Wasn’t expecting a woman

I thought this was gonna be about Wikipedia finally shutting down because nobody donates

Haha yeah the same thing you’d get a male golfer.

Summary please

Y’all were worried about people not voting if Biden ran. That kind of sentiment and pressure was a huge contributor to this move. Demand more of your politicians. We control them. Don’t let them control you.

Wealthy politicians don’t need your money. You should give your money to people who need it.

The women, and the children, too

All Israeli’s have to do military service and they get a bonus afterwards that they often use for travel. Thailand was full of Israeli kids when I went. Would be awesome if Thailand did the same.

We don’t need more slaves to capitalism.

Your experience trying to get a hysterectomy is so frustrating. It’s a common story. People should be allowed to sterilize themselves if they want to, and I won’t get into this controversial opinion, but I think there are cases where we should forcibly sterilize people (NOT eugenics). An example being a man who impregnates a child.

I appreciate your opinion on suicide and I’m truly sorry for the loss of your father.

Like sexuality, I think if we’re going to keep gender around, and obviously it’s not going away any time soon, we need to make a much more fluid spectrum so people can more comfortably fit into society. Call everybody non-binary. Women can have penises for example, or men can have vaginas. Obviously social stigmas as well. You’re probably rolling your eyes thinking I missed or disregarded everything you’ve said, but I think this social shift would enable some people to be more comfortable being themselves and not have to diagnose themselves with dysphoria, and a small percentage of the rest of the population would have some other form of dysphoria in which they simply do not want to be in their body irrespective of gender.

I imagine you can understand that if you cannot explain how being trans relates to a cis person people will struggle with understanding each other. You say physicality and cultural spot, which are both not foreign to cis people. I spiritually don’t feel any gender, but I can’t imagine that you would be able to understand what a cis man feels spiritually in the same way I wouldn’t understand a trans woman. You have your own internal understanding of being a man and your own spiritual feelings of what being a man is, but how can you say what being a man is? How can anybody without introducing their own cultural ideas into it?

Women do not feel alien to cis men. Maybe some, but not all. Aside from the physicality of my body, I feel more comfortable and feel more of a likeness around women than men often times, but I’m not trans. Your experience as a trans person couldn’t be the experience of a cis person, so how can you claim to know that you are a man?

The self harm, suicidal ideation and hatred of your bodily functions must be influenced by not only your internal feelings but also the external society. If altering one’s physical appearance is so successful for gender dysphoria, then the physical nature and perception of oneself within society must override internal spiritual incongruences.

Curious how you feel about suicidal people. If somebody is so unhappy with their existence that they want to kill themselves, no surgery nor adjustments to society will quell this deep internal dissatisfaction with themself, would you recommend they kill themselves? No wrong answer here. I presume you might feel that there are underlying issues causing their resentment towards existence. If you feel like killing yourself because you don’t want to get pregnant, that should just be an accepted state of mind because you are trans.

I really should apologize here because my line of questioning must sound aggressive and dismissive, especially through text. I’m just intensely curious and eager to understand each other. I don’t believe this is possible, however, because we have a fundamental disagreement on gender. I truly appreciate the back and forth and hope I haven’t hurt you in any way. I support people doing whatever they feel is best for them, but I just fear that we are not addressing deeper issues and the fear of invalidating one’s experience (rightfully so) hinders our ability to solve these deeper issues as a whole society. Trans people cannot be entirely correct and knowledgeable about transness and its inner workings and cis people cannot be entirely wrong.

Your previous example and explanation of gender euphoria was based around an external perception of your gender and the consequent reward. Did I misunderstand?

What are the innate ways that you feel the gender that you feel? And how would you get euphoria from this without external perception? I don’t think we feel or perceive gender, but rather universal human characteristics have been categorized into gender. A penis and a vagina are just body parts. Gender is merely one’s own creation. I don’t think wanting to have a penis is different than wanting to be taller. What you perceive as being a man, may not be what a cis man perceives as being a man, but neither is more accurate about being a man than the other.

I believe there are more parallels of dysphoria between cis and trans people than we want to admit. Being transgender is not an entirely unique experience but a derivation of other types of dysphoria, depression and struggles with social conformity. If we understand that we can understand each other.

I think people are afraid to express other types of transness or do not have the words to express what they feel yet. Even cis people do not understand themselves because they are just considered normal like you said.

