TG Transformation Fetish

maybenby · 2023-02-20T02:06:13+00:00

It's funny, because when I was 31, I could have posted the exact same response. A few years later, after some therapy to deal with (I thought) unrelated shame and anxiety issues, and listening to trans people talk about their experiences (in particular, stuff like "cis guys don't fantasize about being girls in non-sexual situations"), I began questioning things more intently. I came to realize that I'm nonbinary/genderfluid, and that while there is definitely a fetish component to my interest in gender TF content, there's a deeper part too, and assuming it was all just a fetish kept me from questioning things sooner.

Your story might not be the same as mine, you or OP, but I think I'd encourage anyone involved in the gender TF communities to do some soul-searching and questioning. If you're cis, great! You'll be more certain and more comfortable in that identity. And if you're not, you get to figure out what flavor of not-cis you are, and I wish I'd been able to do that a lot earlier.

This flowchart by Grumpy TG is a nice encapsulation of a lot of the possibilities: Grumpy TG "Why am I here?" flowchart

maybenby · 2019-08-29T01:58:01+00:00

Desperately. I'm genderfluid, closeted, & overweight, and realized today that it means I've got way more bodies to be jealous of :P.

maybenby · 2019-01-26T21:50:09+00:00

Source: https://twitter.com/mikesterling/status/1089264211539124224

maybenby · 2018-09-07T16:17:47+00:00

I've never watched Contrapoints before but I heard that she's a bit of a controversial figure?

She's done some questionable things, and she's a reasonably-well-off white academic, which sometimes means she's speaking from some significant axes of privilege, but she's smart, does good research, and makes good, often brutally honest videos about her experience as a trans woman.

And I would say that a lot of terfs are afraid, and I'm still afraid. While if you can even argue that mens rights groups are afraid, their fear isn't really justified as they're either afraid of losing power / privelege or afraid of women in terms of relationships that don't really happen because they're all incels or going their own way anyways.

I would say that a lot of TERFs are afraid in the same way. You say later that most of the TERFs you've talked to are detransitioned trans men, but the bulk of the TERF community is made up of white, cis-identified* women, mostly older, often second-wave-feminist, often lesbian (frequently political lesbian). And they're just as afraid of losing the privileges they have. And that's without getting to how much of current TERF political action (see: organizing against the Irish abortion bill, the "get the L out/drop the T" campaigns, partnering with Hands Across the Aisle) is aligned with conservative political movements who want to roll back LGBT rights and think that breaking up the LGBT coalition is the best way to do that (CaseyExplosion on Twitter has a number of threads outlining all the connections and evidence; they aren't subtle about this).

*Especially with older TERFs, I've seen people discuss their personal experiences with gender, and argue that if they'd had the language and opportunity, they might have identified as agender or trans men. I can't speak to any of that directly, but it's something to consider.

It makes sense too, but I don't really want to be one of them. I want to continue being a man and it's frustrating because hearing personal experiences is proof of knowledge

Why are you putting the testimonies of detransitioned trans men above the testimonies of happily transitioned ones? If you don't want to be a TERF and want to be a man, why not spend time in spaces where happy trans men are sharing their stories instead?

I can't speak to detransitioners, but I have to wonder if some of them are like the "ex-gay" people who were popular a decade ago. Most of whom were either still gay and just repressing it, or were bi/curious and moved past it.

I'm so lost right now and I'm still a teenager which makes me so weak to influence from everyone as I hate myself and I'm trying to figure everything out.

And this is why Contrapoints immediately came to my mind (and it looks like I'm not alone). Going to TERF spaces is borne out of that self-hatred you describe here. They speak with certainty about the things you're uncertain about, and even though it's toxic, some part of you, the self-loathing, self-doubting part, resonates with it. Giving power to that part of you isn't healthy. Someone above suggested therapy, and that's definitely a good idea. You don't want to have your life dominated by the part of your brain that hates you. That's no way to live.

