pressure to see yourself as trans?

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This has been a very thoughtful discussion of the topic, probably the most so of any I've seen on social media/Internet forums. For such a hot button issue, people have been both very civil and rational in the discourse here.

Well, I don't quite appreciate Anemone implying that trans women are somehow "less female" than cis women. But other than that, good thread.

I grew up a total tomboy, then in my late teens and early twenties I moved into absolute butch. Eventually I moved out of that back to tomboy and am now much more comfortable in accepting myself as I am, the boyness and girlness of me.

My main question for people who decide to officially transition, particularly through taking hormones and getting surgeries: Isn't that just yet another form of gender conformity? Society has defined maleness vs. femaleness in particular ways. Isn't that just conforming to some other set of societal ideals?

I can't help but think people would be a whole lot happier if they could just accept both their brains AND their bodies as they are. (Who says you can't be happy with a masculine brain in a woman's body? Society?) Instead, it seems we're denying some fundamental part of ourselves, even if it's our brains that we feel most define us, our bodies are just as much a part of us, even if we don't associate them with consciousness and thought. Why should we mistreat them so simply to conform to the brain's ideals? It's little different than anorexia or bulimia, or anything else we put our bodies through to achieve our vision of "ideal self."

What if we came up with a treatment that didn't involve transitioning? There are people detransitioning now who may be able to point us to alternate therapies for dysphoria.

What if we could get the culture to change, to make it commonplace to have brains that don't match our physical sex role stereotypes?

I keep hoping the pendulum will swing the other way again. As it is now, I think current social norms are what's causing all this dysphoria in the first place. I recently read an excerpt from something a trans boy wrote that made it pretty clear their mother didn't want a dyke for a daughter, and would be happier with a trans son, so what choice did the kid have? Kids are going to try to conform to what's expected.

I think that's also true for people in their late teens and twenties. I'm not sure you can be informed even at that age.

I know for me that one thing that stopped me from daydreaming about a sex change (back in the '80s) was that I'd never pass as a man with my pelvis, and reconstructing it seemed unrealistic. I guess I'm lucky I don't have an androgynous frame.

^ Social expectations are certainly some of it, but not all of it. I remember reading a study on this, that someone raised as the opposite gender in every social way still identified internally as their birth gender, even though they had been naturalized as the other socially all their lives.
Besides, the amount of transgender people with unsupportive families is, unfortunately, the norm. Some people's families abandon them when they transition. This is hardly just conforming to your social role.
I know for myself it was a fundamental problem with my body that began at puberty, when secondary sex characteristics kicked in. I was later told, before I transitioned surgically, that I "passed" perfectly as the opposite gender when I tried. That did not matter to me, because I still had the intrinsic problem with what I knew was underneath, what I dealt with, even if no one else could ever see it. It's a difficult concept to explain, but even alone with no social pressures, severe dysphoria makes you need to crawl out of your own skin.
Societies everywhere are becoming more accepting of a mixed presentation, and someone who is just androgynous or gender-bending may indeed have no need for medical transition, being free to present how they want contrary to their physical form. But I believe there is as mentioned above a big gap between someone who is just a bit androgynous, or doesn't conform to gender stereotypes, and a transgender person with severe dysphoria.
I'm not sure there can be any alternative treatments. Therapies do zero good - I have heard some horror stories from others who went to therapy (usually religiously based) to try and "cure" their transsexuality, and it sounded horribly like the conversion therapies that used to be used on gay people, to convince them they weren't really gay, they were just mentally ill and could be "cured" straight. Gah.

Is anyone here familiar with John E. Sarno's work on psychogenic pain? The idea is that sometimes our minds create physical pain by restricting blood flow to tissues to deprive them of oxygen, so we have a physical condition we can fuss over as a distraction from painful emotions (anger, fear). Our minds can also generate chronic fatigue, IBS, depression and anxiety as distractions, too. I wonder if being trans is also a distraction from difficult emotions, since it's so trendy right now. Psychogenic conditions tend to be trendy - ulcers, back pain, carpel tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia - because if it's trendy we think it's legitimate, even if there are no physical reasons for the pain. i had a situation recently where I got one thing to clear up, but then got fibromyalgia all over, without eating anything that might possibly be a trigger, so that's how I knew the first one was psychogenic. When you're playing whack-a-mole with symptoms, it's likely to be psychogenic.

So I'm just wondering if there's a link. Being trans does seem to be very distracting.

What if you accepted people for who they are, trans or not?


The first time I wore a skirt in public, I was beaten and had rocks thrown at me. I can promise you, being trans is not trendy.

