A big reason that drove me was that I have a micropenis.
Fake. There are no āreasons to drive someoneā other than their internal gender, this sounds like something a cis person someone who thinks being trans is a choice would say.
Edit: For clarity, Iām not speculating on whether or not the OP in the post is trans or cis, Iām saying it doesnāt sound like a real story because it sounds inauthentic to the trans experience. A trans person could easily think this up, like anyone can make up a story that is close to their experiences, but since it isnāt real it doesnāt really pass scrutiny.
Thatās such reddit logic. You assume everyone has a perfect understanding of themselves, but people have a lot of different things internally that drive them and theyāre not always aware of it. When I was young I was interested in other men, and frankly, quite disgusted by it. Itās the habitat I was raised in and if youād asked me back then, Iād have told you it was because I was a sinner. The real reason as I came to discover was indeed that Iām just gay. It took a lot of steps and discovery to get there. Iām not saying this is real, Iām just pointing out that just because your logic is correct does not mean that this person if they are real has made enough discoveries about themselves to be strictly logical.
You assume everyone has a perfect understanding of themselves
The āunderstandingā of gender is appreciating how gender is socially constructed. That requires observation of society, hence revealing of new information, hence a journey of understanding.
Your own gender is an experience, one that is even present (although not labelled) without the social norms. Itās what you experience as what you want to be and do. It would exist without the social construction of gender. You could prefer certain colours and certain toys regardless of what society says is ārightā or āwrongā for your external genitalia and designation on a birth certificate. I have known what society thinks about gender is not important to me since I first saw gender norms in the real world. I found the whole concept ridiculous. Iāve known that I am treated as male for having a penis, but am actually not interested in gender, since before I discovered terms like non-binary.
Someone saying that āyou need to watch Gordon Ramsay says about cooking before you know what food you likeā is ridiculous. Youāve had experiences and you prefer some of them without Gordon Ramsay. He doesnāt even need to exist.
Someone saying āyou realise your gender preferences by being mocked for your micropenisā is being similarly ridiculous. Gender does not equate to external genitalia.
Itās not a āperfect understandingā. Itās āhaving experiencesā, which everyone does.
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When I was young I was interested in other men, and frankly, quite disgusted by it. Itās the habitat I was raised in and if youād asked me back then, Iād have told you it was because I was a sinner. The real reason as I came to discover was indeed that Iām just gay. It took a lot of steps and discovery to get there.
You did have an understanding of yourself. That was scared out of you by threats. You didnāt discover that you were gay - you just knew it, because it was a feature of your experience - you discovered that other people were wrong when they told you that was disgusting.
Iām human, and Iām speaking on the issues of self discovery, a progress path we can all share as people learning who they are, so maybe you shouldnāt assume Iām stepping where I have no ground.
As for being told something made me gay, I have been. Iāve been told it was sexual assault (that did not occur) when I was young. Iāve been told it was the media and my friends. Iāve had those experiences, and yes, I know that weāre born that way now but I did not always have the space to make that discovery. I lived a life where I thought there had to be a reason because I thought it was a negative quality in myself. I hated it because I grew up around others who hated it. Insults behind closed doors, threats of violence and hate, and I agree with you that if they believed it was the reason they discovered their identity, they have more to learn. That does not mean they have learned it.
Wait, are you saying people would lie on 4chan???
But seriously, yeah, people donāt seem to realize that people tend to want to pick the path of least resistance. If someone really is trans I have to believe itās because who they are is so at odds with the expectations of society.
Edit: added a qualification because I am not trans
Exactly. Coming to terms with being trans, when trans people have been seen as nothing but the butt of far too many jokes in damn near all exposure most of us had growing up, is a difficult process rife with cognitive dissonance and defense mechanisms. No one wants to be trans, they just want to be their gender and have to be trans to get that.
two of my trans women friends, when getting their sperm frozen before starting hormones, found out they just have XX chromosomes and never had working sperm in the first place
i think we underestimate how many intersex people there are
Yup. My belief is that we are likely to eventually combine the categories of transgender and differences in sexual development (formerly known as intersex) as we discover more about itās biological origins. The vast majority of people have never been karyotyped and have no idea what their chromosomes are.
Idk 4chan has a notoriously toxic and strange trans community. Giving āreasonsā is exactly the sort of thing Iād expect of them
Thatās a good point. I havenāt browsed 4chan since way before they had any LGBT community/rep visible on it, I donāt know what kind of convoluted views they have. Let me guess, some of them unironcally identify as āagpā donāt they?
Thereās a whole lot of blanchardianism (agp vs hsts). Quite a bit of homophobia, itās actually a lot straighter than youād probably expect. A lot of how they act is surprisingly old school, like back in the day when you werenāt allowed to transition unless therapists thought you couldnāt live a normal life as your assigned sex old school. And all this with the characteristic 4chan edgy bs. Also theyāre anti supportive, like full on terf forum level of critical of trans peopleās appearance.
I havenāt been but Iāve learned to pick up the signs by seeing the shit trans people who come from 4chan say.
i have spent and still spend lots of time in this places and yes, they do. they desperately want to be hsts and hate themselves for being agp and not being trutrans enough. lots of reppers too (trans people that know theyāre trans but repress it out of self hatred). thereās lots of lore
This very well may be fake, but itās also entirely possible to identify as trans for any number of reasons. You might say such a person is ānot reallyā trans but, supposing that is true, thereās no contradiction between that and some person who doesnāt have such ideological convictions having a thought process like you see in this image and acting on it.
That said, I agree that itās probably fake, though Iām not as confident that the poster is a cis impersonator.
You might say such a person is ānot reallyā trans
Excuse you, I would never tell someone they are not really trans. If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someoneās gender.
Iām somebody who absolutely does think I am trans purely by life circumstances, but I also recognize that the vast majority of trans people arenāt. Like I am incredibly glad that I transitioned and am now living life mostly stealth as a woman, years down the line, but Iām almost positive that if I wasnāt put through literal hell as a child (in the very cruel and specific ways that I was) I wouldnāt have even thought to have transitioned as a young adult. Perhaps I am completely incorrect in my assumptions about myself, and I would have turned out this way no matter what, but I find it hard to believe that if I wasnāt relentlessly bullied, harassed, beaten, and rejected by my peers as a child, that I would be sitting here now as a woman. I feel like I literally became a woman by sheer force of will in order to save my life, because I literally could not continue as the broken husk of a āmanā I was at 21, and by some miracle it worked. But maybe Iām just delusional, idk
If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someoneās gender.
I think itās worthwhile remaining open to this but not really valuable to trans people to like make it part of activism or anything. There are enough instances of people saying things like their sexuality has completely shifted for me to be open to the idea that what gender weāre attracted to can change. I donāt think we know enough about being trans to be certain one way or another, trans people however have a very understandable defensive reaction to this because we donāt want it to be weaponised against us as āfakeā or whatever.
Weāre talking about an imagined person whose internality we have access to. If you acknowledge that, within the assumptions of your own ideology, there could be people that are ālikely not transā, that means essentially that there is an array of different possible stipulated people and some of them are trans, but most of them arenāt. Another way to put it is that, if you said you were ā80% sureā that someone wasnāt trans that means, depending on certain unknown variables that actually determine the truth of that guess, there are 20 possible worlds where they are trans and 80 where they arenāt.
All this to say, based on what you expressed ideologically originally and even in your refutation, it is consistent to stipulate a self-identified trans person who you identify as not trans, even if you would never tell a person that in real life (out of respect, because it involves information you canāt access, etc.). Does that make sense? I feel like I got a little bogged down in adjectives, but I felt obliged to explain myself further given the āExcuse youā.
