Thanks for taking the time to make this. Within the community there are so many conversations going on that I've felt to be completely directionless purely for the fact that we can't all agree upon the same definition of words, so its really encouraging and nice to see a video like this where knowledge is being shared in a clear and concise way.
Ahh thanks a lot, I appreciate that. You're so right though I think a lot of confusion and disagreement comes about because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what the words we are using actually mean. This is what I truly think the term gender identity was intended to refer to when it was created in the context of transsexualism, even though I doubt they knew about these biological elements in such detail at the time.
Great video. I really wish this was how we were educating people about being trans. It seems to be that the ideas that are getting out into the mainstream are that gender is a social construct and that gender identity has to do with how you feel you fit into that social construct, which I think is not only inaccurate, but harmful for a lot of reasons. I want people to understand why I'm medically transitioning, I want them to understand what's wrong with saying, "Why would you changing your body if society already accepts you as your gender?" I want it to be understood why medical transition is necessary and should be covered by insurance. But they're making it all about gender roles and vague senses and words are becoming meaningless. Gender is whatever you want it to be. Being trans isn't a medical condition or state of being, it's an identity. And this is how kids are being taught about gender. I see so many kids in youtube comments nowadays confused because they don't fit gender roles and think this means they're trans, or don't "feel" they have any gender (despite being completely fine as they are) so they think they're agender. No one talks sex dysphoria. I even tried to explain this stuff to a trans guy vlogger on tumblr one time when he told someone asking for advice to try to accept their body when they said they felt it didn't belong to them (was a surprise to see a trans guy who was medically transitioning himself say that stuff, not understanding the very basics of sex dysphoria being that it doesn't go away, that the whole problem is that the brain really isn't wired for that body), and he got offended. He replied, but didn't reblog to his blog because he "frankly didn't want it on [there]" cause I guess it would taint it with my cissexist ideas or whatever, I don't know. I know it's considered offensive in some circles to even suggest that there is brain sex (what I think the term gender should mean), that we're all blank slates and that gender only comes from society. They say saying that you were born in the wrong body is internalized transphobia, society making you think that you need a certain body to actually be a certain gender. I want that idea to die.
+BowlMasterAsh Wow, great comment! You literally have written so many of my thoughts about this. I understand the push against medicalising from the perspective of how it's been used to invalidate trans people in the past, but I really think they are mistaken in wanting to shift the focus the way that is happening now. The idea and understanding of what it is to be trans and what it behind it is being lost and that can lead to even more harmful ideas. I know we do not fully understand the science and biology behind it right now, but I think focusing on that is a step in the right directions, for the reasons you listed. Thanks for contributing, good stuff.
+BowlMasterAsh I find people seem to mix up and conflate gender identity with gender expression and or also gender roles. Both of which were coined my Dr.John Money. Even though he did so much good work for transsexual and intersex people in the 1950's and 60's, but he undid all of that and then some when he lied about the results to a medical case that one Dr.Milton Diamond would uncover the truth of only recently in 1997 and it would be known as the John\Joan case. In 1956 2 twin identical boys were born, and but they needed to both have medically necessary circumcision. When Bruce the first boy went for his operation the cauterizing machine malfunctioned and burned his penis off. She went to every doctor and no one could fix her son's penis, and she was desperate and didn't know what to do. And then she saw Dr.Money explaining his theory of gender neutrality. That for the first 2 years of our lives our gender identities aren't set in stone, and what plays the biggest role in what gender identity a person will adopt depends on how they are raised. If they are raised or nurtured as girls, then even a baby born a boy could be raised as a girl and would grow up thinking and believing he is female. In 1972 he published that drivel as truth and doctors and surgeons who had to deal with intersex babies, babies with ambiguous genitalia like Bruce\Brenda\David Reimer, and what sex to assign them. Because if they aren't assigned a sex at birth, and lol people who talk about trans people and our language and they think that we've made it up, when it fact, it's quite the opposite our talk and jargon if you will comes from the medical and psychological community and some have been in use for a long time. Look at gender identity it's been around since money coined it and gender roles in the 1950's, and yes, doctors assign a child a sex at birth, and it's unfortunate that is conflated with and thinking that the genitals dictate the gender of the baby. This one guy who is a critic of transgenderism as in one of those people who thinks it doesn't exist in nature and therefore, transgender