arbitrary; they can be enjoyed by anyone. But I live in a culture that places more "masculinity" points on one than on the other, so some people may knock my manhood on that basis alone, with or without knowledge of my gender history. The social aspects of gender - the things that we perform - those change from culture to culture, from person to person, from place to place. Someone who was raised by a single dad in a liberal city probably doesn't think about gender in the same way as someone who grew up in a nuclear family in a small Bible belt town. Gender cannot entirely be separated from factors such as geography, race, class, disability, age, etc. I look like a "man." I was raised to be a "woman." I behave in ways that exist somewhere in-between or altogether outside of those categories. And that last part - the part that is not strictly one identity or another - I believe that is true for everyone, cis or trans. No one person can live up to every possible expectation of femininity or masculinity across every single culture, time, place, and personal experience. And because that part is true for everyone, I simply am what I say I am. You simply are what you say you are. At the end of the day, I'm at my happiest being a man. My plate from the metaphorical gender buffet inevitably contains a different combination of items than that of the next man, and his combination will also be unique to him. But I'm happy with my plate. And that, for me, is enough.
i would just be my weird lil scruffy transmasc me. i catch myself getting caught up in toxic masculinity all the time, im stealth and scared as hell, especially now about people knowing about my transness. would still deffo transition tho, dysphoria exists outside of society ;-;
I think it's similar to how anyone on an island without other people would still follow their basic routines, like cleaning or getting dressed every day. Doing "civilized" or "normal" things makes you feel more sane
I am a trans person. I always get really nervous when I see titles like the one on this video, but I am glad I watched it. The thoughtful way you pose and ponder this question is really beautiful, and it truly is a question for everyone, not just trans people.
Genderfluid person here! I think the desert island might cause me to *evaporate...* but seriously, as a person who semi-constantly checks in with my gender identity everything said in this video holds a a part of the puzzle(some bigger than others...) Also, fun fact- if you look into how language alters brain patterns you'll quickly find out that every self-referential-gender-identifying pronoun produces some similar brain patterns.(I did a fun little test once and my friend managed to observe my gender shift before I even realized I had!)
Hey, I identify as genderfluid as well! Do you mean that the change in the way you think of your gender was able to be literally observed in real time? I'm very curious about the subject, because I do know that I indeed experience occasional substantial changes in how I perceive my gender. Sometimes I may experience intense body dysphoria, but some days later I will feel very satisfied with my body. It's very confusing to me. I also can prefer different expressions of gender identity at different points (though this is mostly in video games where I have full control over clothing style lol).
one of my transition goals is to be able to reflect how i feel about myself in my looks for others, like no longer be a scary looking boy with no emotions but look like i can comfort others , help people and look like I'll love others. but if there's no one else to see me I'll still want to be someone i can be comfortable around and it will definitely look different than being in a society.
This went from background noise while I finished something, to sitting down listening to the entire thing real quick. It's honestly rare to see a video this thought through these days on youtube, love to see it honestly!
I haven't finished the video. Just heard your question and got excited. This is EXACTLY what my therapist asked me and we worked through when I started to realize I wasn't cis and we worked through things for months. But essentially this question was how I figured out my medical transition needs.
Needs? Needs. I'm intrigued by that choice of word. Could I ask what makes you say you have medical transition needs? (Fair warning: I am coming from a position of disagreement, as a Christian who believes gender is determined much before someone's born, aligns with their bodily makeup, and cannot be changed. I understand debating a topic of identity can be very stressful and painful. If you don't want to do that, by all means, ignore me. I'm here to understand your viewpoint and provide a different viewpoint to you. I'm not here to hurt or stress anyone.
@@DreamtaleEnjoyeryes needs - I’ll try to explain a bit. I was sold by your rambling parentheses bc mood lmao. The first very basic counter example is that many trans people lack gonads so if you take them off hormones they will medically suffer instantly. Instantly. I do not recommend it. Secondly, to address the earlier transition trans ppl since it is relevant and I am one lol. So the first concession I’ll make is that yes, trans people will be physiologically alive without transition: our basic body temp regulation, blood pressure, respirations etc would not fall outside of normal physiologically range deprived of it. Yet that is not how we use “needs” most frequently, otherwise people wouldn’t need money, knowledge, wisdom, or God. No, when people ardently claim to “need” something it is usually because their quality of life is fundamentally worse without it. Ik it can be challenging to understand, as I struggled with it too, what “being transgender” truly means. I won’t do biology 101 bc been there done that (although willing to talk about it if you’re curious), but I will do a material analysis of the ways transitioning is soothing much of the pain of existence. And isn’t that just something we’re all trying to do. In no particular order: Is there a need to be present and engaged with the world? Yes, and yet before hrt I moved through every day in a disassociated daze punctuated with bouts of severe depression. Nothing but hrt changed that. Should we live our lives entirely disconnected from our bodies? Maybe Christianity would say yes, but I would entirely disagree: our body and life is all we have. From a medical standpoint, that type of disassociation can be literally dangerous; from a philosophical/historical/psychological perspective, the extreme prioritization of religious life over any physical concerns explains the prevalence of trans+ (gender fuckery) religious leaders throughout all of history around the world. From a personal standpoint, I can also add the profound pain and suffering of being unable to truly process people touching you, good or bad, and the simple joy of touch and human connection after transitioning. It’s striking. Would you rather we didn’t experience love? Now, I’m not saying that trans people can’t/dont fall in love without transitioning as those are unrelated processes, but what I am referring to is what it means to be loved, and to love fully. The former requires others to see and know you for who you really are, and the latter requires you to be fully embodied and yourself. Both of those require transitioning in some regard. It’s kinda in the “name” of transness, hence why it used to feel like a bit of a circular definition, but it remains true. I think of all the ways my life is immeasurably better since transitioning, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. Yes I wish the world sucked less, and yes I wish life was easier, but it is what it is and I’m ultimately grateful. It is a truly transcendental, transformative, and religious experience. I use the word religious instead of spiritual to denote the social aspect of it. It’s intense, and yet it is the easiest thing in the world to actually live it. So much of your daily suffering is gone: you wake up happy, you enjoy eating food, your sex life gets better because you’re just more yourself and more present. The daily minutia of living becomes so beautiful that sometimes it is shocking. I’ll say it’s a need because I’d hate to return to my native hormones and that constant brain fog and depression. I’d just feel vaguely ill, all the time. I’d probably spiral back into alcoholism and apathy, perpetually ruin relationships, etc. No, I could not live a happy and healthy life as my birth sex and so I transitioned. That’s just it. I know it is terrifying to think transitioning is a choice that anyone can (theoretically) make, but that is something we all have to sit with occasionally. Anyway this is uh way too long but hopefully explains a little bit. I’m cutting myself short bc it’s almost 2 here
@@anonnonny3142 Almost 2, pfff, it's 4 am for me. It's the internet, none of us have sleep schedules :p Anyway, back on topic-of course I understand that after transition is started there'll be ongoing medical needs. I'm not gonna argue that! Especially since I have a conspicuous lack of a medical degree, lol. I'm specifically talking about the need to START transition on a physically healthy body. Now... may I dare to present the possibility of a coping mechanism? That maybe, that brain fog and depression you experienced (also I'm so sorry you went through that) could've come from a different source, and you misattributed it to gender dysphoria? Therefore the relief you found from transition would be a sort of placebo effect. Your brain wholly believes the problem is resolved, so the symptoms should disappear, so they do. I'm genuinely asking if you think there's any chance that could be the case for you, or any trans individual. As for your questions: yes, of course I agree people need to be present and engaged with the world. Though I wonder what originally triggered your loss of that. I sincerely doubt as a little baby you were dissociated and depressed because of which entirely arbitrary color your parents dressed you in, so I wonder when that really started? Of course we're getting really personal with that, so feel free to leave me wondering. Again I'll agree, and say that no, nothing about Christianity says we should be disconnected from our bodies! I personally view my body as a tool to interact with the material world and everyone in it, which is obviously vital for so so many reasons. Though I'm fascinated with what you said about touch. You experienced touch & connection differently before and after transition? Do you want to tell me more about what that was like? And as for the last one I actually agree with the first half (others need to see you for who you are to love you) but disagree with the second half (needing to fully embody yourself to love others). I mean honestly that bit gave me some Big Feelings because of my personal life, and how I don't feel truly loved because I don't feel anyone really sees all of me. But as for the second half, I don't really see how giving love has anything to do with your identity! You can give love to anyone at any time, regardless of who you are and who they are. Overall thank you for responding, I love a good friendly disagreement.
@@DreamtaleEnjoyer ugh fine I’ll continue answering lmfao, who needs sleep. To answer your points one by one, first stating with depression. I’ve thought about it quite a bit, but it’s actually shocking because it’s true. I very quickly started seeing the world in new eyes. I’d wake up every day energized and excited to face the day, and I could feel the fog begin to creep as my levels dropped during the last few days. I was on an intentionally low dose at the time, so I know that my levels likely dipped below the healthy range at those times. No, I do not actually consider myself “cured” of depression: I still have episodes fairly frequently and am in fact barely getting out of one again, but they’re much more manageable. There’s more to live for once you start enjoying life. I am, coincidentally, studying towards a medical degree, but I’d love to conduct some studies on biochemical dysphoria as a whole. I don’t have the time to work on it now, but I’m slowly setting things up for it to be possible in the future. As for the second, I truly don’t know. Believe me when I say it but a large majority of my childhood memories and dreams were third person. I had a relatively happy tho not ideal childhood I guess, but I don’t think that’s it because it was there before. The earliest “developmental” memory I have (ie one that splits my behavior into before and after) was being chided by my grandmother and mother for needing so much attention and being impossible to please (both true; this may have also been around the time my grandpa was killed in a hit n run by a drunk driver, but my memory is foggy). And so, I vowed to myself to not need it or really anything from them, to fully suppress it all. Ofc, it’s not an even process, but I was a fairly dissociated and depressed kid: my first ever favorite song (like age 3) was about hope in the face of loss sung by a holocaust survivor who died tragically. My next favorite song (age 7 was when it “took over”) was by Metallica lmao. As a kid, I don’t remember ever being unaware of gender. I saw it as some secretive/yet important performance. And at the time, I was extremely fem: I loved all things Barbie, I liked perfumes, women’s clothing, and really women. I can easily pin so many crushes on women to my early childhood, it’s insane. And yet, here I am years later a trans man. I’m bisexual, so there’s that: could’ve known that from my ~weird~ feelings towards gay porn at age 12, but here we are. Of note in that story (at least to me) is the patterns of my psychosexual development mirroring that of guys my age more than girls. The touch thing is actually super easy - your skin and hair change on hrt. So does your pain processing, overall getting sick (ie man flu phenomenon, it’s a thing), body temperature baseline, sweat, physical bodily sensations (ie people start liking different things, moving your muscles feels different, your body literally changes to grow things, etc) and so much more. Hormones are just “activators” of different parts of your genome - your body literally rebuilds itself to slowly start to resemble the opposite sex with hrt. And in that you’re happy and less dissociated (and horny if you’re on T, but maybe depressed in the first few months of E) and you got a recipe for “it’s different”. My pain tolerance and endurance went down a bit on T, but my body temp, appetite, and metabolism went up. The difference in sensation itself is hard to describe, but I did used to feel a “skin dysphoria” so ig I’ll try. E skin is extremely soft, while T skin is rough: the soft plushness of estrogen felt weird to be interacted through, like I was confined inside in a straight jacket unable to escape. The skin felt wrong, too young and soft for who I expected to see in the mirror when I looked for myself. By the way, I do find gender to be “developmental” and likely some combination of predispositions and environment. It still doesn’t change much. Emotions also feel different post hrt: I feel a much bigger breadth to anger now but less depth to it. It feels social (in the sense of relatively precise communication tool) to me now, and more moderated. I am also probably sad less frequently, but that’s also a factor of hrt. My cognitive patterns shifted too, which of course affects emotions. This is both likely hrt-resultant and arising out of social factors and roles, but the fact remains. The former is mostly what’s an attenuation of prior testosterone-formed pathways in my brain, while the latter is the social conditioning that we are all subjected to and the weird ass experience of watching the expectations shift in front of your eyes. The rest I’ll respond to tmr, it is quite enjoyable to talk to you too. I love any good faith discussion.
@@anonnonny3142 I'm not gonna say much, I'll wait for you to finish everything you want to say before I respond but- I have to- Dear stranger I believe you are traumatized. I can't even describe the brain shock you threw me into when you said "I had a relatively happy childhood" then went on to describe being criticized for BEING A CHILD (seriously, name one child who doesn't need tons of attention and isn't impossible to please) and dissociating and repressing your feelings because of that????? My friend that is childhood trauma!!! You are traumatized!! That is not a good childhood! I'm going to bed too, goodnight. I'm just still in such shock you just said that so casually, I'm not even gonna get into how shocking it was to see an equally casual mention of being exposed to corn at such a young age. Goodness...
As a [self-diagnosed] autistic non-binary [autigender-leaning] person, it really spoke to me when you touched on “how would [you] want to live [your] body in the world if [you] didn’t crave the attraction and approval of others.” I struggle with interoception and the way I view and experience my own body. This leaves me often with a sense of extreme dismorphia when I see my reflection or photos of myself (ie anytime I’m forced to perceive myself or confront how I am perceived physically by others) because the way I internally perceive myself is so chaotic and flowing that there is not really a way to match my body to my own perceptions of it. I cope by wearing bright clothing that many find obnoxious, but the awesome few find as cool as I do. For me, seeing bright colors and patterns when I catch my reflection is more in line with the more chaotic nature of my being. You touching on this topic as quoted above made me feel really seen in how I do a version of that thought process when I pick out what clothes to wear each day.
That's so interesting! I am also autistic and non-binary, but I lean more towards the masculine side (for me, he/they is it's own gender lol). Sometimes looking in the mirror I can identify with what I see and sometimes it's completely foreign, my self-perception is always shifting. I also struggle with introception but I only recognized the physical aspects of that, like hunger and temperature, before seeing this comment. What's facinating is that i gravitate towards dressing in all-black, plus black hair, black nails, ect. It gives me a sense of coherence in an otherwise ever-shifting gender performance. It just goes to show how different people with similar experiences can be, especially on the autism spectrum!
I think the deserted island is a better thought experiment - for this specific question - than the singularity because in a simulation you could (hypothetically) take any form and I'm pretty sure a lot of people would choose to be an animal or something else non-human instead. Which leads to slightly different, but equally interesting questions about our perceptions of what constitutes being human (at least interesting to me as an agender person).
Yeah, looks like you hit the nail on the head here. I am non-binary, and thus outside of the gender binary; but I am specifically outside the traditional western binary. My identity is static, and wouldn't change if societal pressures were to melt away, but it nonetheless is informed by those pressures. I ultimately do define myself in terms of the gender binary, albeit negatively so. As Butler said, people (not just trans people) build their gender identity in response to the inherent trauma of being alive. That doesn't go away if you travel to an island. Skirt still go spinny.
This is a great question I think could be applied to cisgender people too. When there's no one around to see it, how would any of us perform our gender identities? When we can behave absolutely any way we want, because we're alone, how do we act like a woman or a man or as no gender?
So… a version I can offer of this as a cis gay man is one of archetypes. Our community has the bears, the twinks, the otters, the daddies, the bulls, the pigs, the gym bunnies, and on and on and on. Archetypes that carry with them ways of behaving, ways of speaking, ways of moving through the world, ways of the world seeing you, ways of the world treating you. It’s not quite a gender per se, but it’s a decent analogue. And if you asked me if I’d still try and be a bear on a desert island? Yeah. I would. I’ve chosen to express multiple archetypes in my time and done so with pretty decent success. And I know which I’ve settled on. I know how it makes me feel in control of my life and able to define my own identity. I think on a desert island, I’d still find myself performing that archetype for the feeling it gives me, even if nobody was around to perceive me. At least until it ceased to be practical.
I think the answer is different depending on whether we assume we've previously been in society. In my current form, I'd 100% still compulsively perform femininity. If I'd never known a world where you get punished for having body hair or wearing the wrong cologne or having the wrong bones...?
trans man here! before hrt i was desperately uncomfortable in my body any time i paid attention to it; the only way i could avoid that discomfort was by mild dissociation, separating my Self from my body. i had social dysphoria in combination to body dysphoria, but it was always very clear that what made be uncomfortable about being seen as a girl/woman was that it reminded me of how badly my body didn't match my sense of self. my dysphoria has changed massively now that i’ve been on t for a while (almost two years!), mainly in that it has gone WAY down. when i’m alone, i’m perfectly comfortable with my body. there’s parts of it i still don’t Like, but i’m now only ever dysphoric when i’m around others/thinking about being seen. almost all of that dysphoria is about my chest. i enjoy when the effects of t are visible (deep voice my beloved
This made me pause, but I’m ultimately not sure about how to interpret/approach the question. Personally, I view trans ppl as falling on the male-female sex spectrum which entirely comes out of the sexual differentiation of humans. To that extent, if you fundamentally changed the function of sex/reproductive biology/etc then yes different people would be trans. However, if you just changed social expectations, I don’t think the groups would change too dramatically: they would, of course they would, but I’m not sure there’s any meaningful way to distinguish them from the “current” trans people. Idk just my $0.02
You mean like how pink used to be for boys as a masculine color or how ruffles in clothing and makeup were? 😅 History says not really, but it depends on where your viewing from. Looking to the past, we could say all men were trans based on our modern interpretation, but we know they didn't think of themselves that way.
To further that point, we know trans people have existed in every population since earlier than Egypt. Trans is a disenfranchising relation to your bimodal morphology (if your body looks closer to male or female and the assumed roles of each) trans people have always been fewer due to gender also being bimodal and not binary. (It isn't binary if 0 and 1 isn't all we ever see. Even if it's rare, just a single 2 or something between 0 and 1 makes it bimodal at least)
@@anonnonny3142 sorry. I was worried it might have been too short worded. Though I think you helped with the answer. I spose the hypothetical was still in the realm that reproductive biology would still remain the same. I spose this question initially came when I was trying to understand gender abolition. Not saying I fully get it but I really like the idea of being able to live as your authentic self as easily as possible.
Psychologist, here. Let's try and look at how the popular schools approach this: Psychoanalysis: The outward performative self is only 1/3 of your identity, the Superego. The self that society shapes. You still have the Ego and Id. Your Id probably has more to do with your attraction than your gender since it drives the sex drive. So we still have the ego. One third of the "you" that is you as you perceive yourself. It is not outward it is an inward thing. So even in your transhumanist singularity space your gender would still be expressed the way you prefer (see Gen:Lock for a good example of a gender fluid uploaded consciousness). Existentialism: All behavior is a pursuit to avoid death motivated by the fear of death. So if being female or being male means that, to you, expressing yourself the way that does not feel right to you is a means of escaping your death fear. It might not prolong your life in actuality but if you feel like you are living then it is the preferred action. A monkey will cling to a comfortable doll rather than wire mother even it means starving to death. As such, on a desert island the person's gender performance would suit what helps them to feel the most alive and/or retreat from fear of death. Cognitive Behavioral: Perception of one's self does not rely on the perception of others. People do not have free will. Action is based on input (stimulus), output (response). The in-between is where cognitive perception plays a role and it can be thought of as the function or processing. A person on a desert island's behavior is based on required input, but their perception of their self may differ from what is outwardly projected or it may be that they align themselves with what better affirms that self perception. A person who is in to sports might choose a jersey over a random shirt that washed ashore if given both options. It's safe to say they would make the choice that best suits their perceptions. Please note: A perception does not have to be based in fact. It can be based on a false absolute such as saying "This is always" or "This is never" this is seen as an irrational belief system and many posit it as the root of mental illness. So perhaps saying "I am still a man even though no one is around" might seem irrational, it is still a perception that will influence behavior. Input, processing, output. Humanism: Trans women are women. Cis Women are women. Trans men are men. Cis Men are men. All humans have a gender identity, not just Trans people. Identity doesn't go away in isolation nor does it require affirmation by others. On an island a person whose sex is female and identifies as female would still be female. If that person identified as male they would still be male. They are a person. Not an idea or a perception. People are substantive measurable self-actualizing beautiful complex animals capable of doing so many beautiful things. Why would we try and limit our understanding of people by putting them into groups? Vegetables do not exist in nature. It is a culinary term broadly referring to many plants. Similarly gender is human, just as much as being agender is human. The whole spectrum exists and is real and are people and they walk among you and so they deserve to all be seen as equals even on a desert island. Before trans people were "popular" or "accepted" by society they still existed and lived sometimes in isolation and sometimes as part of the community. See the Two-Spirit people of Native American tribes for instance. As long as humans have been around there have been people who feel deeply, desperately, that they are of a kind. Even if kind is a simplification. Humans tend to try to label things to help make sense of and measure the world. Evolutionary: Trans people existed before the label "Trans" existed. This is because they are naturally occurring. Chemical reactions, DNA, and brain makeup all contribute as factors in determining things like identity and attraction. Nature tried to establish a set boundary, but mutation is inevitable and constant. We have seen correlations in current data such as increasing use of fertility drugs results in a higher chance of producing trans offspring. Additionally, we see that DNA and chemical factors introduced in the womb during pregnancy can influence sexual orientation and gender identity. Most of these are naturally occurring. For instance: A mother whose son's blood type is seen as foreign might be attacked by the mother's immune system during sexual development resulting in a "Feminized" male embryo. Some theorists have posited that this occurs in especially large population pools as a means of population control. It also notices that the role used by these individuals is usually one of celebrity or some hierarchical leadership place. One rat study referred to them as "The Pretty Ones" whose gender traits or behavior were non-conforming, but they had a place in rat society and were a part of the whole. If you took one out of that large group and put it in isolation it's not like it would stop being a trans rat. It's still a trans rat. It was born that way. Does that help? Sorry if this offended anyone please bear in mind this is like 200 years of opinions with varying degrees of accuracy and understanding. In practice any one of them could be helpful or valid to a person, but you have to admit it's pretty weird that science seems to be just a lot of different opinions arguing about what the truth is all the time. What hurts me most is when I see someone struggling with their journey to understand this stuff because a lot of non-science is out and it really messes up the clinical approach that exists solely to save lives and promote general welfare and health. This is why it is ABSOLUTLEY CRITICAL that gender affirming care ALWAYS be made available. It takes so long to even qualify for it and only a few thousand receive it each year but for those small few it is LIFE SAVING MEDICINE (and it's surprisingly very affordable!) and shouldn't be treated like something up for debate due to cost or bad scientific curriculums in American schools, or just because some politicians realized they could use it as a talking point to get the uneducated masses who haven't written thesis papers on gender identity to suddenly feel like they have skin in the game on deciding whether it's okay or not to allow trans people to even exist directly resulting in them getting votes from uneducated, fear-guided, confused people. This whole anti-trans movement that has been sweeping American and UK politics has had an incredibly negative effect on the mental health of all LGBTQ peoples of the US and UK and it really shouldn't be up for debate whether or not these living, breathing, human people exist or deserve to be accepted by society or receive care.
