I really don't give a fuck where you're at in the book, tell us your thoughts so far. And I better not seeing any of you shitlibs saying "Wahhh someone already said this buttttt", I don't give a single fuck. I want to hear them regardless of whether or not someone has already said something similar. Put your thoughts out there and I won't ask again. Do some self-crit amongst each other.

  • Are you beginning to understand how trans issues are inexplicably tied to cis people as well as trans people?
  • What can be done materially on this site to further the trans struggle?
  • What have you learned from Trans Liberation?
  • What was shocking for you to read about?
  • What misconceptions regarding trans struggles did you have that were clarified through the reading?
  • Is there anything you didn't understand that you have questions about?
  • Do you have a better understanding of what 'trans rights' entails instead of meaninglessly shouting it into the void?
  • Have you learned anything about yourself through reading this book involving your own gender?
  • Are there things that brought out intense emotion?
  • Literally anything else you want to say. God, please, just fucking discuss.

For any of you confused about language used throughout the book, I highly encourage you to read this brief wall of text that I wrote breaking things down.

If you found the parts about Leslie's interactions with doctors to be horrifying, please read this comment from yours truly about my experience with needing to find a new doctor a couple weeks ago and the challenges I faced with that. I got very lucky and that experience is no where N E A R as bad as M O S T of us have had it, but it's an experience I feel comfortable sharing.

Here is a comment from Quartz talking about her own lived experiences with transphobia. Read it and let the emotional confusion that this is the life a lot of us are forced to live flow through you.

  • RosaBremen [she/her,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Assuming gender is a set of roles associated with sex, would the ultimate goal be to abolish the roles entirely? If so, would that have a significant impact on the number of people wanting to transition? How can the process of abolishing gender roles be implemented without harming trans people?

    The saying that I see get repeated a lot goes "abolish gender roles, not gender identity or expression." It's not bad to feel something pleasing when you wear that fits into a gendered category. The way that I try to reinforce this in myself is that clothes, hair, voice, etc are all material things in the world; they aren't assigned a gender role on a material basis, rather on an idealistic level they are the chosen signifiers of a culture's gender roles.

    My personal takeaway on this point is that abolishing gender roles can be liberating for all people, cis or trans, because they don't remove anything from the possibilities people are allowed to express, only the expectations of a social role that is tied to a gender identity or expression.

    Assuming it’s psychological/neurological, does it make sense to have a defined diagnosis for the purpose of obtaining HRT and surgery? Would scientific research into the causes and mechanisms of how people develop a gender identity help or harm trans people?

    This is kinda a hot button issue in many ways, and I hope other people can chime in to fill the gaps in my explanation. The most important that I want to try and get across is that you don't have to transition to be trans, you don't have to want to transition to be trans. Being trans means that the sex you were assigned at birth does not correlate with the gender identity that you want to live as. This can get thorny because it can lump a whole lot of people who might not consider themselves trans (like Gender-non-conforming people) in with people who do consider themselves trans. At the end of the day, the most important identifier of who is or isn't trans should be who identifies as such, and imo the abolition of gender roles should make it easier, not harder for people to accept their gender identity.

    The quick and dirty is that a lot of times, medical-isms can get in the way of people achieving the self they desire. Requirements for diagnosis of being trans means bureaucracy, delays in treatment, means testing, and in general feeling like you're being gate-kept by folks who have never questioned either their own gender identity or the gender roles that they take part in.

    I'm kinda running out of steam to be able to speak coherently on all of these, but you raise some important questions about how we define things that can be really illuminating to investigate. Thank you for taking the time to read this book and take part in the discussion!

    I'm tagging out, some other trans comrade pls take over :trans-hammer-sickle:

      • RosaBremen [she/her,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I think in your example, imo clothing that is gendered today could still be relevant to a person's gender identity, but not because it continued to function as a gender signifier, rather it would be relevant because the clothing fulfills personal desire.

        For example, skirts presently (largely) are a gender signifier of femininity or womanhood, but if that signifier was removed, the people who continued to wear skirts would be doing so out of a genuine desire and not out of a societal expectation that they needed to fill a feminine role. I think a lot of it ends up being the cultural assumptions that are associated with gender roles that aren't intrinsically tied to gender expression. If someone wants to wear skirts but otherwise presents (in our contemporary contexts) hyper masculine, that shouldn't be a problem, but often Gender Non-Conformity is punished as 'degeneracy.'

        I guess like my takeaway would be, gender roles are designated by a society, while gender identity is a personal form of expression that shouldn't be tied to any one role and is defined by the individual.

        Is that helpful at all? I'm a lil drunko so not sure if I'm totally coherent rn

          • RosaBremen [she/her,they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I'm not totally sure tbh! I think the conclusion you've arrived at that a skirt would be a non-gendered aspect of identity and expression is correct, but I'm also a lil fuzzy on some of these forward looking details. Sorry I can't provide a more in depth answer, I hope this has overall been somewhat helpful!