Transgender Philosophy (Questions, Ideology)

[Gredival]

Not to derail the topic again, but I feel this needs to be clarified.

Chiming in to say fuck this thread. Pretty hilarious that people think they will learn anything from a mod presenting a bunch of cisnormative bullshit disguised as information, and who perpetuated the sex/identity discussion and making it the main focus, instead of paving the way for real transgender discussion about experiences and life. Get the fuck out of the discussions mods.

PS. if something does happen to hey it's on Gred as far as I'm concerned.

I said it before, I'll say it again, this is a discussion/debate forum; NOT a safe space. Discussion includes a back and forth. This is not a forum where otherized individuals, be they LBGT, women, and racial/ethnic minorities, who have experienced oppression, to dictate what is the appropriate way for everyone else to treat them.

Look at the thread title. Transgender Philosophy. This encompasses anything related to that broad topic, including sex vs. gender.

Insofar as any individual wants to share experiences as they are illustrative to the subject at hand, they are welcome to. But people had legitimate questions or issues with how society is supposedly to interact with transgender individuals, and this was the appropriate venue. Therefore the role of transgender individuals and their allies (and I do in fact consider myself one), if they engage in the discussion, is to educate and inform.

That's what a good debate forum is about. Not breeding belligerent shitposting.

P.S. If you look, I actually haven't moderated anything in the thread except banning hey at her own request and setting down the rule to address/reference transgender individuals by the pronoun of their request or the pronoun that corresponds with their self-identified gender. My participation is simply to prevent this thread from degrading into another "You're a whiney SJW" vs. "Stop being an oppressive bigot" shitfest that other threads became.

[Mazmaz]

Stop perpetuating this fucking thread Aks. Let it die

[Xno Kappa]

Long live Gredival.

[Aksannyi]

Stop perpetuating this fucking thread Aks. Let it die

I should not respond to this, but you know what? No. You don't get to dictate how or where I post, and as long as there is good discussion to be had on this subject, I will continue to post. Transgender rights and education of people who don't understand trans issues are important to me, and I'm going to continue to do both for as long as this forum will allow it.

However, I am going to enjoy the damn Super Bowl, and I suggest that everyone else do the same.

[Cream Soda]

However, I am going to enjoy the damn Super Bowl, and I suggest that everyone else do the same.

But Mew2King vs Leffen is too hype for me to care about the superbowl. APEX2015 bruh

[arus2001]

Perhaps to briefly spur conversation, how many have encountered transgendered individuals in media and how do you believe it has affected your perception?

For me, I'd say I most commonly encounter in a few places, the first being anime/manga. And if I'm being 100% honest, I do not believe it tends to help the cause. And while I couldn't say whether or not this is the origin of context for the word, "Trap," it has certainly "popularized" the premise. For those not in the know, traps are males who are passed off as females, usually with very few people knowing about their actual sex. It's usually a safe bet that it will eventually become a point of shock value or gag once the individual either confesses or is involuntarily outed. This subject may feed a bit back into the earlier "sexy time surprise" conversation, but I'm generally content cutting that off with whether or not the person truly meant to deceive a potential partner.

My next field of encountering lies in writing fiction and reading that of others. Sometimes it's original, others it's fan-fiction. Given how I think I've seen most faces here in the Game of Thrones thread, I'm comfortable in the belief that we've all seen some smut in media that isn't outright porn and can understand sex and its related aspects can both contribute and detract from a tale. So, yeah, I've written smut. That confession, however, isn't my point. What is, and this ties back into the anime/manga exposure, is what I'd actually consider an unrealistic depiction of transgendered individuals. Distancing myself from writing tropes like Mary Sue, when encountering a female with a penis, one of two things tends to happen: Either they're so fucking gorgeous a popular model would look like a bow-wow in comparison or so much attention is put on the penis that you start asking yourself, "Dude, why aren't you just writing a dude?" I'm talking foot-long+ monster cocks and wrecking pussies being their goal in life. And no matter how much they act like a college frat boy, calling them anything but feminine is inviting scorn. Some take it a step further and even rock both sets of genitals as fully functional hermaphrodites, but again, usually hyper-sexualized feminine.

