Apologies for the late reply; I am quite busy with school.
you essentially propose marginalizing
non-binary people andanyone playing with their gender expression in a nonmedical way so that they aren’t included in the transgender umbrella
Yes, if by “marginalizing”, you mean “pushing out of highly visible positions, the definition of ‘transgender’, and the transgender community” and not “actively discriminating against, denying services to, or seeking to harm”. I’m not saying these people are entirely unjust or should be without support either; they are always welcome to form their own communities.
Non-binary people are their own thing and aren’t too optically damaging as long as they aren’t at the forefront.
then you’d expect there to be a gradient of gender mismatch—from subtle to large.
Yes, gender dysphoria varies in severity; I’d say mine is moderate. There are definitely those who suffer more than I did, and definitely those who suffer less, but still suffer all the same. However, what matters here is that there is significant dysphoria present.
Perhaps there’s something you’re wanting to carve out as a protected status—suffering?
Normal transgender people who medically transition from their birth sex to the opposite when they are legally, financially, and safely able to. In other words, people who have gender dysphoria and don’t behave in an optically-damaging manner.
What about gender euphoria (the reason I transitioned)
Is gender euphoria not the alleviation of constant dysphoria that you have accepted as baseline? Also, congratulations.
If people who want to be gender noncomforming don’t have a place under the trans umbrella, where do you propose they go instead? What’s their identity supposed to be? Or is that simply not your problem?
Again, nothing is stopping people from self-advocating or forming their own communities. The following is not a one-to-one comparison, but the gay community has managed to reject pedophiles and most enjoyers of kink without infringing upon either or turning into a gatekeeping cesspit; the latter have their own, separate community.
How plausible is it actually, to even do this? Is this actually something that could happen if a lot of smart and motivated people put a lot of focus into it? Would the payoff be worth it? Or to put it differently—suppose we put our cultural effective altruist hats on for a moment and treat trans suffering as a cause area. Is this the best use of time and energy for that, compared to other interventions?
If you look at it that way, no American’s problems are worthwhile compared to genocide in Sudan. To answer your question in good faith, it’s not something that a small group of people or a single individual could achieve; rather, it would need to be a cultural shift throughout the trans community. While transgender issues in general are insignificant in comparison to pretty much every other social issue out there, protecting one’s own interests is pertinent to most human beings, of which transgender people are a subset, so it is strongly in the interest of the transgender community in particular to enact this. Do I think it would happen? Absolutely not; as touched on in the post, those with gender dysphoria are a minority within the community that claims to represent them, and alternative communities are either too small to impress upon the public consciousness as the current “transgender community” has or have other optical problems.
To spell out the direct costs: a lot of the non-conforming people would be hurt under this proposal,
How so? They can form their own communities and will have the same access to informed consent medical transition, mental healthcare, and other resources as the rest of us (which will be none if they keep at it).
and probably a lot of people who were trans-curious but felt ashamed of it would stay in the closet.
Which happened to me because of the poor optics of the mainstream transgender community.
I think it’s likely a nontrivial portion of currently medically transitioning people got their start by playing with their gender in a way that wouldn’t have happened in the proposed regime.
When did I imply that people ought not to play with their presentation. Try makeup, men’s clothes, whatever, just don’t call yourself transgender unless you’re transgender. There’s no shame in being gender-nonconforming. In fact, reinforcing the narrative that experimenting with one’s appearance or preferring the trappings of the opposite gender make you transgender leads to more false positives and detranstioners (who suffer actual gender dysphoria when they screw up their endocrine system, and are optically terrible and convince the public to support removal of informed consent for the rest of us), and provide a narrative that is very easy to poke holes in (“I’m a tomboy and still a girl!”).
If this pendulum were set in motion, do you feel confident it would stop at “reject the noncomformists” and not swing all the way back into “reject all trans people”?
Yes, because it’s the trans community that is making the change, not some other nebulous entity. If the community becomes so small that it excludes the majority of those with gender dysphoria, it will be socially irrelevant, and the afflicted can form a new community.
Transgender people have been thought of as “ridiculous” ever since the 60s or so. The non-binaries did not start it, and it’s not clear to me ejecting them would end it.
I never deny the existence of prejudice or hatred. There are some people who will always find gender dysphoria ridiculous, just as they do for the moon landing, the heliocentric model, and the vaccine. Some people will always outrun reality, no matter how fast it chases after them. However, the public presentation of ridiculous notions greatly broadens the set of people who find it ridiculous. I consider myself, my family, and the majority of my peers back home to be reasonable people, who simply ridiculed what is ridiculous. The notion of gender as an “identity” that one could pick and choose, with transgender people “feeling” like one gender or another, sometimes two at the same time, or even a super secret third animal gender that nobody else has, when people don’t “feel” a gender at all, is ridiculous. It is no surprise that I was closeted, even to myself, if acknowledging I was “transgender” meant I was that.
The same is true for the people who surround me, who are generally reasonable and not politically extreme in one direction or the other. Once I was able to explain to my family what gender dysphoria entailed, that it was not a choice or an “identity” but a medical condition, and that I would not be shitting in a litter box (this was a genuine concern of my mother), they were quite receptive. Of course, there were people who would have accepted me even if I did make use of the litter box (such as my elder sister, who told my mother about such things), and there are people who do not accept me now, but both groups are by far in the minority. People can respect “poorly understood endocrine disorder”; they will not respect “gender identity”.