So the humanist viewpoint really totally invalidates the very ideas of hetero- and homo-sexuality. You can't claim that you're attracted to any particular societal construct, when people who are unhappy with the fundamental limitations of the human experience decide to defy them, whenever it's convenient, and relapse, whenever it's convenient. E.g. I couldn't claim that, I am attracted to men, since their most formative years are characterised by profound sexual humiliation and fear of abandonment, since that isn't true for trans men, who got the benefits and drawbacks of being a girl in their most formative years (supposing they didn't live as transsexual). I also cannot trust a man to use his own experience of suffering as motivational fuel to seek to protect me from further harm, because the trans man will betray me for the own benefit, citing "well, SOME men are really selfish, too, sometimes! (...in other, disparate contexts)", acting the woman, but still claiming the valor of the man. Yes, the female body regards the male as foreign, this is probably true for trans men as well. And the more male foetuses you ask it to sustain the growth of, the more the oestrogen bombardment increases in an effort to kill it, and the statistical chance of a non-breeder homo-- or trans-person increases. There is an overweight of little brothers among gay males, and you can easily imagine, that is further exacerbated by their familial position and relationships, in particular, we also see sibling age gaps of 6 years or more, as pushing for a homosexual development. I am further reminded of that TikTok rainbow family, where the mother looks like she may have eaten a couple of Russian battle tanks - and she seems to not be particularly happy, as a female promised so much sex and exaltation, to grow up to find, that only the most sick and perverse fetishist, would even touch her with a barge pole. So, in rage and complete denial, she decides, she is so sexy and fuckable, that she should go right ahead and make 7 kids with him... And every last one of them becomes a non-breeder, in particular the obese girls seem to be severely struggling with their mental health, just as their mother did, throughout her own youth. John B. Calhoun's "science" experiment of Universe 25, was bought and paid for, by anti-homosexual campaigners. It does by no means reflect, the corruption of rodents into "Pretty Ones", that was merely the result that they paid him to create. In reality, the so called "utopia" was nothing but a prison colony, with occasional "air raids" and similar torture-like stimuli, that functioned like a violently forced speed-domestication outside of a human connective element, to drive the critters insane. And he was happy to accommodate his buyers, because he lost any chance he may have had, to make him self sexually attractive to other men in repressing his homosexuality in his youth, and now he was ugly, old, lonely and bitter - the kind of degrading "consolation" man, that he also, would never settle for. The sunk cost fallacy of internalized homophobia. As a young man myself, I would have been more than ashamed, and purely terrified, of having a "second rate" boyfriend with, e.g. effeminate mannerisms, a scrawny build, a gay haircut, etc. My motivation has always been contempt of the females and their harmful, selfish narcissism, and you can't combat that, by sticking your peepee in a dog turd, I thought - it will only enrage and excite them to further attacks on your dignity. Over time, I have learned, there are certain moderations to this principle. One example, that became available later, was how there where ZERO girls who wanted to have sex with pedo-baby face Justin Bieber with the gay haircut - until they could rely on EVERY girl wanting him for themselves... At that point, he had become the safe boyfriend option, for girls to safely harass homosexuals over, since they already knew, Justin was never going to stick his peepee in them, anyway - Free heteronormative supremacy! It's really just a question of making yourself sexually unavailable, from the safety of some type of fortress, that they can't hope to assault, then you can trigger the absolute Niagara from their nethers. And there was a boy called Fritz 20 years ago, who would've been the perfect candidate for this "ugly duckling" stunt - petite, timid (easy for a girl to threaten and control), gender challenged, buckteeth of the ever-fornicating rabbit, and thoroughly, repulsively gay in his expression - guaranteed garbage can fodder, for the female supremacists, BUT also precisely the kind of man, they would eventually need for a husband to safeguard their family and kids. He would really have been the perfect lifetime husband for me, that would have been so immensely gratifying for the both of us, to punish the females with consequent sexual abandonment. And if he had been a child today, his misery would have been explained away as gender dysmorphia, and he would have been tricked into sacrificing the only thing, that could make him attractive to me, in favor of those who would never want to consider him sexually powerful and attractive, and still don't. It's a powerful fear, that can make you ignore the reverse side of the coin, and lust only for the infinite sexual pedestalization that girls enjoy, to not even stop to consider, that trans women will never have that benefit. But you don't care about ruining my life and humiliating me, by destroying a sexy boy, one of the only ones, who could not only pull off the mind trick, but also hold such a powerful spite for women as to stay loyal to the flag, no matter what they say and promise. Shut them down at every turn, instead of trying to replace me with a girl , who only loves herself, in the utimate humiliation of my value as a human being - something that would 100% cause mass unaliving! Because you think I'm a weak f-slur, nasty unfuckable manbearpig, and I should just get over myself and put up with the abuse and humiliation?... Now, that I'm old, what other life could I hope to have anyway? (conveniently ignoring the fact that females deliberately ruined my youth and sex appeal with homophobic molestation and trauma, for the sake of their entitlement issues and power trip)... No, obviously, it could never be a sexual victory for a 9 year old boy to marry a 42 year old man, no matter how insanely intent he may be, on being the diametrical opposite of a selfish girl. Spite is strong enough to last a lifetime, causing unlimited atrocities... but it's not strong enough to make it seem desirable to have sex with an adult. In terms of pornolisciousness, it could never hope to compare to the prideful, validating sex, "that -girls- real people get as a reward for existing! It will ALWAYS be degrading and harmful, to settle for unnatural undesirables, like adults, eew!" - kind of exactly like your suggested gender transition would be, sunk cost fallacies not withstanding, permanently, and irreparably destructive - and to the legitimate benefit of no one, but a few virtue signallers, that don't care anyway, and the people, who already embarrassed themselves, by throwing their lives away and mutilating themselves undesirable, who are now desperate to save face, by normalizing the loss of something that infinitely valuable, to not be the only idiot children, that fell for it.
That last one with the trans rats was fascinating. I'm reminded of those in North American indigenous cultures where the role of what usually translates to "two-spirit", regarded as some combination of male, female and/or "other" are well respected as religious leaders and intellectuals.
I think watching Philosophy Tube's video called The Most Misunderstood Philosopher talks a lot about gender and it might not answer your question but i think it will give you so much more context about gender in general
I was thinking about that too. He keeps saying gender as performance instead of a performative act and it kinda triggers me a little bit lol I know he probably means performative but still gives me the little "oof"
@@ElunaeIt's not just a matter of using the wrong word. Dad here is having the exact misunderstanding of meaning that Abigail talks about in that video. Gender is not "performance, done for an audience". It is "performative: doing it makes it so."
Honestly right now, I'm scared being myself outside and being outside the in general (anxiety social stuff). I kinda am on a deserted island with (some) of my needs met. I perform things for myself, it makes me happy. I do makeup and dress more how I like in isolation. I do it because it brings me joy by itself. Just like drawing does if you ever did that, or any other creative venture can give you satisfaction. It's for me alone.
Trans person here. You’re asking *excellent* questions, Phil. Here are my thoughts (and my thoughts only; I speak for no other trans person). Gender, as we live it, is indeed a synthesis of one’s internal calculus based on both internal and external factors. It’s not merely who we are, but those we most strongly align, identify, and empathize with. The element of recognition is a key part of this, and I’d be lying if I said my personal understanding of womanhood didn’t include an element of kinship to those others among the tribe we call “women.” In that sense, my gender as I experience it is indeed a highly social construct. BUT… devoid of a “society” as we understand it, e.g. your desert island, I believe there still persists an element within all of our psyches that universally inclines us toward certain modes of self-understanding and self-identification, that which we could still call a gender. This does still hinge to a degree upon one’s understanding of their place among others, but in a way independent of all the added filters we’re accustomed to seeing life through. Which is why I think a better question to ask is how do we think we’d imagine ourselves slotting into a completely different society with entirely foreign rules (or even better, a desert island populated by a mere handful of other humans without an established society, among whom you’ll work to develop a society from scratch). My answer to this is that across many kinds of hypothetical societal structures, we’ll find similar (albeit non-identical) collections of individuals emerge. That’s to say any given person will find themselves often relating to or aligning with the same rough group of people every time, those most proximal to us in some X-dimensional “gender space.” Of course for any two people, no matter how proximal in this space, you can conceive of a societal framework in which a boundary is drawn between these two individuals, i.e. they are of distinct genders. But their proximity means the fraction of hypothetical societies where such a boundary is drawn is negligible. All this said, even if such a society is constructed as to allow people full self-determination over their membership within any, several, all, or none of its provided genders, some people’s understanding of their gender can be rooted in the desire to perform physical roles that their body isn’t immediately equipped to perform, such as the capacity to get pregnant or to be the penetrator in sexual encounters. As such, even in a society with a truly anarchical approach to gender, there will be some among us who will desire medical intervention to fully actualize our perceived place within such a society. I could go on for days. But I think that’s all the major points. Keeping asking good questions!
As a trans woman, I've actually had this exact question as well. What would happen if I was on an island. My first thought is definitely not being able to shave which brings on dysphoria. Now how would it look for me? I'm not sure. I have to imagine not being in a society, which means I need to imagine a world I have not experienced which is very difficult. Even if I'm isolated all day at my home, the essence of who I am doesn't leave me. I'm still performing for myself when I'm home alone. So using being home alone, I think I'd still be 'performative' just for myself, which I already do.
Not shaving brings you dysphoria? Fascinating. No matter where on your body you mean, that's purely societal ideas of femininity. I wonder if after some amount of time you'd stop caring, or if there'd always be this idea in the back of your head that that hair is somehow masculine.
As a cis woman, I'm very aware that every moment I've spent shaving, waxing, and plucking is because I've been explicitly told over and over that my hair makes me less of a woman. I think part of the spirit of the question is, would those things still dysphoric if no one's around to have ever told you they weren't female traits?
@@PrincessNinja007 I think if taken to the logical extreme, if women were allowed to have hair, then it wouldn’t affect me, assuming men and women were equally hairy on average. Two differences can trigger dysphoria. Differences assigned by biology and those assigned socially. Even if we have a scenario where it’s socially okay for women to have body hair, on average men have more so that disproportion would still cause dysphoria (for me). Same as other features. So I think no matter what I’d still by dysphoric. The only way to completely remove that would be to not have met another human of the opposite sex. Either that or I’d still feel wrong but would lack the ability to properly articulate what was wrong.
@@PrincessNinja007 Im a trans woman, and I feel like there is a blueprint lodged in my brain of how my body is supposed to look. Not "supposed" in a cultural sense, because there are parts of this blueprint that drastically diverge from the cultural norm. But its just what my brain expects my body to look like for whatever reason and things that mismatch that like facial hair and lack of breasts cause a very different degree of dysphoria than things that aren't different but also socially perceived as diverging from expected feminine presentation. Like for whatever reason my genitals are not at odds with my mental blueprint. I haven't had bottom surgery and i probably never will. Despite having tackle down there not being very the done thing for women in our society, it doesn't cause me dysphoria. I do try to hide any bulge when i go out because I'm aware of how it will be perceived, and if i was unable to hide it i'm sure it would cause me embarrassment and anxiety as to how people would react. But it's very different from the other things that are just hard no's for my brain like not having boobs, which was a big deal before HRT. Even though breast forms shoved into a bra looked outwardly identical, i hardly ever wore them because they just drew my brains attention to the absence of real boobs. But as soon as boobs did start growing, even while they were still soo small they weren't noticeable to anyone else my brain immediately got a lot happier. So yeah, there are definitely things that i do because of social pressure, like tucking my bulge. Probably similar to you shaving your legs. They are things we've been told by society aren't acceptable for women to have visible. But it i was alone on an island i would never tuck or shave my legs. But i would still 100% shave my face if i possibly could, because my brain hates facial hair on me whether or not any other human sees it
When we consider the performance of gender, it's important to remember that performance is not just for others. Gender identity is a core part of who I am, and will always be.
And gender identity isn't all that important to me. Easy since I'm a cis man, but still... I just don't care that much about it. I think that's why this video is framed as a question to trans folks. Of course trans people aren't the only ones who care a lot about their gender identity, but it is pretty certain that they do care and have thought about it. There's more diversity out there and on more dimensions than most folks realize.
Gender isn’t a performance. Gender is a performative action. Abigail Thorne explained this in one of her videos. “Performativity” is a philosophical term that is essentially saying that certain words or phrases or actions can make a thing happen materially. For instance, she uses partners in marriage saying “I do” and a Judge pronouncing a verdict. These words transform material reality. “I do” makes two people married. A judicial sentence can ruin a person’s whole entire life, end someone’s life via a death sentence, save a life via stay of execution, etc. In terms of gender, saying you’re x gender and engaging in activities that reaffirm and reinforce what that gender is. Sure those signifiers are often formed by outside hegemonic means, but one can and in the case of us trans people do change those performative actions I also need to add that sex is indeed a social construct. To paraphrase heavily Judith Butler’s argument in their book “Bodies That Matter”, sex is the gendering of body parts. For instance, there is no such thing as “male” or “female” anatomy. Just because I’m non op doesn’t mean I have “male” anatomy. Body parts obviously exist, but other than that everything else in terms of so called “primary” or “secondary” sex characteristics are very much a product, like most of society, in Christianity filtered through its spawn: white supremacy, allocisheteropatriarchy, ableism, etc. Physicallization of gender was one of the most dangerous actions engaged in starting in the late 1600s in Europe. The physicallization of gender, a short way of saying the creation of the social construct of “sex”. The way I always joke about it is that Sex isn’t my body part, it’s what I had with your Mom last night Further edit to say that Julia Serrano’s arguments are largely incoherent and I hate that “Whipping Girl”, very much a dated project of the mid 00s, is still heavily adored. Serrano is a biologist, meaning she is biased against social theory and so very much misunderstands Butler’s theories. She, as a biologist, is biased towards centering her analysis on biology. Biology has a notorious history of the aforementioned prejudices (to be fair all academic fields do). She also has a very muddled and confused idea of what sex and gender are. I am eminently qualified as both an academic (sadly) and a trans person to talk gender theory. Serrano’s book had some good points about trans misogyny FOR THE TIME, but other than that her writings and concepts, which don’t seem to have changed much
Thank you for this comment! I had previously been a huge proponent of Whipping Girl before I had just recently watched Alexander Avila's "A People's History of Gender" and Abigail Thorne's latest essay. I've even been seen defending Serrano's work on the basis that Biological Sex is Real™ only to now feel like I have egg on my face 😅. I suppose that's what growth is. They're both constructs. The concept of gender identity largely first popped up in order to continue trying to reify binary sex even after it was proven binary sex doesn't really exist. (As per Avila's video, I hope im representing that correctly!) I think in some capacity, I liked Serrano's work because it made me feel like I could point to something Real and Respected and Scientific and say Look, im a real trans because my "subconscious sex" marked in my brain says Woman™ on it! It was validating to hide behind biology. But it's even more validating now to know I don't need biology to feel comfortable in my body. Knowing that gender is only a thing we do and a thing done to us means doing gender more kindly when we have to and one day not having to do it at all.
@DrAnarchy69 Great point and also super well written, allocisheteropatriarchy is such a word and I looked it up and while I could find other instances of it being used on the internet, no one seems to have a written definition Was this a word that Judith Butler coined? I’d love to know :))
I do think Julia Serranos more recent video about gender is better explained than her book. The book was weird about nonbinary people that wasn't AS present in her more recent video. It was basically just the idea that transness like all aspects of ourself are influenced by a multitude of nature AND nurture factors with no one originating point. There may be some biological and biologically intrinsic inclinations, cultural factors, social factors, personal life stuff. Which is as good as it gets I think.
For those interested in the referenced Abigail Thorn/PhilosophyTube video, it dropped on Nebula a couple days ago so should be hitting RUclips sometime in the next week!
I would honestly want to become part of the island. Be the waves one day and the sand the next. For me gender is a connection to the world. Most days I don’t want to be “human passing”. Existing without the feelings others project to or around me.
As a middle-aged non-binary AFAB trans person, I guess I'm surprised to discover that, assuming placement on some magical desert island that supplies all medical and nutritional needs but lacks any component of society, I think I would more assertively pursue masculinization of my physical form (non-surgically, just hormonally), but almost nothing else would change. I already act as I wish to act, think as I wish to think. I guess I worry about becoming too obviously masculine in day-to-day life because what I actually want is visible ambiguity, for my form to match my internal sense of myself in all its confusing changeable lovely peculiarities. And to become "too" masculine, might actually drown out my visible femaleness too much, let people become resolved to a male me in the same way that they are currently resolved to a female me, when that wouldn't be accurate either. But without having to worry about external perception, I think I'd enjoy embodying a stronger mix of the two than I feel fully comfortable pursuing now. Also, I'd be very lonely. But that wasn't the question.
To let you in on a secret: it’s possible. You can just go on hrt to achieve whatever level of masculinization you want. Cis people are largely stupid so so long as you keep your hair slightly long, keep shaving, learn at least a bit of vocal control, you can get away with it for a long time. Even with people you know very well. Start low start slow. And then, you can stop: the permanent effects stay, others change. It all depends but your feelings on this may change through time and it’s ok.
I'm AFAB non binary (agender) as well and i can tell you that once i hit menopause i felt so much more comfortable in my body. Due to my estrogen crashing my body feels better to me hormonally. If i had known about all the gender things when i was younger (i came out at age 48) i probably would have asked for a small dose of testosterone.
trans person here. I 100% agree with the take at 4:54 . I would continue my transition even if no one els were around anymore. tho I would change some things ofc. there wouldnt be a need to hide it from others anymore for security reasons. so after having fully socially transitioned (whatever that means on this island lol), I can imagine it would be alot easier to live with the body I have gotten from hrt without doing any surgeries
That "(whatever it means on this island lol)" is funny to me because it is so loaded it somehow carries the bulk of the question. But that's the realization, right? Social transition on the island is whenever you start accepting yourself, and that's beautiful, I think.
I'm a mostly transfem genderfluid person. The first thing that comes to mind with this question is that even devoid of any social context, I would still need to have my HRT; my body and brain just really don't like to run on testosterone. Other than that, I do experience gender in layers that come before the social aspects too. When I wake up in the morning, I know whether I'm more masc or fem by, among other things, the way my perception of the world goes, the way my keyboard feels when I start to improvise some music and what kind of voice I naturally lean towards when talking to myself. It's not really possible to put into words how that works, but even if I were to lock myself into my room and there's no internet access and the curtains are closed, that sense of gender would still be there. I once heard someone say that on the individual level, gender and personality are not entirely distinct concepts and that does seem to describe it in a way too. Your personality doesn't entirely disappear when you're on a deserted island, you still decide whether or not you trample the nest of some animals that aren't bothering you, you still have to decide on the shape and form of the shelter you build for yourself and how you embellish it. Gender to me seems to be for a quite big part inherent to the relationship between me as an esoteric "something more than physical", my body and the physical world around it. To deprive me of gender entirely would require that relationship to cease existing, for the physical world to be fundamentally different.
outside of society, I'd just live as myself. in a vacuum I have no gender. I would just carry myself in a way that brings me joy. my phoria comes from being in a human body not a male of female body
To echo a couple others' comments down here, I think as long as I had my medications I'd probably be satisfied. Things never felt quite right before my meds, and trying to adapt in a new environment like a desert island would be pretty fucking rough if my whole body was fighting against itself because it cant naturally create the hormones it needs to function properly. Being on estrogen has helped alleviate my brain fog, improve my mood, and so many other things. Without others to judge me, i don't know how i would choose to present. But I just need my body to have access to the right chemicals or I'd probably freak the fuck out.
@@technopoptart💯 otherwise the question becomes would you die or suffer great consequences to present differently. I'm pretty sure that question has already been answered.
As a non-binary trans masc; I just get to be me, enjoy my own body the way I've always envisioned it. I would definitely continue my transition as even just the hormones have done a world of good for my mental health and I really want surgeries to finish what the gods didn't.
Id actually be really fucked up and sad if i was transported there, because im mid transition and if i cannot complete my transition, that meaning gaining boobs ,having bottom surgery, i would be REALLY sad. Thats got nothig to do eith society, i dont do sex, noone ever sees me naked, but i HATE having this current shape, i need to change it. One thing that WOULD change is that I wouldn't change my voice if noone was there to hear it, I like my voice but it makes me not pass and I dislike not passing
Hi! Another trans woman here, one of my earliest "very obviously transgender" things i did was try on my girl friends, my mothers, my cousins clothing when no one was around. I would stay up till 2 in the morning and wait until no one would be awake, and just enjoy the unexplained happy feelings of gender euphoria that i was experiencing. I didn't really have a clue why i was doing it, because i didn't know what a trans person was, just that there were "crossdressers" and everyone was expected to laugh and point and mock when they saw one. So i kept these feelings to myself. One frequent daydream I had, was that i could just stay in an abandoned clothing warehouse, with no time limit, no one barging in, no one knowing where i was, just me, and a warehouse of neatly folded and sorted clothing i could happily try on. Again, very trans daydream to have...) Last year i was very much in the closet. I knew i was trans. No doubt, but I was in a relationship i was trying to keep, and i sacrificed my own happiness and wellbeing foolishly to try to make it work for a bit longer. Even with a beard, a body I was unhappy with, and the only thing i liked about myself being my long hair, what mattered to me was that I could hold out, for things to get better. And with that, you do little gender affirming things to keep you sane, cause closeted is no way to live. and my heart goes out to anyone that is currently closeted. The world deserves your brilliant shine, and I hope you can be like the light from the sun someday. I think that a lot of what gender is, is not just how you want others to perceive you, but how you want to perceive yourself. And we all take steps to get to where we are happy with our own self perception, we shave, we put on makeup to feel happy even when we don't go out, we work out to get a little more toned cause we are tired of looking in a mirror and not liking what we see, we paint our nails cause its fun to look down and see the pretty colors... I could go on forever, gender expression is a pretty vast subject. but I hope that makes sense.
If I was transported to an island, I wouldn't really be different. I'd know what I am, and that would only matter to me, because I'm not preforming for others, I'm preforming for myself, even if I'm the only person there it doesn't matter, because my self comes from myself and no one else. The island may not have these things, but my very own head does, and thats why I am not different, just me, always was, always will.
This is a great question! I love this question being posed to transgender people and I've learned so much just in this comment section. (But I'm still curious how a cisgender person would behave in an isolated setting with no one to see or judge their behavior. I mean what would be the point of a cisgender person acting like a man or a woman in an environment where there is nobody to care but them?)
@@lkeke35 based on what I know, a cis person might start to experiment a bit and just do whatever they feel regardless of expectations because there are no expectations on the island, for some they'd be exactly the same, for others they might behave in a way thats different than when they weren't on the island. Its a very nuanced thing, but my conclusion is that in an environment where there is no gender, even being cis isn't entirely black and white.
agreed! if anything it'd be removing discomfort of being "incorrectly" understood and interacted with by a larger society that holds different and more rigid views on gender than I do.
I’m happy that you’re presenting the gender questioning in its explorative form. When I was first questioning my gender I struggled to find this and mostly has either: academic/definitions things, memes, or descriptions of experiences with minimal introspection. Idk I liked it
This type of thought experiment is always so intriguing to me because I feel like it really capitalizes on how much variation there can be to people's gender expression/identity, not only are there things to consider like the scale of feminine to masculine, but also the scale of social to physical. I'm FTM and have a sibling who is nonbinary, we're both afab but have had VERY different transitions, not only because we have different identities but because our identities are validated by different things. For me, having the physical component of transition is very important, and people's opinions on my gender (whether they be supportive or negative) tend to make me very anxious, and usually result in me "watering down" my gender presentation out of fear. Whereas my sibling does care about the physical aspect, but tends to view it in a more casual light (for example, they are FAR less bothered if their testosterone dose is delayed, whereas I have consistently done mine the same day of every week, for over 2 years now), but the perception of the people surrounding them matters INCREDIBLY to them. If I were on a desert island, not only would my presentation not change, but it would probably become even more defined. But if they were to be on a desert island, they would probably pay less attention to their presentation in general.
For context also: Despite being FTM I am in no way hypermasculine, I pass quite easily but the most common criticism I get from other men is that I'm "too feminine/soft" I find this absolutely hilarious. I'm also gay so I suppose you could say I adhere to those stereotypes, but I really don't define any aspect of myself based off of other people. So despite identifying solely as a man, I rarely present in a way that is "acceptable" as a man.
Great video and great question! Im also a cis man, and something this question brings to mind, for me, is how my own gender has become somewhat softer as I age. The hallmarks of traditional masculine gender are quickly fading in me. I'm losing my hair, my once-lean body is slowly losing muscle and gaining fat, those moments of gender euphoria you described, that I once felt in my dating days, are long-gone. The thought on my mind here is that as I age, my perception of my own gender has become less focused on my physical body and more on how I am choosing to live my life - my actions and attitude. Basically, my internal perception of my own gender is quickly sliding from "cis man" to "cat dad," which is an outwardly subtle, but inwardly really important change for me. So, to answer your question, I think this softer gender is what I'd be in the singularity. It's how I want to be as I grow old.
Like you, I'm a cis guy, and so to some extent I almost feel uncomfortable throwing in my own perspective. Obviously, the inclusiveness you bring to the discussion with this video, and the general openness in the comments are all great reads, I think it mostly stems from a fear that my interpretation of my own identity would somehow be wrong or offensive to those who, thanks to not living on this hypothetical island, are forced to live with poor treatment every day in society. That said, nothing would change for me on a deserted island. I'd still see myself as a man (I know, shocker), but I've also never felt like any of my personal identity was tied to that gender. To ME, my maleness has always been, plain and simple, defined by my biology. I never felt less manly enjoying "feminine" stuff or felt pressured into enjoy "manly" stuff for the sake of my gender. I have this thing between my legs, this thing tells me I'm a guy, and nothing about my hobbies or clothing or posture can suddenly validate or dismiss that. My first pair of glasses were hot pink. I never liked sports. I've tried on commonly considered "women's" clothing before like dresses and hells - and even though I didn't like them, it had nothing to do with some preconceived sense of I as a man have to not look this way, it was just a style that looked ugly to me, in the same way a suit and tie does. Hell, if forced to wear a dress or a suit, I'd probably pick the dress. If I'm going to look hideous, I might as well wear the item that's more comfortable to sit in lol. And that's not to dismiss anybody else's perspectives or to say they're wrong. It's just that, while I can intellectually understand that those who aren't me can find the nuance in this question, and I can also find the responses people give fascinating, it doesn't FEEL like the question makes any sense. I was born with a 3rd leg, that makes me this thing, and living alone doesn't change the fact that I was born with that 3rd leg. It's the only relevant deciding factor within my own mind for how I should perceive my existence. I don't know. I think part of the cleverness of this question is the fact that it shows, at least to me, how difficult it really is to define anything for anyone. You know the thought experiment "what if your red is different from my red"? There are hundreds of synonyms for happiness, and most of them mean slightly different things. There are emotions and feelings only expressible in certain languages, they literally do not exist in others. And it's practically a lazy trope to say you can't describe your love for someone in words. I once had someone tell me they think I'm "really agender, you just haven't discovered that for yourself yet". And like, I disagree. I feel comfortable saying the words "I am a man" the same way I do saying "I'm a redhead". But I'm also not going to say they're wrong? Plenty of people would have very different definitions for what makes a man. It's certainly possible that what he understood as agender is exactly the thing I was describing myself as, just because he reached a different conclusion doesn't mean he misunderstood my self-description, it's possible we're just going off of different definitions for what is arguably an undefinable and unproveable concept. I have never experienced gender related body dysmorphia, but I've been disgusted with my physical being after a near fatal injury. I've never felt ostracized for being misgendered, but I've also never put much value into that gender, so anything that may be perceived as such are obviously going to feel like nothing. I've never felt like I've had to act a certain way to be seen as a man, but I have felt like I needed to act a certain way that felt unnatural just to remain safe in an unsafe space. In my own brain, it feels nigh impossible to try and relate those experiences to something as unimportant and unquestioned as my genitalia-based sexual identification assigned at birth, but I can at least understand that to the people who can or do on a daily basis experience these kinds of things, that island might be a paradise. To me it's just another Tuesday, just without air conditioning.
as a trans person, i just want to say thanks for sharing your experience, and i'm sorry that sometimes it can be difficult for cis people to earnestly share and interact in trans spaces. i think your perspective is very insightful and valuable for giving us another angle to look at our own experiences of gender from :) my experience is kind of the opposite - to me, my biology [should be] the least defining thing regarding my gender. i feel that i'm immutably the person i am (for me "the person i am" equals my intrinsic gender, since gender is basically the collection of how someones chooses to groom and dress, how they act and speak, what they like to do, etc. - and altogether that's most of "who i am" to others), *despite* the body i have, which feels like it should have zero bearing on my existence as a person. this constrasts frustratingly to my experiences in society, where the link between gender and sex/physiology is inescapably thrust upon me by others who treat me by the guidance of abritary, cumbersome, and nebulous rules based on visible characteristics of the body i was born with. so that's the gist of why the question makes sense - to me at least. the desert island significantly chnages how i interact with my body, my life, and how i think of my gender and sense of self, because in my life, all these things are forever linked to how society interacts with me and i with it. all that being said, on a desert island, my gender basically ceases to exist, since there's noone around to perceive it. i still have a body, and still have some dissatisfaction with that body - less, but still some - these that remain are intrinsic to my transness and seem to stem from deeper within myself (a 'biological' transness so to speak; citation needed). labels for my [experiences of] sex or gender would lack relevance too, since these are things that describe how i relate to categories (primarily, society's traditonal binaries of gender and sex) that are objectively [biologically] not rigid. i wouldn't be 'transgender' since i wouldn't have a gender ascribed to me, nor a gender to transition to - i'm just me.