The keen might realize trying peel back the layers on this is what has gotten me in trouble elsewhere. As a hetero male, I'm not really a fan of the penis aside from my own. From the artistic standpoint, I'm not a fan of how some take the work of another and throw a dick on it with no regard for how it might've changed that character's life were she otherwise born a woman. They simply think it's "cool" to do, perhaps due to taboo, strangeness, or impossibility. Others most definitely use media characters to draw in fan appeal. Whether or not they're forthright with the Trap aspect is another matter. There is yet another part of me that wants to recognize a given author as male and too insecure in his sexuality to write a female character, and writing her well, for fear of being called gay. Thus, if they have teh cawk and seek out women, they're still maintaining their hetero manliness behind the pen/keyboard. The rest? Well, maybe it's just a supply and demand thing for the kink/fetish. Whatever the motivation, the fantasy seems very rarely rooted in reality, which has the consequence of creating an unachievable atmosphere for trans-folk not unlike how some might look to early Lara Croft and think she's a bad way to depict women with her huge boobs and tiny waist. I'd say all this probably extends to reverse-traps, too, but my forays into internet kink-dom have me believing the types of female representation far outweigh the male.

Socially, this leads into some confusion of identifying a character as heterosexual, homesexual, and bisexual if sex is ever involved in the plot. I've seen the uber-schlonged Victoria's Secret models claim they're lesbian because they only boink girls, just to get mad when other lesbians refuse them. Some are all about emasculating guys under the premise of homophobia while calling themselves straight. Strange as it may sound, I feel like I wind up happier seeing such characters identifying themselves as bi and playing the field that way while doing their blurring the gender line thing. Funnily enough, some vehemently refuse to interact with others like them--which partially feeds into my earlier suspicion of homophobic males behind the wheel. It just comes off a giant clusterfuck that I do see influencing people and their perceptions of transgendered individuals.

Pragmatically, I would like to believe most people can differentiate fact from fiction, but in seeing people where fantasy is the only reality they've experienced about trans individuals, there may be a risky false acceptance going on. How many of these wind up the originators of violence when they realize reality and the process isn't as pretty as their fetish? Might this confuse some people into thinking they're trans when they're really not as an offshoot of hero worship?

Maybe there's not a whole lot that really can be said since a fair bit of this is all speculative and not everyone here flexes creative muscles, if ever, the same way I do. It just all winds up being very much, "Us vs. Them" in those circles, though. Conversation might be better served in bringing up movies where we see fair attempts to depict the transgendered experience, traps, cross-dressing, and gauge that way. Because like it or not, the media we consume affects us.

[FNH]

Perhaps to briefly spur conversation, how many have encountered transgendered individuals in media and how do you believe it has affected your perception?

For me, I'd say I most commonly encounter in a few places, the first being anime/manga. And if I'm being 100% honest, I do not believe it tends to help the cause. And while I couldn't say whether or not this is the origin of context for the word, "Trap," it has certainly "popularized" the premise. For those not in the know, traps are males who are passed off as females, usually with very few people knowing about their actual sex. It's usually a safe bet that it will eventually become a point of shock value or gag once the individual either confesses or is involuntarily outed. This subject may feed a bit back into the earlier "sexy time surprise" conversation, but I'm generally content cutting that off with whether or not the person truly meant to deceive a potential partner.

My next field of encountering lies in writing fiction and reading that of others. Sometimes it's original, others it's fan-fiction. Given how I think I've seen most faces here in the Game of Thrones thread, I'm comfortable in the belief that we've all seen some smut in media that isn't outright porn and can understand sex and its related aspects can both contribute and detract from a tale. So, yeah, I've written smut. That confession, however, isn't my point. What is, and this ties back into the anime/manga exposure, is what I'd actually consider an unrealistic depiction of transgendered individuals. Distancing myself from writing tropes like Mary Sue, when encountering a female with a penis, one of two things tends to happen: Either they're so fucking gorgeous a popular model would look like a bow-wow in comparison or so much attention is put on the penis that you start asking yourself, "Dude, why aren't you just writing a dude?" I'm talking foot-long+ monster cocks and wrecking pussies being their goal in life. And no matter how much they act like a college frat boy, calling them anything but feminine is inviting scorn. Some take it a step further and even rock both sets of genitals as fully functional hermaphrodites, but again, usually hyper-sexualized feminine.