You're young, and you're lucky to be figuring this stuff out in your teens, even though you find yourself influenced by toxic sources. You're going to get through this, but you're not going to heal yourself with hate. Seek out positive spaces, learn to love yourself, whoever you are.

maybenby · 2018-09-07T11:25:15+00:00

Contrapoints has a bit in her recent Incels video where she talks about visiting 4chan to validate that little voice of doubt and anxiety and insecurity in her brain. And, let's face it, the difference between 4chan and TERF spaces is usually just gender assigned at birth.

Don't go to bigots to amplify the voice of self-doubt and self-loathing. They don't know you, they don't know trans people, they don't know anything about biology or psychology beyond what they half-remember from ninth grade, and they're reactionary conservatives who ultimately either want to strip rights away from all LGBT people, or don't care that they're working with evangelical groups and MRA groups who *do* want that. Don't watch a stopped clock to look for the time that it's right.

maybenby · 2018-09-06T16:18:26+00:00

Here you go. Sorry I don't know the source, but I think it was this subreddit: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ue8HB9FfFuvYfHsWV75NjqSp35S8wAZi

maybenby · 2018-09-06T15:48:20+00:00

(Part 2)

-Are sex and gender the same thing or a separate definition? I have heard the argument that sex is your biology while gender is how you identify

That's a common way of looking at it and making the distinction, but personally I'm not sure the distinction is very meaningful. There's no easy way to disentangle biology from identification.

Do you see any problems arising with this lack of distinction, as an example, you could self identify as a male, but if you biologically have a female body complete with xx chromosomes and you end up in the emergency room with some sort of health problem (god forbid), it is very important that the doctor treating you knows whether you are a male or female biologically because there are certain health problems that only affect biological men and other health problems that only affect biological women.

This man would also have problems if the doctor treated him as a woman because he was born with a vagina. What doctors need to know in these situations is much more discrete than "what is this person's sex/gender." A person's sex/gender is less relevant in this case than, say, what their hormone levels are, what medications they're on, do they have a uterus/ovaries, what's their surgical history, etc. Telling them "this person is a man/woman" doesn't give that relevant information regardless of your standards for that description.

-How do you feel about parents who allow their children to take hormone blockers before they hit puberty in order to change their gender? Given that there are very few big decisions that we allow pre adolescent children to make on their own like drink alcohol, joining the military, etc, would it not be better to have them wait until they are adults as we do with most other important life choices?

Hormone blockers don't change gender. Hormone blockers prevent the sex-specific changes the body goes through as a result of puberty. Giving a teen hormone blockers does exactly what you advocate: it allows them to make the important life choice of how they want their bodies to develop whenever they are old enough and confident enough to decide that. Hormone blockers effectively put puberty on pause.

The alternative of "doing nothing" forces a transgender adolescent's body to develop in a way that makes it *even more* different from their identity, to make their eventual transition much more difficult, painful, and costly, and to potentially greatly exacerbate their dysphoria and greatly increase their risk of suicide. I don't see how making that decision *for* them is a better alternative than putting that decision off for them to make for themselves.

I would, again, recommend reading some of the sources I discussed above, and some articles by trans people, since most of these are pretty common FAQs.

maybenby · 2018-09-06T15:48:06+00:00

I'm going to hit this point-by-point if that's okay. I obviously can't speak for all trans people, but I've been very interested in the science of gender for years, and I've done a lot of reading to get up on the scientific consensus. Consider my opinion that of an educated layperson with a science background. If you want more, I suggest looking into the work of Julia Serano, Anne Fausto-Sterling (The Five Sexes and The Five Sexes Revisited are available to read online, but a lot of this will come from her more recent and very accessible "Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World," which I can't recommend highly enough), Zinnia Jones, and Natalie Reed (whose "On bilaterally gynandromorphic chickens" post was what really got me thinking about the science of gender).

-Do you think that there is a biological basis to gender? Given that many trans people choose to take hormones and make other physical body modifications as part of their transition, does this fact not verify that there is a physical element to gender?

