Was just casually checking out some videos from this voice coach lady… when suddenly I find out she’s trans too! Kinda makes me feel inspired, with progress like that.
She was assigned male at birth, but whether she was born a man or a woman or neither is something only she can say.
The point being, being assigned male doesn’t mean she was ever a man. It means people assumed she was.
Both “biological sex” and “legal gender” are considerably more nebulous than you’re assuming.
Let’s say you define “biological sex” by genotype, seems unambiguous enough, right? It’s a pretty good bet someone is 46,XX or 46,XY based on sex assigned at birth, but generally people don’t actually know for sure.
Likewise, in many jurisdictions, you don’t have a legal gender, you have a collection of gender markers. Ironically, trans people are often the only people who actually have an explicit declaration of their gender by a court or other legal mechanism. For cis people, the fact that it’s a fractured mess generally doesn’t matter.
It’s true that I’m only familiar with two country’s legal systems (and both are common law jurisdictions), but as I understand it, your “legal gender” in the UK is only well-defined if you acquire a GRC, which is something only trans people do, and plain old doesn’t exist in the US. (To be fair, I imagine if you brought a discrimination case on the basis of gender in the UK your gender might be established as a result, but among the long list of things I am not is an attorney (anywhere, never mind in one of the UK’s multiple legal systems).)
Amusing, the letter that comes with the GRC asserts that it should suffice to establish your gender for any interested entities, which is decidedly false overseas.
So, this take is based entirely on thinking that a person is their body, rather than their brain. Cut off a person’s arm, and they’re still the same person. Cut out part of someone’s brain and they’re not.
Some people have poor eyesight, and we have ways to fix that. Some people have curved spines, and we have ways to fix that. Some peoples’ bodies develop the wrong genitals, which leads to developing with the wrong hormones, and we have ways to fix that.
People like BaroqueInMind are body focused: they think the person is what they can visibly see, not who they are inside, and I think that’s just the result of a society that stigmatizes caring about mental health, but also a limitation of the human experience: we can’t tell what’s going on inside someone’s mind, all we can see is how they present on the outside, and most people don’t have the tools required to think about people any other way.
To break it down though, if you took me and a friend, and put our brains in each-other’s bodies, which one would be me? My old body with my friend’s brain, or my friend’s body with my brain? To me, I am my mind, and to people like BaroqueInMind, I am my body. It should be easy to convince them otherwise, but people can be very stubborn when their beliefs are challenged.
Why are you entering the LGBTQ community and challenging a queer person? Your post is six words long. This doesn’t garner a discussion. This shows no understanding of what modern science thinks. You’re responding to everyone asserting a statement which is frequently used by transphobic individuals. Why are you here? What do you wish to accomplish?
I wasn’t meaning to challenge anyone, I simply wanted to put in my understanding of how things work and try and better understand the life of a trans person. So I’m sorry if it came across as that as it was very much not intended, but if it’s transphobic then prove it and ban me for it, because I am not transphobic of all things…
In addition I was looking to maybe be educated rather than yelled at by you. But I guess fuck me for trying to learn right?
I want to believe that you truly want to learn. I am writing this comment under the assumption you’d like to learn effectively and didn’t mean any harm with your initial comment(s)
If you’re entering into discussion on a topic you’d like to learn about, it may be more beneficial to you, and less negative for others, if you ask questions instead of posing statements.
The mod isn’t trying to tell you that you’re transphobic - they’re just trying to tell you/give you a nudge that the thing you said is a very, very common transphobic piece of rhetoric.
As for the stern response in general - life as a trans person (or any member of the LGBTQ+ community, for that matter) at the moment is fucking scary. Several countries that were making huge steps toward better rights and equality and healthcare, are regressing at astonishing rates, and its putting our lives in danger.
Rhetoric along the lines of the sentiment you expressed is part of the general arsenal of the people spearheading action against LGBTQ+ folks’ existences, and when we start seeing it entering our community/ies, it’s so important to stamp that shit out fast, for one because we want the communities to feel safe, so swift, stern action must be taken, but also because if its allowed to take root in any way, that poses genuine threat to people’s lives.
I hope you find this constructive and educational, and that it helps avoid future accidents 😊
If you’re looking to be educated, don’t make assertions about someone else’s life - instead, ask questions.