The keen might realize trying peel back the layers on this is what has gotten me in trouble elsewhere. As a hetero male, I'm not really a fan of the penis aside from my own. From the artistic standpoint, I'm not a fan of how some take the work of another and throw a dick on it with no regard for how it might've changed that character's life were she otherwise born a woman. They simply think it's "cool" to do, perhaps due to taboo, strangeness, or impossibility. Others most definitely use media characters to draw in fan appeal. Whether or not they're forthright with the Trap aspect is another matter. There is yet another part of me that wants to recognize a given author as male and too insecure in his sexuality to write a female character, and writing her well, for fear of being called gay. Thus, if they have teh cawk and seek out women, they're still maintaining their hetero manliness behind the pen/keyboard. The rest? Well, maybe it's just a supply and demand thing for the kink/fetish. Whatever the motivation, the fantasy seems very rarely rooted in reality, which has the consequence of creating an unachievable atmosphere for trans-folk not unlike how some might look to early Lara Croft and think she's a bad way to depict women with her huge boobs and tiny waist. I'd say all this probably extends to reverse-traps, too, but my forays into internet kink-dom have me believing the types of female representation far outweigh the male.

Socially, this leads into some confusion of identifying a character as heterosexual, homesexual, and bisexual if sex is ever involved in the plot. I've seen the uber-schlonged Victoria's Secret models claim they're lesbian because they only boink girls, just to get mad when other lesbians refuse them. Some are all about emasculating guys under the premise of homophobia while calling themselves straight. Strange as it may sound, I feel like I wind up happier seeing such characters identifying themselves as bi and playing the field that way while doing their blurring the gender line thing. Funnily enough, some vehemently refuse to interact with others like them--which partially feeds into my earlier suspicion of homophobic males behind the wheel. It just comes off a giant clusterfuck that I do see influencing people and their perceptions of transgendered individuals.

Pragmatically, I would like to believe most people can differentiate fact from fiction, but in seeing people where fantasy is the only reality they've experienced about trans individuals, there may be a risky false acceptance going on. How many of these wind up the originators of violence when they realize reality and the process isn't as pretty as their fetish? Might this confuse some people into thinking they're trans when they're really not as an offshoot of hero worship?

Maybe there's not a whole lot that really can be said since a fair bit of this is all speculative and not everyone here flexes creative muscles, if ever, the same way I do. It just all winds up being very much, "Us vs. Them" in those circles, though. Conversation might be better served in bringing up movies where we see fair attempts to depict the transgendered experience, traps, cross-dressing, and gauge that way. Because like it or not, the media we consume affects us.

All the media you seem to be talking about here is porn.

[Vandalhart]

This is something I find a little WTFy. It pertains to a couple of places I think, but I'll post it here. I've seen it frequently in discussions about transgender rights and education and also with feminism.

For a group of people that want to be treated just like anyone else, there are some that throw labels and immediately discount anything others have to say because they "were privileged" enough to be born as the sex and gender they were supposed to be(not sure if this is offensive or not. it sounds a little odd when I read it back). That doesn't exactly seem like a good way to approach a discussion.

Call me naive, or an idealist, or whatever, but it makes more sense, to me, to just label people as people, whether male, female, transgender, white, black, etc. and just let people live their lives the way that makes them happy. We're all just trying to get through life and not be miserable.

[Eurell]

For a group of people

Some people are assholes. Some people have victim complexes. Some people hate everyone that isn't exactly like them. Cis or trans does not make a difference here.

