Campaign Creations

I was wondering what people on here think of gender identity and stuff, and transgender topics.

Do you think gender is intrinsically linked to or the same as sex? If someone asks you to use different pronouns for them would you respect that? Is it wrong for someone assigned male at birth to identify as a girl? Etc etc.

It's a bit of a controversial topic but I expect (or at least hope) people can discuss this civilly and respectfully on this forum. It's becoming a bigger and more well known thing in the media (example: Laverne Cox on Orange is the New Black) so it seems worth thinking about at least.

Personally I was raised in a Christian family and while they never exactly tried to force me to believe things there's still an amount of "this is the way things are" tied to that, so as I've grown up I've just stopped accepting everything I've been told since I was a kid. I'm more interested in figuring out what's true for myself now, so I can generally accept it as it doesn't really hurt anyone and I'm exploring my own gender identity stuff as well but idk where that's going yet.

Anyway yeah, the question's there: Is it wrong for people to identify as genders they weren't assigned at birth? Why or why not?

It's no more wrong for a person identify as the opposite gender than it is for them to be a homosexual. With that being said it's good to remember that GID is classified as a mental illness and also have higher rates of depression, OCD, self harm, phobias and substance abuse. This can be partly attributed to social factors, but I firmly believe that transgender people are more likely to be mentally unstable or suffer from other mental health issues because of the biology of their disease.

If you're suffering from GID you need to find a psychiatrist and undergo therapy, this is especially important if you're a young adult, it's going to save you a lot of pain in the long run. Do not listen to SJWs and tumblrites who tell you that there's nothing wrong with you and to be yourself, mental health issues are a serious problem and ignoring them is only going to make your life shittier.

tl;dr No reasonable person cares about what you identify as, but seek help as it is a mental illness and sufferers of GID also have higher rates of depression, suicide and substance abuse.

We've already lost a community member to suicide because of GID as well, so see a psychiatrist.
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While I agree that GID and body dysphoria are serious issues, I'm not confident it's always the case with transgender people. There's a very bizarre group of people that call themselves "truscum" and try to police gender identities and say that you can only be trans if you have dysphoria, but I don't think this applies to every transgender person. I think that in those cases there's nothing particularly unhealthy about it.

As for me I've had a variety of problems stemming back long before any of this came up, so it's plausible that it's related. I don't think this is the place to get into any of that so I'll just say I don't think suicide is particularly likely for me, just gradually increasing anxiety and apathy. As for professional help, I saw a pyschologist once (last month) and he determined that if I have anything it's mild.

Anyway, there are a lot of happy and adjusted trans people that I've met. I'm not confident that there's dysphoria involved in every case.

Jim_Raynor wrote:Do you think gender is intrinsically linked to or the same as sex? If someone asks you to use different pronouns for them would you respect that? Is it wrong for someone assigned male at birth to identify as a girl? Etc etc.

No. Yes. No.

Jim_Raynor wrote:It's a bit of a controversial topic

I've lived in California and Hawaii. In neither place is it a controversial topic.

Jim_Raynor wrote:Anyway yeah, the question's there: Is it wrong for people to identify as genders they weren't assigned at birth? Why or why not?

Nope. Gender is a performance repeated over time. While saying it is "a social construct" can be misconstrued as suggesting it's therefore meaningless, what it really means is what we mean when we say "male" or "female" is very heavily determined by culture and not by biology.

Pink is for girls and blue is for boys? Only for the latter half of the 20th century. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cult ... 97/?no-ist

In Hawaii, and in many cultures across the world, there have long been "third genders" -- although the word Mahu today means transsexual generally, in older cultures it simply indicated someone who lived outside the male/female binary.

Which is not to say that there is no biological component to sexual orientation. For example, the maternal immunization hypothesis, while still only part of the picture, has growing credence. That is, women's bodies treat a fetus, particularly the male fetus, with some amount of hostility. As a woman has more male children, her body gets better at creating antibodies that change the nature of the fetus. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2120218

Although the development of sexual characteristics ("is the baby a boy or a girl?") is heavily genetic, sexuality ("am I a boy or a girl... or something else?") is much more susceptible to changes in the prenatal environment.

Trying to assert that there are "real" and "fake" transpeople is therefore both hopeless and pointless. The idea that there are "real" transpeople is just as absurd as the idea that there is only "male" and "female." The truth is that there is as wide a variety of differences in sexuality as there are differences in people. A "straight man" who has homosexual urges whenever Ryan Gosling is not necessarily a closeted homosexual, rather it has never really been needed or useful in biology to make sharp distinctions in sexuality. Likewise, a "gay man" who is attracted to Jennifer Lawrence is not a "fake gay". And a "trans woman" who opts not to go through with S.R.S. is not a "fake trans." There's a spectrum, and there are no "rights" and "wrongs" just what the dice of biology have happened to throw at one person or another.

I don't understand how this was ever a controversial topic. No one really gives a shit. Just make fun of people who think it is and move on. I know trans and bi and gay and it doesn't really make a difference either way. The extreme vast majority of people who pretend to be trans or whatever are just attention seekers and thus the whole should be ignored. Anyone who is legitimately trans or gay won't bother to cry about it.

I think the issue and controversy isn't social, school, or workplace acceptance but personal boundaries. We can pretend to be enlightened as anyone but finding out someone you've been with is transsexual would throw you for a loop to say the least.

We may see legal barriers go down in a decade but I think those personal issues or taboos surrounding it could take 25 years; trannie jokes are still pretty acceptable in most circles, for example. I'd echo wibod's point about GID and that while the medical and psychiatric science isn't bonafide yet, they're definitely better in dealing with this than tumblr.

Krazy, it may not be controversial in places you've been, but it's definitely still a big deal where I live in Canada, and it's still argued about a lot on the internet. Aside from what DrumsofWar mentioned with trannie jokes still being a thing, there's also a lot of people who refuse to use peoples preferred pronouns, and I've heard my own parents say that if someone is trans they shouldn't be treated as a person.

I agree that personal and social barriers will take longer than the legal barriers. This has applied to other things as well such as sexism, racism, and homophobia, even after laws are passed that help oppressed people, the social side of it is still there. A currently relevant example regarding racism would be the stuff happening in Ferguson right now.

And yeah I'd also sooner listen to a psychiatric professional than tumblr.

Also, Horou Musuko (Wandering Son) is a much better representation than anything you'll see on TV. http://mangafox.me/manga/hourou_musuko/

Okay, so, this is two months late, but...

Is everyone okay then using she/her pronouns for me from now on? I also generally prefer the name "Church" now (strictly not religion related, btw) but since my username has "Jim" and all it's okay to still use that to avoid confusion.

Jamie_Raynor?

Can't be sarah kerrigan, that would be too confusing with SKS. Maybe Raszagal? Or Nova?

Definitely Nova. I need that "sexy yet also could probably eat you" persona.

Jamie is actually a name I did consider for a while. I like it.

Are you the second Church on my Steam friends list?

When you finalize a name, we have the ability to alter it for the forum.

Yeah, that's probably me. I'm the Church with the Punpun avatar.

And I guess just Church would be good for a username, thank you. I don't have an internet last name to put after an underscore this time.

Jim_Raynor wrote:And I guess just Church would be good for a username, thank you. I don't have an internet last name to put after an underscore this time.

Internet last name, eh?

Rose
Hill
Bell
Carroll
Sherman
Freeman
Swanson
McBride
French
Tucker
Underwood
Cochran
Wilcox
Steele
Savage
Payne