If I didn't have to worry about the expectations of others I still don't think I'd be happy. I haven't transitioned yet, so I'd be in constant discomfort with my body just as I am now.
There are two sides to this: how one perceives oneself and how others perceive you. For society, it is important how you are perceived, as it can impact your life, your work, and your means of getting food on the table. But in the hypothetical case of a desert island, I guess your internal self would become the external self, whatever that being is. I'm cis, so I will refer to myself as a dude. "Who is the dude in charge of the fire here? Oh right, that's me."
In the hypothetical case of being alone on an island, I would act like myself. 🤷 There is a performance involved around others? **The same way cisgender people perform their gender?** But nonbinary people _don't really have a socially-visible space in society._ YET. We nonbinary peeps get to make that space.
YES!!!!! You hit the nail (that so many people, especially cis, don't seem to realize exists) squarely on the head!!! Gender isn't somehow more weird or vague or "made-up" just because trans people exist. Gender is all those things and more **ALL THE TIME** and has been this whole time! I genuinely wish for every single human to have the opportunity to truly examine their own gender experience and figure out what it means for them. No matter the result, even if they "just" find that they are 100% comfortable and confident in a cisgendered way, it's a valuable education of who one's self is and what one is like. I think it would end up opening a lot of people's minds to just how much gender (in all its forms, including absence of) is an individual experience and not "something that only exists because society made it up." People created the labels to describe the concept. The experience behind the concept of gender existed way before any of the words for it ever did. 🙂
@@clockside ...I mean, identity is weird. I think the problem comes when gender roles are imposed on a person, and not natural to the person themselves? Maybe?
@@grmpEqweer When it comes to gender _roles_, I absolutely 100% agree. Societal pressures against individuals simply being themselves is such a huge problem and gender is one of the clearest examples of how many people get harmed by that crap. Just look at all the dialogue around gender roles and pressures in areas like feminism, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and all the various forms of sexism (including benevolent sexism) for a plethora of examples! One of the most visible impacts of gender roles on trans people is how we get judged according to roles that don't even align with our actual identities. We get labeled wrongly before we even get cleaned up from our entrance into this world. Labels and roles and lack of consent are so entwined, well beyond our first breaths. The good news in all of it is that humans as individuals are capable of growth and change in ways that humans as an animal species are encumbered. And when enough individuals grow and change, our species is able to evolve to be less animalistic as well. The better we get at that, the less people will suffer from their primal instincts to quell individuality. ^_^
I'm disabled, so this thought experiment takes a lot of mental stretching on my part. Assuming I never had to worry about where my next dose of hormones was coming from (which is really hard to imagine, even in the trans-friendly major urban center where I live), and assuming that survival in my body didn't present its current challenges, I think I would just be non-binary. Ultimately, I present as trans, but I think of myself as a person before I think of myself as a gender or sex.
The way I see gender personally is that it’s not always about how others perceive you. Even without a society i’d probably still have looked at my reflection with a sense of wrongness. And it’s not just a physical thing, it’s how you perceive your personality, noticing the things that don’t fit. For me, it’s been a constant journey of self discovery, and gender is a part of it. I think if society was not present and all the things that defined us externally were wiped away, gender wouldn’t be a separate category from any other part of becoming in tune with who you are or wish to be.
I consider myself Cis but not because I “have XY chromosomes and I feel like a man”, more just that I “have XY chromosomes and I have no feelings of gender whatsoever”. Of course I fully support every flavour of genderqueerness, but I don’t get it at all on an intuitive level- I simply can’t imagine feeling like a man or noticing that I don’t feel like a man, it’s like trying to Imagine a new colour
I'm a fairly typical straightforward transsexual with the typical "I knew when I was a mote in my daddy's ballsack playing with my sister's barbie dolls" that despite that has an odd relationship with their body and gender and how I try to think of all lf that. On the body side I have a somewhat unusual relationship with it for someone who knew they were trans so young. I would definitely change some things. I've tried everything I could think of and a whole lot of things I didn't and stole from others to try and be comfortable with my junk but it hasn't worked. I've always felt like my chest has been mutilated by lacking breast tissue, like somebody violently lopped them off with a cleaver in my sleep. Then there's stuff I'm surprisingly okay with like my hips and shoulders despite social pressures. I even actually like my Adam's apple in part because it's such a distinct feature of my body that people notice it and find it attractive. There's tons of trans gals who would kill to be short like I am and yet I want to be eight, nine, ten, eleven inches taller than I am. Then there's stuff where I don't know how to answer that other than "doesn't matter how I would have felt if raised in isolation but I know how I feel now" like hair loss. If you threw me on that desert island when I was five I might feel differently, maybe, but that didn't happen and I only have the feelings I have now. But then there's my presentation. Not only is it fairly masculine but I'm fairly comfortable with that even to the point that misgendering me doesn't hurt most of the time. Even being misgendered the masculinity in part of me and part of my identity. To be honest I've never put much thought into my gender or presentation or how I feel about my body until the past few years and I'm mostly coming back with the same feelings I've always had so maybe I just always had it sorted out. As for your bit about gender euphoria, consider this thought - would you feel that way about your masculinity if your masculinity was forcibily suppressed for the first three decades of your life? Do you know what it's like to have oxygen until you've been deprived of it? Do you know what it's like to be hydrated until you're baking in the hot sun of a desert without having had water in twelve hours? Do you know what it feels like to have a hand until you've lost it? To bring it back to that bit about my balding earlier- would I *feel* like I'm balding if I didn't first have hair to lose? What if I just never had hair to begin with? I don't know but "maybe" seems like it could be a legitimate answer. As for how cis or "cis" people relate their gender to their society there's this idea I have that turns out isn't unique among trans folks. It's usually a "not in front kf the cis" kind of discussion topic but I think you'll do fine with it. I'm right-handed, my significant other is left-handed, and my sibling is ambidextrous. I would struggle immensely to have a good life if I had to use my off hand for everything as would my partner. My sibling, however, would manage about as fine as they would have despite having a minor preference for their left hand. 100 years ago their teacher would've rapped my sibling's left hand with a ruler, told them to use their right hand, and my sibling move on like nothing happened. I kind of look at gender identity that way. Cis people, the dominant population like right-handed folks, would be incredibly unhappy if forced to live life as another gender. Then there's trans people, a minority that would be incredibly unhappy being forced to live life as their assigned gender yet society coercively pushes them to live that way the same way southpaws were ostracized. But then there's the equivalent of the ambidextrous population - people who could live quite happily either way but have a preference. And no, I don't mean non-binary people. I think part of the uptick in trans identifying people is not just society no longer being as violently malicious towards folks like us anymore but I think it's also society changing in other ways as well - social attitudes about masculinity and feminity, social attitudes about gender roles, social attitudes about modifications, logistical matters such as relative ease of transitioning compared to the past, etc. I'm not one of those types of people. In fact if I couldn't transition I'd kill myself. But I think people like me who couldn't live life with our coercively assigned genders are actually not just the only type lft trans people but a minority as well. I think soon the majority of people who transition are going to be people who transition not because they need to transition to be happy but because they need to transition to be *happier.* That would explain why we haven't counted these people as part of the trans population earlier - they weren't unhappy and in need of transition ans it wasn't available to them anyways. No different than an ambidextrous person who had a preference for their left being forced to use their right - they exist but because their need to transition isn't as extreme they don't make a blip on the radar. And to bring it back to something you mentioned about gender being how one is treated those people would still be my trans siblings despite being different in a distinct and meaningful way because of how they're treated by cis people - which is to say no differently than me. There's this contingent of people who are neither cis nor trans but because they fit outside of the box of cis they're pushed into the box of trans alongside people like me. I think some trans people aren't really trans in the way I am and that some cis people aren't really cis in the way that you are but 100, 200 years from now somebody who would fit into one of our two categories today will fit into a then existing third category. I think if we took 100 people and put them onto islands like your hypothetical suggested that like 1% or 2% would be trans, about 90% or so would be cis, but then there would be that remaining bit that falls into neither.
The one thing I will just add/mention, is that from talking about some of this with an agender friend of mine, I suspect it is quite a bit lower than 90% who would identify with cis if there wasn't social pressure/punishment, and also the education was better available. I mention this because one of the things I noticed was how many of the anti-trans arguments I see made, indicate a lot of the same feelings that my agender friend has expressed, and (friend uses he/him because its what he's used to, so doesnt feel a desire to change atm) he has spoken about how a lot of those arguments made sense to him, but because of his background he talked to trans people and more solidly cis people about the feelings before just joining the anti-trans folks. I hope this makes sense, though if not or anything else, I can do my best to clarify/address.
It means knowing who I am, man --even alone, we're in a social system. It's not that a social construct exists because of _people,_ it's a world that is both real and completely inside of us. No escape, even.
Yes, but is that societal structure inherent or inherited? I lean towards the latter, because while we are social, we are integrated into these ideologies of society through mimicry and then through understanding. I know there have been cases where twins separated at birth have led eerily similar lives, but it's all under this same overarching umbrella. If they could be separated into vastly different cultures, would the results still pan out or would the socialization play a bigger factor?
I love it so much when people who arent queer question the concepts of queer people in a healthy and respectful way. You are the coolest type of ally :3 As for the question: I am very bad at social interaction irl and because of that it kinda feels like I’m alone on an island (I haven’t had any friends or any form of relationship in years). And I’ve kind of lost my judgement on my own body and whether it looks masculine or feminine in my opinion. I just see a living body in the mirror. That being said I would love to have the ability to not care about being part of society and had the power to feel completely fine while isolated from the outer world. But unfortunately I have these painful emotions
As a transwoman, I feel that if I was in an absolute vacuum, stranded on an island where i'd never seen another human being, never known what is society, never ever thinked, without social need, where I don't even know that there is something else than me or even another "sex" or "gender, a total blank state, I'd feel like I would absolutely live my life normally, seeking to do creative stuff cause all my needs are fulfilled, just living on life. But I'd feel weird sometimes, feeling an invisible need, a sort of pressure on my chest, something missing. I'd also feel like that the weird organ between my legs, that is only a tool to empty my bladder and nothing else, feels somewhat foreign and I'd wonder why I have that nagging feeling that... it's just wrong ? I genuinely feel that if even no one was around I'd still feel like this. It's something deeper than just the social. Yes, most of the secondary characteristics are for me social. In a vacuum, I'd never have the idea of what are boobs, what's a vagina, how the hair of people with more oestrogen than me looks, how their body hair looks and how their fat, bones and skulls take their shape. I'd have no idea of any of that, I'd just know that I am and that's it. Yet, i'd still feel like my body is wrong somewhere, that something isn't right. A weird feeling of unease, of having something wrong. Sometimes I'd wonder why my penis would feel foreign, why sometimes I feel like my chest is heavier or why my chest feels weird. But i'd have ultimately no answer, knowing only my testosterone fueled body and what it brings. If I ever saw, in the far ever distance, a body of a human with an oestrogen prevalence, just for the blink of an eye, not enough time to even think about the concept that someone else is alive and looks from my species, far before knowing what even is "social", the concept of bonding, the concept of the "other", I'd immediately understand why I felt this weird in my body for ages. It's just cause my oestrogen level is too low and my testosterone level is too high. Not to insinuate that it's what the actual cause of transidentitites, it's still pretty debated if transness has a biological factor. (and frankly I don't give a shit if it's biological or not, just let people do their thing we're social animals and constantly live in social relations) But in the vacuum, I'd certainly feel that way. That the nano second after seeing the body of another living being, with an oestrogen prevalence, I'd feel like that's what my body, my being, my entire entity and absolute pure soul of what I am inside of myself, should have been all along and that's why I always felt weird. After realizing that, knowing that there is more than my self, that there could be another form of my being, still without any concept of social relations, I'd know that this form, this form full of oestrogen, is me. It's what's deep, deep deep inside. It's what's inside my body, behind those meaty walls and organs. The soul within the brain. Then, I'd realize than my body, my corporeal form, the muscles and bones shaped by the specific hormonal cocktail that my brain ever did since I spawned in the vacuum, would be wrong, would be the absolute reason why i'd always feel weird in my life. Since i'm in a vacuum and all my needs are filled, I assume.I could then have some oestrogen instantly in me to flip the hormonal balance, the testosterone dominance would lower and let the oestrogen be more present than testosterone. Then I'd feel fine and myself, with a grown chest and suddenly with the feeling that when I touch my body, I look at it, I finally feel inside. My soul feels attached to it's body, I finally recognise the meat robot that i'd feel like having piloted for so long before having this question brought to me in the vacuum. I'd finally feel like my corporeal being, the cells in me, would feel right. I wouldn't have any problem with my penis since I still don't know what is a vagina and the tissues kinda rearranges themselves under oestrogen. I'd just know that this organ would feel better. That the weird times where it would fill itself with blood on its own, the times where it would weirdly give me a itch and a need to stroke it till it pukes out that weird liquid thing, would be gone. I'd only feel that how that organ looks and feel right now is way better. It doesn't rise on its own, it doesn't got that animalistic need to reproduce, it doesn't need to spew out something out every so often due to those animalistic needs. Then, I'd also feel like my body itself would feel strange every month, having stomach aches for a few days and feel like my hormones are doing a bit of whatever. Due to those biological changes maybe i'd feel sadder or angrier or I dunno. Then those feels would dissapear, and come back every month. Since I don't know anything more about the other form of my species in the vacuum, I won't know that's period symptoms, I wouldn't know what even is a vagina, how it works, that it spills blood each month to get rid of something called uterine lining. I wouldn't know what is an uterus or ovaries or anything about reproduction, not even how my sperm itself work, or what is a penis nor testicles etc. I'd just feel that my body would regulate itself in weird spikes of hormonal stuff each month since my biological form had an oestrogen fueled body. It would feel anoying since I knew what my past biological form had (no period symptoms or absolute variations in hormonal stuff, stable just like haves a testosterone fueled body.) But I'd feel like it would feel right, better than not having those weird feel bad moments each month. It would feel like I am whole, like what I was since my first second appearing in the vacuum. That my biological body just simply needed an oestrogen dominance instead of a testosterone hormonal dominance to actual feel connected to it. My soul within my brain, my sense of identity, of what I am, the consciousness of what I am due to my ability to perform self actuation, would feel finally connected to the biological body, wouldn't feel that weird distance anymore, that it was a soul piloting a meat body. I would feel like myself and continue living in the bliss of the vacuum, spending my time in infinite time, all my needs met like I ever was and ever did before I have seen that biological dominant oestrogen body for a split second in that vacuum. I would finally be able to truly enjoy my surroundings, do what I want and that I want feel right. I would feel like my entire being experiences the sensory inputs and feelings generated by the brain in my corporeal body. I wouldn't have the odd need to think about why my corporeal body always felt kinda weird, why I wasn't able to experience everything in my reach, why would I feel like a robot piloting my brain, a soul that is split from the body it controls. I'd understand that my self, all that i've ever experienced before having that question brought to me, is a singular entity. It not the brain and the body, it's both. The brain would have just only felt so distanced from the body, never getting that sense of self trigered by the sight of the meat enveloppe he would see only bits of while moving around sometimes. After that, i'd spend the rest of the eternity in the vacuum in absolute bliss, having finally all my absolute needs met. Since I'm in a vacuum, the concept of time itself would fall, and I'd keep doing whatever I was doing in the vacuum, having absolutely everything satisfied within me. I'd be able to feel nothing, not that weirdness in my body anymore. In the vacuum, i'd become just what the instincts tells the body to do to function and not die. I wouldn't feel like a fondamental need wasn't satisfied anymore. I'd feel like what I ever was and should be : me
I remember reading a book (might have been a paper) about dress (as in fashion and clothing), one thing they mentioned was the idea of 3 selves, public, intimate, and secret self. The first one is essentially what you show everyone when you go out, the second would be what you wear when you are with people you love (simplifying a bit, this is a RUclips comment) the secret self is how you dress when you are alone. I think when we talk about gender, this idea of the 3 selves fit pretty well, if you remove the public and intimate self, there is still the secret self. Another thing, I think when we are alone with only our secret self, gender and dress becomes play, it is something we allow ourselves to have fun with, to play around with. Also, it's been a while since I've read that book/paper, so take it with a grain of salt.
Just to clarify because I don't think it was clear, the 3 selves aren't just about dress, that was the focus when I read it, but the idea of the self is more broad than that
I think you can still consider fashion play. Play behavior is just interacting with your environment in a way that's enjoyable. Anything that can be enjoyable that involves interaction can also be play prove me wrong. 😂 Edit just to clarify, it'd be play as long as you enjoy it, obviously you might play differently without other influencing factors, just as you might dress differently for different events or play different games with different company.
This is an interesting question. I am a feminine presenting person, but I think I mostly fall between the middle and “tomboy” on the gender spectrum. I live alone and am very introverted so I am basically alone on my own desert island all the time. I will now try to track how often I perform gender ideas when I am alone. Thanks for the intriguing thoughts! 🙏🏽
Hey! Trans guy here. And I think my answer would really be the answer I have currently about myself: I am a man, but my masculinity cannot really be replicated by anyone other than myself. My gender exists in the context of the basis of gender as a social construct, sure, but after finding the label that is comfortable for me, it has grown beyond needing societal framework. My gender is now based on how I act, they confidence I gain from myself, the kindness I can give, my relationship to nature, rather than just the framework of a body. I know this might not make much sense to anyone else, but that's sort of indicative of my very point. No one else can be a man like me. I am not one that believes that gender is a performance, and I actually very strongly hate that idea pushed onto my own identity because my gender is intrinsically tied with who I am, now that I've figured out the label. I don't "perform" who I am for anyone else's benefit, approval, or happiness, or even to make them believe me, which I think this idea of 'gender performance' comes from. I have gender expression sure, but I just exist as I am. If I was born on a desert island, raised by apes after my parents left me in an uninhabited beach, then maybe I wouldn't label myself as a man, or any such gender concepts. Maybe I would just hate my hips, but be happy with what's between my legs, disliking my chest somedays and being neutral other days, and embodying my kindness and love of nature and confidence in a way that would make sense in my little ape society. I like to think I would still experience my gender as I do now, but not have any language or labels to describe it. That may not be everyone's experience, but its mine.
I'd still be a woman but hell if I'd be bothering with basically any of the 'performance' of womanhood. I mean, even as it is I've basically dropped any part of the performance that isn't liable to get me shanked or, at the very least, constantly barraged by weird and annoying questions. I've had top surgery so going full "boy-mode" and not shaving for two weeks isn't really an option unless I want every second person giving me their manifesto on trans existence. Exceptions being big events, concerts, etc, where the effort of meticulous presentation actually has some heightened payoff in being perceived. Not to say that I like the feeling of having whatever my body can still manage of a beard, but if the only downside to it is the feeling + occasional glimpse in the ocean's reflection, it's not really enough to dissuade my apathy. And conversely, that ten seconds of 'damn, I can still fucken get it' when I look at myself in a mirror after getting cleaned up is very nice, but without outside perception it's not really worth the effort. Which is to say, I'd look like Tarzan but if Baloo or King Louie drop a he/him they're still getting smacked. Do keep in mind this is the perspective of a trans woman who is both fairly butch, at least intellectually, and has been out for 10 years and is WELL passed her 'trying eyeliner for the third time for the board games orgy night' phase. Tbh, I think most 35 year old cis women would have fairly similar perspectives on presentation.
Growing up in the country, surrounded by women who could sling a calf on their shoulders like it was nothing, the "not caring about presenting female" is just a natural response to being away from society and having more pressing concerns like "the fence needs fixed" On days where I'm out doing country shit, I honestly more or less stop having a gender at all. I put on my brother's old boots and my mom's old jeans, and I fix my shed. My gender is "person fixing the shed"
Hi! This video is me working through my own gender by seeking council and dialogue from trans people. If you object to the *content* of my words, by all means push back and tell me where I beefed it. But if you object to me *asking this question at all*, I'm not receptive to that opinion so keep it to yourself. Either watch the whole thing and comment on specifics or scroll on to something more to your tastes. Thanks!
Anyone who objects to someone asking a question has their own problems. And for the record, I don't think this question is weird. I think the question is completely normal and something that most people on both sides of the discussion should really consider more.
You ask a lot of questions and do a solid (but very simplified) job answering most of them. If you would like me to weigh in on any specific question, I would be perfectly willing to answer it for you, but there are so many details that if I don't know what you are actually wondering about (now that you have done some more research) I will wind up giving you essentially an entire book, most of which either you don't care about or already know.
-A woman who has/continues to transition
I think if I was dropped on an island after already living in society I would still see myself as female. I'm also Intersex and trans female. Before I understood what gender is I already kinda knew my gender is female. Now, if I was raised on an island without really being exposed to our society I feel like my gender wouldn't really be firm because I wouldn't have anything to base it off of. Probably be more like a tom boy.
I like your channel. Been watching it for a month now. I was on acid one night and started watching police cam videos and suddenly your videos popped up ❤
@@RoxanneBarbelo I think you're on the right track when imagining being raised on an island without society. As I think once you've been raised around social constructs, it's difficult to view the world without those lens. You can remove the person from society but not the society from the person. You'd have to start off with a clean slate somehow.
@@wrackfuljackal I was just thinking what it would be like if I grew up on an island and some ship discovers the island and the first thing they see is me, a hermaphrodite eating an octopus out of a coconut. I could see that being a scene in a Mel Brooks film Lol
@@wrackfuljackal I would discover every hallucinogenic plant on that island and wouldn't remember what a gender is after how high I'll be
I’m trans, and I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I think that even on a desert island there is still an audience-myself. I still carry society in my own head, and I still have all the ideas about gender that I brought from the outside world. If I’d grown up on the desert island and never had any contact with society, that’s another matter, but in that case I’m not really me any more.
This. Precisely the answer that popped into my head after the first few sentences of watching the video. At nearly 50, and having been on HRT for a total of almost one year, I can say that my chances for an 'audience' that matters (ie. not just people that pass by/interact with me for a few seconds on a random day, positive or negative) are being pared down rapidly with advancing time, I can honestly and succinctly say that I'm transitioning purely for myself and to solve my issues primarily (perhaps exclusively, but I am not thrilled with using definitives), not others. I think that this question was something that I was addressing as part of my decision in the first place without overtly asking it of myself, but there we are.
Maybe you would do exactly the same, but without people classifying it... that's what I believe.
Like you wouldn't know if what you're doing is classified as feminine or masculine, you would just do what feels more natural/comfortable to you.
That's what I believe when I think about it
I (trans) agree with this take. No notes.
exactly this, thank you
Positive and negative in this comment refer to relationship trends, in a statistical manner, NOT good or bad.
This is a thing I studied in college, actually. The preservation of self and others in the case of being completely and utterly alone either relationally or literally. Society stops. That's the answer. If anyone has read the logs of Cabeza de Vaca, his name is Head of Cow, yes, you'll know that he underwent an overwhelming loss of self even in the company of a few of his comrades from Spain. His enslavement by the Natives of Florida really screwed his identity up and he became a prophet for them eventually. His entire sense of religious identity, a very strong piece of self at the time, and his sense of humanity altered significantly in inverse patterns.
Other significant texts report the human condition becoming larger than ever before, humanity being first and foremost to survival of the mind. Suspect texts like the various Crusoe novels demonstrate an abandonment of self unlike anyone inside a society can ever undergo. If anything, I think being trans and being stranded would completely alter, in a positive effect, how much a person sees themself as whatever preferred state of identity. Of course, other mental degradations occur to affect that aspect of mental change, so who can say for sure whether the trans person's view of themself would be otherwise realistic or even possible in a healthy light inside a society. It could be either a vast improvement for mental health even in respect to mental decline or it could be a vast drop in self respect, leading to things like dysmorphia and internal shame.
It's a complex question and answer because each party we talk to has a completely different result. It cannot be anything different because some people are more or less of any given identity than others. Even now I don't really count myself as non-binary or binary, somewhere in between man and non-binary. I think for myself I would keep going as I am and suffer only from the extended effects of being alone, eventually killing myself due to the expanded suffering of isolation. It would take years, though.
For a gendered trans person though? Perhaps it would be a release from norms and the constant reminder that they don't *look* or *feel* right in respect to others, or perhaps the lack of ability to present visually would destroy their mental health. Much of our gender conformity is visual, which leads to mental conformity/non-conformity.