[FNH]

This is something I find a little WTFy. It pertains to a couple of places I think, but I'll post it here. I've seen it frequently in discussions about transgender rights and education and also with feminism.

For a group of people that want to be treated just like anyone else, there are some that throw labels and immediately discount anything others have to say because they "were privileged" enough to be born as the sex and gender they were supposed to be(not sure if this is offensive or not. it sounds a little odd when I read it back). That doesn't exactly seem like a good way to approach a discussion.

Call me naive, or an idealist, or whatever, but it makes more sense, to me, to just label people as people, whether male, female, transgender, white, black, etc. and just let people live their lives the way that makes them happy. We're all just trying to get through life and not be miserable.

That is how it would work in a perfect world. Unfortunately, humans strive for individualism and that is where the problem lies sometimes. Everyone wants to be an individual but they don't want to be "different".

[Gredival]

That is how it would work in a perfect world. Unfortunately, humans strive for individualism and that is where the problem lies sometimes. Everyone wants to be an individual but they don't want to be "different".

Homer Simpson: All I want is what everyone wants - preferential treatment.

[Vandalhart]

Some people are assholes. Some people have victim complexes. Some people hate everyone that isn't exactly like them. Cis or trans does not make a difference here.

Oh I completely agree. I didn't mean to single out a specific group, everyone is capable of doing it and they most assuredly do.
My typical stance is: "People are the worst, fuck people".

[Aksannyi]

The thing about privilege, is that often people with it don't see it. They see that the world is good, and things are good - because that's the world they experience. So to say "I don't see color," is ignorant, because people of color recognize that their lot in life is more difficult, and that they will have to work harder to earn respect from the police, their bosses, their colleagues, the media, etc. It's the same for women, trans people, homosexual people, etc.

Now the people who will yell out things like "check your privilege" are generally only trying to get people with privilege to understand - but they're doing it in a rude way. Simply saying that accomplishes nothing, because again, people with privilege don't typically recognize that they are privileged. And of course it doesn't mean that white males (highest tier privilege) won't have personal problems, it just means that despite those problems, that person will have it easier than anyone who isn't a white male with the same problems. So simply saying "I'm colorblind" is actually ignorant - while the idea is, in theory, that you treat people equally, it also says, "I'm a person who doesn't understand the privilege that I have," often resulting in that person holding such fun thoughts as, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just get it done!"

So it does matter.

[Vandalhart]

I have a feeling we're on the edge of a rabbit hole about to fall through, but I'm going to ask this anyways:

What's the solution to that problem?

I'm not sure if I'll be able to adequately put this into words, so bear with me.

There seems to be a very fine line between claiming that people having things easier than an individual does, and that being used as an excuse or a reason to play the victim to why they have a hard lot in life. It also sounds like it's a no win situation. Everyone is fighting for more privilege, but no matter how much you get, you can use it as a reason for not getting what you want when you want, or to dismiss those with more because they are more privileged and don't understand where you're coming from.

Anyways, I'm fine with dropping this because I have a feeling it could just start a completely different discussion that doesn't go here.

[Aksannyi]

The thing is - it's not just playing the victim card, there is actual discrimination against those groups that happens, making it harder for those people to find work or be taken seriously, and people discount it and assume that they're playing the victim when it's actually just the fact that it's a long-standing tradition of systematic oppression.

[Lyall]

My issue with privilege is that it comes very close to minimizing someone else's stresses or issues because they happened to be born into a specific class structure. You're a poor white male born into a shitty neighborhood and you're straight? Suck on your privilege hose, fat cat, you don't know what it's like to be oppressed. It's dangerously similar to "Your ordeals don't matter because of reasons." Sure, privilege exists as a statistical thing, but under a microscope it isn't so cut and dry.

People are goldfish. Our worlds are only as big as they appear to be, and we're pretty dim to what's going on outside of it. Even knowing that there are fishbowls out there with cats trying to eat the people in them and without filters doesn't lessen or diminish or take away from the fact that mine's without food. This is a shitty analogy.