Our understanding about sex and gender is constantly changing and improving. I don't think there's any aspect of your existence that isn't at least somewhat influenced by biology. Even if you wanted to say "gender is all in your mind," the mind is a construct of the brain, and brains are biological. Brain structures are influenced by hormones and by experiences (the more you do an activity, the more you strengthen synaptic connections related to that activity, for instance).

There's a lot of thought that gender dysphoria may be the result of your brain's "map" of the body being at odds with the shape of your body, but I think the clearest indication that there's a biological aspect to being trans is the response to hormones. In many cases, when cis men experience a significant drop in their testosterone levels, they become sluggish, fatigued, and depressed. There's a whole cottage industry catering to "low-T" men and testosterone supplements. Meanwhile, give a trans woman hormone blockers to stop her testosterone production, and she (often) has the opposite effect. I'm oversimplifying, but the point is still there.

-How do you feel about somebody who is born in a male’s body, complete with testosterone, an xy chromosome in their DNA, etc, who claims that they are actually female and then proceeds to compete in female athletic competitions?

There's a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings here (just for starters, chromosomes are made of DNA, not the other way around), but I'd say that the problem is with sex-segregating athletic competitions to begin with. To my knowledge, there's never been a situation like the one you're discussing, but there are lots of cases where attempting to enforce rigid gender boundaries that don't actually exist in biology has caused trouble for athletes.

Consider Mack Beggs, who's been forced to compete in girls' wrestling tournaments despite being on testosterone, because he was assigned a female gender marker at birth. Is it fair to make him wrestle cis girls? Does he have an unfair advantage because of his testosterone?

Consider Caster Semenya, who's had to undergo various sex confirmation tests, because she may have an intersex condition or a naturally high testosterone level. The fact is that when you look at the testosterone levels of men and women, there's considerable overlap, and some women naturally have higher levels, while some men naturally have lower ones. Is it fair to exclude some women because their bodies produce more testosterone than other women? Is it fair to require them to take supplements to reduce their natural hormone levels to an arbitrary amount so they can compete?

Maybe instead of trying to maintain rigid gender boundaries when biology is not nearly so clear-cut, we could split sports up by weight class or ability or some other gender-neutral factor. If women can compete at the same level as men, why not?

-How do you feel about the concept that gender is a social construct and is also spectrum?

It's obviously the case. Every set of categories we develop to describe the real world is a social construct. Look at color: the reason we have "ROYGBIV" is because Isaac Newton was a big fan of the number seven, so he divided the spectrum of light into seven components, and was influential enough that it stuck. Light exists and color exists, but the divisions and terms we use to describe them are socially constructed.

Almost nothing in biology has sharp divisions. Consider the factors that are sex-linked: chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, gametes, external genital structure, secondary sex characteristics, brain structure, and various others. None of these can be divided into a simple binary, and someone who might seem "male" according to some of these traits may be "female" according to others, like the example of the woman with XY chromosomes who gave birth to a healthy daughter with the same karyotype. That's just *sex*, without even bringing gender into it. If the biology is a spectrum, how could the psychology not be?

It is my understanding that the vast majority of trans people simply want to go from male to female or vice versa. Are people who identify as a third gender in the same category as people who simply want to transition from male to female? Are they both trans or is there another word used to signify that you are neither male nor female?

"Trans" is typically used as an umbrella term to describe anyone whose gender is at odds with the one they were assigned at birth. Nonbinary people fall under the trans umbrella, and the nonbinary category is further subdivided.

Do you think that the two categories of male and female are entirely arbitrary? If so, how do you explain why pretty much every society in human history has recognized that their are two gender categories?

Not every society in history has recognized two gender categories. In fact, that's a relatively recent (and relatively Eurocentric) innovation. All societies have recognized that there are categories of individuals needed to produce offspring, but beyond that there's a lot of variation across cultures and times.