I think the head comment is especially on point -- when isolated for extended periods of time, the person isolated stops being who they were before isolation irreversibly in many unhealthy ways. Are you trans if there is nobody to witness you but yourself? I think no but also yes, it depends. Trans just means transitioned from one identity to the another, but if we're real, many trans people were always who they were and transitioning just means presenting and acting how they want to in order to be more comfortable. But also, it's very hard to transition from hard-learned activities and thoughts, so maybe being trans is indeed existential in nature and will always be an identity marker for someone who transitions.
Perhaps, hopefully, in the future transness will no longer be defined by mental aspects but by physical aspects alone when we let people be themselves without consequence.
Trans person here. This is really interesting, and I don't think this is a question for trans people. I think this is a question for EVERYBODY
I think trans people, by and large, have more practice explicitly thinking and talking about their gender than cis people. So most of them should be better equipped to answer this question than most cis people.
And cis people and eggs have some catching up to do, so it's good exercise!
This was also my exact same thought, as a cis person.
I knew someone else would have beat me to it. It's quite actually quite strange to just ask it to us trans folx. :-)
Jupp, this guy understood the assignment!
Tbh, as a cis guy, this is the first time I thought about actively performing a gender, probably because there is a general lack of gender expression especially among cis men.
On the island, I would probably only start experimenting with my gender if I get bored, I'm not too attached to it. I don't think the concept of gender is necessary at all, at the end it's just whatever you do with your sex and wether you do a lot with it or not is just a matter of interest.
Enby here - the desert island does indeed sound like paradise! I could just be me and not have to worry about how others see me, or what they think about my outfit or whatever, or trying to fit me into one of two boxes that I don’t want to fit into!
I'm just living for the dessert island
@@HarkertheStoryteller mmmm dessert island… more cake and ice cream than your little heart could desire! 🤩
But I’d still take the island without the desserts. I’ll bake my own 😝
yeah to me the boxes are just obstacles, I dont really care what I am because my body is basically just a tool for me to do the stuff I like but people make a big deal out of it. Like seriously just call me what you want and let me get to the good part of life, the fact that its shoved in my face all the time makes is kinda annoying. Like imagine if people kept making you check one of two boxes you dont care about. Its like do you like the letter A or the letter B? What? why? let let to the good part already!
its just a minor inconvenience for me personally but its one I would rather not have, it feels like im being forced to participate in something I genuinely could not care any less about.
I think it would be roughly the same for me as well!
Enby here - personally I think it would be torture. I would have this person inside that I would never get to show anyone else. I wouldn't even know that my gender is different from anyone else's which would suck because then I wouldn't know that it's unique. Your rarity is what makes our internal experience of sex special.
i love how there are cis people out there who understand us and can talk about things like this. Thanks for being so kind.
We are just all people. That insanity doesn't help
@@hllyenaylleth9576 what insanity?
@@The_Burber i think he means the drawing of lines between people. I tend to agree because if we all only saw each other as people I think we wouldnt have so many issues, but honestly its not that practical for everyday life. Either way, youre welcome for seeking to understand before being understand, though I dont believe you should have to thank people for that, I appreciate the gratitude nonetheless :).
@@gumbunch Hopefully that's what they meant. All the labels and us'ing and them'ing isn't helping anyone understand anyone else. Just be you while being a productive member of the society we share. News media is constantly broadcasting how we're all killing each other when we should know most of us are good people who just want to help each other live good lives.
in my transition, i am the society, and i am my audience. it makes ME feel good, and it makes me feel right.
Well said, I was trying to figure out how to comment what I mean without writing a whole novel and I think you got it exactly right.
This is exactly how I feel omg
I am a cis woman and I was about to write the same thing. Gender is performance, but I am the audience too
I’m sorry but this makes me think that there must be a Palpatine of gender and I find that hilarious
“Society will decide your gender”
“I AM THE SOCIETY”
Also forgot to add that you made a great point as well
“i don’t know how to think about myself as a being that isn’t being perceived by others”
hegel eat your heart out
My brain instantly went to Sartre's the look and a lot of de Beauvoir lol.
If you can’t think of yourself as something that won’t be perceived by others, gender will always be part of your identity. Otherwise, you could end up discarding your gender if you were alone on an island for the rest of your life, as it’s really just a social label.
@@holynder3181 That will only happen if you're agender. For me, I would absolutely remain male. Every time I'm alone, I find out again through firsthand experience. That's if you stay healthy though. Once you are psychologically starved enough, you won't have a sense of any kind of personal identity whatsoever, temporarily lose language and social skills, and become a pure observer. I also know this through firsthand experience.
FtM transman here. Remember that guy in Pulp Fiction who sells drugs to Vincent? The one with the long hair and beard and wears a bathrobe and eats cereal at 2AM while watching old movies?
I turned into that guy during Covid lockdown (minus the drug dealing). I think he is my true form. So to answer your question, I'm definitely a man in both social and nonsocial settings, it's just the level of upkeep that changes.
I think we're all that dude given enough distance from other people. I was that dude for like 20 years, and only recently decided to try being awake during the day, sometimes.
in a similar vein, the Dude from Big Lebowski is something I strive towards too
@@Claw.00 The Dude is a way better end goal than the Pulp Fiction guy. I plan to change my tragectory.
i know a handful of women that tend to be like that. doesn't seem to be a gender thing, unless you make it out to be.
maybe it's a cultural moment, like in some places it's considered gay to wear pink shirt to work, while in many others it's completely normal. i've also heard that wearing earrings makes you gay, but in some places many men wear earrings, doesn't seem like they have more gays.
We are all The Dude deep down inside
sometimes being transmasc is less about being a boy and more about not being a girl. what's most important is being free from the constraints that hit me hard as a kid
This is interesting... in my own experience, before I started taking T and growing facial hair, I tried a lot harder to present masc. But after my beard came in, I started growing out my hair and wearing a mix of women and men's clothing. I identify as male and use he/him, but I am no longer worried about being called a woman or she/her pronouns even if I cross back over the gender binary.
The best I can guess is the more man I saw in myself the more comfortable I became with myself and the less I felt I had to assert my gender to others. Now with just facial hair it's like it clicks in other people's head that I'm a man and use he/him.
If there were no one around to perceive me, I'd still have a beard and wear a mix of clothes- the only difference is there would be no one else there to see me as a man.
After transitioning, I no longer felt the need to run from feminity, as I began to accept and see myself as a man. And I think that I became more comfortable BECAUSE the people started to make assumption that I am male and that assumption (when right) can be very validating.
For me as a trans girl it is about being a girl. I think it depends on the person. You are the inverse of being a girl, while I am a girl, not the inverse of a boy, if that makes sense
I'm nonbinary, and I have the same realizations. I am unsure if this could be Caste as us being sexist, or if the dysphoria around sexism is what triggered the desire to escape girlhood.
actually in my pov this discussion here is the distinction between transgender and transsexual.
TG is about leaving the constraints of the born gender.
TS is about arriving in the constraints of the opposite gender.
nonbinary trans people are TG.
binary trans people are TS.
@ffh6795 that's an interesting take on it. I identify as a binary trans guy but honestly that's mostly for convenience. I want to be perceived as a boy by societies standards, but if there was no standards, I don't think I care as long as I also wasn't being held to the standard of being a girl
Growing up, | was a very feminine child. Constantly bullied by fellow children and parents. Usually just called gay or queer. Beaten for "Standing funny" I had no idea what that meant but I know I didn't want to be it. Height of this was having petrol thrown over me and set on fire aged 12. Aged 16, got thrown out of home. Was told that my parents didn't want to live with "My type". I got a job, went to the gym. I got big-"Manned up". Changed everything about myself to fir in. Lost my virginity aged 24 (my equipment didn't work until that point). Got married, had four children, became a success. Suddenly aged 37 and after an accident, I discovered I was wasn't the man I thought I was. Turns out that I was born with an open wound between my legs and had surgery to make me a boy as that's what my body resembled mostly- I was intersex and In one instant I understood what I was and why I constantly felt the way I did. After several mental health assessments, I'm transitioning, but I'm still a dad, partner to my wife and human in society. I now feel like myself. Being on an island wouldn't make a difference but do admit to having to look a certain way to fit in.
It's wild how vast and complex individual experience can be. Thank you for sharing ❤ that's pretty powerful.
Been questioning myself on that actually, just putting off talking about my big hips and extrasensory perception plus the cost is a bit much atm. I also don't think knowing would change anything, but I could be scared of the answer. More accurately I probably fear *having* to explain it one way or another as opposed to being under the radar and not explaining. It's a bit existential, but I don't really want to invest in the answer without knowing either.
Society is an asshole that way, we like our sorting boxes simple. Yet real life is rarely so.
Your whole story is horrifying, but the revelation that your parents KNEW you were intersex at birth takes it to a whole new level.
I'm so thankful that you can live your authentic self now.
you were set on FIRE AT 12 YEARS OLD? that's like a whole new crime
Your life is so much like mine except I'm 35 and I'm not a parent. Also I transitioned. I have tits and a dick and I feel somewhere between m and f.
🙏❤️🙏
I really appreciated the little pause to show the definitions of words when you were reading quotes.
doing my part to hopefully make this stuff easier to chew on :)
The thing is even if there was no gender, it makes me happy, and its impossible to understand why it makes me happy, but it does.
Being seen as my gender makes me happy because it means people see me how I want to be seen. My body being shaped how I want it to makes me happy because I like it when I look how I want to. Being treated the way that I like, or having the role in society that I want, makes me happy because it fits with how I view myself
I absolutely love that because it gets to the heart of being human: some stuff just makes us happy and honestly, i'm so grateful to have those things!
@@ThatDangDad one way I like to explain being trans is like playing a symphony in the wrong key. Life kinda sounds OK, but doesn't quite resolve well. Transitioning sets everything in the right key and the symphony sounds right. Even if there's nobody else to listen it. The symphony still resolves well inside us and gives us great peace of mind.
we are the audience with the closest 'front seat' to our own performance.
@@vansen-qod I am stealing this so hard. This analogy is amazing.
I am a trans girl MTF, I love this question because it gets to the root of me.
Honestly, this applies to really anything political or ideological, I believe I was born trans and it would torment me if I interacted with society after not interacting with people for all my life. But yeah, I would do anything to transition, despite the circumstances, it would torture me if I didn't.
I knew I was trans when all the girls around me were in my mind: "becoming beautiful and pretty" while I became more and more what I couldn't be satisfied with myself.
But I think even without seeing other human beings I genuinely think a part of me would not be satisfied.
When I say I was born trans, I do not mean in a bio essentialist way, I genuinely believe that there's a spiritual aspect to dysphoria, akin to a soul which to other people sounds Schizophrenic but I don't know it's some intrinsic part of me which I can't say is just a material expression of society or some genetic or biological difference, it's so much deeper than that.
And I genuinely was reborn when I took hormones and blockers, it was like a religious experience without the let's say the dogma and pressure of it.
But yeah that's just my ramblings, thanks to anyone who read this :)
I just wrote a similar thing. I see the dysphoria and my gender as two separate things. Gender is a part of who I am, while my dysphoria is the illness that needed to be treated for me to be able to live a normal life. My dysphoria started at around 11 when I realised I couldn't go out in swimsuits with the other boys. Cuz my body was a girl. At 30 I transitioned cuz the dysphoria, depression and anxiety was getting unbearable. Dysphoria doesn't go away when you go to a lone island. While it does let you experience with gender expression freely, it doesn't change the bodyparts allign with the gender of my brains.
Thank you for sharing your experience!🙏🏾
I feel you on the soul part. I'm not spiritualistic in basically any manner, which is probably influenced by my strongly scientific and analytical mind. Yet, I feel that something huge is missing from our understanding of reality, our universe. That something is how we perceive things, qualia, but also the uniqueness of everyone's mind. The thought that our mind is just an amalgamation of the things we've seen around us and picked up, then further developed... that reasoning still falls flat in my experience.
Either inside of, or adjacent to, the black box of our brain, there is something else immaterial that makes us all unique.
I've had gender identity issues since I was a first-grader, maybe even before then. I cannot fathom that those problems could be a product of how we forge our minds. I choose to believe that it's something deeper that lies inside the question of who one truly is.
I think there's actually something to this. I'm still in my egg, and I wouldn't consider myself religious, but I definitely felt something very deep and spiritual when I finally realized I was trans. I don't know what it is but there's something there.
Edit: Not sure why this posted twice lol
I think this is similar to asking “if you were raised seperated from society, would you still follow a 7-day work week?” like no, probably not, but I’d still follow some similar work schedule, probably one thats comfortable for me
I disagree. Mostly because my concept of gender is completely detached from societal norms and completely attached to my inate sense of internal sex, as a nonbinary person.
Yes if you live away from the civil world you will be working 24/7
Doppio >>>> Diavolo.
@@ravenmationsyt3443 I disagree, i think our internalized connection between gender and sex only exist because its ingrained in us by society.
I probably wouldn't even have the concept of weeks or months.
I already am nearly unable to plan ahead for longer than maybe 3 weeks.
In isolation, I'd feel even more comfortable with my transition. Social pressure is a huge barrier to being who I see myself as, because that's the only pushback I ever get. I noticed this during Covid lockdowns most.
Masks were wonderful.
regarding disability and gender, often disabled people are so infantilized that their gender is an afterthought. This has resulted in laws restricting transition or gender affirming care in some places for people with cognitive differences like autism. The idea that someone can be so disabled that they barely experience gender is common for those with higher support needs where their gender expression and even their sexuality can easily be policed and limited by caregivers.
"Restricting gender affirming care in people with autism"
Do those fuckers not know the comorbidity between the two...?
Yes! Although I would argue that the degendering of disabled people is actually a degendering tinted with a kind of failed femininity, like a sheer lip gloss with a hint of color. Disability itself, particularly in its more socially visible forms, has long been understood through a heuristic of ability as masculine (see "you kick like a girl" or "don't get hysterical," among others). In our binary society, to be incapable of masculinity is therefore to be shuffled into femininity, only for that category with its equally high standards of performance to also reject the disabled body. Because the masculine was impossibilized first, the feminine remains the lingering identity, but still one which doesn't want us either.
@@lunarmagpie619eugenics in a nutshell. Because like it or not America has spent the better part years of the late 19th and early twentieth century obsessed on the perfection of the human race and all that reminded them they were not perfect were in many ways rendered inferior and undesirable in as many ways as they could possibly get away with. That not only included people of other races they wished to rid the world of but also the many flaws in their own. Including disabled people mentally or physically or socially as sexual orientation and people who were poor. Many people these deeds were unique to Germany and Adolph Hitler. Oh no, that came straight out from the privileged white class of American society by 1890. Margret Sanger was a Eugenics activist. And many notable people in this country from Woodrow Wilson to Henry Ford were very fond of her. It included what the ideal woman measured. What the Ideal man looks like. How many kids should you have if any. They debated that marriage would be allowed the working class but not the privilege of making babies. That was their plan with the pushing birth control. It was never about equality or feminism. They sold it to workers that way to sell the idea that you can’t make it on this salary and grow a family on a wage of one wage slave. Mentally unfit were sterilized. The sexual deviant were jailed and castrated or sterilized. Now you can see the autistic, borderline personality disordered and gays and lesbians kids are suddenly being persuaded that they are something that leads them to want to castrate themselves. What a sell. Indoctrination. Why these groups in particular? They fit the Eugenics agenda pretty well doesn’t it?
Now his is a social construct. You can tell because it’s promoted in University in Europe first where top Psychology in child development aka DSD used hospitals and psychiatric methods aimed at treating people with ambiguity of sexual development are also the same people that thought sense of self gender were fungible. They would assign a baby a sex and tell parents to raise such an altered child the sex that they created. They would never have the pleasure of sex, of child rearing or any real sense of themselves. They were sold a life that was not truly viable. Now out of the playbook script of f yesteryear these very same people are now indoctrinating youth to do for them what they can’t force on the public because it’s a human violation of human rights. Convince yourself that you are not what you are. A true Transexual didn’t need anyone to tell them “hey maybe you really are a girl or tell a girl you’re really a boy. We actually wake up and look in the mirror and see to our horror like reminded we are not in the right skin suit. And have a panic attack. That would a disorder not a fad, it’s a crushing feeling. Especially if you like me are also intersex and already medically altered and cannot be reversed. Radical acceptance behavior training is the only thing keeping me sane. Don’t let anyone get you down that dark path.
These kids were experimental versions of transgender phenomena. All the verbal que. None binary, binary non conformity, sex assigned at birth. Gender fluid. Straight out of the box terms used back in the 30s and beyond when referring to people who it’s ambiguous sexual development.
As someone who is autistic, I have been told that I can’t know my gender because my autism makes me less mature than others my age. I was 18 at the time. It’s really fucked up how infantilized so many disabled people are, especially by parents, caregivers, and teachers. Even if my autism did make me less mature than others my age (which I don’t think it does), if I am capable of communicating about my gender, then I am capable of deciding my own identity. And there’s literally no harm in respecting a person’s wishes to go by a different name and pronouns. If it’s just a phase, then everything goes back to the way it was before eventually. If it’s not, then people are being assholes for no reason. People need to learn to let others live their lives the way they want to
yep, once had a friend that was forced to stop transitioning because "testosterone is making [them] have psychotic breaks" they had been diagnosed with schizophrenia years before medically transitioning.
also have seen a lotttt of autistic kids be told that they just dont UNDERSTAND their gender bc theyre autistic (used to work for child & adolescent psychiatrists)
“May a thousand flowers bloom.” Is such a beautiful ending sentence, I find it very comforting as a trans masc person who’s not exactly binary but also not completely non binary.
I assume you were totally nonbinary before but you touched your computer weird and it shocked you full of binary.
i guess if i was alone on the island my identity would fluctuate a lot more and i might start performing plays with different versions of myself in various costumes
Same
This describes my early childhood so well!
same
I definitely restrict my expression to get misgendered less, which is sad.
@@nuclearalchemy9220It’s realistic. If you want to live as a man you have to… live as a man. It’s a lesson I wish I learned 10 years earlier because denying it and dressing up for people on social media did nothing for me. Do not make my same mistakes.
During covid lockdowns (i.e., staying at home, not seeing other people for weeks on end), a a looot of trans people I knew got all jazzy with their gender in a way they hadn't before (myself included).
I reckon those lockdowns are a great case study of "on a desert island": a social isolation for an extended period where people didn't need to worry about how people would react to their appearance.
Food for thought. Thanks for the video :)
dang, that's a really great observation!
And while I had been questioning my gender before covid, that time period largely gave me more time to think about it and my place in gender! I'm a trans guy now, and proud of it.
Very good point. I saw so much of this myself!😊
For myself, not much would change because I've always been just who I am, rather fiercely so. I never fit the ideal female gender though I am female cis, and I identify as such, for the most part. As a child I felt equally or more male than female, to my mother's great concern. Today we would call such a young girl a tomboy, and leave it at that, never questioning her gender identity. This fits into the social aspect of gender. I have multiple medical issues, chronic pain, disabilities, and a genetic disease that takes up all of my time dealing with, besides living in forced poverty because I have Social Security disability, so I don't really have time to sit around and worry about my gender. If I were on an island, I'd still be dealing with the same issues, nothing would change. And as one other person commented here, not having social pressures, one tends to be more themselves than they might be, and when it comes to my neurological issues and my neurodivergence, I would have to agree with that. I would be more myself, masking wouldn't be an issue. I find how we perceive ourselves, be it sex, be it gender, be it anything, does not change that much. It may grow, develop and become more nuanced, but we are who we are for the most part, usually. The fact that transgenderism is now linked to a part of the brain that is different physically and can be identified in autopsy regardless of whether or not a person has taken hormones or had surgery, pretty much says everything that needs to be said about this issue. We are who we are because that's the way our brains are wired. ❤
Similar thing happened to me, it wasnt covid, but I had quit my job to destress and to do some skill training at home, and during that time I got smacked full-on by years worth of trans feelings I hadnt fully conceptuallized.
You saying "I'm somebody who feels that 'male' describes me perfectly fine but who is not otherwise attached to 'masculinity' as some stat that I need to min-max" helped me realise my placement in the gender spectrum. Thank you so much for kinda accidentally helping.
Haha yes that's kinda where I sit too. I identify as a trans guy and I've socially and partly physically transitioned to what aligns with my gender identity, but I honestly do not really care about being masculine. Masculinity does not necessarily equal maleness, which may sound confusing, but it makes sense to me lol
@@flickerwizz233 I'm Enby, and it's kinda the opposite for me.... I DEFINITELY wanna Min the Macho Masculinity....
That's how I feel too, as a cis guy. I'm a guy, I identify as one, but I don't feel any strong attachment to masculinity as a concept. I just an what I am, not like I'm really GNC anyways but yeah
This might be me as well.
We need more people being masculine in healthy ways that aren’t a joke or toxic
I am a trans woman. I spent a lot of time reflecting on your question. I realized that my main concern with having feminine attributes is not for my own sake, but for others to respect me as a woman. I discovered how amazing estrogen is after starting it, and how harmful testosterone felt after I blocked it. If it weren't for society's judgments about gender, I might never have transitioned and could have been content living as I am. The societal definitions and expectations of gender were the main reasons I felt depressed before, and transitioning has brought me happiness. The double standards that once made me miserable are now what contribute to my happiness. Society’s failure to treat everyone equally based on gender is deeply damaging.
I haven't spent a huge amount of time reflecting on the question, but other than that, I'm in a very similar boat. I absolutely hate the aggressive "feeling on edge" sensation from testosterone, and don't particularly enjoy the defensive version from adrenaline either.
Thank you for sharing your experience!🙏🏾
If I was on an island I’d be vibing with the crabs.
I pinch 🦀
I'd argue we are an inherent part (maybe the most important member) of our own audience so we can't really be without an audience in any real sense.
It gets weirder when you have any sort of plurality going on, too. I'm my own audience. A small audience, but still an *audience*.
I actually just commented the same thing before noticing yours
inspired by the Wynton Marsalis quote about jazz
As my partner has been known to say, "I am my own captive audience."
@@OdinsSage definitely stealing that one. It's a gift and a curse for sure 😂
On a deserted island, the socially constructed parts of gender would slowly start to crumble away leaving me with only my personal identity. An outside observer might still consider my actions to be gendered, but that would only be due to their socially constructed lens. I'm just a person, living as myself. Labelling myself as a woman and as transgender are both just shorthands to signal to others how to approach me.
This! yes!! you get it!
this is probably the best way to put being trans, i love this.
Yeah when you're alone your ego starts to fade and you just live without thinking about gender at all.
Clothes don't matter except as shelter from the elements, roles don't matter as you do everything in pursuit of survival. Even cis people would experience this.
Yes, that’s really interesting. It’s the observer that makes the distinction, the classification, if you will. They apply their own definition of gender to you based on their observations and their preconceived definitions. But that doesn’t change you. If a person on a ship observed your behaviour through binoculars and decided you were male/female based on your behaviour, the only person that affects is them. It only changes when you reintegrate into that society. All it comes down to is whatever society deems you to be. It’s imposed upon you, rather than society making room for people outside of the norm.
Anyway, big love n’ hugs to you. We can all use a bit more love and kindness.
For me, gender is simply what makes me comfortable. It wouldn’t matter if I was surrounded by one thousand people or ten. I will still want to be in a body I am comfortable in regardless of how people perceive me.
I'm trans and autistic. Gender, for me, is more like an aesthetic (I may be on the agender spectrum), in a similar way to how I decorate my room. I'd still present masculine, and decorate my room the same way if I could, because it happens to make me comfortable, and I like it.
I thought I was the only one! I’m so happy that there’s someone out there that validates my experience.
As a cis dude I think that's a nice way to put it. I just like the thought and 'romanticism' of the "though big guy with an emotional soft heart" and feel comfortable living that way. Thinking of gender as an aesthetic is a nice new perspective.
Yeah and for me both aesthetics are irrelevant to me, if pressed I say my assigned gender purely because I dont care and want you to move on from this thing that has really only ever served to be an inconvenience. Like seriously my body is just a tool to me, I dont care what it looks like that much so long as it allows me to do the things I like. Gender is weird and feels made up, I understand the concept of biological sex but gender is more like a cultural or religious identity almost. The problem is I dont understand those either, like I dont need any labels I have a name for that purpose already right?
I care about having a male body as much as I care about having brown eyes or being 5'3, its only relevant for practical reasons for me. If anything height is more of a a thing since being short can be annoying when I cant reach something.
All I really know about gender is that it is important to both trans and cis people for some reason so I try to respect it, but I do not really get why it matters at all.
I'm also trans and autistic and this is fascinating because I totally agree. I was born male, and I am changing my aesthetic to be more feminine but don't want to get any surgeries or anything. I want to look like my perception of what a feminine aesthetic looks like because that would just make me a lot more happy about my appearance, not become a full-blown girl or have any expectations to look or act like what a girl is supposed to be. I've also struggled with not feeling like a "girl" 100% of the time, and I wonder if that's due to just not being anything but liking how one gender looks. Some gender experts should do a paper about this view point because I would really like to see what other people think on it. Like if this kind of gender identity is more agender or non-binary esc instead of what gender you want to look like.
Wow I just posted my comment, this is way better than I put it. I feel exactly the same way.
As an agender person I can confidently say that nothing about my nonexistent gender presentation would change.
Also as an Agender the only thing I would change is my chest. I find it physically annoying. It makes me get too hot and gets in my way. Things would just be easier with it gone, has nothing to do with everyone else.
@@dragonscale46 Fair point, though I'd argue that isn't really gender presentation because for you, it's not about fitting into a gender role and just about utility and comfort.