people are delusional, crazy people who are full of sh*t. So because surgeons believed it was how a child was raised and that it was indeed nurture not nature that decides if a person will feel male or female. So most were assigned female, and if they had testicles those were removed, which is brutally unfortunate and should never be done if there is any chance they will let the kid be fertile as an adult and maybe the sperm can be harvested from the sac if the penis isn't formed right to release it and freeze it and then remove it if it's an issue. Sorry, rambling again. It's easier to surgically fashion a vagina since all fetuses start out female, and so most intersex, and genital ambigous children were "assigned female" at birth. The sh*tty thing is that these kids were never kept track of to see how they turned out. Because if even 1 of them turned out like David Reimer who is the boy from the John\Money case, then I have to think that quite a few of those "assigned" female at birth ended up becoming trans guys, which may or may not actually be what they are karyotypically like XY lol. Anyway back to 1965 so they took Bruce to Dr.Money and Money seeing that he had a twin brother saw this almost as God smiling down on him because he's identical twin brother would be a perfect control for the experiment. To truly see if nurture has all the say over nature in whether or not we feel male or female, and if we see ourselves as male or female. At that time if you had told them gender identity is on a spectrum and that people end in the middle, and I bet if it's looked into their brains were only partially masculinized and it would be interesting to see if it's nature or nurture in people who are in the middle what gender they see and identify themselves as. Nature loves variety and it's not us binary trans men and women who are the most interesting. It really is those people who who brains and minds that are different percentages male and female and it depends on if the whole brain or only part of the brain or if only certain gendered characteristics of the brain like BSTc region, like the SDN region, and also whatever it is that the researchers in Spain saw in binary identified trans people pre=HRT, which brain strutures it was that they were comparing. I confess I forget, but it would be interesting to the brain scans and disections of people who feel their gender identity is in the middle and how they feel like if they feel agender, bigender, gender fluid, and gender queer. Anyway they renamed Bruce Brenda and removed his testicles. Thankfully, they left the rest. Which also is what finally pushed Brenda I think to her breaking point was that by age 7 Money was pressuring her into having the rest of the SRS\GCS, and at 13 he pushed her really hard, and coupled with a female puberty that wasn't right for his brain, mind, or body and she broke down and became so depressed about her gender that she became suicidal. He told Dr.Diamond that from the age of 5 or 6 he knew that he wasn't a girl, he said he knew being female didn't feel right, that it didn't feel natural for him to feel like a girl and do feminine things that his parents and society push on all young girls, and women. So at 13 they told Brenda the truth that she had been born a boy, but the news did not sit well with Brian because now there was instant competetion between the two of them, and that he was no longer the only boy, and also that he had been deprived of having a true relationship with his identical twin brother. Because David would say when he was like 6 he's brother could see how miserable Brenda was playing with her toys so he would share his with her from time to time. So he immediately stopped living as Brenda and started to live as a boy named David for obvious reasons, and he told everyone he ever had to go back to living as and thinking that, and the world and society seeing him as female again that he would kill he himself. And this case proved Dr.Diamond's theory that gender is a deep seated core innate part of us that is decided by nature and biology in the womb. And more specifically that it's the presence or absence or testosterone that determines a person's gender identity. He had injected pregnant rats with testosterone, and when the rats were born the female one's did have masculinized genitalia, but still vaginas. However, when they grew up with no guidance from the lab techs, that the female rats acted, behaved, and otherwise thought they were female rats. So he felt something similar must be true in humans this was also during the 1950's, but Diamond was only a graduate student then. It sucks that it took until 1997 to uncover the truth, and to re-train and re-educate so many doctors to teach them to not operate on an intersex baby, or one with ambiguous genitalia like David Reimer until the child grows up and can show and tell you if they feel male or female, or neither or they feel like both, and keep waiting then to see if they ever just settle on one. If they don't then they are a gender non-binary person. I actually wish I had a computer that I could ask any question and get an answer and besides asking it what are the things that can a transgendered fetus, I would also want to know if binary feeling trans people are the majority, and if not what is the percentage of binary trans people to non-binary trans people. Right now we feel that .5% of the population is trans that is 35 million people world wide, and that's also 1 in 200 people as well. It would be interesting to me to see the ratio of binary trans people to non-binary trans people. Either way again it's the people in the middle who don't feel binary that are Nature's greatest show of diversity, and variety.