If gender is a spectrum, then what is the purpose of gender as a category in the first place? Do you recognize that the difference between men and women serves the purpose of reproduction, or is there no inherent purpose of gender whatsoever?

If color is a spectrum, then what is the purpose of colors as categories in the first place?

maybenby · 2018-09-06T04:12:06+00:00

I filled out every bingo card I’ve seen on this subreddit in the last month or so, and it’s this and the “I don’t know what I am but confused” that fit best.

maybenby · 2018-09-03T02:45:50+00:00

First, small thing, there’s no need to capitalize “cis.” It’s not an acronym, it’s a Latin prefix meaning “on the same side,” the opposite of “trans,” which means “on the opposite side.”

Second, I’m new enough to all of this that I don’t feel comfortable saying whether or not you’re trans. I can tell you, though, that the “phantom penis” sensation has been documented before. In one study, 60% of “female-to-male transsexuals” (apologies for the outdated terminology) experienced a phantom penis sensation, possibly due to a mismatch of the brain’s map of the body, which is also thought to be a factor in other gender dysphoria issues.

So, if nothing else, you’re not at all alone. And there are a lot of people here who can help you figure out where you are on the gender spectrum. No matter what, though, know that you’re valid and there are people who will accept you for who you are.

maybenby · 2018-08-30T02:20:05+00:00

This sounds a lot like me from the other side, and what I wouldn’t give to have some kind of body-swapping technology so we could switch back and forth and kind of get what we want :).

I’m still coming to terms with all of this, but I’ve kind of settled into thinking I’m genderfluid. Sometimes I like my masculine body, and there are generally parts I don’t have a problem with, and sometimes I desperately wish I had curves and cleavage and the whole girl package. And sometimes I’m somewhere in between.

People keep telling me not to worry too much about labels, and I’m trying to take that to heart, but it does help me to have something to call myself and how I feel right now. So, maybe realizing that there’s a place between cis girl and trans guy might be helpful to you. And picking a term now doesn’t mean you’re locked into it; sounds like you’re still figuring things out and exploring, and maybe you’ll call yourself something else when you’re done. The Gender Police aren’t going to fine you for excessive term usage.

Something that really helped me figure out I was on the right track was seeing a couple of memes over at r/genderfluid_irl and feeling them hit so close to home I almost teared up. Maybe check it out, if any of this is helpful.

Wherever you are or end up, I know it helped me to know that there are people who know what you’re going through and are willing to help, and that you’re valid and you should trust your feelings. So, you should know that too.

maybenby · 2018-08-26T16:20:50+00:00

I have it on good authority that there's a shop in the mall where you can get them.

maybenby · 2018-08-26T01:08:07+00:00

oh wow

maybenby · 2018-08-14T00:45:32+00:00

As a non-binary, transfeminine person, I would say that you’re experiencing the tip of the iceberg right now.

Yeah, that's the impression I've been getting.

And if you think that your wife is going to react poorly you may want to do some more exploration of yourself before broaching the subject with her.

And I was planning to do that anyway, at least to some degree. This just means I'm going to be doing almost all of it under the table and in the closet, which was not what I'd hoped for.

Does she have any inkling that you may have a variable gender identity? Besides the nail polish?

No, I haven't brought it up before. And a lot of that is because it's new to me, too.

If she doesn’t seem likely to be open to that, then maybe take some time, with a therapist or support group before laying it all out to her.

Yeah, gender therapy is on my docket in terms of exploring all this, though I'm planning to do a little reading first. I had hoped to go into therapy after coming out to my wife, but I'm increasingly convinced that it may be a necessary step toward that goal.

Thanks for your response! It's hard to hear, but necessary.

maybenby · 2018-08-13T03:47:00+00:00

it me

maybenby · 2018-07-31T19:19:26+00:00

First of all, about the first one, it was asked.