Same
@@paperbird9817 I agree with that. But top surgery is often considered under the umbrella of trans. So I figured it would be nice to let people know how I think.
Another agender person here and I think my presentation would likely shift some based on a shift in priorities. The first thing that comes to mind is skirts, light flows skirts. They’re much more comfortable in warmer temperatures (DESERT island) and if all my physical needs were met and I didn’t have to concern myself over the safety of others (on account of there being no others) then yeah comfy light skirts it is. TBH most of my day to day presentation is structured around pragmatism
As a trans woman I would live my life as a woman regardless of my surroundings. I don't do this for anyone, I'm simply being myself.
Ayo??? This legit feels like itcame straight out of my head, complete withparts I don't quite get, but with research I didn't do. I'm a cis guy with pretty much the exact same vibe to his gender as you described and the same want for all trans peeps to be fine to live their lives as they want
I went off of HRT for a month and became quickly depressed. The social aspect is honestly secondary to physically being able to transition. I think my behavior would change, but I already just kinda live how I want to so I don't think it would be too different from how I act now.
This is the real answer
@@crystalvulpine2314for some people it is, me included, but for a lot of trans people it’s all about the social stuff. I personally think these are two different categories entirely but we’re all in this boat together
@@stdesy Isn't that just sexism?
@@crystalvulpine2314 I was wondering the same thing. If it’s social then what folks are saying is that it’s bad to be perceived as a certain gender.
Similar feelings here. I went off HRT for a couple of months and it was terribly detrimental to my mental health; I went back to how I felt before I started HRT, and back then I was very unhappy. Regardless of whether “gender is a social construct”, my gender dysphoria is physically tangible. If I were on a deserted island, I’d still certainly be trans because regardless of societal expectations, not being able to medically transition would by far be the much more damning part.
I have no idea about the island question. But the island as a symbol really spoke to me. After 8,5 years on HRT and top surgery my dysphoria has shrunken and it feels like I am now able to take a break from swiming restlessly in the ocean. I have reached a shore and don't have to constantly worry about survival anymore, which is great but also weird. I ask myself "What kind of masculinity do I want to live? How do I want to live it? What do I reject?".
Oooooo...now that's good....nods.....mtf here
I remember panicking when I realized i was transmasc because i didn't want to be a beer-drinking frat boy type. I was really into my identity as a creative type. I blew my own mind when I thought "I'm already a guy, right? So I just.... keep doing exactly what I already want to be doing. I'll just live as a /male/ creative type." Basically, whatever you decide, whatever you experiment with, whatever you find joy in... by being masculine and doing a thing, you define that thing as masculine for others. My mantra was "Who I am as a man becomes what a man is."
Hi Trans person here. To answer your question. I don't think it's possible to not have an audience, we ourselves are an audience of sorts.
100% especially when you factor in body dysmorphia, even if no one was around, there would be aspects that weren't performative in nature.
Thank you for this video. I always wish cis people were trying to do more of gender retrospection and analysis on theirselves, like you did. When people start to analyze gender and reflect how the different aspects of gender affect them, there would be much more compassion to people, their identities and their expression be they trans or cis. I hope this encourages everyone to take a moment every now and then and just explore all these different ideas.
Man I love this. philosophical shit about gender with relaxing music and no transphobia, great! I'm still exploring wtf am I gender wise, so these sort of questions are really interesting for me.
i love how you spelled philosophical
Oh fuck I swear I'll never spell philosophy or physics right first try
@@geckoram6286 hey i mean its pretty creative
I like some mild francephobia myself, the french can be annoying 😆
@@xWood4000 man I swear I wasn't drunk while writing that, I'll check it again. Although, gotta say, french people can be annoying sometimes
How are you always so kind, mentally challenging and utterly gentle? I'm seriously impressed by the level of empathy you display. And I say that as someone who got labelled "The most empathetic person I know" by a coworker just this morning! Thank you so much for your work ❤
Well I was kind of a douchebag for 20 years so i'm making up for lost time lol
@@ThatDangDad You're doing an outstanding job making up! I love your content and I hope your reach will grow even more! Thanks for the reply ☺
@@ThatDangDadbetter late than never! reflection & thoughtfulness are strengths that are difficult to maintain because they require so much effort (and lbr time). all i ever want from people is for them to think about things more deeply. the fact that you were an "asshole" for 2 decades and managed to pull thru gives me a lot of hope for the future
@@ThatDangDad So many people don't ever acquire the self-awareness, tools, or will to examine themselves to that degree. That kind of work is HARD and lots of people dip a toe in, realise how much effort it will take, and just... don't.
Thank you for not only putting in that hard work, but also for being publicly transparent about your journey and bringing these conversations to your platform.
I have an interesting story about gender, especially as a masculine cishet dude. I grew a lot of facial and body hair early on (about 14ish).
Well, in the 2000’s body hair and facial hair was very much out. Beards were for stoners and serial killers only, for the most part. The only beards any guy had was either a soul patch or line beard (at least until 300 came out).
I even remember a popular guy at school walking by me and saying “ew, wax your chest, dude.”
Unfortunately , I, being a teenager in the 00’s, called him a homophobic slur for it. But despite constantly being told to shave, I refused to because it made me feel masculine in a very animalistic and primal way. In the 2010’s the lumbersexual and Viking look became popular, and suddenly my aesthetic was considered hot.
Even as a kid, I wanted to be a large beast man thing. I always liked orcs and beastly fantasy and Sci-fi races in tv shows and video games. I played as Donkey Kong in Mario Party and Smash Bros on the N64 and couldn’t wait to go through puberty so my physicality could match the beast man I felt like that my skinny childhood body couldn’t.
Point is, even if you’re not trans, if you perform gender the “wrong” way, you get policed at the wrong time. Do what you are, because times always change. Be unmoving because you’re best at being you
that is really interesting, thanks for sharing!
oh thats really cool, thank you for sharing that!
wow interesting!
Thank you for showing me that I have solidarity even with men. Why are people so crazy about other people's hair?? I'm a woman, and I was given unsupervised use of a BLADE in MIDDLE SCHOOL because my mom decided I should shave my legs. *_?????????_* The worst part is it actually opened the door for a SH addiction (don't worry, I'm long clean now). My dad is continually weird about my choice to let my body be fluffy on my legs and underarms. Why do people care so much? It's so weird. Feels borderline pedophilic to me :|
Yes, as a cis woman I never enjoyed shaving and it actually makes me uncomfortable (itchy and lots of ingrown hairs) to shave. Yet I am left feeling incredible pressure to properly perform my gender by shaving and every spring time as I stop wearing long pants I have to fight against my feelings of incorrectness for having leg, arm and armpit hair. It's ridiculous and intellectually I know it, but still I feel this annoying feeling that I am not female enough if I don't do what I am 'supposed' to.
The thing is, there is always an audience. Even if I was entirely isolated, when I look at myself in the mirror or feel my body exist in space, I feel wrong.
My entire life, I couldn’t help but catch my reflection every time I came across it. It took me a while to understand that the reason why I did that is that my reflection always felt off. This was before I even knew what a trans person was.
After discovering my identity, I realized that the “off” feeling was discomfort and a recognition that I associated with seeing who I was, and that I wasn’t who I envisioned in my mind.
Whenever I envision my completed transition, I imagine looking at myself, feeling that finished body and image exist. How others view me doesn’t come into that vision.
How others view and refer to me is always an afterthought, how I see myself is the primary concern. Now, this has also caused me problems, confusing my gender dysphoria for simple body image issues due to my weight.
However, my doubts about my own “transness,” vanished when I had an eyeopening dream. It was a simple dream: I woke up, walked to bathroom, did my business, and looked in the mirror. I was a woman, inside and out. Not only that, but the body I inhabited had never been envisioned by me before, this was a wholly new image of myself, yet, I felt a larger and more profound joy and euphoria than I’d ever felt before and since. It is the peak moment of my life, and it was all due to my brief change what I looked like, the ability to look in the mirror and see myself looking back for the first time in my life.
It's this "desert island" hypothetical that made me realize a couple years ago that I'm agender *and* on the aromantic-asxual spectrum. It changed my performance to be just "I'm wearing what I want to wear and doing what I want to do and doing who I want to do" without any guilt or reservations :)
oh wow, it's so rare for me to come across another agender. Very nice to find a kindred soul.
@@LeynaLhuff high five :) we exist!
Yeah this is a weird hypothetical for agender folks because the answer is so obvious. I'd just be me all the time. I wouldn't have to get anxious about formal events with dress codes. I wouldn't have to get stressed about people behaving a certain way around me because of my perceived gender. I'd just get to be me and not have to perform a gender because I have to in certain situations because society expects it or I have to in order to get a job or not be judged by family for 'not making an effort' etc
I would love nothing more than existing in a world where gender didn't exist. I have a body. My body is not 'me'.
I suppose I just don't do self-expression. Maybe it would be interesting to see if I was more comfortable doing this alone on a desert island. If I found a feather I'd probably stick it in my hair. But because it pleased me and it wouldn't be misinterpreted by an observer.
I've been identifying as non binary period for a few years now, and kinda felt like agender is kind of right for me as a label, but on the other eI love presenting in pretty gendered ways on some occasions (I love to do hyperfem makeup and outfits to combine with my weird androgynous hair and posture and personality), so I didn't think it was quite right either. But when it comes to this hypothetical my immediate answer was also "I'd just present the same ways I do now, be myself the same way i am now". And reading your comment I've felt pretty reflected on the label the way u explain it. Either way I don't care so much about labeling myself the perfect way anymore, but just existing howhever i please and trying not to project what i feel other people will gender me as on my own thoughts about who i am or how I can present to be "accepted" or read as non binary. To me, I'm CLEARLY that, and that's what ultimately matters.
It's refreshing to come across a "question for transpeople" that isn't trying to smuggle in anti-trans rethoric.
My starter class was Male and I don't feel the need to multiclass out of it. I don't have the most min/maxed build, but that doesn't bother me. If I did end up on the island though, I would probably stop caring about my gender pretty quickly. Not because I would stop taking levels in Male, but because I'd lose myself without others to relate to. The increased isolation during the height of the pandemic, I believe, was a harsh reminder of how much people need other people for lots of folk.
I cannot explain how much I love you talking about yourself like a d&d character
God that is so true, I think the pandemic really affected myself and others in a way with gender of seeing less reason for it, as outside of the day to day of society, gender is kinda pointless to some extent. Also, as someone who is non-binary (and identifies under the trans umbrella), I am fully multiclassing, didn't need to mix/max or respec, just had to alter the build moving forward.
Normally I'd have rolled my eyes and clicked past, but That Dang Dad has shown he's a fair bet as a good actor.
Most questions are not anti-trans rhetoric. People just falsely ASSUME they are right away. :/
Yeah, I would think the same thing. I like being male as defensive... something people find oddly feminine, it lacks the rage needed to be male according to conservatives. The person who makes no aggression and is defensive holds the notion of the "Den mother" a bear or wolf that protects the cubs... a mom.
It was what I heard as an AMAB guy, being the level head of people who could not act mature... a mom. It was literally my title. Very interesting, I lacked the rage and was too compassionate to perform as male, also being gay added to that. It was a group of far-left people but put on me by conservatives, we just all thought it was fun so it got adopted.
This is actually a great and profound question. I’m MtF, and a lot of the time I’m ONLY performing for myself. I’m 6’4”. no matter what clothes I wear, what parts of my body I shave, I’m not fooling the people looking for a man in me. I’m not even bothering changing my voice at all in casual conversation. But at home, I don’t like how I look if I’m dressing like a man, or if I have facial or body hair. I don’t really like how I sound, so I’m more inclined to try changing it. I don’t think any of that would change if I were left alone on a desert island.
Most people don't know this, but you can actually physically raise your voice over time by stuffing your body full of magnesium (as many different forms as you personally can tolerate in as many doses across the day as possible) and doing myofascial release (basically massage) on the front of your neck where vocal cords are. Testosterone and estrogen have vastly different impacts on bone density--T breaks down bones faster and causes minerals to accumulate in soft tissue all over the body faster than E. This breakdown of bone and accumulation of minerals in soft tissue is why testosterone makes your voice drop--it changes the frequencies that vocal cords resonate at by changing their density and mass. But when you take a bunch of magnesium and do a lot of massage on your neck, the accumulated minerals in vocal cords break down and are put back into bone, causing them to resonate at higher frequencies. You can also use the same techniques to de-masculinize your face (as testosterone does not actually thicken bones in the face but merely causes minerals to accumulate in the soft tissue on top of the bones) HRT doesn't actually redistribute fat itself--it redistributes the minerals that have accumulated in fat, with T and E causing minerals to accumulate more in different locations across the body. Detective Wiggles on youtube has a great video on this.
preach, sister. i'm in basically the same situation myself, but i can't even take estrogen because my liver is messed up for some reason
Yes! A lot of the times I'll venture to 'try and pass' as it were it's when i'm alone and just messing around tryna find what looks good
If you were in a house with no mirrors and didn’t speak would you think of yourself as a woman or a man?
@@michaelajames99 i personally don’t need a mirror or a voice to feel how nice sheets feel on my freshly shaven body or enjoy the look of a skirt on myself, and i certainly don’t need the labels “man” and “woman” to describe the way i think about my body
I think you were spot on with your thoughts on nonbinary people. The only things dictating my appearance on that island would be my own comfort and sense of aesthetics. On a more metaphysical level, what I am would matter little to me as long as I knew I was myself, and I could reflect who that was as much or as little as I liked through physical characteristics.
Agender person here, I love this well thought out and researched vid. Right at the very start I was reminded of how I ended up realizing I was agender, which was in a sense in the closest real world equivalent to the hypotheticals: living alone stuck at home during the covid lockdowns. Having no one around to perform gender to for long stretches of time, I realized that for me, with the performance (and, as I now realize, much of the outside feedback) gone, there wasn't much gender left. Since that realization, as life started back up, it has become uncomfortable to perform the gender associated with my birth sex, but oh well, it did make room for experimenting with funky queer presentations :)
I kinda feel this. For me, I don't think I ever did a great job of performing my assigned gender, but there were a lot of masculine things that I was encouraged to do even if I didn't do a great job of them. For me, I realized I was agender not because I quit performing my gender and found that I liked it, but because I stumbled into LGBT stuff on youtube, and upon being introduced to the idea of gender euphoria, I realized I was supposed to like it and never did. Sadly, I still haven't fully shaken off the habits I built up while learning to perform gender, but I'm getting better, and becoming more myself every year.
I think agender is just normal
@@bow-tiedengineer4453 That sounds more like you were a victim of sexism
@@crystalvulpine2314 I do think my extended family is a little sexist, yeah, but the main reason I'm pretty sure I'm some flavor of nonbinary is that there's never been a single things that's given me that masculine gender euphoria feeling, and for the longest time I didn't really see any difference between men and women other than biology and societal expectations. Like, when I first found out about trans people, I didn't find it strange because I thought gender roles were important, I found it weird that anyone cared enough to bother asking people to use certain pronouns. When I was little, before my extended family bribed me to get my hair cut, I looked so much like my mom when she was my age, to the point that people would assume I was a girl, and rather than giving me the same sort of feeling of it conflicting with how I see myself that I've seen in both cis and trans people, young me's reaction was "Ah, yes, I'm so much like my mom, isn't that so neat?" Like, I was almost 18 when I realized that gender and gendered pronouns were anything more than sexist stereotypes and a way to sort people so people don't risk seeing the opposite genetalia in changing rooms and bathrooms. I support people doing whatever weird harmless things make them happy, and now I've seen how much most people care about their gender it's clear to me that supporting trans folks is more important than sorting people based on what their underwear covers, but it's still a little wild to me that anyone has such strong feelings about gender and sex. I'm just me, you're just you, and words like "he" and "she" are all just made up
@@bow-tiedengineer4453 That people's whole lives revolve around their gender is a sign of a sexism problem.
Personally, if I had never been exposed to society in any way, I wouldn’t be transgender, since gender wouldn’t exist to me.
I’d still want to have estrogen as my dominant sex hormone, since it makes me more comfortable in my body, and I’d still wear the clothes and makeup and wear my hair the way I want.
If I were transported to an island now, I’d still be trans, because it is impossible to exorcize my conceptualization of gender from my brain. I might technically not have any more application of gender, but my transness and queering of the world is inherent to how i exist as a person.
I fully agree with this
I'll just second this instead of writing the same thing. If I were taken there now I'd still be a trans guy but if I were never introduced into a society with gender conceptions then I'd probably feel more comfortable in my skin compared to how I currently am but my mind and how I interpret gender, even as someone who considers themselves nonconforming, is largely dictated by how society broadly and collectively views gender.
i was going to write a comment but it'd basically just be a less eloquent version of this so i'm just going to say yeah same
My thoughts exactly
I love the way you put this! I have a genuine question if you don’t mind answering it, otherwise feel free to ignore this.
In my own exploration I also got to “I wouldn’t be transgender because gender wouldn’t exist to me”. But when it comes to self-expression (or what would, in our society, be called gender expression) such as taking hormones, styling yourself a certain way, or using certain mannerisms, how do we know that those preferences would remain the same?
On one hand those things feel intrinsic to who I am but on the other hand they may be things I adopted in order to reinforce my gender identity and make me feel more aligned with that internal sense of gender. In case of the latter, if society had deemed things like testosterone (or the types of changes it causes in a body), short hairstyle, facial hair, suits etc as being feminine, then would those thing be what I was drawn to instead? As they would reinforce my femininity and allow me to feel more at home with myself as I embody it.
I imagine that if gender as a concept never existed, then gendered styles, body types, mannerisms etc, would not either. There would be no clothes or hormones that would make me feel more feminine because it wouldn’t mean anything to be feminine. In our current reality, what is femme or masc is quite arbitrarily decided and under constant flux and redefinition.
It them follows that those style preferences and performances as learned, things that may have been completely different if we were born in another culture, region or time period. We may be conditioned from birth to see some things as feminine so we do them to express that we are feminine people and vice versa. So do I prefer those things because of my gender identity, or do I have this gender identity because I prefer those things? It’s a chicken and egg type situation I guess.
I hope this all makes sense. This is as much a question for other people as it is for myself and I’m really curious what you (& any others who have ideas about this) think.
I try to stay out of the trans discussions precisely because I don't understand the concept of gender identity. It's not something I've ever experienced, I have no sense of 'feeling' like a man, I just know I have a male body. So I get stuck on questions like this, and on the subject as a whole. I'm not so presumptuous as to think that since I have no sense of gender identity, nobody does. But I can't access their internal lives, so how do I even engage with questions that hinge on internal experiences of gender identity? It's an impasse.
This Trans-masculine person appreciates your sensitivity & intelligence on being something that you're not. I hope you continue to keep & open mind,...maybe even do some Trans research to learn about us. Google Gender Dysphoria to get a start, Thx.
I don't want to make things uncomfortable for you really, but I've been told what you describe is itself some peripheral part of the trans sphere... Basically being agender or gender neutral, or at least demi male. These things aren't hard and fast, there's a continuum if indeed not a spectrum.
In contrast, the typical cis man or woman seems to have at least some innate feeling of being that thing and what it means, though it's hard to figure what of that is instinctual and what is accepting the social idea because it just fits OK with them and is at least vaguely in the same region as their natural feeling. Regardless, their sex and the way their hormones make them feel, their interactions with others of the same and of the opposite stripe, correlate with their inner workings and affirm their gender status to them.
I'm in a similar boat where it's just, like... Whatever? I have a body that's of a particular shape and it has a name and expectations associated with it. I think i'd like it to be different but i don't know if that's just general life dissatisfaction and emotional dysphoria finding something to latch on to. But I've not found any particular pleasure in conforming with the expectations, but dot dot dot and at this point my phone keypad stops working properly and the voice recognition also proves to be faulty, I will leave this open and finishes up when it's behaving itself again
@@tahrey If they don't care it's probably because it's comfortable to them so they have no reason to feel any way about it. It's just normal. I can almost guarantee they're cis.
ok so i had further technological and then illness problems whilst trying to follow this up, including having something 90% written and then the phone freaked out again. Now I've found it with my laptop I'll have another go when my brain is halfway back to clear again.
To me, the flaw with the desert island question has always been the lack of establishing context. It comes down to two basic possibilities: was I born there, or was I sent there?
If I, at some point in my life after having lived many years in ✨️society✨️, suddenly found myself on a desert island and could live however I wanted to, I would still come to the conclusion that I'm trans (if I didn't know already) and I would still want to transition. I would know what "being a woman" looks like to me, and I would still want to find and live out my own version of womanhood based on that prior knowledge.
On the other hand, if I grew up on that desert island, with no other human contact and no learned concepts of gender physicality and performance... I have no idea what I'd want! I can't even begin to imagine that. I know that in present day, in the real world, I desire more than anything to be physically "female" by many common (and oppressive) definitions, even though I don't believe that's a requirement for anyone's womanhood. I find joys in the way I have become more "female", and pain in the ways I yet haven't, or never will -- even in things no one else can see. But how much of that is innate? If I didn't grow up around any other women, or females, or humans in general, how would I even have a concept of that? How much of it is burned into our very being from conception? It's impossible to know.
There's a relevant theory (I say theory because I believe studies have been done but I don't remember whether anything has been "proven") about how the body's concept of gender develops in utero. It's been awhile since I read up on this so please take it with a grain of salt (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong). As I remember it, it's believed that for many people, our sense of gender is in part based on the primary sex hormone our brain expects to mainly function on. The theory is that for most people - and indeed, practically all cis people - the brain develops to expect the same hormone that is produced by the gonads they end up developing. While for trans people, the brain decides that it wants one hormone, but then the gonads develop into the set that produce the other one. Thus creating a natural sense of incongruence which becomes painfully apparent during puberty. This explains why trans teens, even if they never had an inkling they could be trans (and still don't), usually begin to experience dysphoria and/or dissociation during those years, whether they have the words for it or not.
That theory does get pretty muddy as soon as you start thinking about anyone other than cis people and binary-trans people. Not that it still can't be relevant, but it's a lot harder to rationalize, unless there are rigorous scientific explanations for every case outside of the binary. (There aren't, and that's beautiful.) I just think it's interesting to consider as one piece of the larger puzzle that is ✨️gender✨️ as a whole. To paraphrase one of the quotes from the video -- sex isn't gender. Gender is the apotheosis of the dimorphism that sex started.
Anyway, that was a long tangent.
This whole topic is incredibly fascinating, and I appreciate that your healthy curiosity is met with enthusiastic allyship. I will say though, that I think the root question is mostly only useful as a philosophical thought experiment. It will never be relevant for the vast majority of people to know how they'd live out their gender in true isolation. _Especially_ people with internet access, whose algorithm feeds them this video. We live in society, with millions of other people, most of whom we'll never meet but all of whom have the power to influence our sense of self and who we want to be. Cis or trans, almost every human can and does experience dysphoria and euphoria related to their experience of gender. (And those who don't are also relevant to the discussion.) I think what's most important is respecting people's sense of self, and respecting how our own projections of our experience can affect others, without restricting who we can be.
I feel like I was gonna say something else but I can't remember it, so that's all for now. :p
Thanks for the video ^^💜
i read most of this and i think this is a really good way of putting it. and that study seems really interesting
I'm someone who spreaks to your words a lot.
I am 42, trans, and non-transitioned.
My specific situation when it comes to gender is that I have mental conditions outside of anything related to gender dysphoria, and it's caused me to be analyzed many times in my life for many reasons. It's also had me equipped with a lot of techniques for calming anxiety, introspection, and self-discovery. I have two symptoms of my transgender that I don't find a lot of other trans people seem to talk about, so I think they might be unique representations with my list of conditions, but they tell me some things.
The first is limb-ghosting. I feel parts of my body differently on a physical level than they appear. I can feel a different shape to my fingers, the top of my head (of all places) the shape and size of my torso, and so on. The feeling I get isn't "it feels male vs female" I simply feel those things 'different shaped' than they really are. It represents as a numb or 'itchy' feeling in places where my feeling of my body lies inside the bounds of my physical body. I've had this phenomenon studied with tests under EKG monitoring. The feeling of my body lines up with the second different... I dream in female and the shape my body 'feels' when I'm awake lines up with the body I 'get' when I"m dreaming.
In dreams I appear always as a female half-fox furry hybrid thing. Get all the laughs out, we can deal with the gender dysphoria because the furry thing is a whole other can of worms. But I have had this 'form' in my dreams as young as 4 years old... and I know this because I also suffer from night terrors that caused PTSD in me as a child. The earliest dream I can remember is burned into my memory because it is the cause of a deeply-rooted trauma. But in that dream I was a 4-year-old girl. This is before I should have 'formed a gender identity' and before I have been 'tricked by doctors into believing I'm trans.'
I've been a curiosity to a few doctors in my life, and have become pretty phobic of seeking medical care for worry that I'll want to be examined more. I donated my brain to science, so hopefully that'll help people enough in the future figuring out why my brain is different or whatever. But for me, on a daily basis... it's the exact antithesis to this question.
I'm basically a hermit, outside of my wife and 2 cats. I have friends that I hang out with on the internet, but it's a very small circle. But I isolate myself because I feel LESS like myself in public. It's the reaction of other people that is the reason I doubt myself, or hate myself so deeply. So I AM on a 'desert island' scenario, or as close to one as can reasonably exist. Being alone is how I feel NORMAL about my gender... how I get to feel female. I feel more masculine every time I step outside my door. That feels oppressive. If I display an inch of myself in public I am ridiculed instantly... so I've learned to stop burning myself.
this is exactly what i was thinking. If i was born there i would not care because those social gender norms wouldnt have ever been built in my mind to cause me to want to follow them.