+Kristin B I say they conflate the 2 gender identity and gender expression which are 2 different things are determined by different factors and one can continue to change and evolve, but the other is set in stone. Gender identity I talked about, and just like with David Reimer he never knew he wasn't born a girl and had no reason to think that he hadn't. His parents, his doctors, his school, and world had always told him since he could remember that he was a girl. So he had no reason to reject being a girl the female gender expression, and the role that he was expected to play in life of a wife and Mother, which is gender role, but he's gender identity was indeed male, and was something that all of those things couldn't change it. It makes that anaolgy of well do you think a person would still feel male or female if their genitals were destroyed and lost for some reason and now didn't function or look the same do you think they would still feel male or female. And people will say of course they would still see themselves as male or female. It's not like a soldier who has her breast blown off, or a male soldier who has he's penis blown off is going to wake up the next day or so in the hospitally and immediately start thinking well it's gone and now I can help it I see myself as a man or woman no longer in the eyes of society. Who by the way can't see them anyway. Well then how did David Reimer who did know he was born a boy know that he was a boy. How did he know he felt like his twin brother did. It must have been hell specially back then when gender roles, and gender expression were much more policed for girls back then, and of course even now a boy can not wear or do anything feminine, but it's fine for us to encourage that in women. Oh I get so masculinity is worth more to society than femininty why else shame a little boy so much for wanting to dress up like a princess. He may not even be trans he just wants to pretend and imagine what he thinks being a princess is like big deal. If the child isn't transgender then letting a boy play with girls, and dress up as girl is not going to result in a trans woman. It might mean you have a gay son, or bi\hetero effeminate son as well. I mean look at Gristley knows best. That guy is super feminine for the most part in his gender expression, but he has a male identity, and is heterosexual. As a trans woman I get blasted because I only fixate on the outer stuff, clothes, make-up, breasts, and as TERF's like to put it the superficial things of femininity, and that we reinforce the gender stereotypes, and gender roles that they are trying to deconstruct. Not realizing that gender is an innate part of us that can't just be shut off, and we all go to being what unisex. I wish those TERF's and people who think like them would realize that not all trans women express their gender the same way. And hey guess what cisgender women actually do like that stuff, its not all vodoo brainwash. Much of the advertisement and product ideas and how to market them don't just come from stereotypes they also come from tests that the company did seeing how well the group of people that they think will buy their product the most think. I know women who love, love make-up they see it as an artform and if you check out the link to Stefsanji or something like that she just recently came out as a trans woman after being a gay male all through most of her life growing up. She's only like 20 now, but like quite a few trans and this happens a lot with trans guys I think they find themselves dressing more more feminine in her case, and was more comfortable with people seeing him as female as often happened to him as a gay man, and he just realized the more time he spent in the female world he knew that's what he really identified with, and what he had been searching for because being a gay male just wan't it. And then of course trans men and women both get blamed for both these things either we are too obsessed with the exterior gender expression stuff, or we aren't obsessed enough. They will be like your girl now why aren't you shaving under your arms, and legs. Why don't you wear more dresses or why don't you wear one at all, and look "it" isn't even trying not wearing any make-up. When they would never say that to a cisgender woman or man for either thing. No one accuses big ass body builders of only thinking that they are male is because they have huge bodies that can't all be 100% performance drug enhancement free. None of these people realize that to us those exterior things to the same things for us as they do for cisgender people. They make you feel better about how you look, and your gender. If you are male you like looking in the mirror, and seeing muscle definition, and you should't be faulted for that you worked really hard for, just like a trans guy did and he is looking into the mirror and thinking the similar things as the cisgender man is. We do these things because we already feel like men and women on inside, and for some of us we want our outsides to match. For some of us we just don't want people to question our gender and find it easier to get along without being harassed if we look typically female, or male. I'm a trans woman myself, and I have "passing privilege" and so I know my experience of being trans is nothing like other peoples. Mine has been really positive, and usually when people find out: they first can't believe it and tell me I had no idea, and want to tell me how good I look and sound, which is flattering and sweet. Only 2 times have I had someone be a direct a** to me after they found out because I had to pay using my check card, which still had my male name on it. I'm never misgendered even on the phone, which is great cause it sucks when it happens. I love my Mom, but somethings are very hard for her and I knew her changing pronouns was going to be really hard, but she loves me and I know when she screws up she is more mad at herself than me because she knows how embarrassed it makes me feel, which is really just my gender dysphoria. I prefer to live in stealth in day to day life because it's way easier than telling every person you meet your trans. And I know life for people who are visible trans is why I'm fighting so hard on comment sections every where to educate people about gender identity, and about how it's formed and why it's important if you want to understand why transgender people transition, and why we want to be recognized as the gender our brains and minds are telling us we are. Seriously youtube the BBC special about David Reimer it's really good and uses a lot of footage from the 2000 documentary that David had done about his life because like Dr.Diamond he was outraged that Dr.Money was calling him a success when at that point he had lived longer as a male than a female, and what the results of that were for intersex babies, and babies that have ambiguous genitalia for whatever reason. Intersex people also show us that gender identity is a deep seated innate core feeling of knowing you are male or female, or something else entirely. And we usually know by 5 or 6 without a doubt and even as babies are gender identity biases will show. And people also underestimate the power that hormones have in making us look and feel like men and women, and that also it would seem that when your brain was not formed like mine as male, that it didn't work as well and wasn't as happy as it was when I was a kid and my estrogen and testosterone levels were both super super low, and this also may be why so many trans people figure out when puberty hits because that rush of testosterone for me or estrogen for a trans man just throws the brain into a kind of shock. I know my mind cleared up and just felt so much more calm once my testosterone was suppressed, and then I felt also euphoric and just a happy that was coming from such a deep down place as the estrogen started to kick in. I felt all of that way before I saw or felt any changes. And there were also emotional changes like I find that I have to be careful around sad stuff because where as before I could hold back the tears, I can't hold them back now. My levels up empathy feel way higher than they did before, which is saying a lot because I was also very empathetic growing up. It was natural for me to place myself in other people or even an animals place and think about what how it would feel, before making a decision about them. Any questions feel free to ask.
Your video will be included in my multi-media dissertation project! Well done - you said it better than I could write it. And, your video will inform a lot of social workers who wouldn't otherwise think to go to RUclips for good information :)
Great video man:) Good to see someone talking sense. A lot of transguys dont even know how to explain genderdysphoria, time to spread some real knowledge.
Thanks man, I think this is important stuff to be aware of, especially since "gender identity" and dysphoria has become so vague and easily thrown around. They're real, biological things
Thanks for taking the time to make this. Within the community there are so many conversations going on that I've felt to be completely directionless purely for the fact that we can't all agree upon the same definition of words, so its really encouraging and nice to see a video like this where knowledge is being shared in a clear and concise way.
