Our sex should obviously not be a major part of our lives outside of, like, medical things. But our society forces gender on us as a set of roles, expectations etc. to follow based on our sex. So, ideally, there would be no gender, right?

But trans people throughout history have wanted to present as the opposite gender. This is in addition to cis people who oppose their own gender’s roles and do the opposite things. But trans people, obviously, go much further than any cis person does.

Is this because trans people want to actually be the opposite sex and for a long time being the opposite gender was the only possible thing? But now thanks to medical advancements they can get closer to that goal than any other time?

Why is this? Is it something in the brain, like with gay people? So, can you do a brain scan to see if people are actually gay or trans? Would that even help? Actually, I can imagine it helping in an ideal world, but in our fascist reality that will probably just end up genociding people. So, uh, scrap that.

Any essential books for reading up on all this stuff? Thanks

  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm not trans, so what I have to say should be secondary to what any of our trans comrades care to comment. But from my reading of Les Feinberg's Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, it seems clear to me that it depends on the person. Not only are there the western genders that you're intimately familiar with, and the concept of being nonbinary or transgender/sex, there are genders that were understood in other cultures that differ in category from any of these. So the answer is, both and more, depending. I think there's a focus on flattening the gender/sex/sexuality spectrum along the most physically realized aspects partly because capitalism commodifies any and everything into its most physical aspects. Surely there are some trans women and men that would feel satisfied being transgender and not wanting any sort of affirmative surgery if not for the various social pressures of capitalism; but those social pressures are a real force. Who's to say how everyone would shake out under different cultural systems. As for Trans Liberation, there are wonderful cases presented of all of the above, people that identify with indigenous gender identities, people that identify as crossdressers or transsexual, and of course Les Feinberg hirself who identified with the "male" gender as nonbinary had seemingly little interest in any sort of surgery . I would highly recommend it as a relatively short read that exists largely to present radical trans acceptance from a variety of perspectives and contexts, as Les speaks to different groups and includes letters from a wide variety of people.

    :cat-trans: