Finally someone said it

I've summoned forces that can destroy me but I regret nothing.

Good god. What have we done? Rarely do mortals see the err of their ways before the gods descend upon them to pass judgement. May we all live through the inevitable shitstorm of words so that we may warn others not to make the same mistake.

Oh man. What a coincidence. I was actually reading the comments and didn’t see the notification. I read the summons here. So I guess it was meant to be. I’ll try to be gentle.

We THINK of a “sex change” in binary terms, but the concept isn’t binary because medically- there is not such thing as a sexual change. It is a “gender reassignment surgery” at most- but really- it’s not even that. “Top surgery” like adding or removing visible breasts, and “bottom surgery”, sculpting genitals- some people don’t want either, some don’t want both. Some trans people want to be a “man” or a “woman” and that’s their self image, they just want who they are to match who they see themselves as. Bald men and women often wear wigs or get transplants- but you’ll see less bald women traditionally walking around bald than men, so there is gender st play there too- but is not wanting to be bald or look bald a reinforcement of binary gender..? Debatable but I’d say in general it has more to do with being seen as and seeing yourself as the way you’d like to be or feel most accepted as.

So I mean- wrapping up, what we call a “sex change” usually isn’t. Technically isn’t. You may or may not take hormones, and if you do take hormones, it is to achieve certain primary or secondary characteristics of a biological sex. How many sexes or genders exist and what they are isn’t really relevant- you’re just trying to have the traits that you see belonging to the gender you identify as- whatever it is. In fact- you can be trans and believe there are only two genders, or believe gender doesn’t really exist, or believe it does but there ar more than 2. That’s what a “construct” is- and why gender identity is a construct. It’s whatever we define it as. For many trans people- they are fine with a binary gender system, but they believe that trans people should be classified in that construct as the gender they identify as. For many other trans people- they believe the construct doesn’t work and should be less rigid, since it obviously cannot classify all the existing identities.

My bowling ball example:
You have a system. Everything is either an apple or an orange. You see a red bowling ball. Now- that obviously isn’t an apple or an orange. But you can only call it an apple or an orange. If you’re trying to make apple juice, you need to find an apple. Would you be fine to drink it if someone crushed up the red bowling ball and mixed it with water and called it apple juice? The system of classification has failed because we can only call it an apple or a bowling ball. Chances are if someone says they want a “woman” as a partner- they’re thinking she will have breasts if some sort, maybe be able to have a baby, and most likely a vagina. But what do you do if it’s a chromosomal woman, who has had surgery and has a penis and a beard? Genetically she is still a woman right? So if you sick her dick- that isn’t homosexual because biologically she is a different sex? Logically that makes sense. But most guys probably do not want to suck their dates penis if they..

.. chose a “woman” no? Not having tits doesn’t make you a man though. Lots of women are flat. Some are AAA cups or lower. Not being able to carry a baby doesn’t make a woman a man. So on their own or even in combination- these traits don’t really give us a very good idea of what we are dealing with- which defeats the entire purpose of classification because the point of classifying things is to make sorting them simpler. Wether you have a penis or vagina alone doesn’t settle it either does it? Our chromosomal woman with a penis is not socially or even generally legally considered the same as a “man.” A lot of people would be upset to find out a person they’d dated and made love to and couldn’t otherwise tell- was actually not “born the gender” that the partner thought they were right? And most guys, upon seeing a young lady naked, penis erect between her thighs- might pause at that point and not say: “well... she’s a woman. I’m swallowing this load.”

So there is obviously much more that factors into “gender” and “gender identity” than just if you can make babies or what is between your legs or how hairy you are. Body and facial hair is common in women- of women didn’t pluck and shave and wax- many would be hairier than the men they date. But the genera image we have as a society is that body hair is for men. A woman with a beard is generally seen as unattractive. The idea that a woman has a smaller frame than a man, less pronounced jaw, is less muscular, etc etc. and then there is behavior of course. Is it “manly” for a woman to be in charge? Not so long ago, it was widely considered so because power and ambition of the sort were solely in the gender identity of men. Women who swore were seen as “mannish” or “unladylike.” Driving cars, riding horses anyway but side saddle- these were “for men.” So we can see that gender is a construct because our definition of what makes a “man” and what makes a “woman” change over time.

It’s ok to be confused. It’s confusing. I mean- we look back and laugh at old times folks who were like “OH MY WORD, that... is that a woman... driving?” Not so many generations back women were banned from skiing in professional sports and discouraged in general because DOCTORS believed that if they hit a jump, their uterus could fall out. No BS. look it up. So we laugh at them, how could they be so foolish and backwards? But... someday it’s very likely that people will laugh at us. “What do you mean? In the 2000’s they all lost their minds over which bathroom you used?” “Wait? Last century they thought that wearing a dress or wanting to have breasts was a sign of mental illness?” “Hold on- people back then thought that someone would t make a good leader just because they were born with different genitals than the ones they have now...?” “Hold on... you’re saying that they used to worry about who they slept with because sleeping with the ‘wrong’ person was ‘gay’? Why didn’t they just..

.. sleep with who they wanted? Did they not realize that if they were attracted to the person and WANTED to sleep with them fore they found out their chromosomes- they still were attracted to a member of the same sex anyway, so it is no less ‘gay’ at that point to not sleep with them? What was so bad about being ‘gay’ anyway’” and so on.

So we can perhaps have empathy for those “silly past people” who couldn’t wrap their minds around ideas that to us, seem so simple. The truth is that it’s simple to us because we grew up in a world where it isn’t so abnormal that a woman could be the fastest runner in class; or kids growing up today who will largely live in a world where gay marriage is legal as opposed to those growing up 40+ years ago when just being gay was illegal most places.