Ahh thanks a lot, I appreciate that. You're so right though I think a lot of confusion and disagreement comes about because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what the words we are using actually mean. This is what I truly think the term gender identity was intended to refer to when it was created in the context of transsexualism, even though I doubt they knew about these biological elements in such detail at the time.
Great video. I really wish this was how we were educating people about being trans. It seems to be that the ideas that are getting out into the mainstream are that gender is a social construct and that gender identity has to do with how you feel you fit into that social construct, which I think is not only inaccurate, but harmful for a lot of reasons. I want people to understand why I'm medically transitioning, I want them to understand what's wrong with saying, "Why would you changing your body if society already accepts you as your gender?" I want it to be understood why medical transition is necessary and should be covered by insurance. But they're making it all about gender roles and vague senses and words are becoming meaningless. Gender is whatever you want it to be. Being trans isn't a medical condition or state of being, it's an identity. And this is how kids are being taught about gender. I see so many kids in youtube comments nowadays confused because they don't fit gender roles and think this means they're trans, or don't "feel" they have any gender (despite being completely fine as they are) so they think they're agender. No one talks sex dysphoria. I even tried to explain this stuff to a trans guy vlogger on tumblr one time when he told someone asking for advice to try to accept their body when they said they felt it didn't belong to them (was a surprise to see a trans guy who was medically transitioning himself say that stuff, not understanding the very basics of sex dysphoria being that it doesn't go away, that the whole problem is that the brain really isn't wired for that body), and he got offended. He replied, but didn't reblog to his blog because he "frankly didn't want it on [there]" cause I guess it would taint it with my cissexist ideas or whatever, I don't know. I know it's considered offensive in some circles to even suggest that there is brain sex (what I think the term gender should mean), that we're all blank slates and that gender only comes from society. They say saying that you were born in the wrong body is internalized transphobia, society making you think that you need a certain body to actually be a certain gender. I want that idea to die.
+BowlMasterAsh Wow, great comment! You literally have written so many of my thoughts about this. I understand the push against medicalising from the perspective of how it's been used to invalidate trans people in the past, but I really think they are mistaken in wanting to shift the focus the way that is happening now. The idea and understanding of what it is to be trans and what it behind it is being lost and that can lead to even more harmful ideas. I know we do not fully understand the science and biology behind it right now, but I think focusing on that is a step in the right directions, for the reasons you listed. Thanks for contributing, good stuff.
+BowlMasterAsh I find people seem to mix up and conflate gender identity with gender expression and or also gender roles. Both of which were coined my Dr.John Money. Even though he did so much good work for transsexual and intersex people in the 1950's and 60's, but he undid all of that and then some when he lied about the results to a medical case that one Dr.Milton Diamond would uncover the truth of only recently in 1997 and it would be known as the John\Joan case. In 1956 2 twin identical boys were born, and but they needed to both have medically necessary circumcision. When Bruce the first boy went for his operation the cauterizing machine malfunctioned and burned his penis off.
She went to every doctor and no one could fix her son's penis, and she was desperate and didn't know what to do. And then she saw Dr.Money explaining his theory of gender neutrality. That for the first 2 years of our lives our gender identities aren't set in stone, and what plays the biggest role in what gender identity a person will adopt depends on how they are raised. If they are raised or nurtured as girls, then even a baby born a boy could be raised as a girl and would grow up thinking and believing he is female. In 1972 he published that drivel as truth and doctors and surgeons who had to deal with intersex babies, babies with ambiguous genitalia like Bruce\Brenda\David Reimer, and what
sex to assign them. Because if they aren't assigned a sex at birth, and lol people who talk about trans people and our language and they think that we've made it up, when it fact, it's quite the opposite our talk and jargon if you will comes from the medical and psychological community and some have been in use for a long time. Look at gender identity it's been around since money coined it and gender roles in the 1950's, and yes, doctors assign a child a sex at birth, and it's unfortunate that is conflated with and thinking that the genitals dictate the gender of the baby. This one guy who is a critic of transgenderism as in one of those people who thinks it doesn't exist in nature and therefore, transgender people are delusional, crazy people who are full of sh*t. So because surgeons believed it was how a child was raised and that it was indeed nurture not nature that decides if a person will feel male or female. So most were assigned female, and if they had testicles those were removed, which is brutally unfortunate and should never be done if there is any chance they will let the kid be fertile as an adult and maybe the sperm can be harvested from the sac if the penis isn't formed right to release it and freeze it and then remove it if it's an issue. Sorry, rambling again. It's easier to surgically fashion a vagina since all fetuses start out female, and so most intersex, and genital ambigous children were "assigned female" at birth.