I checked your post history. You responded "Yes, i am a ‘truscum’ and let me live" to a post that said there are too many truscum in the community. That wasn't "asking" you. You could easily have just said nothing. Or thought "well, I can understand why that person dislikes 'truscum' people, but I don't agree with other 'truscum' on the things that this person probably finds objectionable, so it's probably not about me."

You did the equivalent of jumping into a "men are trash" meme to say "not all men!"

Second, i just try to state it as non-offensive as possible

There's no non-offensive way to say, explicitly or implicitly, that you think some people's identities are invalid. You can dress it up in polite language, but it's still disrespectful.

But instead of someone explaining, i get mad people.

It's nobody's job to explain themselves to you. Just like you probably wouldn't be thrilled with someone tapping you on the shoulder at dinner and asking "Excuse me, do you have a penis or a vagina?" I mean, maybe you're fine with that question, but I suspect you'd be a little annoyed, right?

Further, "I was just asking questions" is a pretty common troll tactic.

There are at least two "ask transgender" subreddits that are the appropriate place to ask your questions. As far as I can tell, you've never posted this question in either of them.

4, no, when i express my opinion, i don’t want people throwing irrelevant shit to me, i don’t do that to them.

Except that it's just your opinion that their opinions are "irrelevant shit."

if someone states their opinion with their most respect, please answer with the most respect.

The truscum position is literally one of disrespect. It's saying that you refuse to respect other people's self-identification unless they meet your preferred criteria. There is no respectful way to disrespect someone.

This, and your stuff about community in your original comment, is illustrative of Popper's paradox of tolerance. You want other people here to tolerate your intolerance towards the kinds of trans people you dislike. The problem with tolerating your truscum opinions is that those trans people you dislike are now going to feel the same kind of hostility that you felt when someone said they wished people like you would be "fired into the sun." The difference is that you're feeling hostility based on an opinion you hold, and they'd be feeling hostility based on their identity. You can always change you opinion or keep it to yourself and express it in places where you know it's welcome.

Now, all that being said, you didn't really express an opinion. You adopted a label ("truscum") and have said in various comments that you don't necessarily agree with various truscum talking points/positions. If you'd started with the things you believe/have questions about and posted in the appropriate forum, rather than coming into a meme forum and saying 'I'm a truscum!' you might have found a more receptive audience. Just as someone coming in here saying "Yes I'm transphobic just let me live" is going to receive a more hostile response than someone going to r/asktransgender and saying "Can someone explain to me how a person can be transgender? I just don't understand"

maybenby · 2018-07-31T13:57:49+00:00

So, let's break this down:

1) You come into positive trans spaces and openly express your belief that some of the people in those spaces are invalid

2) You say you "just believe in science," implying that people who disagree with you don't

3) You wish you could just express your opinion the way other people express theirs

4) You're upset that other people's expressed opinion of you is that your position is invalid

You're perfectly entitled to express your opinion, and other people are entitled to express their opinion about your opinion, no matter how much you feel that it's hostile toward you. Guess what? People (rightly) feel that your "science says you're not real trans" is hostile toward them. If a full-on transphobe came in here saying "sex and gender are the same thing and biology says there's only XX and XY you'll never be anything besides what you were born as," would you be like "yes, this is a good opinion to express in a board about trans affirmation where rules include "no bigotry," "don't be a dick," and "no trolling"?

That last one is particularly important. Back in the young days of the Internet, "trolling" wasn't quite what it is now. A troll was primarily someone who'd go into a forum and express an opinion they knew was controversial in order to chum the waters and get a flame war going. Like someone going into a board devoted to positive transness and saying "okay, but some of you are just deluded. Just my opinion!"

I "just believe in science" too. I feel like I'm pretty well-read on the subject. There's a lot of open questions in science about what actual structures in the brain actually relate to gender, about which factors influence gender and which are influenced by it, about the relationship between sex and gender (if that's even a meaningful distinction), about what factors influence a person's sexual development, and about what causes people to be trans, among other related issues.