Appreciate the response. Did not intend to make you feel uncomfortable. Im not aware of this Oli person. Just like there are some people who may use transgender identity as a stunt, I believe there may be people who authentically may feel trans-something else. I’ll leave that convo at that.

I wasn’t saying being transgender is about beauty initially. You had mentioned that transracial is about beauty, and I responded saying that if this is the case then there must be some aspect of conforming to beauty standards with transgender people.

Cis people feel gender euphoria all the time in the context of being praised for conforming to social standards of gender. Women being praised for being beautiful. For being pregnant and raising a baby. Men for being strong. For having lots of monetary power and being sexually active. Everybody is just trying to be seen and accepted by society’s standards. When you’re a child and you grow up and are finally addressed as a man or a woman. That’s huge.

I appreciate taking the time to help me understand your feelings and your perspective on how the rest of the transgender community feels. I have no doubts about how you feel about yourself and I don’t question the validity. I have difficulty understanding the boundaries of being trans and the thresholds for what should be provided medically to people as a human right vs what should be treated as a mental health issue.

I’ll continue to do research and talk to people about it.

In a gender free world everybody would have the same pronouns. No need to introduce yourself. If society stopped reminding a trans person that they’re in the body of a specific gender, wouldn’t they then be on the same level of necessity as somebody who wants surgery because they do not like some other aspect of their body? If gender is not a thing, you only have to worry about your own perception of yourself, like how a fat person or a woman who wants a BBL does.

Are you saying that until we abolish racism there could not exist transracial people? The history of power dynamics with race also exists with sex/gender. We would have to then abolish sexism before transgender people could exists.

I don’t think being transracial would be based on beauty. Just like being transgender, being transracial means that you feel that you were born in the wrong body. If being transgender is dependent on beauty standards could we not expand beauty standards and widen the construct of gender to allow transgender people to feel more comfortable in their bodies? Men can feel beautiful and women can feel masculine. A penis can be beautiful and a vagina can be masculine. The question remains though. Should we provide medical care to people who are transracial?

To your last point, it sounds like even if we abolished gender, transgender people would still suffer from dysphoria, which I then wonder how much of the dysphoria is around how you are perceived vs how you feel about your body? It might then in fact be a band-aid to another problem in the same way somebody might get a BBL to make them feel more comfortable during sex.

That all makes sense. I’m curious then, since the gender dysphoria is exacerbated by the way society treats people based on gender, would people no longer require gender affirmation if we abolished gender and we only referred to people as they/them?

Is being transracial different than transgender given that race and gender are social constructs?

During segregation in the United States, would you say that black people would have benefitted from the government providing them racial affirmation surgery if they felt that they were not comfortable in their bodies, were a different skin color and had to face it constantly?

To that point, is gender affirmation surgery a band-aid to the real problem of conformity to society’s gender construct?

Idk that they’ve done a lot of research on BBL’s specifically, but people who I know have had cosmetic surgery did so because they were unhappy with how their body was, not because they saw it as something else.

I don’t doubt that gender affirming surgery can help people. I’m just wondering why one type of mental abnormality should be treated with surgery over another.

I’m curious, if society abolished gender, would people still feel the need to have gender affirming surgery? They would only ever be perceived as they them.

What about the BBL example? They see their body the way it is.

Imagine mental health professionals should address this situation with gender dysmorphia in the same way their might address somebody who wants to get a BBL.

Let’s say the person has dysmorphia about their body and they are willing to undergo one of the most dangerous cosmetic procedures available (1 in 3000 mortality) in order to feel good about themselves. A good therapist/psychologist, and maybe in conjunction with a psychiatrist, should try to get them to a place where they are comfortable with their body and do not have feelings of self harm because of it.

Wanting to cut your boobs off may not come up in discussion of suicide but should come up in conversation if you’re being honest with your therapist.

Aside from that, I’m curious how this is different than somebody who needs other forms of cosmetic surgery to feel confident with their body and the way they are perceived by society?

Let’s say somebody is avoiding sexual relations because of the penis they were born with and tried to circumcise themselves because it’s not covered by insurance as an adult.

Should everybody be provided care to undergo whatever surgery they need to feel comfortable in their body?

Is anorexia not self harm if somebody does it because they can’t afford surgery and it gives them dysmorphia?

Also part of the failure of the mental health system