The sh*tty thing is that these kids were never kept track of to see how they turned out. Because if even 1 of them turned out like David Reimer who is the boy from the John\Money case, then I have to think that quite a few of those "assigned" female at birth ended up becoming trans guys, which may or may not actually be what they are karyotypically like XY lol. Anyway back to 1965 so they took Bruce to Dr.Money and Money seeing that he had a twin brother saw this almost as God smiling down on him because he's identical twin brother would be a perfect control for the experiment. To truly see if nurture has all the say over nature in whether or not we feel male or female, and if we
see ourselves as male or female. At that time if you had told them gender identity is on a spectrum and that people end in the middle, and I bet if it's looked into their brains were only partially masculinized and it would be interesting to see if it's nature or nurture in people who are in the middle what gender they see and identify themselves as. Nature loves variety and it's not us binary trans men and women who are the most interesting. It really is those people who who brains and minds that are different percentages male and female and it depends on if the whole brain or only part of the brain or if only certain gendered characteristics of the brain like BSTc region, like the SDN region, and also whatever it is that the researchers in Spain saw in binary identified trans people pre=HRT, which brain strutures it was that they were comparing. I confess I forget, but it would be interesting to the brain scans and disections of people who feel their gender identity is in the middle and how they feel like if they feel agender, bigender, gender fluid, and gender queer.
Anyway they renamed Bruce Brenda and removed his testicles. Thankfully, they left the rest. Which also is what finally pushed Brenda I think to her breaking point was that by age 7 Money was pressuring her into having the rest of the SRS\GCS, and at 13 he pushed her really hard, and coupled with a female puberty that wasn't right for his brain, mind, or body and she broke down and became so depressed about her gender that she became suicidal. He told Dr.Diamond that from the age of 5 or 6 he knew that he wasn't a girl, he said he knew being female didn't feel right, that it didn't feel natural for him to feel like a girl and do feminine things that his parents and society push on all young girls, and women. So at 13 they told Brenda the truth that she had been born a boy, but the news did not sit well with Brian because now there was instant competetion between the two of them, and that he was no longer the only boy, and also that he had been deprived of having a true relationship with his identical twin brother. Because David would say when he was like 6 he's brother could see how miserable Brenda was playing with her toys so he would share his with her from time to time.
So he immediately stopped living as Brenda and started to live as a boy named David for obvious reasons, and he told everyone he ever had to go back to living as and thinking that, and the world and society seeing him as female again that he would kill he himself. And this case proved Dr.Diamond's theory that gender is a deep seated core innate part of us that is decided by nature and biology in the womb. And more specifically that it's the presence or absence or testosterone that determines a person's gender identity. He had injected pregnant rats with testosterone, and when the rats were born the female one's did have masculinized genitalia, but still vaginas. However, when they grew up with no guidance from the lab techs, that the female rats acted, behaved, and otherwise thought they were female rats. So he felt something similar must be true in humans this was also during the 1950's, but Diamond was only a graduate student then. It sucks that it took until 1997 to uncover the truth, and to re-train and re-educate so many doctors to teach them to not operate on an intersex baby, or one with ambiguous genitalia like David Reimer until the child grows up and can show and tell you if they feel male or female, or neither or they feel like both, and keep waiting then to see if they ever just settle on one. If they don't then they are a gender non-binary person.