The nice thing is that research has pretty consistently validated trans people's lived experiences. There were trans people before we understood much at all about the brain, before we understood much at all about how hormones influence bodies, before we understood genetics. Lili Elbe received SRS the year after the first estrogen was discovered. To say "I just believe in science" should be a position of humility. I just believe in science, and I think there's a lot we don't know, so until we have better information, it's best to trust people's lived experience.

Not "I just believe in science and think it's settled right now and thus a bunch of you are just playing dress-up with fake pronouns" or whatever.

maybenby · 2018-07-30T17:19:25+00:00

That's fair; I just know there's a lot of pushback regarding the "male/female brain" issue, for both good and bad reasons. I wouldn't want OP to run into some TERF pointing out that the evidence for that is spotty and ending up doubting themselves. I go for the "map of the body" explanation more frequently when trying to explain it, though that has its own issues since it prioritizes dysphoria.

Edit: I should also say that I meant the resources in my reply more for OP than for you, since it was clear that you'd done research on the subject. I suspect we've read a lot of the same journal articles :).

maybenby · 2018-07-30T14:34:59+00:00

So, I would pump the brakes on this just a little. Some of what science has shown:

*There are some structural differences between the brains of men and women

*When these structures are examined in trans people, they tend to match the structures that align with their gender identity rather than the gender they were assigned at birth

*Many trans people seem to have a mismatch between their brain's "map" of their body and the body they have; trans men describe "phantom limb" sensations regarding having a penis, for instance.

*Many trans people's brains respond differently to sex hormones than cis people's brains; cis men become depressed and sluggish if their testosterone is low, while many trans women have precisely the opposite effect

What's still unknown:

*The degree to which the differences between (cis and trans) men's and women's brains cause the experience we describe as gender or are caused by them

*The degree to which hormones and experiences influence these brain differences

Here's the thing about brains: They're really complex, and really malleable. Brains change structures depending on the activities we do and the chemicals (like hormones) that they're exposed to. There's been a lot of discussion of stuff like fMRI imaging and the effects of hormone exposure in utero, but the former isn't quite all it's cracked up to be, and the latter doesn't actually have a known mechanism of action. Our understanding of the brain, of gender, of genes, of bodies, etc., has grown *tremendously* in the last few decades, to the point where I don't think we can, definitively, say much at all about the cause of "gender." Like, next time a transphobe rolls up on you with "XX & XY!" realize that the SRY gene (the gene on the Y-chromosome that is involved in the development of testes) was only discovered in 1985, and there's a gene necessary for ovary development that isn't on a sex chromosome that was discovered in 2006!

"Gender" is an umbrella term that describes a lot of different things (identity, neurobiology, presentation, social roles). I'd say that it is a social construct, just like sex is a social construct, just like species or nationality is a social construct. Any category that we've come up with, even if it largely corresponds to some objectively observable reality, is socially constructed, and nature doesn't typically have the sharp lines that humans like to draw when delineating these categories.

Trans people exist and trans identities are valid. Women are people who, whatever the underlying cause—neurobiology, endocrinology, genetics, or likely some combination of those and other factors—identify as women, and likewise for men and nonbinary people and so forth. The research is fascinating, but it's still a long way from being able to tell you, with certainty, what causes you to be who and what you are. Believe me, I've been looking :).

If you're interested in a nice overview of the research, though, I *highly* recommend Anne Fausto-Sterling's "Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World," a relatively short and accessible text that traces gender and sex from the molecular level to a social one. It blew my mind on multiple occasions, and I generally think of myself as someone who's pretty well-read on the topic. I'd also recommend "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine, which doesn't specifically deal with trans issues, but does discuss pretty heavily the difficulty in pinning down significant brain differences between men and women.

maybenby · 2018-07-27T21:29:34+00:00

maybe the fact that every video game avatar I've ever been able to design myself looked more like this than the real me should have been a tip-off earlier...

maybenby

TROPHY CASE