Trans issues are complex, but there's always going to be a contingent of people out there who simplify them. The one that I heard and couldn't argue against was this:

Imagine if tomorrow you are in a horrible plane crash. The wreck annihilates everyone on board, and the only methods of identification are skeletal or tissue related. Science isn't going to give a flying fuck about your blog, your identity or your personal feelings. You're going to have a combination of chromosomes, and that's that.

...it's a direct and icy way of looking at it, but I couldn't find a counterpoint.

[Vandalhart]

The thing is - it's not just playing the victim card, there is actual discrimination against those groups that happens, making it harder for those people to find work or be taken seriously, and people discount it and assume that they're playing the victim when it's actually just the fact that it's a long-standing tradition of systematic oppression.

I absolutely believe there are situations where people are being discriminated against and that should be stopped. The problem with that, is that it's not always easily provable. It just seems like it creates situations where people can justify them not getting where or what want because of racism, or sexism, or other bigotry.

I mean does that sound crazy?

My issue with privilege is that it comes very close to minimizing someone else's stresses or issues because they happened to be born into a specific class structure. You're a poor white male born into a shitty neighborhood and you're straight? Suck on your privilege hose, fat cat, you don't know what it's like to be oppressed. It's dangerously similar to "Your ordeals don't matter because of reasons." Sure, privilege exists as a statistical thing, but under a microscope it isn't so cut and dry.

People are goldfish. Our worlds are only as big as they appear to be, and we're pretty dim to what's going on outside of it. Even knowing that there are fishbowls out there with cats trying to eat the people in them and without filters doesn't lessen or diminish or take away from the fact that mine's without food. This is a shitty analogy.

Trans issues are complex, but there's always going to be a contingent of people out there who simplify them. The one that I heard and couldn't argue against was this:

Imagine if tomorrow you are in a horrible plane crash. The wreck annihilates everyone on board, and the only methods of identification are skeletal or tissue related. Science isn't going to give a flying fuck about your blog, your identity or your personal feelings. You're going to have a combination of chromosomes, and that's that.

...it's a direct and icy way of looking at it, but I couldn't find a counterpoint.

I don't know how deep they'd have to go into DNA to identify bodies. That being said, even the details of your personal DNA wouldn't matter. It would just be a link to a database with your information in it. That would also have any gender information stored. At least that's what I think.

[Tyrath]

My issue with privilege is that generally it's racist... My girlfriend is white but comes from poor background. She grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and was *gasp* bullied and discriminated against because she was white. She recently had a class in college taught by a black woman who basically told her that couldn't have happened to her because she was born with white privilege. What privilege exactly? In her childhood she didn't get any of that privilege because of where she lived.

I'm not white and it irks me when white people tell me that they can't be discriminated against. It's basically another way for a white person to tell me how privileged they are

[Aksannyi]

Oh I definitely believe white people can be discriminated against (I have experienced that on at least one occasion), but it's not nearly as large in scope as discrimination against other marginalized groups. The problem is, like you've outlined, when people refuse to listen to someone who had a similar background or experience and look only at color, which is the exact problem in reverse.

So I think there's definitely a time and place where too much colorblindness is bad, but so is too much acknowledgement of privilege and refusal to see beyond stereotypes. On a larger scale, though, privilege is definitely a thing. (Also, I'd argue that your girlfriend would probably still have an easier time getting and keeping a job because of her skin color, not being stopped by police on random suspicion of mischief, etc., so privilege still somewhat applies.)

[Lyall]

I don't know how deep they'd have to go into DNA to identify bodies. That being said, even the details of your personal DNA wouldn't matter. It would just be a link to a database with your information in it. That would also have any gender information stored. At least that's what I think.

And I agree with you. His point was that everything after chromosomes is an asterisk that WE put there. He offered the same idea but supplanted it with "Fine, the planet flash freezes. In ten thousand years alien life finds us. Do you think they're going to differentiate between what data says you are versus what you felt?"

Then again, none of us were anywhere near educated enough to discuss philosophy like that. Mine's based on gut feelings, too.