hidden-agender:

I actually think the mindset of “all trans people have always been the gender they are,” which I see everywhere on here, is actively damaging to the trans community. 

I have two big reasons behind this:

Reason One: it turns the whole discourse into “who’s more trans than anyone else” instead of “how can we help each other as trans people.” Let’s face it: if you think that every trans person has knowing they weren’t the gender they were assigned as among their earliest memories, you’re kidding yourself, hard. Sure, plenty of them do, but gender is a weird-ass thing and can sneak up on you. I know tons of trans folks who happily identified as cis for years until puberty, or a mental breakdown, or something else entirely snuck up on them completely unawares and made them realize, “hey, this body doesn’t really feel right after all.” I know my girlfriend identifies as a “boy who grew up to be a woman,” and while I can say that I never felt any kind of strong identification as female beyond a defensive thing when boys said they were better than girls (I often conceptualize it as being like loyalty to a political party or sports team), it feels highly disingenuous of me to classify myself as nonbinary earlier than summer 2010. The sad thing is, the Harry Benjamin attitude of having early-childhood evidence of being trans is so entrenched both within and outside the trans community that it’s used as a wedge to try to invalidate people. My poor girlfriend is currently being emotionally blackmailed by her parents, who are wishing she would detransition because she “never liked girly things as a kid” and was into James Bond and video games and other “boy” stuff. And it’s all too common for trans people who didn’t figure out they were trans until adolescence or later to receive the “special snowflake” label, sometimes even from other trans people. Fuck that shit.

Reason Two: it assumes that trans people have always had availability to information about other trans people from a very young age. For one, it’s extremely classist to assume that everyone has the technology to access information about trans people from a young age, and transness is a really taboo issue for a lot of people so a lot of trans people don’t hear about gender variance from their parents and friends when they’re growing up. With me, I did have inklings about being gender-weird when I was a kid, but because information about nonbinary people has really only come about in a big way in the last half-decade, I instead had this lingering fear of being FTM, since I knew I wasn’t a cis girl but I didn’t know there was any other choice, so I was terrified of knowing that one day I’d have to resign myself to transitioning to male, since I didn’t want to be a boy, either! For as long as I can remember I had this obsessive interest in anything related to transgender issues, as I would devour any magazine article or web page that even remotely discussed it. (Not to say cis people can’t have a fervent interest in trans issues, but in my case it definitely went beyond an interest to a fixation.) But I had no idea why this was the case with me until I finally came across Genderfork in late 2009 and learned that some people didn’t identify as either male or female, and suddenly everything made sense—so with nonbinary people especially, it’s really unfair to expect them to know their identities as small children when information is scarce.

Really, it shouldn’t matter when, how or even why (even if someone *gasp!* claims they chose to be trans—THAT DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO INVALIDATE THEM) someone came to the conclusion that they’re transgender. All that should matter is that they do, in fact, identify as transgender. Period.

I was quoting the article which you posted — it stated everything I said about parthenogenesis.

As long as the human race remains what we would recognize as human, there is absolutely no chance that men (or women, for that matter) will become obsolete.

metapianycist:

[A poster advertising the services of an attorney named Justin Bieber.]

Seen in Philadelphia, PA on a subway train earlier today.

Heh, reminds me of the character named Michael Bolton in Office Space.

jespree:

Scientists report of two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact.

I’m not sure what parthenogenesis in reptiles has to do with men becoming obsolete.  Parthenogenesis has never been observed in mammals, let alone humans.  Even more to the point, parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons produces only male offspring.

“Because of the genetics of this process, he added, her children would always be male.

This is because Komodo dragons have W and Z chromosomes - females have one W and one Z, males have two Zs.

The egg from the female carries one chromosome, either a W or Z, and when parthenogenesis takes place, either the W or Z is duplicated.

This leads to eggs which are WW and ZZ. WW eggs are not viable, but ZZ eggs are, and lead to male baby Komodo dragons.”

alonmg:

I love it… If we ever run out of cows, I am going after another Grass eater… Vegans LMAO! Just only the Vegan’s who keep trying to force me to not eat meat.

I don’t particularly like veganism as a dietary choice, but if that’s what someone else chooses it’s not my choice to make.  It’s only those who try to force their choice on me that I have a problem with.

As an aside, or perhaps a sign of a deeper truth, good grass-fed beef is delicious.

communismkills:

What age did you notice your genitals?