It’s all very confusing and a big part of that confusion is that we can’t help but try to fit everything into this neat little box. We are used to a world of apples and oranges and when a red bowling ball shows up- we don’t have words for it. It doesn’t fit what we understand of how the world works. The only way it can make sense if if we give up trying to call everything an apple or an orange, and call things what they are. The problem of course is that such ideas are so deeply and widely ingrained in us and in society, and completely destroying ones world view and budding a new one is easier said than done most of the time. Our own self identity is wrapped up in this. Like I said up there- sucking an F>M trans persons penis- logically is not gay. But- even as open minded and logical as I am... I can’t see myself doing that. Hell- I’d be more likely to sleep with an M>F trans person I thought was “hot” than a F>M that was an actual woman but looked like a man to me.

And now we know. (You just scrolled down to read this comment)

Many people likely feel the same, whatever your sexuality and identity is- a “cis Herero woman” do you want a genetic male with a vagina who “looks like a woman” or a genetic female with a penis that looks like a man? By default an attraction to a person of the opposite biological sex- regardless of how they look- is in the definition of homosexuality, but having sex with a person who is genetically the opposite sex from you- is also literally homosexual. So which is it? Is it homosexual to sleep with any trans person? If it is- then biological sex isn’t the deciding factor in homosexuality is it? If biological sex is all that matters, a man taking the D from a F>M transsexual couldn’t be gay could it?

Confused? No worries. Our system isn’t very good. It just can’t deal with the red bowling ball in any elegant way. A system exists either for a functional purpose, or as a tool of control or discrimination. Our system as it is right now- you can’t use just “man” or “woman” to get most any meaningful information about how someone behaves or looks or wether you can mate with them and make babies or even what is between their legs. It doesn’t reflect reality. It didn’t actually reflect reality in nature before as there are more chromosome combinations in humans than XX or XY, and there are hermaphrodites and all sorts of mutations. But they were rare enough and society was rigid enough that the system mostly worked most of the time for most people. That’s becoming less the case.

Tl:dr- gender is like apple vs windows. Apple is a very restrictive system. You don’t have many options, but because of that- it’s stable. There’s only one way to do most things. Everyone knows what is going on. Very little confusion of complication. Windows- you’re free to do what you want. ANYTHING, whatever suits you for whatever reason, even if it makes no sense to anyone else or would be seen as foolish. And well.... most people are apple or windows- but there is Linux and Unix and more- flavors of things like Linux distros that are similar but not the same, android OS isn’t windows OS and so on. And well- I’m society people can either be free to make choices, even ones we don’t get or think are foolish- or we can lock it all down like apple. If people have choices, we will be confused, we may have compatibility issues. But the idea of freedom would have us all just sort of deal with it in the name of freedom.

The straightest path to no longer being confused is to just give up traditional ideas of gender and gender roles and gender traits and sexuality. Just go with what you like and let others do the same. As my example of “which type of transsexual would you sleep with” we saw that often it isn’t even the actual biological sex of a person that we are attracted to- it is all the cues we have been conditioned to believe belong to the sex we think we are supposed to want. If it became fashionable for women to grow beards or wear fake beards and stuck- in only a generation or less we’d look at “lumberjack manly men” and think they kinda looked like sexy ladies. Pink was a men’s color because red was a men’s color. It didn’t take much for us to decide pink was “for girls” and run with that to where now the identity of the gender and the color are linked in most peoples minds. It can go that way for anything. It’s whatever we decide to make “normal.”

@hinetbumblebee- lol. Sorry. My phone kept... it was acting all funny. So that took me awhile because I had to keep rebooting to finish. But I see you there.

Read the whole comment. Still makes 0 sense, logically. You explained it well, but we were pointing out logical fallacies in the whole concept, which are still there, but thanks anyways I suppose.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t really read all of @guest_ comments but since I am a trans person not on the binary but still experiencing gender dysphoria I can at least explain what I know and how it works for me. So there’s different ways to classify yourself if you are trans. There’s the binary trans people who usually experience gender dysphoria (similar to body dysphoria but includes a bit more). These are usually the people who go for gender reassignment surgery although not all of them do for different reasons. Then there are those outside of the binary who can sometimes skip hormones and surgery to feel like themselves. Since non-binary people usually have to rethink the concept of gender the most they are more likely to defend the “abolish gender” position and i think the person in this post are of this variety. But! There has been a long history of connecting gender to sex so if you want to transition socially and mentally, doing so physically can usually help...

There are different theories to why being trans is a thing. One is trans medicalism which if you’ve barely scraped the surface this concept might be the easiest to understand. This is basically the girl brain/ boy brain thing. The idea that trans peoples bodies work slightly differently from cis peoples and that’s why they experience gender dysphoria. There’s also performatism, the idea that gender is entirely a social construct. This idea supports the breaking of gender norms more and includes those who don’t experience gender dysphoria but at the same time creates the problem of “then there’s no reason to medically transition so why do people want to do it?”

The way I see it (my viewpoint so don’t apply this to everyone) is that gender is a social construct but sex isn’t. And there are medical reason as to why someone might feel more comfortable being another sex. Yes I know we can’t change chromosomes but there are 6 combinations of the 23rd “pair” that we know of currently and also in normal life what specific chromosomes never really comes up anything so whatever. Since gender and sex are separated but also heavily culturally connected there’s just so many factors at play that every trans persons journey with their gender is going to be different. Hell, every cis persons journey will differ.

If you’d prefer someone more coherent talking about this i would recommend looking up contrapoints and shonalika is YouTube since they have both made excellent points. If you want a more surface level introduction by a cis man you can look up Philosophy tube. (I don’t mean that in a bad way i love him with my entire heart.)