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crime posted:I was just trying to get a feel for what Transgender people think/feel when they go about actually changing their gender. I've little to no interest in the politics of it, but rather the psychological elements of someone who thinks they are the wrong gender. I would like to refer you to one of the better books written by a transwoman: Whipping Girl. It is not a very long book, but she describes lots of the psychological and emotional issues before, during and after her transition. For an example of a contrast, one good book that is written by someone who is not transgender, I'd like to refer you to is Self Made Man. vv For a book that discusses some of the hormonal differences between men and women, I would like to refer you to the book Female Brain. There are a number of hormonal differences between male and female fetuses and children. One of which is a higher level of estrogen between 6 and 24 months. Girls who don't get that surge (perhaps because they've got some medical condition involving estrogen insensitivity) don't develop as typical girls: they behave and play like boys do. They aren't boys, they are fully functional females who will grow into fertile women, yet their brain doesn't get wired like girls' brains do. Hormonal levels during pregnancy, as well as stress levels of the mother, can cause developmental differences. Also being transgender is inextricably linked to politics. Especially who can use which bathroom.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:27
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Tautologicus posted:
Gender does not have any sort of "standard definition". If you ask 100 "men" what it means to "be a man" you will get 100 different answers. You'll also get different answers if you ask 100 "women" what it means to "be a woman". And if you ask these questions in different countries, you'll get different answers as well. Gender is one of those things that "everyone knows" or "everyone accepts" without questioning it. I'm currently reading Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. That author uses the Greek word doxa for things that people treat as facts but are really "things that everyone knows". The book goes into the attempt to come up with "scientific" definitions for all sorts of things, such as sexual behavior, and not all 19th Century attempts at defining science are recognized as legitimate (phrenology for example). In the beginning, the word "heterosexual" meant someone who had sex with both men and women; today we call such people "bisexual". Early writers trying to identify what is normal tended to follow Catholic Cannon Law which only permitted sex that was capable of producing pregnancy. Gender is also something that isn't really taught, like math. Instead it is what children learn from seeing adults behave with each other and towards children. One book that goes into this in some good detail is Being Boys; Being Girls: Learning masculinities and femininities I think one passage from that book illustrates how gender gets taught: quote:Staff distinctly discouraged amorous relationships between pairs of boys, less so between girls and boys, and hardly at all between girls, revealing here, possibly unconsciously, a public homophobic attitude towards the boys while perhaps seeing the girls' behaviour in a non-sexual or sexually passive way. If you ask 100 "men" whether it is acceptable or not for men to cry, you will get different answers depending on whether the questioner is male or female, and whether other males can hear the answer. That's gender.
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Sep 19, 2015 22:13
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