cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46294831
Gender identity among adolescents initiating hormone therapy is “highly stable,” the authors write.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46294831
Gender identity among adolescents initiating hormone therapy is “highly stable,” the authors write.
Ask yourself carefully, what actually led you to this conclusion? There’s a lot of fear mongering and misinformation about trans surgeries. There’s part of folks that just simply want to believe it must be too good to be true, that there has to be some sort of horrible Faustian cost for crossing what seems like such an extreme line.
Like, I’ve actually met cis people who believe that getting SRS means you can never orgasm again. As if a complete lack of sexual pleasure is the terrible cost every trans person must pay if they want the right parts.
It’s bollocks. Are there complications? Sure. Any surgery has them. But if you really interrogate your feelings on this, you’ll find that your feelings are not actually based on a real informed assessment of the actual surgical risks. More likely, your feelings have been shaped by a combination of deliberate propaganda and some deep sense that there simply “must” be some terrible price people have to pay for such a transformative surgery. Part of your brain thinks there simply has to be a terrible downside for crossing such a massive social line.
I hear you, but I really don’t think that’s it. And yes, I really don’t know the complications, I’m only surmising based on what I know about surgery, and about the way humans can get permanently damaged and can heal. I’ve had other surgeries and it’s very not fun, and there are always scars, limitations on recovery, and prolonged issues, and then recurrences of more issues as I get older. Srs seems like there’s a lot of complicated rearrangements and lots to go wrong. I really wish there was an easy foolproof way for people to change their genitalia if they wanted, but I simple don’t have the faith in our medical capabilities. I really don’t think I have have any social line about changing gender. People should be free to do whatever they want if it doesn’t hurt anyone else. I was brought up with the notion that there shouldn’t be considered any differences between sexes. Wear a dress, play with trucks - it doesn’t matter what’s between your legs. Being gay was normalized, and any fashion sense was independent of sex. Of course I realize society hasn’t moved that far, and I see how just buying into conservative sexual prejudice but changing your gender is basically the same thing, and maybe easier. But to me it’s the wrong fight / wrong direction. And so unnecessary surgery (from that perspective) seems really silly. But I truely get that I don’t understand what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong body sex.
It’s only unnecessary if you view trans people as only transitioning gender, not sex.
I very much identify with the latter language. I didn’t just change my gender. I fundamentally altered my sex. If it were all about gender, then yes, changing your presentation would be all that’s needed. And for some trans folks, it is just about altering gender. The term “transsexual” fell out of favor for a variety of reasons, but we did lose something when we moved away from it. Many trans people want to and actually do change their sex.
When I fill out a form and put down my sex, I list female. My body is entirely estrogen-dominated. My body metabolizes medication like a cis woman. I have female external anatomy. If I had been born with an identical (age appropriate) version of the body I have now? I would have been assigned female at birth. This is why I say I changed my sex, not just my gender. When defining sex, bigots choose to obsess over chromosomes because that’s one thing medical science can’t change. If tomorrow we figured out how to change chromosomes, bigots would suddenly decide something else defines someone’s “true sex.” If I got a uterine transplant and gave birth to a kid, bigots would say, “doesn’t matter, only reproductive capacity at birth matters. Because reasons.”
Some (perhaps most) trans people have a deep need to fundamentally change their sex. It’s not just about gender. It’s about having a body with the correct sex. For me, the old “born in the wrong body” narrative is quite descriptive.
Maybe you need to change your framework. Don’t focus too much on the social stuff. Instead imagine how you would feel if you woke up in an opposite-sex body tomorrow. God switches your sex overnight and just leaves you to deal with it. How would you react to that? If you think you would just be OK with it and say, “well, doesn’t matter what’s between your legs, guess I’m a man/woman now!”…well that contradicts the lived experience of most every trans person out there. Odds are if that happened to you, you would be so distraught by the fact that you would quickly begin a medical transition process of your own. You might not survive long enough to even begin it.
I can’t know exactly how your kid views things. But if they’re interested in genital surgery, odds are they lean into more of the “changing sex” than “just changing gender” camp.
Trans people do not seek medical care simply because it helps us fit into a social role better. For many of us, our bodies are simply the wrong sex, and we are fixing that. Much of the confusion around this disappears when you realize trans people are just trying to fix their sex. This need would still exist even if we lived in a completely androgynous society totally free of gender.
Thanks. I really appreciate your perspective.