Does transsexuality entrench gender stereotypes?

Gender dysphoria is not "wanting to do other gender stereotype things".

Your argument is based on a fallacy. Gender dysphoria is experiencing dissatisfaction, bordering on despair, in ones birth-assigned gender.

Literally nothing about this demonstrates any engagement with the issue, a cursory google search does not invalidate trans men and womens experiences nor prove your point.

I realise that, but in practice, the things people cite as symptoms of their gender dysphoria often are simply gender expression, not sex.



How do we have a birth-assigned gender? I thought we were assigned sex, not gender, at birth?

And if it is despair with gender not sex, then that is easy to fix. Gender is not a physical attribute and changing it does not require surgery.



I'm not trying to invalidate trans people's experience, I'm asking whether some aspects of the expression of transsexuality tend to entrench gender stereotypes.

For example, if someone wants sex reassignment surgery, why do they have to "live as a woman" or "pass as a woman" for a period of time before the NHS signs off on it? That is entrenching gender stereotypes about what a "woman" does

You are explicitly trying to invalidate trans peoples experiences

Sex is not independent of gender

and besides that, "gender assignment" is the term used by the scientific and medical communities

Many intersex people

This is your arguments logical conclusion if you consider them completely independent.

I agree.

This is one of my issues with some children claiming a desire for gender reassignment, as they are easily influenced by what they see at their age.

I am doing nothing of the sort. I am asking questions. Questions that are entirely natural to ask. Are we not allowed to even discuss this issue without being accused of "invalidating" people?

Yes it is. In fact, as a matter of both law and medical science, sex is taken to refer to a person's genetic and biological sexual characteristics (primary sexual organs, XX/XY gene expression) and gender is taken to refer to a basket of socially-constructed behaviours that are ordinarily attached to, and expected of, members of a certain sex.



Actually, I don't think it is. I think the term used is 'sex assignment'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment



We are not discussing intersex people and that is not the issue here. The issue is the degree to which transsexual people are told by doctors they must conform to certain gender stereotypes in order to be permitted sex reassignment.

How is it consistent with a modern understanding of gender to require someone seeking sex reassignment surgery to "live/pass as a woman" when what they mean by that is to engage in socially-prescribed normative gender behaviours that have no basis in biology?



If you do not believe sex and gender are independent, what are you saying is the link between sex and gender? What necessary link is there between the female sex, and the group of behaviours that constitute the gender 'woman'?

It's impossible to argue for that link without descending into stereotypes

Indeed. I sometimes wonder whether the need for sex reassignment surgery is actually just a symptom of rigid gender roles within society.

If there was greater fluidity in gender expression, and people felt more comfortable to express themselves as they please rather than comporting themselves with the socially-expected stereotype, then a person who feels they want to engage in particular behaviours hitherto associated with a particular gender would not feel the need to make their primary sexual organs match the traditional sex of their preferred gender.

I would hope we could all agree that surgery should be an absolute last resort. Not banned, but it should be the last thing that is tried.

With children particularly, it's often a phase they grow out of. Funnily enough, my younger brother loved dressing in our sister's dresses and generally behaving in feminine ways when he was quite young (around 5). He just grew out of it. These days, he might well have been put into some kind of gender reassignment programme and had the surgery

And herein you demonstrate your true nature - the paternalistic handing down of designations to others with no regard for their own identification and preferences, even discounting the fact that wikipedia is not a suitable resource for medical terminology since it's largely curated by people like you who are not in fact specialists in the field but simply "fact" accumulators.

Intersex individuals, genderqueer individuals, and trans individuals are groups which have huge overlaps in their self-identification, and it is extremely ignorant to not only not consider this but to outright reject it as valid. Gender may be performative but the social construct exists and you are doing nothing to tear this down. The medical communities requirement to "live" as a given gender is considered contentious to a large degree, and the necessity to excessively perform to gender stereotypes viewed negatively by most trans people. However they are being railroaded into doing so by the cis doctors who will not allow them to continue their transition if they do not do so.

It is unbelievably ignorant to "pin" gender stereotyping on trans men and women, as if they are the cause for these extremely toxic concepts and the long entrenched cis patriarchy is not. Trans people are not asked if they want to live a stereotype - it is demanded of them, lest their transition be taken away - an idea which is horrifying to anyone who thinks of trans men and women as humans, people, and not simply abstract ideas.

Furthermore neither law nor science is absolute or complete, and by their fundamental nature both fields are ever evolving and to use "law and science" as a defence for your semantic Sophistry is absurd. "Retard" was the "legal and medical" term some 50 years ago, it's well established this is an incorrect way to refer to people with developmental disorders. Plate tectonics were not established until some 60 years ago. Women were legally barred from voting some 100 years ago. If you can't grasp the unbelievable ignorance in throwing this out as a defence, you are completely unqualified to debate anything whatsoever.