I'm sorry that happened to you. I guess I meant ideologically trendy, not on-the-street trendy.

I want to accept people for who they are, without being required to accept their beliefs about sex and gender, because I see some of those beliefs as harmful. I want more rigorous debate.

I'm really, really glad I'm not a young person today.

My teenage daughter (XX, female, probably NT) says there's a huge amount of peer pressure to identify as "SOMETHING". Be it straight, gay, trans, asexual-- SOMETHING.

She's 15 and says she feels like "a myself" and has "no f***s to give for sex with anything".

I remember feeling that way at her age-- "I am a me, and sex can wait. We're still kids, and all you people are going to get a disease." Lucky for me, at that time (early to mid-90s), they just called you a lesbian or called you a b***h and left it alone.

I do believe that "transgender" is a real, actual thing. But it's not the same as "not feeling comfortable checking off all the expectations for the box labelled 'straight cis woman'."

It makes me really sad that, basically, what we are accomplishing so far with starting to recognize other gender orientations other than those determined by biological sex at birth is just making more, smaller boxes that we expect people to jam themselves into.

I also have chronic fatigue syndrome. I do think my illness and others with cfs has got something to do with the mind and body trying to cope. I wouldnt use the word trendy. I think that it's a thing that's been around for a long time, maybe for as long as humans have existed, but we keep giving it different names. Back in Jane Austen's time it would be called, "trouble with her nerves".

I don't think feeling transgendered is the same sort of thing. It's an intriguing theory.

Strangely enough it's that not belonging with other women that made me wonder if I am genderneutral. And the whole not coping with not belonging stresses me out and causes my illness.

As far as I know, being trans is the cause of difficult emotions a lot of the time. Chicken - egg?
With the "trendy" thing, I don't know - I had some contact with a trans support organization for a while, and they had a very active over 55's group, of people who were transitioning back in the 60's or 70's when surgery techniques were even worse than they are now. It wasn't trendy then, but people still did it. Transgender people existed then, too, and have throughout history. It's not as if they appeared suddenly in response to a social trend.
Keep in mind with these supposedly trendy psychogenic conditions listed - carpel tunnel, back pain, ulcers, etc - these can also have a directly physical cause. Someone may have injured their back earlier in life and be stuck with back pain ever since, someone may have been a book keeping machinist and developed the carpel tunnel as a kind of RSI later (I know someone this happened to) or someone could have been living with undiagnosed and untreated GORD and developed ulcers from that. It doesn't always have to originate in the mind.
Plus, autism is often described as just a trendy illness people appropriate or make up to make themselves special. I doubt any autistic agrees with this. Besides, wouldn't the problems of just having difficult emotional makeup be more trendy, if that's what people were after? Depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline personality disorder, etc? They all originate in the mind and are a lot safer an option than transition if you just wanted a distraction.

That's interesting too. That younger people can't just be what they are without having to take on a label - to stand out from the pack, or to better conform to one group over another?

I used to think it'd be kinda cool to be a trans dude but there's just way too many things I'd miss out on being a girl. It just seems more boring to me after giving it a lot of thought. Though, I reckon life would be a lot easier in a mans world cause there's less scary aspects, like you could actually go for a walk at night and not have to constantly worry about being on your own in public for fear of rape and all that kinda stuff that goes with it. I had noticed the huge rise in popularity of trans though, especially on tumblr.

I think the person that goes around and calls themself the genderless alien is damn fabulous though.

With all this sex reassignment surgery going on, none of the trans people are able to reproduce using their new gender identity.

Just something to ponder.

I don't identify as a cis woman. No qualifier should be needed.

Reproduction isn't everything.

I don't feel female. I have no idea what that means. I was born female, I AM female. I've never liked stereotypically female toys, or clothes, or worn any makeup. I am strongly feminist and a believer in equal rights. I wished I was a boy when I was younger but I knew I wasn't. I work in IT and my passions are science fiction, aeroplanes and cycling.

I am very much in favour of eradicating pigeon-holes. I really hate it when I am expected to behave or be a certain "feminine" way - I AM female, this is ME, this IS what a woman is like, even if you don't think it is. I also hate it when I see what is expected of males to be " REAL MEN".

I wish people didn't have such a stupidly restrictive view of what male and female is.

They are "less female." They aren't female at all. And we aren't cis, we're just womyn/females/girls, thanks. No number of adjectives and other b.s. rhetoric can turn males into females or womyn.

I'd like to see your video. You can send the link in a PM if your prefer.