A lot of the transgender people that come to the front of the minds of cis people who don’t have a good impression of trans people, like your parents, might just literally be the people who don’t look super great because they’re early in transition and haven’t been on hormones for several years or gotten surgery or nailed their voice training. People don’t notice the ones who do pass. What % of the impact on the cisgender public do you think this might be contributing, vs. the non-binaries? I don’t think I have a good answer here; do you have solid evidence on this?
I take it you are situated in a very liberal environment or MAGA central (if it is the latter, my condolences); in either case, your perception of politically neutral and (normal) conservative individuals is largely influenced by stereotypes on social media, which are largely false. The people who demagogues use to frighten and provoke people like my parents are detranstioners who were told that experimenting or the usual adolescent confusion rendered them trans, those who act ridiculous/provocative/promiscuous, and those who support the notion of gender as an identity; that last group is a majority among the mainstream transgender community and progressives in general. I’m not the Pew Research Center, but among reasonable people, it is not non-passing but otherwise respectable transgender people who are the target of ire.
I get that you sorely wish you could’ve transitioned earlier and easier, and this pain needs to go somewhere. I wish I could’ve too, having grown up in a red state myself and not even knowing I could transition until I was 19. But I think this pain might be coloring your reasoning—are you sure you picked the right target? Have you tried modelling gender non-conforming peoples’ minds in good faith?
Ah, so MAGA central. My condolences. Of course, power hungry politicians are at fault for the current situation, but the way the transgender community conducts itself makes those with gender dysphoria a very easy target. I believe genuine non-binary people exist, albeit in lesser numbers than reported, and I believe the vast majority of “non-confomers”, as you call them, are not explicitly acting in bad faith or are too young to know better. Modeling their minds in good faith, they are either people confused by the current narrative of “gender identity” or adolescents who saw a shiny new cool thing they could use to distinguish themselves from their peers; in either case, neither are (entirely) to blame, unlike the narcissists, attention-seekers, and people who really ought to know better.
Thank you for your kind comment, and apologies for the late reply; I am quite busy with school.
Thank you! At least in the US, FtMs are politically invisible (thank the Lord); if I wanted to play college football or something with the men’s team and use the appropriate locker room after, governors and Congressmen who definitely have more important things to be doing wouldn’t rain fire upon my head and act as if I kicked puppies for a living.
Eh, pretty normal in my area. They tolerate it now, which is what matters.
Neither, actually. Compared to how my mental health was from puberty up until the moment I started transitioning, I am actually much better off. Even though once every two weeks might not be normal for other people, I consider it such because it no longer at the forefront of my thoughts or even present at all most days. :D
Likely because you have a higher standard for posts than me; I am alright with speculation as long as it is disclosed as such. I’m aware the studies have small sample sizes and the modern ones are tainted by bias, but based upon what can be garnered from them, I speculate upon a possibility. You, on the other hand, only post what can be confirmed, which is unfortunately not much.
Same here, fortunately; I know such people are prevalent there and on Tumblr due to outside reports (screenshots on Reddit, Fox News, people at school).
I’m a libertarian, and accordingly
completely insanein support of informed consent for all medical procedures, regardless of how any given doctor, husband, religion, or government feels about it. There should be no barriers to medical care other than basic mental competence and full knowledge + responsibility for the procedure. (In a perfect world, finances would not be a consideration either, but we are not at that point yet.) Besides, the optical trouble is not people who want to transition, but the people who don’t, yet claim to be transgender.How so? (I speculate that) gender dysphoria is an endocrine disorder or a neurological disorder, and your organs don’t just flip on and off. Nobody but a very small subset of the population claims to “feel” a gender as some do. I am genuinely curious about how biological gender dysphoria is comparable with quickly slipping genders and genders outside the binary. (I do believe that genuine non-binary people exist, albeit in lesser numbers than self-reports would indicate.)
I’m not the Pew Research Center, but the area I grew up in was generally pretty reasonable and politically neutral, and I can personally confirm from speaking to many of the people around me that the notions of gender as an identity and the conclusions that followed pushed those who would otherwise have been supportive into being ridiculing, as evidenced by the support they gave me when I provided my own speculations.
Allow me to copy-paste a segment from my other comment here, which is a bit more aggressively worded than I intend for this conversation, because it might be somewhat relevant and I am lazy: “I consider myself, my family, and the majority of my peers back home to be reasonable people, who simply ridiculed what is ridiculous. The notion of gender as an “identity” that one could pick and choose, with transgender people “feeling” like one gender or another, sometimes two at the same time, or even a super secret third animal gender that nobody else has, when people don’t “feel” a gender at all, is ridiculous. It is no surprise that I was closeted, even to myself, if acknowledging I was “transgender” meant I was that. The same is true for the people who surround me, who are generally reasonable and not politically extreme in one direction or the other. Once I was able to explain to my family what gender dysphoria entailed, that it was not a choice or an “identity” but a medical condition, and that I would not be shitting in a litter box (this was a genuine concern of my mother), they were quite receptive. Of course, there were people who would have accepted me even if I did make use of the litter box (such as my elder sister, who told my mother about such things), and there are people who do not accept me now, but both groups are by far in the minority. People can respect “poorly understood endocrine disorder”; they will not respect “gender identity”. … The people who demagogues use to frighten and provoke people like my parents are detranstioners who were told that experimenting or the usual adolescent confusion rendered them trans, those who act ridiculous/provocative/promiscuous, and those who support the notion of gender as an identity; that last group is a majority among the mainstream transgender community and progressives in general.” (Apologies for the wall of text.)