I actually wish I had a computer that I could ask any question and get an answer and besides asking it what are the things that can a transgendered fetus, I would also want to know if binary feeling trans people are the majority, and if not what is the percentage of binary trans people to non-binary trans people. Right now we feel that .5% of the population is trans that is 35 million people world wide, and that's also 1 in 200 people as well. It would be interesting to me to see the ratio of binary trans people to non-binary trans people. Either way again it's the people in the middle who don't feel binary that are Nature's greatest show of diversity, and variety.
+Kristin B I say they conflate the 2 gender identity and gender expression which are 2 different things are determined by different factors and one can continue to change and evolve, but the other is set in stone. Gender identity I talked about, and just like with David Reimer he never knew he wasn't born a girl and had no reason to think that he hadn't. His parents, his doctors, his school, and world had always told him since he could remember that he was a girl. So he had no reason to reject being a girl the female gender expression, and the role that he was expected to play in life of a wife and Mother, which is gender role, but he's gender identity was indeed male, and was something that all of those things couldn't change it.
It makes that anaolgy of well do you think a person would still feel male or female if their genitals were destroyed and lost for some reason and now didn't function or look the same do you think they would still feel male or female. And people will say of course they would still see themselves as male or female. It's not like a soldier who has her breast blown off, or a male soldier who has he's penis blown off is going to wake up the next day or so in the hospitally and immediately start thinking well it's gone and now I can help it I see myself as a man or woman no longer in the eyes of society. Who by the way can't see them anyway. Well then how did David Reimer who did know he was born a boy know that he was a boy. How did he know he felt like his twin brother did.
It must have been hell specially back then when gender roles, and gender expression were much more policed for girls back then, and of course even now a boy can not wear or do anything feminine, but it's fine for us to encourage that in women. Oh I get so masculinity is worth more to society than femininty why else shame a little boy so much for wanting to dress up like a princess. He may not even be trans he just wants to pretend and imagine what he thinks being a princess is like big deal. If the child isn't transgender then letting a boy play with girls, and dress up as girl is not going to result in a trans woman. It might mean you have a gay son, or bi\hetero effeminate son as well. I mean look at Gristley knows best. That guy is super feminine for the most part in his gender expression, but he has a male identity, and is heterosexual.
As a trans woman I get blasted because I only fixate on the outer stuff, clothes, make-up, breasts, and as TERF's like to put it the superficial things of femininity, and that we reinforce the gender stereotypes, and gender roles that they are trying to deconstruct. Not realizing that gender is an innate part of us that can't just be shut off, and we all go to being what unisex. I wish those TERF's and people who think like them would realize that not all trans women express their gender the same way. And hey guess what cisgender women actually do like that stuff, its not all vodoo brainwash. Much of the advertisement and product ideas and how to market them don't just come from stereotypes they also come from tests that the company did seeing how well the group of
people that they think will buy their product the most think. I know women who love, love make-up they see it as an artform and if you check out the link to Stefsanji or something like that she just recently came out as a trans woman after being a gay male all through most of her life growing up. She's only like 20 now, but like quite a few trans and this happens a lot with trans guys I think they find themselves dressing more more feminine in her case, and was more comfortable with people seeing him as female as often happened to him as a gay man, and he just realized the more time he spent in the female world he knew that's what he really identified with, and what he had been searching for because being a gay male just wan't it.
And then of course trans men and women both get blamed for both these things either we are too obsessed with the exterior gender expression stuff, or we aren't obsessed enough. They will be like your girl now why aren't you shaving under your arms, and legs. Why don't you wear more dresses or why don't you wear one at all, and look "it" isn't even trying not wearing any make-up. When they would never say that to a cisgender woman or man for either thing. No one accuses big ass body builders of only thinking that they are male is because they have huge bodies that can't all be 100% performance drug enhancement free.