@@KitZunekaze Childhood trauma before your personality has fully formed can cause a fracturing of self perception, development of an "inner world", multiple personalities independant of each other, disphoria, and a host of other things. Your self perception does not match reality.
@@darketernal3piss off
I think for me in that scenario, it would largely stay the same. I would probably lose the need for others to affirm my gender identity, but aside from that id still wanna look the way i imagine myself as. That can change, sometimes i want bottom Surgery and other times i dont. Sometimes i want a flat chest other tomes i want Breasts. To begin with my gender has always been a chaotic mess and prone to change over short periods pf time.
I feel the same way
Trans man here! Firstly, I've just gotta say, thanks for asking this question. Gender is so interesting and complex, and it's really refreshing to hear these questions being asked with curiosity and openness. It's not too often that I encounter cis people asking these questions in good faith, and it genuinely means a lot to me to hear this perspective.
My thoughts on gender have evolved so much over the course of the past decade or so since I first began transitioning, and I'm sure that those thoughts will continue to evolve as I age and grow as a person. From where I currently stand, I see gender as less of a spectrum between male and female or between intrinsic truth and social construct, but rather as somewhat of a buffet that offers a little bit of everything. You get handed a plate at the front of the line, and what you do from there is partially a matter of personal preference, partially a matter of socialization, and partially a matter of factors entirely beyond your control.
For instance: Maybe you grew up eating a lot of mashed potatoes, so you throw some on your plate without even thinking. No one in your family really likes broccoli, but you love it, so you put it on your plate despite the playful jabs that come your way. And, man, you /really/ wanted that piece of pie for dessert, but the person in front of you took the last slice, and the chef says they're out of pie for the day, so you settle for cheesecake instead.
The island thought experiment was, funnily enough, the exact thing that forced me to admit to myself that I was trans all those years ago. I'd been agonizing over whether or not to transition - whether I could stand the judgment of my family and friends, whether I was willing to put myself on such public display, whether I'd end up looking and feeling like myself at the end of it all - and I realized that if I was on a deserted island facing no social pressures, if I had all the resources needed to transition, I'd press that button in a heartbeat. I knew that it would make me happier in my skin, that it would bring me closer to some truth I had always known yet was always running away from. I didn't know why I was trans, or what that meant - but I knew what my body needed in order for it to be mine.
But gender is more complex in reality than just answering a yes-or-no question. I don't know that any two people truly ever experience gender in the same way, and part of the joy that I've felt in transitioning has been figuring out exactly what kind of a man I want to be. Am I a man who likes football and beer? No, not really. Am I a man who likes drag shows and pop music? Absolutely. Does any of that change the fact that I'm a man? Nope! Those things are totally arbitrary; they can be enjoyed by anyone. But I live in a culture that places more "masculinity" points on one than on the other, so some people may knock my manhood on that basis alone, with or without knowledge of my gender history.
The social aspects of gender - the things that we perform - those change from culture to culture, from person to person, from place to place. Someone who was raised by a single dad in a liberal city probably doesn't think about gender in the same way as someone who grew up in a nuclear family in a small Bible belt town. Gender cannot entirely be separated from factors such as geography, race, class, disability, age, etc.
I look like a "man." I was raised to be a "woman." I behave in ways that exist somewhere in-between or altogether outside of those categories. And that last part - the part that is not strictly one identity or another - I believe that is true for everyone, cis or trans. No one person can live up to every possible expectation of femininity or masculinity across every single culture, time, place, and personal experience.
And because that part is true for everyone, I simply am what I say I am. You simply are what you say you are.
At the end of the day, I'm at my happiest being a man. My plate from the metaphorical gender buffet inevitably contains a different combination of items than that of the next man, and his combination will also be unique to him. But I'm happy with my plate. And that, for me, is enough.
Yooo I that's a really cool perspective. Your explanation made my understanding of gender become a little more holistic. Thanks a ton🔥💪
i would just be my weird lil scruffy transmasc me. i catch myself getting caught up in toxic masculinity all the time, im stealth and scared as hell, especially now about people knowing about my transness. would still deffo transition tho, dysphoria exists outside of society ;-;
I think it's similar to how anyone on an island without other people would still follow their basic routines, like cleaning or getting dressed every day. Doing "civilized" or "normal" things makes you feel more sane
I am a trans person. I always get really nervous when I see titles like the one on this video, but I am glad I watched it. The thoughtful way you pose and ponder this question is really beautiful, and it truly is a question for everyone, not just trans people.
Genderfluid person here! I think the desert island might cause me to *evaporate...* but seriously, as a person who semi-constantly checks in with my gender identity everything said in this video holds a a part of the puzzle(some bigger than others...)
Also, fun fact- if you look into how language alters brain patterns you'll quickly find out that every self-referential-gender-identifying pronoun produces some similar brain patterns.(I did a fun little test once and my friend managed to observe my gender shift before I even realized I had!)
I love puns, I loved your joke! At what temperature and atmospheric pressure are you genderfluid?
@@samsibbens8164 definitely at STP, SATP is pushing it though.
Hey, I identify as genderfluid as well! Do you mean that the change in the way you think of your gender was able to be literally observed in real time? I'm very curious about the subject, because I do know that I indeed experience occasional substantial changes in how I perceive my gender. Sometimes I may experience intense body dysphoria, but some days later I will feel very satisfied with my body. It's very confusing to me. I also can prefer different expressions of gender identity at different points (though this is mostly in video games where I have full control over clothing style lol).
whats the test?
Im asking because gender stuff is finally forcing me to deal with it, and the more information I have the better
also i'm just curious
@@har-binger7645 it was a literal brain scan lol
one of my transition goals is to be able to reflect how i feel about myself in my looks for others,
like no longer be a scary looking boy with no emotions but look like i can comfort others , help people and look like I'll love others.
but if there's no one else to see me I'll still want to be someone i can be comfortable around and it will definitely look different than being in a society.
This went from background noise while I finished something, to sitting down listening to the entire thing real quick.
It's honestly rare to see a video this thought through these days on youtube, love to see it honestly!
I haven't finished the video. Just heard your question and got excited. This is EXACTLY what my therapist asked me and we worked through when I started to realize I wasn't cis and we worked through things for months. But essentially this question was how I figured out my medical transition needs.
Needs? Needs. I'm intrigued by that choice of word. Could I ask what makes you say you have medical transition needs?
(Fair warning: I am coming from a position of disagreement, as a Christian who believes gender is determined much before someone's born, aligns with their bodily makeup, and cannot be changed. I understand debating a topic of identity can be very stressful and painful. If you don't want to do that, by all means, ignore me. I'm here to understand your viewpoint and provide a different viewpoint to you. I'm not here to hurt or stress anyone.
@@DreamtaleEnjoyeryes needs - I’ll try to explain a bit. I was sold by your rambling parentheses bc mood lmao.
The first very basic counter example is that many trans people lack gonads so if you take them off hormones they will medically suffer instantly. Instantly. I do not recommend it.
Secondly, to address the earlier transition trans ppl since it is relevant and I am one lol. So the first concession I’ll make is that yes, trans people will be physiologically alive without transition: our basic body temp regulation, blood pressure, respirations etc would not fall outside of normal physiologically range deprived of it. Yet that is not how we use “needs” most frequently, otherwise people wouldn’t need money, knowledge, wisdom, or God. No, when people ardently claim to “need” something it is usually because their quality of life is fundamentally worse without it.
Ik it can be challenging to understand, as I struggled with it too, what “being transgender” truly means. I won’t do biology 101 bc been there done that (although willing to talk about it if you’re curious), but I will do a material analysis of the ways transitioning is soothing much of the pain of existence. And isn’t that just something we’re all trying to do.
In no particular order:
Is there a need to be present and engaged with the world? Yes, and yet before hrt I moved through every day in a disassociated daze punctuated with bouts of severe depression. Nothing but hrt changed that.
Should we live our lives entirely disconnected from our bodies? Maybe Christianity would say yes, but I would entirely disagree: our body and life is all we have. From a medical standpoint, that type of disassociation can be literally dangerous; from a philosophical/historical/psychological perspective, the extreme prioritization of religious life over any physical concerns explains the prevalence of trans+ (gender fuckery) religious leaders throughout all of history around the world. From a personal standpoint, I can also add the profound pain and suffering of being unable to truly process people touching you, good or bad, and the simple joy of touch and human connection after transitioning. It’s striking.
Would you rather we didn’t experience love? Now, I’m not saying that trans people can’t/dont fall in love without transitioning as those are unrelated processes, but what I am referring to is what it means to be loved, and to love fully. The former requires others to see and know you for who you really are, and the latter requires you to be fully embodied and yourself. Both of those require transitioning in some regard. It’s kinda in the “name” of transness, hence why it used to feel like a bit of a circular definition, but it remains true.
I think of all the ways my life is immeasurably better since transitioning, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. Yes I wish the world sucked less, and yes I wish life was easier, but it is what it is and I’m ultimately grateful. It is a truly transcendental, transformative, and religious experience. I use the word religious instead of spiritual to denote the social aspect of it. It’s intense, and yet it is the easiest thing in the world to actually live it. So much of your daily suffering is gone: you wake up happy, you enjoy eating food, your sex life gets better because you’re just more yourself and more present. The daily minutia of living becomes so beautiful that sometimes it is shocking.
I’ll say it’s a need because I’d hate to return to my native hormones and that constant brain fog and depression. I’d just feel vaguely ill, all the time. I’d probably spiral back into alcoholism and apathy, perpetually ruin relationships, etc. No, I could not live a happy and healthy life as my birth sex and so I transitioned. That’s just it. I know it is terrifying to think transitioning is a choice that anyone can (theoretically) make, but that is something we all have to sit with occasionally.
Anyway this is uh way too long but hopefully explains a little bit. I’m cutting myself short bc it’s almost 2 here
@@anonnonny3142 Almost 2, pfff, it's 4 am for me. It's the internet, none of us have sleep schedules :p
Anyway, back on topic-of course I understand that after transition is started there'll be ongoing medical needs. I'm not gonna argue that! Especially since I have a conspicuous lack of a medical degree, lol. I'm specifically talking about the need to START transition on a physically healthy body.
Now... may I dare to present the possibility of a coping mechanism? That maybe, that brain fog and depression you experienced (also I'm so sorry you went through that) could've come from a different source, and you misattributed it to gender dysphoria? Therefore the relief you found from transition would be a sort of placebo effect. Your brain wholly believes the problem is resolved, so the symptoms should disappear, so they do. I'm genuinely asking if you think there's any chance that could be the case for you, or any trans individual.
As for your questions: yes, of course I agree people need to be present and engaged with the world. Though I wonder what originally triggered your loss of that. I sincerely doubt as a little baby you were dissociated and depressed because of which entirely arbitrary color your parents dressed you in, so I wonder when that really started? Of course we're getting really personal with that, so feel free to leave me wondering.
Again I'll agree, and say that no, nothing about Christianity says we should be disconnected from our bodies! I personally view my body as a tool to interact with the material world and everyone in it, which is obviously vital for so so many reasons. Though I'm fascinated with what you said about touch. You experienced touch & connection differently before and after transition? Do you want to tell me more about what that was like?
And as for the last one I actually agree with the first half (others need to see you for who you are to love you) but disagree with the second half (needing to fully embody yourself to love others). I mean honestly that bit gave me some Big Feelings because of my personal life, and how I don't feel truly loved because I don't feel anyone really sees all of me. But as for the second half, I don't really see how giving love has anything to do with your identity! You can give love to anyone at any time, regardless of who you are and who they are.
Overall thank you for responding, I love a good friendly disagreement.
@@DreamtaleEnjoyer ugh fine I’ll continue answering lmfao, who needs sleep.
To answer your points one by one, first stating with depression. I’ve thought about it quite a bit, but it’s actually shocking because it’s true. I very quickly started seeing the world in new eyes. I’d wake up every day energized and excited to face the day, and I could feel the fog begin to creep as my levels dropped during the last few days. I was on an intentionally low dose at the time, so I know that my levels likely dipped below the healthy range at those times. No, I do not actually consider myself “cured” of depression: I still have episodes fairly frequently and am in fact barely getting out of one again, but they’re much more manageable. There’s more to live for once you start enjoying life.
I am, coincidentally, studying towards a medical degree, but I’d love to conduct some studies on biochemical dysphoria as a whole. I don’t have the time to work on it now, but I’m slowly setting things up for it to be possible in the future.
As for the second, I truly don’t know. Believe me when I say it but a large majority of my childhood memories and dreams were third person. I had a relatively happy tho not ideal childhood I guess, but I don’t think that’s it because it was there before. The earliest “developmental” memory I have (ie one that splits my behavior into before and after) was being chided by my grandmother and mother for needing so much attention and being impossible to please (both true; this may have also been around the time my grandpa was killed in a hit n run by a drunk driver, but my memory is foggy). And so, I vowed to myself to not need it or really anything from them, to fully suppress it all. Ofc, it’s not an even process, but I was a fairly dissociated and depressed kid: my first ever favorite song (like age 3) was about hope in the face of loss sung by a holocaust survivor who died tragically. My next favorite song (age 7 was when it “took over”) was by Metallica lmao.
As a kid, I don’t remember ever being unaware of gender. I saw it as some secretive/yet important performance. And at the time, I was extremely fem: I loved all things Barbie, I liked perfumes, women’s clothing, and really women. I can easily pin so many crushes on women to my early childhood, it’s insane. And yet, here I am years later a trans man. I’m bisexual, so there’s that: could’ve known that from my ~weird~ feelings towards gay porn at age 12, but here we are. Of note in that story (at least to me) is the patterns of my psychosexual development mirroring that of guys my age more than girls.
The touch thing is actually super easy - your skin and hair change on hrt. So does your pain processing, overall getting sick (ie man flu phenomenon, it’s a thing), body temperature baseline, sweat, physical bodily sensations (ie people start liking different things, moving your muscles feels different, your body literally changes to grow things, etc) and so much more. Hormones are just “activators” of different parts of your genome - your body literally rebuilds itself to slowly start to resemble the opposite sex with hrt. And in that you’re happy and less dissociated (and horny if you’re on T, but maybe depressed in the first few months of E) and you got a recipe for “it’s different”. My pain tolerance and endurance went down a bit on T, but my body temp, appetite, and metabolism went up. The difference in sensation itself is hard to describe, but I did used to feel a “skin dysphoria” so ig I’ll try. E skin is extremely soft, while T skin is rough: the soft plushness of estrogen felt weird to be interacted through, like I was confined inside in a straight jacket unable to escape. The skin felt wrong, too young and soft for who I expected to see in the mirror when I looked for myself.
By the way, I do find gender to be “developmental” and likely some combination of predispositions and environment. It still doesn’t change much.
Emotions also feel different post hrt: I feel a much bigger breadth to anger now but less depth to it. It feels social (in the sense of relatively precise communication tool) to me now, and more moderated. I am also probably sad less frequently, but that’s also a factor of hrt. My cognitive patterns shifted too, which of course affects emotions. This is both likely hrt-resultant and arising out of social factors and roles, but the fact remains. The former is mostly what’s an attenuation of prior testosterone-formed pathways in my brain, while the latter is the social conditioning that we are all subjected to and the weird ass experience of watching the expectations shift in front of your eyes.
The rest I’ll respond to tmr, it is quite enjoyable to talk to you too. I love any good faith discussion.
@@anonnonny3142 I'm not gonna say much, I'll wait for you to finish everything you want to say before I respond but- I have to-
Dear stranger I believe you are traumatized. I can't even describe the brain shock you threw me into when you said "I had a relatively happy childhood" then went on to describe being criticized for BEING A CHILD (seriously, name one child who doesn't need tons of attention and isn't impossible to please) and dissociating and repressing your feelings because of that????? My friend that is childhood trauma!!! You are traumatized!! That is not a good childhood!
I'm going to bed too, goodnight. I'm just still in such shock you just said that so casually, I'm not even gonna get into how shocking it was to see an equally casual mention of being exposed to corn at such a young age. Goodness...
As a [self-diagnosed] autistic non-binary [autigender-leaning] person, it really spoke to me when you touched on “how would [you] want to live [your] body in the world if [you] didn’t crave the attraction and approval of others.”
I struggle with interoception and the way I view and experience my own body. This leaves me often with a sense of extreme dismorphia when I see my reflection or photos of myself (ie anytime I’m forced to perceive myself or confront how I am perceived physically by others) because the way I internally perceive myself is so chaotic and flowing that there is not really a way to match my body to my own perceptions of it. I cope by wearing bright clothing that many find obnoxious, but the awesome few find as cool as I do. For me, seeing bright colors and patterns when I catch my reflection is more in line with the more chaotic nature of my being. You touching on this topic as quoted above made me feel really seen in how I do a version of that thought process when I pick out what clothes to wear each day.
That's so interesting! I am also autistic and non-binary, but I lean more towards the masculine side (for me, he/they is it's own gender lol). Sometimes looking in the mirror I can identify with what I see and sometimes it's completely foreign, my self-perception is always shifting. I also struggle with introception but I only recognized the physical aspects of that, like hunger and temperature, before seeing this comment. What's facinating is that i gravitate towards dressing in all-black, plus black hair, black nails, ect. It gives me a sense of coherence in an otherwise ever-shifting gender performance. It just goes to show how different people with similar experiences can be, especially on the autism spectrum!
enby here, literally what you said about the enby stuff is 100% literally my thought the entire time. Living life without bounds is just great.
I think the deserted island is a better thought experiment - for this specific question - than the singularity because in a simulation you could (hypothetically) take any form and I'm pretty sure a lot of people would choose to be an animal or something else non-human instead.
Which leads to slightly different, but equally interesting questions about our perceptions of what constitutes being human (at least interesting to me as an agender person).
Yeah, looks like you hit the nail on the head here.
I am non-binary, and thus outside of the gender binary; but I am specifically outside the traditional western binary. My identity is static, and wouldn't change if societal pressures were to melt away, but it nonetheless is informed by those pressures. I ultimately do define myself in terms of the gender binary, albeit negatively so.
As Butler said, people (not just trans people) build their gender identity in response to the inherent trauma of being alive. That doesn't go away if you travel to an island. Skirt still go spinny.
you're so right for this. Skirts really do be spinny :D
This is a great question I think could be applied to cisgender people too. When there's no one around to see it, how would any of us perform our gender identities? When we can behave absolutely any way we want, because we're alone, how do we act like a woman or a man or as no gender?
So… a version I can offer of this as a cis gay man is one of archetypes.
Our community has the bears, the twinks, the otters, the daddies, the bulls, the pigs, the gym bunnies, and on and on and on. Archetypes that carry with them ways of behaving, ways of speaking, ways of moving through the world, ways of the world seeing you, ways of the world treating you.
It’s not quite a gender per se, but it’s a decent analogue.
And if you asked me if I’d still try and be a bear on a desert island? Yeah. I would. I’ve chosen to express multiple archetypes in my time and done so with pretty decent success. And I know which I’ve settled on. I know how it makes me feel in control of my life and able to define my own identity. I think on a desert island, I’d still find myself performing that archetype for the feeling it gives me, even if nobody was around to perceive me. At least until it ceased to be practical.
I think the answer is different depending on whether we assume we've previously been in society.
In my current form, I'd 100% still compulsively perform femininity. If I'd never known a world where you get punished for having body hair or wearing the wrong cologne or having the wrong bones...?
trans man here! before hrt i was desperately uncomfortable in my body any time i paid attention to it; the only way i could avoid that discomfort was by mild dissociation, separating my Self from my body. i had social dysphoria in combination to body dysphoria, but it was always very clear that what made be uncomfortable about being seen as a girl/woman was that it reminded me of how badly my body didn't match my sense of self. my dysphoria has changed massively now that i’ve been on t for a while (almost two years!), mainly in that it has gone WAY down. when i’m alone, i’m perfectly comfortable with my body. there’s parts of it i still don’t Like, but i’m now only ever dysphoric when i’m around others/thinking about being seen. almost all of that dysphoria is about my chest. i enjoy when the effects of t are visible (deep voice my beloved
Thank you for sharing your experience!🙏🏾
I think a question I usually think about is - if we had different gender expectations would different people be trans.
This is a really great question.
This made me pause, but I’m ultimately not sure about how to interpret/approach the question. Personally, I view trans ppl as falling on the male-female sex spectrum which entirely comes out of the sexual differentiation of humans. To that extent, if you fundamentally changed the function of sex/reproductive biology/etc then yes different people would be trans. However, if you just changed social expectations, I don’t think the groups would change too dramatically: they would, of course they would, but I’m not sure there’s any meaningful way to distinguish them from the “current” trans people. Idk just my $0.02
You mean like how pink used to be for boys as a masculine color or how ruffles in clothing and makeup were? 😅 History says not really, but it depends on where your viewing from. Looking to the past, we could say all men were trans based on our modern interpretation, but we know they didn't think of themselves that way.
To further that point, we know trans people have existed in every population since earlier than Egypt. Trans is a disenfranchising relation to your bimodal morphology (if your body looks closer to male or female and the assumed roles of each) trans people have always been fewer due to gender also being bimodal and not binary. (It isn't binary if 0 and 1 isn't all we ever see. Even if it's rare, just a single 2 or something between 0 and 1 makes it bimodal at least)
@@anonnonny3142 sorry. I was worried it might have been too short worded. Though I think you helped with the answer. I spose the hypothetical was still in the realm that reproductive biology would still remain the same.
I spose this question initially came when I was trying to understand gender abolition. Not saying I fully get it but I really like the idea of being able to live as your authentic self as easily as possible.
Psychologist, here. Let's try and look at how the popular schools approach this:
Psychoanalysis: The outward performative self is only 1/3 of your identity, the Superego. The self that society shapes. You still have the Ego and Id. Your Id probably has more to do with your attraction than your gender since it drives the sex drive. So we still have the ego. One third of the "you" that is you as you perceive yourself. It is not outward it is an inward thing. So even in your transhumanist singularity space your gender would still be expressed the way you prefer (see Gen:Lock for a good example of a gender fluid uploaded consciousness).
Existentialism: All behavior is a pursuit to avoid death motivated by the fear of death. So if being female or being male means that, to you, expressing yourself the way that does not feel right to you is a means of escaping your death fear. It might not prolong your life in actuality but if you feel like you are living then it is the preferred action. A monkey will cling to a comfortable doll rather than wire mother even it means starving to death. As such, on a desert island the person's gender performance would suit what helps them to feel the most alive and/or retreat from fear of death.
Cognitive Behavioral: Perception of one's self does not rely on the perception of others. People do not have free will. Action is based on input (stimulus), output (response). The in-between is where cognitive perception plays a role and it can be thought of as the function or processing. A person on a desert island's behavior is based on required input, but their perception of their self may differ from what is outwardly projected or it may be that they align themselves with what better affirms that self perception. A person who is in to sports might choose a jersey over a random shirt that washed ashore if given both options. It's safe to say they would make the choice that best suits their perceptions. Please note: A perception does not have to be based in fact. It can be based on a false absolute such as saying "This is always" or "This is never" this is seen as an irrational belief system and many posit it as the root of mental illness. So perhaps saying "I am still a man even though no one is around" might seem irrational, it is still a perception that will influence behavior. Input, processing, output.
Humanism: Trans women are women. Cis Women are women. Trans men are men. Cis Men are men. All humans have a gender identity, not just Trans people. Identity doesn't go away in isolation nor does it require affirmation by others. On an island a person whose sex is female and identifies as female would still be female. If that person identified as male they would still be male. They are a person. Not an idea or a perception. People are substantive measurable self-actualizing beautiful complex animals capable of doing so many beautiful things. Why would we try and limit our understanding of people by putting them into groups? Vegetables do not exist in nature. It is a culinary term broadly referring to many plants. Similarly gender is human, just as much as being agender is human. The whole spectrum exists and is real and are people and they walk among you and so they deserve to all be seen as equals even on a desert island. Before trans people were "popular" or "accepted" by society they still existed and lived sometimes in isolation and sometimes as part of the community. See the Two-Spirit people of Native American tribes for instance. As long as humans have been around there have been people who feel deeply, desperately, that they are of a kind. Even if kind is a simplification. Humans tend to try to label things to help make sense of and measure the world.
Evolutionary: Trans people existed before the label "Trans" existed. This is because they are naturally occurring. Chemical reactions, DNA, and brain makeup all contribute as factors in determining things like identity and attraction. Nature tried to establish a set boundary, but mutation is inevitable and constant. We have seen correlations in current data such as increasing use of fertility drugs results in a higher chance of producing trans offspring. Additionally, we see that DNA and chemical factors introduced in the womb during pregnancy can influence sexual orientation and gender identity. Most of these are naturally occurring. For instance: A mother whose son's blood type is seen as foreign might be attacked by the mother's immune system during sexual development resulting in a "Feminized" male embryo. Some theorists have posited that this occurs in especially large population pools as a means of population control. It also notices that the role used by these individuals is usually one of celebrity or some hierarchical leadership place. One rat study referred to them as "The Pretty Ones" whose gender traits or behavior were non-conforming, but they had a place in rat society and were a part of the whole. If you took one out of that large group and put it in isolation it's not like it would stop being a trans rat. It's still a trans rat. It was born that way. Does that help?
