What's gender?

Not sure how this will go down but, choice is often connected to our preferences when talking about pronouns and gender politics. However, I also think it's important to say, you also have a choice in how you react.

I am male and would be typically a he/him pronoun. If someone mistook me for a female or decided to call me she/her etc, I can of course choose to be offended. But I would likely choose to laugh and move on.

There is immense sensitivity in what I consider 'label politics' today and I think it's often a case of self-control that is lacking.

I see what you mean. If I could access T I might put less effort into presenting masc.

I've never, ever seen a younger person invalidate an older trans person for not passing though. The opposite is far more likely. As evidenced by your post - a trans person in their 20s would never say something so transmedicalist as "some non binary people don't deserve the term." Groups run by this demographic explicitly have codes of conduct saying that attitude is not acceptable.

Actually it’s more the issue that puberty blockers don’t put growth hormones on hold. And you need the growth hormones and sex hormones to be synced to get the full puberty effect. The delayed puberty is therefore blunted some what.

trans girls who take oestrogen in their 30s grow smaller breasts compared to female relatives for example. You need high oestrogen and high growth hormone to optimally grow breasts.

and trans hrt protocols don’t generally include toping up hGH to puberty levels.

but doesnt that cause issues though? ... it has to take place while your body is growing and developing, you cant just pause it, wait, and restart it.... because when you restart it your body may have gone past its growth phase and thus the whole point of puberty and it effecting your growth is gone, and with it blocked likely youd get disabilities and issues from blocking it and interfering either way with your bodys growth phase. so a doing nothing or taking a hormone replacement would even be better and safer than a puberty blocker. but puberty blocker id guess would hinder your growth phase and cause defects and disability.

This is why they use puberty blockers. It pauses the physical changes that come with puberty and gives them to consider whether it's what they really want.  Then, when they are sure they can make use of whichever hormones they need to guide their body to the comfortable shape.

But doesn’t that fit with the completeness of the transition. The more you look like the transition gender the less you feel you need to perform as that gender. The non binary people I’m slightly unsure deserve that term are largely those who have not modified their bodies and have no plans to. Some of them it might just be technical issues or concerns about complications but the rest it seems it’s not really about the way they feel about their bodies at all. It’s about gender roles and tbh gender roles are a very different thing than gender.

The more male you look as a trans man maybe the less fussed you are about acting manly. 

Gender from a grammatical perspective is in the masculine and feminine (etc.) form of language, objects tend to be described in terms of gender such as ships, it’s modern-day illiterate creep that has confused ‘sex’ with ‘gender’ in grammar.
It is ‘sex’ that distinguishes between biological-differences such as ‘male’ and ‘female’, I’ve only broadly alluded to the difference between gender and sex, I have not looked to create a particularly keen definition..

As a non binary person whose friendship group is mostly made up of trans and enby people of a wide range of ages, I have the opposite experience. Younger people seem far more likely to play around with gender and flaunt stereotypes. E.g. I have a much younger friend (he/they) who has transitioned with testosterone/surgery and now looks male but presents very femme in terms of clothing, makeup, nails, jewelry etc, which I find fascinating and joyful. Older trans people seem more likely to stick with one set of binary pronouns and present more conservatively within their gender identity.

"everything is based on what you feel and think these days"

The more accomodation there is for this, the better surely? As long as it hurts no-one else, which no truly progressive evolution of societal accomodation will do. 

aye but then you have to weigh up whether they truly want it or whether its a phase. if they use the drugs but then change their mind later on then they dont pass as the original they then decided they want to stay as and thus have negatively effected the quality of their life too. so its a dual sided blade.

I am grateful for your calm sharing of your knowledge on these matters.  It is how I like to inform myself on things that I know little about.  Thank you.

The cruel reality is it’s very hard to undo puberty so if trans people don’t have puberty blockers or transition in their teens they are going to be much less passable which is going to massively effect their quality of life. There are comparatively few trans people who transitioned mid / early puberty but Most have what might be called passing privalidge. They don’t worry about being challenged using a toilet or changing room, don’t worry when they go out dating. Some of their friends maybe even some of their lovers don’t know they are trans.

I have been told that among many young transitioners there is a sense that they are more true or completely trans than older transitioners just because a lot of older transitioners do not have that passing privalidge.

it’s an irony that those who are most vocal about their trans identity are often those for whom the transition was, in terms of their ability to pass, only partially successful.

the younge transitioners are more like ‘just let us have the drugs and gender identity politics can go hang. We like our new gender role and you will never know the difference.’

hasnt the term gender been around longer than your rehashed version of the word though?
thats why we have had gender on birth certificates longer than your new meaning of the word and it meant male or female at birth lol

Ah forgot to turn the notifs off, okay I'll repond once more but then I'm off for the night.

Caelus said:

but isnt that contradicting what you said though?

No.

Caelus said:

but originally you used the term to render things unimportant and to be cast aside? 

Because I didn't. Again that's not what I said, I can't believe this needs be explained here, but I am autistic and for me that means explaining things explicit terms.

But see what I mean? It's become circular and boring. I'm now explaining to you what I've had to with Number. This topic becomes very understimulating very quick when not discussed with academics in this field as it is anyway.

Time for something more fun again so I'll say nn now as I remembered to turn the notifs off this time.

I am female but I don't really have a concept of gender. Maybe that would make me technically non-binary but I don't think of it like that. I just think, I'm a person who happens to have female anatomy.

I usually dress in a gender-neutral way. Sometimes I'll wear a dress on special occasions because that's what's expected, and I don't have a problem with that.

I'm glad that where I live, being female doesn't prevent me from accessing opportunities and it's quite normal for women to dress in a neutral/masuline way if we want to. 

I can relate to a lot of things that you wrote here. Thank you

Yes, very difficult for all concerned.

Is this satire? The capitals and bingo card of "it's my right to have an opinion" etc feels like a parody of a grumpy old "PC gone mad" type character, but I'm not sure? Am I having a woosh moment?

aye thats the thing, it then goes onto human rights and experimentation on humans so it becomes more taboo and not allowed... but yet making surgical choices for a person before they are old enough to make up their own decisions is also kinda taboo too, so its a lose lose situation both ways on human rights when you think on it lol

Respectfully you must be very old indeed because the very prominent transexual Christine Jorgensen Was big news in 1958 and trans people have been mentioned in the press periodically ever since. The NHS has been doing sex changes since at least 1989.