None of these people realize that to us those exterior things to the same things for us as they do for cisgender people. They make you feel better about how you look, and your gender. If you are male you like looking in the mirror, and seeing muscle definition, and you should't be faulted for that you worked really hard for, just like a trans guy did and he is looking into the mirror and thinking the similar things as the cisgender man is. We do these things because we already feel like men and women on inside, and for some of us we want our outsides to match. For some of us we just don't want people to question our gender and find it easier to get along without being harassed if we look typically female, or male.
I'm a trans woman myself, and I have "passing privilege" and so I know my experience of being trans is nothing like other peoples. Mine has been really positive, and usually when people find out: they first can't believe it and tell me I had no idea, and want to tell me how good I look and sound, which is flattering and sweet. Only 2 times have I had someone be a direct a** to me after they found out because I had to pay using my check card, which still had my male name on it. I'm never misgendered even on the phone, which is great cause it sucks when it happens. I love my Mom, but somethings are very hard for her and I knew her changing pronouns was going to be really hard, but she loves me and I know when she screws up she is more mad at herself than me because she knows how embarrassed it makes me feel, which is really just my gender dysphoria.
I prefer to live in stealth in day to day life because it's way easier than telling every person you meet your trans. And I know life for people who are visible trans is why I'm fighting so hard on comment sections every where to educate people about gender identity, and about how it's formed and why it's important if you want to understand why transgender people transition, and why we want to be recognized as the gender our brains and minds are telling us we are. Seriously youtube the BBC special about David Reimer it's really good and uses a lot of footage from the 2000 documentary that David had done about his life because like Dr.Diamond he was outraged that Dr.Money was calling him a success when at that point he had lived longer as a male than a female, and what the results of that were for intersex babies, and babies that have ambiguous genitalia for whatever reason.
Intersex people also show us that gender identity is a deep seated innate core feeling of knowing you are male or female, or something else entirely. And we usually know by 5 or 6 without a doubt and even as babies are gender identity biases will show. And people also underestimate the power that hormones have in making us look and feel like men and women, and that also it would seem that when your brain was not formed like mine as male, that it didn't work as well and wasn't as happy as it was when I was a kid and my estrogen and testosterone levels were both super super low, and this also may be why so many trans people figure out when puberty hits because that rush of testosterone for me or estrogen for a trans man just throws the brain into a kind of shock. I know my mind cleared up and just felt so much
more calm once my testosterone was suppressed, and then I felt also euphoric and just a happy that was coming from such a deep down place as the estrogen started to kick in. I felt all of that way before I saw or felt any changes. And there were also emotional changes like I find that I have to be careful around sad stuff because where as before I could hold back the tears, I can't hold them back now. My levels up empathy feel way higher than they did before, which is saying a lot because I was also very empathetic growing up. It was natural for me to place myself in other people or even an animals place and think about what how it would feel, before making a decision about them.
Any questions feel free to ask.
Your video will be included in my multi-media dissertation project! Well done - you said it better than I could write it. And, your video will inform a lot of social workers who wouldn't otherwise think to go to RUclips for good information :)
+Russ Healy Wow! Thanks so much man, I'm really happy that this info is going to good use. And I hope it's accurate enough! Haha
Really interesting. Thank you for sharing.
thanks for this video man, very interesting
Cheers, I hope I was able to explain this stuff clearly enough!
Thank you for explaining this so well, I'm cis and i'll forever fight for the trans community, you guys all sincerely deserve it !
+beyoulifeisbeautiful Hey, thanks! I'm sure that is appreciated by many trans people.
Great video man:) Good to see someone talking sense. A lot of transguys dont even know how to explain genderdysphoria, time to spread some real knowledge.
Thanks man, I think this is important stuff to be aware of, especially since "gender identity" and dysphoria has become so vague and easily thrown around. They're real, biological things