If someone wishes to live as another gender then it is not your place to determine whether they are "allowed" to wish to engage in behaviours long associated with that gender or indeed undergo surgery to alter their physical form to alleviate dysphoria. Your place is merely to accept them unconditionally as another human.

even discounting the fact that wikipedia is not a suitable resource for medical terminology

Indeed. I sometimes wonder whether the need for sex reassignment surgery is actually just a symptom of rigid gender roles within society.

If there was greater fluidity in gender expression, and people felt more comfortable to express themselves as they please rather than comporting themselves with the socially-expected stereotype, then a person who feels they want to engage in particular behaviours hitherto associated with a particular gender would not feel the need to make their primary sexual organs match the traditional sex of their preferred gender.

I would hope we could all agree that surgery should be an absolute last resort. Not banned, but it should be the last thing that is tried.

With children particularly, it's often a phase they grow out of. Funnily enough, my younger brother loved dressing in our sister's dresses and generally behaving in feminine ways when he was quite young (around 5). He just grew out of it, he's a perfectly well-adjusted guy (rugby player, into mountain climbing, works in law enforcement) with a masculine temperament. These days, he might well have been put into some kind of gender reassignment programme and had the surgery.

Kids should be allowed to be kids, I really question the need to lock them into something that is irreversible.

I realise that, but in practice, the things people cite as symptoms of their gender dysphoria often are simply gender expression, not sex.



How do we have a birth-assigned gender? I thought we were assigned sex, not gender, at birth?

And if it is despair with gender not sex, then that is easy to fix. Gender is not a physical attribute and changing it does not require surgery.



I'm not trying to invalidate trans people's experience, I'm asking whether some aspects of the expression of transsexuality tend to entrench gender stereotypes.

For example, if someone wants sex reassignment surgery, why do they have to "live as a woman" or "pass as a woman" for a period of time before the NHS signs off on it? That is entrenching gender stereotypes about what a "woman" does

x

If you can't grasp the unbelievable ignorance in throwing this out as a defence, you are completely unqualified to debate anything whatsoever.

herein you demonstrate your true nature

It is unbelievably ignorant

extremely ignorant

Furthermore neither law nor science is absolute or complete, and by their fundamental nature both fields are ever evolving and to use "law and science" as a defence for your semantic Sophistry is absurd. "Retard" was the "legal and medical" term some 50 years ago, it's well established this is an incorrect way to refer to people with developmental disorders. Plate tectonics were not established until some 60 years ago. Women were legally barred from voting some 100 years ago. If you can't grasp the unbelievable ignorance in throwing this out as a defence, you are completely unqualified to debate anything whatsoever.

That whole argument is horribly flawed, just because things that were once considered insane or crazy are not considered common sense and common decency does not mean that your point is any more valid.


If someone wishes to live as another gender then it is not your place to determine whether they are "allowed" to wish to engage in behaviours long associated with that gender or indeed undergo surgery to alter their physical form to alleviate dysphoria. Your place is merely to accept them unconditionally as another human.
But the left are not asking us to "accept" them it is forcing us to accept and validate them, with the punishment being "hate speech" and sadly even sometimes threatening legal actions.

It is no longer "live and let live" it is now live as long as you support my political and social views

In most cases it probably goes beyond just wanting to act like the opposite gender, but also wanting to look like them. And so a male experiencing gender dysphoria will want breasts, a vagina, a higher pitched voice etc.

So you're denying that the correct terminology is 'sex assignment'? And you claim I'm the one unqualified to take part in the debate?

As for the rest of your puerile, unlettered little rant, it is clear you have no interest whatsoever in honest discussion. There are many people who come to this subject with sincere questions, wanting to discuss and understand more, but who may not know all the lingo and the current politically-correct terms (although in your case, it's clear your understanding of current medical terminology is somewhat lacking).

Instead of welcoming their questions as an opportunity to discuss, to enlighten, to change views with which you might disagree, you attack the questioner.

There's only two reasons you might do that. The first is that you are quite insecure about the validity of your positions and arguments. You realise that what I'm saying has force. You worry that you cannot adequately defend your positions so you simply attack and abuse.

The second is that you're just a very tetchy, grumpy person and you do this to anyone who attempts to engage with you.

I don't know which one you are.

And my question was, if that is the core of gender dysphoria, why should a doctor require them to "live/pass" as a 'woman' (a gender expression) by dressing as a woman, etc?

Why cannot someone merely say, "I have gender dysphoria. I would like breasts, vagina etc. But I still want to live as a man, I do not want to stop being a man".

This gets to the core of whether the current medical approach entrenches gender stereotypes. Why should an XY/Male who wants the primary sexual characteristics of an XX/Female have to dress/act as a stereotypical gender woman in order to get the surgery?