Sorry if this offended anyone please bear in mind this is like 200 years of opinions with varying degrees of accuracy and understanding. In practice any one of them could be helpful or valid to a person, but you have to admit it's pretty weird that science seems to be just a lot of different opinions arguing about what the truth is all the time. What hurts me most is when I see someone struggling with their journey to understand this stuff because a lot of non-science is out and it really messes up the clinical approach that exists solely to save lives and promote general welfare and health. This is why it is ABSOLUTLEY CRITICAL that gender affirming care ALWAYS be made available. It takes so long to even qualify for it and only a few thousand receive it each year but for those small few it is LIFE SAVING MEDICINE (and it's surprisingly very affordable!) and shouldn't be treated like something up for debate due to cost or bad scientific curriculums in American schools, or just because some politicians realized they could use it as a talking point to get the uneducated masses who haven't written thesis papers on gender identity to suddenly feel like they have skin in the game on deciding whether it's okay or not to allow trans people to even exist directly resulting in them getting votes from uneducated, fear-guided, confused people. This whole anti-trans movement that has been sweeping American and UK politics has had an incredibly negative effect on the mental health of all LGBTQ peoples of the US and UK and it really shouldn't be up for debate whether or not these living, breathing, human people exist or deserve to be accepted by society or receive care.
So the humanist viewpoint really totally invalidates the very ideas of hetero- and homo-sexuality. You can't claim that you're attracted to any particular societal construct, when people who are unhappy with the fundamental limitations of the human experience decide to defy them, whenever it's convenient, and relapse, whenever it's convenient. E.g. I couldn't claim that, I am attracted to men, since their most formative years are characterised by profound sexual humiliation and fear of abandonment, since that isn't true for trans men, who got the benefits and drawbacks of being a girl in their most formative years (supposing they didn't live as transsexual). I also cannot trust a man to use his own experience of suffering as motivational fuel to seek to protect me from further harm, because the trans man will betray me for the own benefit, citing "well, SOME men are really selfish, too, sometimes! (...in other, disparate contexts)", acting the woman, but still claiming the valor of the man.
Yes, the female body regards the male as foreign, this is probably true for trans men as well. And the more male foetuses you ask it to sustain the growth of, the more the oestrogen bombardment increases in an effort to kill it, and the statistical chance of a non-breeder homo-- or trans-person increases. There is an overweight of little brothers among gay males, and you can easily imagine, that is further exacerbated by their familial position and relationships, in particular, we also see sibling age gaps of 6 years or more, as pushing for a homosexual development.
I am further reminded of that TikTok rainbow family, where the mother looks like she may have eaten a couple of Russian battle tanks - and she seems to not be particularly happy, as a female promised so much sex and exaltation, to grow up to find, that only the most sick and perverse fetishist, would even touch her with a barge pole. So, in rage and complete denial, she decides, she is so sexy and fuckable, that she should go right ahead and make 7 kids with him... And every last one of them becomes a non-breeder, in particular the obese girls seem to be severely struggling with their mental health, just as their mother did, throughout her own youth.
John B. Calhoun's "science" experiment of Universe 25, was bought and paid for, by anti-homosexual campaigners. It does by no means reflect, the corruption of rodents into "Pretty Ones", that was merely the result that they paid him to create. In reality, the so called "utopia" was nothing but a prison colony, with occasional "air raids" and similar torture-like stimuli, that functioned like a violently forced speed-domestication outside of a human connective element, to drive the critters insane. And he was happy to accommodate his buyers, because he lost any chance he may have had, to make him self sexually attractive to other men in repressing his homosexuality in his youth, and now he was ugly, old, lonely and bitter - the kind of degrading "consolation" man, that he also, would never settle for. The sunk cost fallacy of internalized homophobia.
As a young man myself, I would have been more than ashamed, and purely terrified, of having a "second rate" boyfriend with, e.g. effeminate mannerisms, a scrawny build, a gay haircut, etc. My motivation has always been contempt of the females and their harmful, selfish narcissism, and you can't combat that, by sticking your peepee in a dog turd, I thought - it will only enrage and excite them to further attacks on your dignity.
Over time, I have learned, there are certain moderations to this principle. One example, that became available later, was how there where ZERO girls who wanted to have sex with pedo-baby face Justin Bieber with the gay haircut - until they could rely on EVERY girl wanting him for themselves... At that point, he had become the safe boyfriend option, for girls to safely harass homosexuals over, since they already knew, Justin was never going to stick his peepee in them, anyway - Free heteronormative supremacy! It's really just a question of making yourself sexually unavailable, from the safety of some type of fortress, that they can't hope to assault, then you can trigger the absolute Niagara from their nethers.
And there was a boy called Fritz 20 years ago, who would've been the perfect candidate for this "ugly duckling" stunt - petite, timid (easy for a girl to threaten and control), gender challenged, buckteeth of the ever-fornicating rabbit, and thoroughly, repulsively gay in his expression - guaranteed garbage can fodder, for the female supremacists, BUT also precisely the kind of man, they would eventually need for a husband to safeguard their family and kids. He would really have been the perfect lifetime husband for me, that would have been so immensely gratifying for the both of us, to punish the females with consequent sexual abandonment. And if he had been a child today, his misery would have been explained away as gender dysmorphia, and he would have been tricked into sacrificing the only thing, that could make him attractive to me, in favor of those who would never want to consider him sexually powerful and attractive, and still don't. It's a powerful fear, that can make you ignore the reverse side of the coin, and lust only for the infinite sexual pedestalization that girls enjoy, to not even stop to consider, that trans women will never have that benefit.
But you don't care about ruining my life and humiliating me, by destroying a sexy boy, one of the only ones, who could not only pull off the mind trick, but also hold such a powerful spite for women as to stay loyal to the flag, no matter what they say and promise. Shut them down at every turn, instead of trying to replace me with a girl , who only loves herself, in the utimate humiliation of my value as a human being - something that would 100% cause mass unaliving! Because you think I'm a weak f-slur, nasty unfuckable manbearpig, and I should just get over myself and put up with the abuse and humiliation?... Now, that I'm old, what other life could I hope to have anyway? (conveniently ignoring the fact that females deliberately ruined my youth and sex appeal with homophobic molestation and trauma, for the sake of their entitlement issues and power trip)...
No, obviously, it could never be a sexual victory for a 9 year old boy to marry a 42 year old man, no matter how insanely intent he may be, on being the diametrical opposite of a selfish girl. Spite is strong enough to last a lifetime, causing unlimited atrocities... but it's not strong enough to make it seem desirable to have sex with an adult. In terms of pornolisciousness, it could never hope to compare to the prideful, validating sex, "that -girls- real people get as a reward for existing! It will ALWAYS be degrading and harmful, to settle for unnatural undesirables, like adults, eew!" - kind of exactly like your suggested gender transition would be, sunk cost fallacies not withstanding, permanently, and irreparably destructive - and to the legitimate benefit of no one, but a few virtue signallers, that don't care anyway, and the people, who already embarrassed themselves, by throwing their lives away and mutilating themselves undesirable, who are now desperate to save face, by normalizing the loss of something that infinitely valuable, to not be the only idiot children, that fell for it.
🙏❤️🙏
That last one with the trans rats was fascinating. I'm reminded of those in North American indigenous cultures where the role of what usually translates to "two-spirit", regarded as some combination of male, female and/or "other" are well respected as religious leaders and intellectuals.
Hi, how do I become your patient?
Could you share that rat study? I'm interested in reading more
I think watching Philosophy Tube's video called The Most Misunderstood Philosopher talks a lot about gender and it might not answer your question but i think it will give you so much more context about gender in general
I was thinking about that too.
He keeps saying gender as performance instead of a performative act and it kinda triggers me a little bit lol
I know he probably means performative but still gives me the little "oof"
That video hits hard, and I agree, it's a good thing to on to.
@@ElunaeIt's not just a matter of using the wrong word. Dad here is having the exact misunderstanding of meaning that Abigail talks about in that video. Gender is not "performance, done for an audience". It is "performative: doing it makes it so."
@@Dupernerd yeah i know
Honestly right now,
I'm scared being myself outside and being outside the in general (anxiety social stuff).
I kinda am on a deserted island with (some) of my needs met.
I perform things for myself, it makes me happy.
I do makeup and dress more how I like in isolation.
I do it because it brings me joy by itself.
Just like drawing does if you ever did that, or any other creative venture can give you satisfaction.
It's for me alone.
Trans person here. You’re asking *excellent* questions, Phil. Here are my thoughts (and my thoughts only; I speak for no other trans person).
Gender, as we live it, is indeed a synthesis of one’s internal calculus based on both internal and external factors. It’s not merely who we are, but those we most strongly align, identify, and empathize with. The element of recognition is a key part of this, and I’d be lying if I said my personal understanding of womanhood didn’t include an element of kinship to those others among the tribe we call “women.” In that sense, my gender as I experience it is indeed a highly social construct.
BUT… devoid of a “society” as we understand it, e.g. your desert island, I believe there still persists an element within all of our psyches that universally inclines us toward certain modes of self-understanding and self-identification, that which we could still call a gender. This does still hinge to a degree upon one’s understanding of their place among others, but in a way independent of all the added filters we’re accustomed to seeing life through. Which is why I think a better question to ask is how do we think we’d imagine ourselves slotting into a completely different society with entirely foreign rules (or even better, a desert island populated by a mere handful of other humans without an established society, among whom you’ll work to develop a society from scratch).
My answer to this is that across many kinds of hypothetical societal structures, we’ll find similar (albeit non-identical) collections of individuals emerge. That’s to say any given person will find themselves often relating to or aligning with the same rough group of people every time, those most proximal to us in some X-dimensional “gender space.” Of course for any two people, no matter how proximal in this space, you can conceive of a societal framework in which a boundary is drawn between these two individuals, i.e. they are of distinct genders. But their proximity means the fraction of hypothetical societies where such a boundary is drawn is negligible.
All this said, even if such a society is constructed as to allow people full self-determination over their membership within any, several, all, or none of its provided genders, some people’s understanding of their gender can be rooted in the desire to perform physical roles that their body isn’t immediately equipped to perform, such as the capacity to get pregnant or to be the penetrator in sexual encounters. As such, even in a society with a truly anarchical approach to gender, there will be some among us who will desire medical intervention to fully actualize our perceived place within such a society.
I could go on for days. But I think that’s all the major points. Keeping asking good questions!
As a trans woman, I've actually had this exact question as well. What would happen if I was on an island. My first thought is definitely not being able to shave which brings on dysphoria. Now how would it look for me? I'm not sure. I have to imagine not being in a society, which means I need to imagine a world I have not experienced which is very difficult. Even if I'm isolated all day at my home, the essence of who I am doesn't leave me. I'm still performing for myself when I'm home alone. So using being home alone, I think I'd still be 'performative' just for myself, which I already do.
🎉😢6 1:10
Not shaving brings you dysphoria? Fascinating. No matter where on your body you mean, that's purely societal ideas of femininity. I wonder if after some amount of time you'd stop caring, or if there'd always be this idea in the back of your head that that hair is somehow masculine.
As a cis woman, I'm very aware that every moment I've spent shaving, waxing, and plucking is because I've been explicitly told over and over that my hair makes me less of a woman. I think part of the spirit of the question is, would those things still dysphoric if no one's around to have ever told you they weren't female traits?
@@PrincessNinja007 I think if taken to the logical extreme, if women were allowed to have hair, then it wouldn’t affect me, assuming men and women were equally hairy on average.
Two differences can trigger dysphoria. Differences assigned by biology and those assigned socially.
Even if we have a scenario where it’s socially okay for women to have body hair, on average men have more so that disproportion would still cause dysphoria (for me). Same as other features. So I think no matter what I’d still by dysphoric.
The only way to completely remove that would be to not have met another human of the opposite sex.
Either that or I’d still feel wrong but would lack the ability to properly articulate what was wrong.
@@PrincessNinja007 Im a trans woman, and I feel like there is a blueprint lodged in my brain of how my body is supposed to look. Not "supposed" in a cultural sense, because there are parts of this blueprint that drastically diverge from the cultural norm. But its just what my brain expects my body to look like for whatever reason and things that mismatch that like facial hair and lack of breasts cause a very different degree of dysphoria than things that aren't different but also socially perceived as diverging from expected feminine presentation. Like for whatever reason my genitals are not at odds with my mental blueprint. I haven't had bottom surgery and i probably never will. Despite having tackle down there not being very the done thing for women in our society, it doesn't cause me dysphoria. I do try to hide any bulge when i go out because I'm aware of how it will be perceived, and if i was unable to hide it i'm sure it would cause me embarrassment and anxiety as to how people would react. But it's very different from the other things that are just hard no's for my brain like not having boobs, which was a big deal before HRT. Even though breast forms shoved into a bra looked outwardly identical, i hardly ever wore them because they just drew my brains attention to the absence of real boobs. But as soon as boobs did start growing, even while they were still soo small they weren't noticeable to anyone else my brain immediately got a lot happier. So yeah, there are definitely things that i do because of social pressure, like tucking my bulge. Probably similar to you shaving your legs. They are things we've been told by society aren't acceptable for women to have visible. But it i was alone on an island i would never tuck or shave my legs. But i would still 100% shave my face if i possibly could, because my brain hates facial hair on me whether or not any other human sees it
When we consider the performance of gender, it's important to remember that performance is not just for others. Gender identity is a core part of who I am, and will always be.
I think you should watch the video again
And gender identity isn't all that important to me. Easy since I'm a cis man, but still... I just don't care that much about it.
I think that's why this video is framed as a question to trans folks. Of course trans people aren't the only ones who care a lot about their gender identity, but it is pretty certain that they do care and have thought about it.
There's more diversity out there and on more dimensions than most folks realize.
God I love the way you express questions and thoughts in this video. Thanks for being so wonderfully curious and thoughtful
"if you upload your consciousness to the GameFAQs forums..."
Most cursed nostalgia I've ever felt. Well played.
Gender isn’t a performance. Gender is a performative action. Abigail Thorne explained this in one of her videos. “Performativity” is a philosophical term that is essentially saying that certain words or phrases or actions can make a thing happen materially. For instance, she uses partners in marriage saying “I do” and a Judge pronouncing a verdict. These words transform material reality. “I do” makes two people married. A judicial sentence can ruin a person’s whole entire life, end someone’s life via a death sentence, save a life via stay of execution, etc.
In terms of gender, saying you’re x gender and engaging in activities that reaffirm and reinforce what that gender is. Sure those signifiers are often formed by outside hegemonic means, but one can and in the case of us trans people do change those performative actions
I also need to add that sex is indeed a social construct. To paraphrase heavily Judith Butler’s argument in their book “Bodies That Matter”, sex is the gendering of body parts. For instance, there is no such thing as “male” or “female” anatomy. Just because I’m non op doesn’t mean I have “male” anatomy. Body parts obviously exist, but other than that everything else in terms of so called “primary” or “secondary” sex characteristics are very much a product, like most of society, in Christianity filtered through its spawn: white supremacy, allocisheteropatriarchy, ableism, etc. Physicallization of gender was one of the most dangerous actions engaged in starting in the late 1600s in Europe. The physicallization of gender, a short way of saying the creation of the social construct of “sex”. The way I always joke about it is that Sex isn’t my body part, it’s what I had with your Mom last night
Further edit to say that Julia Serrano’s arguments are largely incoherent and I hate that “Whipping Girl”, very much a dated project of the mid 00s, is still heavily adored. Serrano is a biologist, meaning she is biased against social theory and so very much misunderstands Butler’s theories. She, as a biologist, is biased towards centering her analysis on biology. Biology has a notorious history of the aforementioned prejudices (to be fair all academic fields do). She also has a very muddled and confused idea of what sex and gender are. I am eminently qualified as both an academic (sadly) and a trans person to talk gender theory. Serrano’s book had some good points about trans misogyny FOR THE TIME, but other than that her writings and concepts, which don’t seem to have changed much
Yesss exactly.
Thank you for this comment! I had previously been a huge proponent of Whipping Girl before I had just recently watched Alexander Avila's "A People's History of Gender" and Abigail Thorne's latest essay. I've even been seen defending Serrano's work on the basis that Biological Sex is Real™ only to now feel like I have egg on my face 😅. I suppose that's what growth is.
They're both constructs. The concept of gender identity largely first popped up in order to continue trying to reify binary sex even after it was proven binary sex doesn't really exist. (As per Avila's video, I hope im representing that correctly!)
I think in some capacity, I liked Serrano's work because it made me feel like I could point to something Real and Respected and Scientific and say Look, im a real trans because my "subconscious sex" marked in my brain says Woman™ on it! It was validating to hide behind biology.
But it's even more validating now to know I don't need biology to feel comfortable in my body. Knowing that gender is only a thing we do and a thing done to us means doing gender more kindly when we have to and one day not having to do it at all.
@DrAnarchy69 Great point and also super well written, allocisheteropatriarchy is such a word and I looked it up and while I could find other instances of it being used on the internet, no one seems to have a written definition
Was this a word that Judith Butler coined? I’d love to know :))
I do think Julia Serranos more recent video about gender is better explained than her book. The book was weird about nonbinary people that wasn't AS present in her more recent video. It was basically just the idea that transness like all aspects of ourself are influenced by a multitude of nature AND nurture factors with no one originating point. There may be some biological and biologically intrinsic inclinations, cultural factors, social factors, personal life stuff. Which is as good as it gets I think.
For those interested in the referenced Abigail Thorn/PhilosophyTube video, it dropped on Nebula a couple days ago so should be hitting RUclips sometime in the next week!
I would honestly want to become part of the island. Be the waves one day and the sand the next. For me gender is a connection to the world.
Most days I don’t want to be “human passing”. Existing without the feelings others project to or around me.
As a middle-aged non-binary AFAB trans person, I guess I'm surprised to discover that, assuming placement on some magical desert island that supplies all medical and nutritional needs but lacks any component of society, I think I would more assertively pursue masculinization of my physical form (non-surgically, just hormonally), but almost nothing else would change. I already act as I wish to act, think as I wish to think. I guess I worry about becoming too obviously masculine in day-to-day life because what I actually want is visible ambiguity, for my form to match my internal sense of myself in all its confusing changeable lovely peculiarities. And to become "too" masculine, might actually drown out my visible femaleness too much, let people become resolved to a male me in the same way that they are currently resolved to a female me, when that wouldn't be accurate either. But without having to worry about external perception, I think I'd enjoy embodying a stronger mix of the two than I feel fully comfortable pursuing now.
Also, I'd be very lonely. But that wasn't the question.
To let you in on a secret: it’s possible. You can just go on hrt to achieve whatever level of masculinization you want. Cis people are largely stupid so so long as you keep your hair slightly long, keep shaving, learn at least a bit of vocal control, you can get away with it for a long time. Even with people you know very well. Start low start slow. And then, you can stop: the permanent effects stay, others change. It all depends but your feelings on this may change through time and it’s ok.
I'm AFAB non binary (agender) as well and i can tell you that once i hit menopause i felt so much more comfortable in my body. Due to my estrogen crashing my body feels better to me hormonally. If i had known about all the gender things when i was younger (i came out at age 48) i probably would have asked for a small dose of testosterone.
trans person here. I 100% agree with the take at 4:54 . I would continue my transition even if no one els were around anymore. tho I would change some things ofc. there wouldnt be a need to hide it from others anymore for security reasons. so after having fully socially transitioned (whatever that means on this island lol), I can imagine it would be alot easier to live with the body I have gotten from hrt without doing any surgeries
That "(whatever it means on this island lol)" is funny to me because it is so loaded it somehow carries the bulk of the question. But that's the realization, right? Social transition on the island is whenever you start accepting yourself, and that's beautiful, I think.
same here as an enby
I'm a mostly transfem genderfluid person. The first thing that comes to mind with this question is that even devoid of any social context, I would still need to have my HRT; my body and brain just really don't like to run on testosterone.
Other than that, I do experience gender in layers that come before the social aspects too. When I wake up in the morning, I know whether I'm more masc or fem by, among other things, the way my perception of the world goes, the way my keyboard feels when I start to improvise some music and what kind of voice I naturally lean towards when talking to myself. It's not really possible to put into words how that works, but even if I were to lock myself into my room and there's no internet access and the curtains are closed, that sense of gender would still be there.
I once heard someone say that on the individual level, gender and personality are not entirely distinct concepts and that does seem to describe it in a way too. Your personality doesn't entirely disappear when you're on a deserted island, you still decide whether or not you trample the nest of some animals that aren't bothering you, you still have to decide on the shape and form of the shelter you build for yourself and how you embellish it.
Gender to me seems to be for a quite big part inherent to the relationship between me as an esoteric "something more than physical", my body and the physical world around it. To deprive me of gender entirely would require that relationship to cease existing, for the physical world to be fundamentally different.
Damn, thank you for translating/explaining words via picture-in-picture fade-ins.
outside of society, I'd just live as myself. in a vacuum I have no gender. I would just carry myself in a way that brings me joy. my phoria comes from being in a human body not a male of female body
me too
I like this answer. I agree.
thank you ☺@@lkeke35
I really like your name@@Kibitserr
💯
To echo a couple others' comments down here, I think as long as I had my medications I'd probably be satisfied. Things never felt quite right before my meds, and trying to adapt in a new environment like a desert island would be pretty fucking rough if my whole body was fighting against itself because it cant naturally create the hormones it needs to function properly. Being on estrogen has helped alleviate my brain fog, improve my mood, and so many other things. Without others to judge me, i don't know how i would choose to present. But I just need my body to have access to the right chemicals or I'd probably freak the fuck out.
Same
if your needs are met then i imagine your meds would be present since, you know, that is a _need_
@@technopoptart💯 otherwise the question becomes would you die or suffer great consequences to present differently. I'm pretty sure that question has already been answered.
As a non-binary trans masc; I just get to be me, enjoy my own body the way I've always envisioned it. I would definitely continue my transition as even just the hormones have done a world of good for my mental health and I really want surgeries to finish what the gods didn't.
Id actually be really fucked up and sad if i was transported there, because im mid transition and if i cannot complete my transition, that meaning gaining boobs ,having bottom surgery, i would be REALLY sad.
Thats got nothig to do eith society, i dont do sex, noone ever sees me naked, but i HATE having this current shape, i need to change it.
One thing that WOULD change is that I wouldn't change my voice if noone was there to hear it, I like my voice but it makes me not pass and I dislike not passing
Hi! Another trans woman here, one of my earliest "very obviously transgender" things i did was try on my girl friends, my mothers, my cousins clothing when no one was around. I would stay up till 2 in the morning and wait until no one would be awake, and just enjoy the unexplained happy feelings of gender euphoria that i was experiencing. I didn't really have a clue why i was doing it, because i didn't know what a trans person was, just that there were "crossdressers" and everyone was expected to laugh and point and mock when they saw one. So i kept these feelings to myself.
One frequent daydream I had, was that i could just stay in an abandoned clothing warehouse, with no time limit, no one barging in, no one knowing where i was, just me, and a warehouse of neatly folded and sorted clothing i could happily try on. Again, very trans daydream to have...)
Last year i was very much in the closet. I knew i was trans. No doubt, but I was in a relationship i was trying to keep, and i sacrificed my own happiness and wellbeing foolishly to try to make it work for a bit longer. Even with a beard, a body I was unhappy with, and the only thing i liked about myself being my long hair, what mattered to me was that I could hold out, for things to get better. And with that, you do little gender affirming things to keep you sane, cause closeted is no way to live. and my heart goes out to anyone that is currently closeted. The world deserves your brilliant shine, and I hope you can be like the light from the sun someday.
I think that a lot of what gender is, is not just how you want others to perceive you, but how you want to perceive yourself. And we all take steps to get to where we are happy with our own self perception, we shave, we put on makeup to feel happy even when we don't go out, we work out to get a little more toned cause we are tired of looking in a mirror and not liking what we see, we paint our nails cause its fun to look down and see the pretty colors... I could go on forever, gender expression is a pretty vast subject. but I hope that makes sense.
If I was transported to an island, I wouldn't really be different. I'd know what I am, and that would only matter to me, because I'm not preforming for others, I'm preforming for myself, even if I'm the only person there it doesn't matter, because my self comes from myself and no one else. The island may not have these things, but my very own head does, and thats why I am not different, just me, always was, always will.
This is a great question! I love this question being posed to transgender people and I've learned so much just in this comment section.
(But I'm still curious how a cisgender person would behave in an isolated setting with no one to see or judge their behavior. I mean what would be the point of a cisgender person acting like a man or a woman in an environment where there is nobody to care but them?)
@@lkeke35 based on what I know, a cis person might start to experiment a bit and just do whatever they feel regardless of expectations because there are no expectations on the island, for some they'd be exactly the same, for others they might behave in a way thats different than when they weren't on the island. Its a very nuanced thing, but my conclusion is that in an environment where there is no gender, even being cis isn't entirely black and white.
agreed! if anything it'd be removing discomfort of being "incorrectly" understood and interacted with by a larger society that holds different and more rigid views on gender than I do.
I’m happy that you’re presenting the gender questioning in its explorative form. When I was first questioning my gender I struggled to find this and mostly has either: academic/definitions things, memes, or descriptions of experiences with minimal introspection. Idk I liked it
This type of thought experiment is always so intriguing to me because I feel like it really capitalizes on how much variation there can be to people's gender expression/identity, not only are there things to consider like the scale of feminine to masculine, but also the scale of social to physical. I'm FTM and have a sibling who is nonbinary, we're both afab but have had VERY different transitions, not only because we have different identities but because our identities are validated by different things.
For me, having the physical component of transition is very important, and people's opinions on my gender (whether they be supportive or negative) tend to make me very anxious, and usually result in me "watering down" my gender presentation out of fear. Whereas my sibling does care about the physical aspect, but tends to view it in a more casual light (for example, they are FAR less bothered if their testosterone dose is delayed, whereas I have consistently done mine the same day of every week, for over 2 years now), but the perception of the people surrounding them matters INCREDIBLY to them.
If I were on a desert island, not only would my presentation not change, but it would probably become even more defined. But if they were to be on a desert island, they would probably pay less attention to their presentation in general.