How long did it take for you to become self-aware?

Do you have cognitive disabilities?

So, you admit people can choose their sexualities?

Now you’re getting it.  Neither trans people nor cis people choose their gender.  For the former, it just happens not to match their anatomical sex at birth, while for the latter, it does.  In neither case does it have anything to do with choice, and people who say trans people just need to choose the gender that matches their bodies instead are being foolish.  I knew you’d come around.

[Trigger warning for anti-trans slurs used uncensored.]

dyksfunctional:

That “It’s a girrrrrl” in the cartoon DOES NOT SURPRISE ME in the least. In fact it exemplifies EXACTLY what is wrong w/labeling females as “cis”.

Half the population has been fighting GENDER stereotypes publicly and actively for thousands and thousands of years. Every time a female does NOT act “normally”, every time a female does not subjugate or CONFORM… she is persecuted, ridiculed, committed, sentenced, jailed, beaten, raped, burned and killed.

Now half the female population is expected to subjugate and conform “normally” to being labeled for NOT being a feminine male. If a female REFUSES she will be persecuted, ridiculed, committed to bigotry, sentenced to silence, locked OUT of gathering w/other females, threatened w/ beatings, rape, burning and murder.

The PAT tactics are normal… refusing to acknowledge and abide by the subtle and NOT so subtle tactics is liberation of the same old game.

I am not “cis”. I refuse to be labeled “cis”. Labeling me as “cis” is actually very PAT normal.  I have battled gender my entire life… I WILL NOT subjugate because you refuse to acknowledge my sex.

You have a seriously distorted understanding of who is “persecuted, ridiculed, committed, sentenced, jailed, beaten, raped, burned and killed.”

(In the following, all statistics refer to the USA.)

In every case except rape (and that’s a lot closer than you think, especially considering prison rape), it’s men, and since we’re on the topic, trans women — the latter even more disproportionately because they’re very likely to be poor and otherwise vulnerable.

For instance, as of 2010, 126 women per 100,000 were in prison — 1,352 men per 100,000 were.  That’s tenfold more men imprisoned than women.  The rate of incarceration at some point in one’s life, likewise, is ten times higher for men than women (4.9% vs. 0.5%, overall), and this holds within every race as well as overall.  It’s difficult to tell, since the only source I’ve seen for trans people did not separate out jail and prison, but imprisonment rates may be even higher for trans women — one in five trans women reported having been sent to either jail or prison.

Every kind of violent crime except rape is committed against men much more than against women — murder especially so.

The world did not begin when you were born; the last 10,000 years are very different from the last 100.  Cite some representative examples of “half the population” (women) “fighting gender stereotypes publicly and actively” over that time, or withdraw your claim.  That’s going to have to be mass movements, not single cases, or else it’s not anything like “half the population”.

Now, back to the issue of “cis”.  Labeling trans women as “feminine males” is not only insulting, it’s — more importantly — wrong.  Not only are most feminine males not trans, I know plenty of trans women who could best be called tomboyish, and plenty of trans men who could best be called, yes, feminine males.

You can be a dogmatist and attempt to ignore these people, or you can be a scientist and attempt to understand them.  The fact is, they transition to feel right in their bodies (and “feeling wrong” is much deeper and worse than is conveyed by that phrase), not to conform to a gender role.

“Cis” is the most natural term, given the existence of “trans”, for those who feel right in their bodies, at least as far as sex and gender go, without any intervention.  And if you’d prefer “normal”, well, too bad, because there have been trans people as long as there have been cis people, and both are part of normal human variation, even if one group is much more common than the other.

Aside from a few jackasses on the internet, no one is using “cis” as a term of hate or a declaration of violent intent — but that’s exactly how people regularly use faggot, tranny, and other words disproportionately directed at trans women.

communismkills:

It will not happen in my household.

I hope you’re right, for your children’s sake.

communismkills:

It’s my right, as their parent, to look after their psychiatric well-being.

Shame on you leftists for thinking the government can replace parents.

Well, fuck you, then.

And I don’t say that easily, as you’ve perhaps noticed.

Shame on you for choosing to remain ignorant.  Institutionalization has never given good results for transsexuality, and it has been tried plenty of times.  Only transition (which, yes, includes psychotherapy) has ever been shown to do that.