For context also: Despite being FTM I am in no way hypermasculine, I pass quite easily but the most common criticism I get from other men is that I'm "too feminine/soft" I find this absolutely hilarious. I'm also gay so I suppose you could say I adhere to those stereotypes, but I really don't define any aspect of myself based off of other people. So despite identifying solely as a man, I rarely present in a way that is "acceptable" as a man.
Great video and great question!
Im also a cis man, and something this question brings to mind, for me, is how my own gender has become somewhat softer as I age.
The hallmarks of traditional masculine gender are quickly fading in me. I'm losing my hair, my once-lean body is slowly losing muscle and gaining fat, those moments of gender euphoria you described, that I once felt in my dating days, are long-gone.
The thought on my mind here is that as I age, my perception of my own gender has become less focused on my physical body and more on how I am choosing to live my life - my actions and attitude.
Basically, my internal perception of my own gender is quickly sliding from "cis man" to "cat dad," which is an outwardly subtle, but inwardly really important change for me.
So, to answer your question, I think this softer gender is what I'd be in the singularity. It's how I want to be as I grow old.
Like you, I'm a cis guy, and so to some extent I almost feel uncomfortable throwing in my own perspective. Obviously, the inclusiveness you bring to the discussion with this video, and the general openness in the comments are all great reads, I think it mostly stems from a fear that my interpretation of my own identity would somehow be wrong or offensive to those who, thanks to not living on this hypothetical island, are forced to live with poor treatment every day in society.
That said, nothing would change for me on a deserted island. I'd still see myself as a man (I know, shocker), but I've also never felt like any of my personal identity was tied to that gender. To ME, my maleness has always been, plain and simple, defined by my biology. I never felt less manly enjoying "feminine" stuff or felt pressured into enjoy "manly" stuff for the sake of my gender. I have this thing between my legs, this thing tells me I'm a guy, and nothing about my hobbies or clothing or posture can suddenly validate or dismiss that. My first pair of glasses were hot pink. I never liked sports. I've tried on commonly considered "women's" clothing before like dresses and hells - and even though I didn't like them, it had nothing to do with some preconceived sense of I as a man have to not look this way, it was just a style that looked ugly to me, in the same way a suit and tie does. Hell, if forced to wear a dress or a suit, I'd probably pick the dress. If I'm going to look hideous, I might as well wear the item that's more comfortable to sit in lol.
And that's not to dismiss anybody else's perspectives or to say they're wrong. It's just that, while I can intellectually understand that those who aren't me can find the nuance in this question, and I can also find the responses people give fascinating, it doesn't FEEL like the question makes any sense. I was born with a 3rd leg, that makes me this thing, and living alone doesn't change the fact that I was born with that 3rd leg. It's the only relevant deciding factor within my own mind for how I should perceive my existence. I don't know.
I think part of the cleverness of this question is the fact that it shows, at least to me, how difficult it really is to define anything for anyone. You know the thought experiment "what if your red is different from my red"? There are hundreds of synonyms for happiness, and most of them mean slightly different things. There are emotions and feelings only expressible in certain languages, they literally do not exist in others. And it's practically a lazy trope to say you can't describe your love for someone in words.
I once had someone tell me they think I'm "really agender, you just haven't discovered that for yourself yet". And like, I disagree. I feel comfortable saying the words "I am a man" the same way I do saying "I'm a redhead". But I'm also not going to say they're wrong? Plenty of people would have very different definitions for what makes a man. It's certainly possible that what he understood as agender is exactly the thing I was describing myself as, just because he reached a different conclusion doesn't mean he misunderstood my self-description, it's possible we're just going off of different definitions for what is arguably an undefinable and unproveable concept.
I have never experienced gender related body dysmorphia, but I've been disgusted with my physical being after a near fatal injury. I've never felt ostracized for being misgendered, but I've also never put much value into that gender, so anything that may be perceived as such are obviously going to feel like nothing. I've never felt like I've had to act a certain way to be seen as a man, but I have felt like I needed to act a certain way that felt unnatural just to remain safe in an unsafe space. In my own brain, it feels nigh impossible to try and relate those experiences to something as unimportant and unquestioned as my genitalia-based sexual identification assigned at birth, but I can at least understand that to the people who can or do on a daily basis experience these kinds of things, that island might be a paradise. To me it's just another Tuesday, just without air conditioning.
as a trans person, i just want to say thanks for sharing your experience, and i'm sorry that sometimes it can be difficult for cis people to earnestly share and interact in trans spaces. i think your perspective is very insightful and valuable for giving us another angle to look at our own experiences of gender from :)
my experience is kind of the opposite - to me, my biology [should be] the least defining thing regarding my gender. i feel that i'm immutably the person i am (for me "the person i am" equals my intrinsic gender, since gender is basically the collection of how someones chooses to groom and dress, how they act and speak, what they like to do, etc. - and altogether that's most of "who i am" to others), *despite* the body i have, which feels like it should have zero bearing on my existence as a person. this constrasts frustratingly to my experiences in society, where the link between gender and sex/physiology is inescapably thrust upon me by others who treat me by the guidance of abritary, cumbersome, and nebulous rules based on visible characteristics of the body i was born with.
so that's the gist of why the question makes sense - to me at least. the desert island significantly chnages how i interact with my body, my life, and how i think of my gender and sense of self, because in my life, all these things are forever linked to how society interacts with me and i with it.
all that being said, on a desert island, my gender basically ceases to exist, since there's noone around to perceive it. i still have a body, and still have some dissatisfaction with that body - less, but still some - these that remain are intrinsic to my transness and seem to stem from deeper within myself (a 'biological' transness so to speak; citation needed). labels for my [experiences of] sex or gender would lack relevance too, since these are things that describe how i relate to categories (primarily, society's traditonal binaries of gender and sex) that are objectively [biologically] not rigid. i wouldn't be 'transgender' since i wouldn't have a gender ascribed to me, nor a gender to transition to - i'm just me.
TRUE
If I didn't have to worry about the expectations of others I still don't think I'd be happy. I haven't transitioned yet, so I'd be in constant discomfort with my body just as I am now.
There are two sides to this: how one perceives oneself and how others perceive you. For society, it is important how you are perceived, as it can impact your life, your work, and your means of getting food on the table.
But in the hypothetical case of a desert island, I guess your internal self would become the external self, whatever that being is.
I'm cis, so I will refer to myself as a dude. "Who is the dude in charge of the fire here? Oh right, that's me."
In the hypothetical case of being alone on an island, I would act like myself.
🤷
There is a performance involved around others?
**The same way cisgender people perform their gender?**
But nonbinary people _don't really have a socially-visible space in society._
YET.
We nonbinary peeps get to make that space.
YES!!!!!
You hit the nail (that so many people, especially cis, don't seem to realize exists) squarely on the head!!!
Gender isn't somehow more weird or vague or "made-up" just because trans people exist. Gender is all those things and more **ALL THE TIME** and has been this whole time!
I genuinely wish for every single human to have the opportunity to truly examine their own gender experience and figure out what it means for them. No matter the result, even if they "just" find that they are 100% comfortable and confident in a cisgendered way, it's a valuable education of who one's self is and what one is like.
I think it would end up opening a lot of people's minds to just how much gender (in all its forms, including absence of) is an individual experience and not "something that only exists because society made it up." People created the labels to describe the concept. The experience behind the concept of gender existed way before any of the words for it ever did. 🙂
@@clockside
...I mean, identity is weird.
I think the problem comes when gender roles are imposed on a person, and not natural to the person themselves? Maybe?
@@grmpEqweer When it comes to gender _roles_, I absolutely 100% agree. Societal pressures against individuals simply being themselves is such a huge problem and gender is one of the clearest examples of how many people get harmed by that crap. Just look at all the dialogue around gender roles and pressures in areas like feminism, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and all the various forms of sexism (including benevolent sexism) for a plethora of examples!
One of the most visible impacts of gender roles on trans people is how we get judged according to roles that don't even align with our actual identities. We get labeled wrongly before we even get cleaned up from our entrance into this world. Labels and roles and lack of consent are so entwined, well beyond our first breaths.
The good news in all of it is that humans as individuals are capable of growth and change in ways that humans as an animal species are encumbered. And when enough individuals grow and change, our species is able to evolve to be less animalistic as well. The better we get at that, the less people will suffer from their primal instincts to quell individuality. ^_^
I'm disabled, so this thought experiment takes a lot of mental stretching on my part. Assuming I never had to worry about where my next dose of hormones was coming from (which is really hard to imagine, even in the trans-friendly major urban center where I live), and assuming that survival in my body didn't present its current challenges, I think I would just be non-binary. Ultimately, I present as trans, but I think of myself as a person before I think of myself as a gender or sex.
The way I see gender personally is that it’s not always about how others perceive you. Even without a society i’d probably still have looked at my reflection with a sense of wrongness. And it’s not just a physical thing, it’s how you perceive your personality, noticing the things that don’t fit. For me, it’s been a constant journey of self discovery, and gender is a part of it. I think if society was not present and all the things that defined us externally were wiped away, gender wouldn’t be a separate category from any other part of becoming in tune with who you are or wish to be.
I consider myself Cis but not because I “have XY chromosomes and I feel like a man”, more just that I “have XY chromosomes and I have no feelings of gender whatsoever”.
Of course I fully support every flavour of genderqueerness, but I don’t get it at all on an intuitive level- I simply can’t imagine feeling like a man or noticing that I don’t feel like a man, it’s like trying to Imagine a new colour
I'm a fairly typical straightforward transsexual with the typical "I knew when I was a mote in my daddy's ballsack playing with my sister's barbie dolls" that despite that has an odd relationship with their body and gender and how I try to think of all lf that.
On the body side I have a somewhat unusual relationship with it for someone who knew they were trans so young. I would definitely change some things. I've tried everything I could think of and a whole lot of things I didn't and stole from others to try and be comfortable with my junk but it hasn't worked. I've always felt like my chest has been mutilated by lacking breast tissue, like somebody violently lopped them off with a cleaver in my sleep. Then there's stuff I'm surprisingly okay with like my hips and shoulders despite social pressures. I even actually like my Adam's apple in part because it's such a distinct feature of my body that people notice it and find it attractive. There's tons of trans gals who would kill to be short like I am and yet I want to be eight, nine, ten, eleven inches taller than I am. Then there's stuff where I don't know how to answer that other than "doesn't matter how I would have felt if raised in isolation but I know how I feel now" like hair loss. If you threw me on that desert island when I was five I might feel differently, maybe, but that didn't happen and I only have the feelings I have now.
But then there's my presentation. Not only is it fairly masculine but I'm fairly comfortable with that even to the point that misgendering me doesn't hurt most of the time. Even being misgendered the masculinity in part of me and part of my identity. To be honest I've never put much thought into my gender or presentation or how I feel about my body until the past few years and I'm mostly coming back with the same feelings I've always had so maybe I just always had it sorted out.
As for your bit about gender euphoria, consider this thought - would you feel that way about your masculinity if your masculinity was forcibily suppressed for the first three decades of your life? Do you know what it's like to have oxygen until you've been deprived of it? Do you know what it's like to be hydrated until you're baking in the hot sun of a desert without having had water in twelve hours? Do you know what it feels like to have a hand until you've lost it? To bring it back to that bit about my balding earlier- would I *feel* like I'm balding if I didn't first have hair to lose? What if I just never had hair to begin with? I don't know but "maybe" seems like it could be a legitimate answer.
As for how cis or "cis" people relate their gender to their society there's this idea I have that turns out isn't unique among trans folks. It's usually a "not in front kf the cis" kind of discussion topic but I think you'll do fine with it. I'm right-handed, my significant other is left-handed, and my sibling is ambidextrous. I would struggle immensely to have a good life if I had to use my off hand for everything as would my partner. My sibling, however, would manage about as fine as they would have despite having a minor preference for their left hand. 100 years ago their teacher would've rapped my sibling's left hand with a ruler, told them to use their right hand, and my sibling move on like nothing happened. I kind of look at gender identity that way. Cis people, the dominant population like right-handed folks, would be incredibly unhappy if forced to live life as another gender. Then there's trans people, a minority that would be incredibly unhappy being forced to live life as their assigned gender yet society coercively pushes them to live that way the same way southpaws were ostracized. But then there's the equivalent of the ambidextrous population - people who could live quite happily either way but have a preference. And no, I don't mean non-binary people. I think part of the uptick in trans identifying people is not just society no longer being as violently malicious towards folks like us anymore but I think it's also society changing in other ways as well - social attitudes about masculinity and feminity, social attitudes about gender roles, social attitudes about modifications, logistical matters such as relative ease of transitioning compared to the past, etc. I'm not one of those types of people. In fact if I couldn't transition I'd kill myself. But I think people like me who couldn't live life with our coercively assigned genders are actually not just the only type lft trans people but a minority as well. I think soon the majority of people who transition are going to be people who transition not because they need to transition to be happy but because they need to transition to be *happier.* That would explain why we haven't counted these people as part of the trans population earlier - they weren't unhappy and in need of transition ans it wasn't available to them anyways. No different than an ambidextrous person who had a preference for their left being forced to use their right - they exist but because their need to transition isn't as extreme they don't make a blip on the radar.
And to bring it back to something you mentioned about gender being how one is treated those people would still be my trans siblings despite being different in a distinct and meaningful way because of how they're treated by cis people - which is to say no differently than me. There's this contingent of people who are neither cis nor trans but because they fit outside of the box of cis they're pushed into the box of trans alongside people like me. I think some trans people aren't really trans in the way I am and that some cis people aren't really cis in the way that you are but 100, 200 years from now somebody who would fit into one of our two categories today will fit into a then existing third category. I think if we took 100 people and put them onto islands like your hypothetical suggested that like 1% or 2% would be trans, about 90% or so would be cis, but then there would be that remaining bit that falls into neither.
great thoughts, thank you
The one thing I will just add/mention, is that from talking about some of this with an agender friend of mine, I suspect it is quite a bit lower than 90% who would identify with cis if there wasn't social pressure/punishment, and also the education was better available. I mention this because one of the things I noticed was how many of the anti-trans arguments I see made, indicate a lot of the same feelings that my agender friend has expressed, and (friend uses he/him because its what he's used to, so doesnt feel a desire to change atm) he has spoken about how a lot of those arguments made sense to him, but because of his background he talked to trans people and more solidly cis people about the feelings before just joining the anti-trans folks. I hope this makes sense, though if not or anything else, I can do my best to clarify/address.
It means knowing who I am, man
--even alone, we're in a social system. It's not that a social construct exists because of _people,_ it's a world that is both real and completely inside of us. No escape, even.
Yes, but is that societal structure inherent or inherited?
I lean towards the latter, because while we are social, we are integrated into these ideologies of society through mimicry and then through understanding.
I know there have been cases where twins separated at birth have led eerily similar lives, but it's all under this same overarching umbrella. If they could be separated into vastly different cultures, would the results still pan out or would the socialization play a bigger factor?
I love it so much when people who arent queer question the concepts of queer people in a healthy and respectful way. You are the coolest type of ally :3
As for the question: I am very bad at social interaction irl and because of that it kinda feels like I’m alone on an island (I haven’t had any friends or any form of relationship in years). And I’ve kind of lost my judgement on my own body and whether it looks masculine or feminine in my opinion. I just see a living body in the mirror.
That being said I would love to have the ability to not care about being part of society and had the power to feel completely fine while isolated from the outer world. But unfortunately I have these painful emotions
As a transwoman, I feel that if I was in an absolute vacuum, stranded on an island where i'd never seen another human being, never known what is society, never ever thinked, without social need, where I don't even know that there is something else than me or even another "sex" or "gender, a total blank state, I'd feel like I would absolutely live my life normally, seeking to do creative stuff cause all my needs are fulfilled, just living on life.
But I'd feel weird sometimes, feeling an invisible need, a sort of pressure on my chest, something missing.
I'd also feel like that the weird organ between my legs, that is only a tool to empty my bladder and nothing else, feels somewhat foreign and I'd wonder why I have that nagging feeling that... it's just wrong ?
I genuinely feel that if even no one was around I'd still feel like this.
It's something deeper than just the social.
Yes, most of the secondary characteristics are for me social. In a vacuum, I'd never have the idea of what are boobs, what's a vagina, how the hair of people with more oestrogen than me looks, how their body hair looks and how their fat, bones and skulls take their shape.
I'd have no idea of any of that, I'd just know that I am and that's it.
Yet, i'd still feel like my body is wrong somewhere, that something isn't right. A weird feeling of unease, of having something wrong.
Sometimes I'd wonder why my penis would feel foreign, why sometimes I feel like my chest is heavier or why my chest feels weird.
But i'd have ultimately no answer, knowing only my testosterone fueled body and what it brings.
If I ever saw, in the far ever distance, a body of a human with an oestrogen prevalence, just for the blink of an eye, not enough time to even think about the concept that someone else is alive and looks from my species, far before knowing what even is "social", the concept of bonding, the concept of the "other", I'd immediately understand why I felt this weird in my body for ages.
It's just cause my oestrogen level is too low and my testosterone level is too high.
Not to insinuate that it's what the actual cause of transidentitites, it's still pretty debated if transness has a biological factor. (and frankly I don't give a shit if it's biological or not, just let people do their thing we're social animals and constantly live in social relations)
But in the vacuum, I'd certainly feel that way. That the nano second after seeing the body of another living being, with an oestrogen prevalence, I'd feel like that's what my body, my being, my entire entity and absolute pure soul of what I am inside of myself, should have been all along and that's why I always felt weird.
After realizing that, knowing that there is more than my self, that there could be another form of my being, still without any concept of social relations, I'd know that this form, this form full of oestrogen, is me.
It's what's deep, deep deep inside. It's what's inside my body, behind those meaty walls and organs.
The soul within the brain.
Then, I'd realize than my body, my corporeal form, the muscles and bones shaped by the specific hormonal cocktail that my brain ever did since I spawned in the vacuum, would be wrong, would be the absolute reason why i'd always feel weird in my life.
Since i'm in a vacuum and all my needs are filled, I assume.I could then have some oestrogen instantly in me to flip the hormonal balance, the testosterone dominance would lower and let the oestrogen be more present than testosterone.
Then I'd feel fine and myself, with a grown chest and suddenly with the feeling that when I touch my body, I look at it, I finally feel inside. My soul feels attached to it's body, I finally recognise the meat robot that i'd feel like having piloted for so long before having this question brought to me in the vacuum.
I'd finally feel like my corporeal being, the cells in me, would feel right.
I wouldn't have any problem with my penis since I still don't know what is a vagina and the tissues kinda rearranges themselves under oestrogen. I'd just know that this organ would feel better.
That the weird times where it would fill itself with blood on its own, the times where it would weirdly give me a itch and a need to stroke it till it pukes out that weird liquid thing, would be gone.
I'd only feel that how that organ looks and feel right now is way better. It doesn't rise on its own, it doesn't got that animalistic need to reproduce, it doesn't need to spew out something out every so often due to those animalistic needs.
Then, I'd also feel like my body itself would feel strange every month, having stomach aches for a few days and feel like my hormones are doing a bit of whatever.
Due to those biological changes maybe i'd feel sadder or angrier or I dunno.
Then those feels would dissapear, and come back every month.
Since I don't know anything more about the other form of my species in the vacuum, I won't know that's period symptoms, I wouldn't know what even is a vagina, how it works, that it spills blood each month to get rid of something called uterine lining.
I wouldn't know what is an uterus or ovaries or anything about reproduction, not even how my sperm itself work, or what is a penis nor testicles etc.
I'd just feel that my body would regulate itself in weird spikes of hormonal stuff each month since my biological form had an oestrogen fueled body.
It would feel anoying since I knew what my past biological form had (no period symptoms or absolute variations in hormonal stuff, stable just like haves a testosterone fueled body.)
But I'd feel like it would feel right, better than not having those weird feel bad moments each month.
It would feel like I am whole, like what I was since my first second appearing in the vacuum.
That my biological body just simply needed an oestrogen dominance instead of a testosterone hormonal dominance to actual feel connected to it.
My soul within my brain, my sense of identity, of what I am, the consciousness of what I am due to my ability to perform self actuation, would feel finally connected to the biological body, wouldn't feel that weird distance anymore, that it was a soul piloting a meat body.
I would feel like myself and continue living in the bliss of the vacuum, spending my time in infinite time, all my needs met like I ever was and ever did before I have seen that biological dominant oestrogen body for a split second in that vacuum.
I would finally be able to truly enjoy my surroundings, do what I want and that I want feel right.
I would feel like my entire being experiences the sensory inputs and feelings generated by the brain in my corporeal body. I wouldn't have the odd need to think about why my corporeal body always felt kinda weird, why I wasn't able to experience everything in my reach, why would I feel like a robot piloting my brain, a soul that is split from the body it controls.
I'd understand that my self, all that i've ever experienced before having that question brought to me, is a singular entity.
It not the brain and the body, it's both.
The brain would have just only felt so distanced from the body, never getting that sense of self trigered by the sight of the meat enveloppe he would see only bits of while moving around sometimes.
After that, i'd spend the rest of the eternity in the vacuum in absolute bliss, having finally all my absolute needs met.
Since I'm in a vacuum, the concept of time itself would fall, and I'd keep doing whatever I was doing in the vacuum, having absolutely everything satisfied within me.
I'd be able to feel nothing, not that weirdness in my body anymore.
In the vacuum, i'd become just what the instincts tells the body to do to function and not die.
I wouldn't feel like a fondamental need wasn't satisfied anymore.
I'd feel like what I ever was and should be : me
I remember reading a book (might have been a paper) about dress (as in fashion and clothing), one thing they mentioned was the idea of 3 selves, public, intimate, and secret self.
The first one is essentially what you show everyone when you go out, the second would be what you wear when you are with people you love (simplifying a bit, this is a RUclips comment)
the secret self is how you dress when you are alone.
I think when we talk about gender, this idea of the 3 selves fit pretty well, if you remove the public and intimate self, there is still the secret self.
Another thing, I think when we are alone with only our secret self, gender and dress becomes play, it is something we allow ourselves to have fun with, to play around with.
Also, it's been a while since I've read that book/paper, so take it with a grain of salt.
Just to clarify because I don't think it was clear, the 3 selves aren't just about dress, that was the focus when I read it, but the idea of the self is more broad than that
I think you can still consider fashion play. Play behavior is just interacting with your environment in a way that's enjoyable. Anything that can be enjoyable that involves interaction can also be play prove me wrong. 😂
Edit just to clarify, it'd be play as long as you enjoy it, obviously you might play differently without other influencing factors, just as you might dress differently for different events or play different games with different company.
This is an interesting question. I am a feminine presenting person, but I think I mostly fall between the middle and “tomboy” on the gender spectrum. I live alone and am very introverted so I am basically alone on my own desert island all the time. I will now try to track how often I perform gender ideas when I am alone. Thanks for the intriguing thoughts! 🙏🏽
Hey! Trans guy here. And I think my answer would really be the answer I have currently about myself: I am a man, but my masculinity cannot really be replicated by anyone other than myself. My gender exists in the context of the basis of gender as a social construct, sure, but after finding the label that is comfortable for me, it has grown beyond needing societal framework. My gender is now based on how I act, they confidence I gain from myself, the kindness I can give, my relationship to nature, rather than just the framework of a body.
I know this might not make much sense to anyone else, but that's sort of indicative of my very point. No one else can be a man like me. I am not one that believes that gender is a performance, and I actually very strongly hate that idea pushed onto my own identity because my gender is intrinsically tied with who I am, now that I've figured out the label. I don't "perform" who I am for anyone else's benefit, approval, or happiness, or even to make them believe me, which I think this idea of 'gender performance' comes from. I have gender expression sure, but I just exist as I am.
If I was born on a desert island, raised by apes after my parents left me in an uninhabited beach, then maybe I wouldn't label myself as a man, or any such gender concepts. Maybe I would just hate my hips, but be happy with what's between my legs, disliking my chest somedays and being neutral other days, and embodying my kindness and love of nature and confidence in a way that would make sense in my little ape society. I like to think I would still experience my gender as I do now, but not have any language or labels to describe it. That may not be everyone's experience, but its mine.
i love how you're always just fcking breathtakingly honest with yourself.
I'd still be a woman but hell if I'd be bothering with basically any of the 'performance' of womanhood. I mean, even as it is I've basically dropped any part of the performance that isn't liable to get me shanked or, at the very least, constantly barraged by weird and annoying questions. I've had top surgery so going full "boy-mode" and not shaving for two weeks isn't really an option unless I want every second person giving me their manifesto on trans existence. Exceptions being big events, concerts, etc, where the effort of meticulous presentation actually has some heightened payoff in being perceived. Not to say that I like the feeling of having whatever my body can still manage of a beard, but if the only downside to it is the feeling + occasional glimpse in the ocean's reflection, it's not really enough to dissuade my apathy. And conversely, that ten seconds of 'damn, I can still fucken get it' when I look at myself in a mirror after getting cleaned up is very nice, but without outside perception it's not really worth the effort.
Which is to say, I'd look like Tarzan but if Baloo or King Louie drop a he/him they're still getting smacked.
Do keep in mind this is the perspective of a trans woman who is both fairly butch, at least intellectually, and has been out for 10 years and is WELL passed her 'trying eyeliner for the third time for the board games orgy night' phase. Tbh, I think most 35 year old cis women would have fairly similar perspectives on presentation.
Growing up in the country, surrounded by women who could sling a calf on their shoulders like it was nothing, the "not caring about presenting female" is just a natural response to being away from society and having more pressing concerns like "the fence needs fixed"
On days where I'm out doing country shit, I honestly more or less stop having a gender at all. I put on my brother's old boots and my mom's old jeans, and I fix my shed. My gender is "person fixing the shed"