Are transgender people the gender they say they are?

[TheReckoning]

Yes (doesn’t want to get infracted)

[TheReckoning]

Yes.

I mean, if someone says they are gay, and there's no other way for you to know that someone is gay until they tell you (effectively, self-identify), who in their right mind would 'well actually' that?. As if they somehow know either different or better? You might still want to discriminate against me, or throw me to the ground in response, but what is gained in denying what I call myself?

It comes down to definition. Definition of a gay man is a man who is sexually attracted to other men. If a man calls himself this, he very well could be lying, but since it’s impossible to know definitively another’s sexual orientation, I might as well go along with it. Let’s say we define “man” as “someone who’s anatomy is natural male,” as it was done for thousands of years. If someone calls themself a man, but they do not have naturally male anatomy, then their not a man, simple as that. I can’t know for sure unless I know what their natural anatomy is, but unlike sexual orientation, there is a way to know this definitively.

[TheReckoning]

Yes.

I mean, if someone says they are gay, and there's no other way for you to know that someone is gay until they tell you (effectively, self-identify), who in their right mind would 'well actually' that?. As if they somehow know either different or better? You might still want to discriminate against me, or throw me to the ground in response, but what is gained in denying what I call myself?

It comes down to definition. Definition of a gay man is a man who is sexually attracted to other men. If a man calls himself this, he very well could be lying, but since it’s impossible to know definitively another’s sexual orientation, I might as well go along with it. Let’s say we define “man” as “someone who’s anatomy is natural male,” as it was done for thousands of years. If someone calls themself a man, but they do not have naturally male anatomy, then their not a man, simple as that. I can’t know for sure unless I know what their natural anatomy is, but unlike sexual orientation, there is a way to know this definitively.

'I can't know for sure unless I know what their natural anatomy is' makes my point. You don't know. Socially, you can only go by what people say they are, by how they present and by what 'stereotypes' (which all of us rely on to some extent) they fall in to. But we don't ask in a social setting to see people's private parts or for them to demonstrate chromosomes via a blood test (and even they aren't universal markers) before we socially categorise them as men or women. We've never done that. We've relied on gender expression in it's varying forms to do so throughout history.

So if a cisgendered woman says. 'Hi, I'm female. I'm a woman', you don't actually know if she 'naturally' is. Either you trust what she says, or you show the same distrust. And that isn't good for society; you end up with real life consequences of lesbians being challenged as women in public toilets based on their perceived lack of 'feminine' attributes. You end up with the trans panic of defining women and men by mere biology...which you can never actually do because you never have access to it!

The difference is that is it literally impossible to know what someone’s sexuality orientation is, but it’s very possible to know someone’s birth sex (doctors do it all the time!).

[TheReckoning]

That's not my point. Naturally there are doctors, intimate partners, parents etc, but that's not your position. How do you know what someones birth sex is?

How in your day to day interactions with people do you determine someone's birth sex? Is that something you do with everyone? When is it relevant to you? How do you determine someone is man/woman, male/female other than by how they present to you and what they tell you?

The honest answer is you do accept what they tell you in order to help validate, or correct what you perceive by how they present to you. Birth sex isn't something you can individually determine with each person you meet therefore sociologically it's irrelevant to interactions with people.

If birth sex is important to you, you should doubt everyone who tells you what they are, until they prove what they have between their legs. But that's bordering on sociopathy, so you won't do that either.

So birth sex, on a practical level, doesn't actually matter to you, or me or anyone.

You can argue that “it doesn’t matter if trans men are actually men or not, just don’t be a jerk to people” which is what you’re doing here by saying that since it’s not even possible to know someone’s birth sex 99% of the time, but that’s different than saying “trans men are actually men.”

[TheReckoning]

That's not my point. Naturally there are doctors, intimate partners, parents etc, but that's not your position. How do you know what someones birth sex is?

How in your day to day interactions with people do you determine someone's birth sex? Is that something you do with everyone? When is it relevant to you? How do you determine someone is man/woman, male/female other than by how they present to you and what they tell you?

The honest answer is you do accept what they tell you in order to help validate, or correct what you perceive by how they present to you. Birth sex isn't something you can individually determine with each person you meet therefore sociologically it's irrelevant to interactions with people.

If birth sex is important to you, you should doubt everyone who tells you what they are, until they prove what they have between their legs. But that's bordering on sociopathy, so you won't do that either.

So birth sex, on a practical level, doesn't actually matter to you, or me or anyone.

You can argue that “it doesn’t matter if trans men are actually men or not, just don’t be a jerk to people” which is what you’re doing here by saying that since it’s not even possible to know someone’s birth sex 99% of the time, but that’s different than saying “trans men are actually men.”

Why do you care whether they are or not? What difference does it make to you?

Very little, as long as no one actually expects me to consider them men (calling them preferred pronouns/using preferred name is not too much to expect, however).

[TheReckoning]

That's not my point. Naturally there are doctors, intimate partners, parents etc, but that's not your position. How do you know what someones birth sex is?

How in your day to day interactions with people do you determine someone's birth sex? Is that something you do with everyone? When is it relevant to you? How do you determine someone is man/woman, male/female other than by how they present to you and what they tell you?

The honest answer is you do accept what they tell you in order to help validate, or correct what you perceive by how they present to you. Birth sex isn't something you can individually determine with each person you meet therefore sociologically it's irrelevant to interactions with people.

If birth sex is important to you, you should doubt everyone who tells you what they are, until they prove what they have between their legs. But that's bordering on sociopathy, so you won't do that either.

So birth sex, on a practical level, doesn't actually matter to you, or me or anyone.

You can argue that “it doesn’t matter if trans men are actually men or not, just don’t be a jerk to people” which is what you’re doing here by saying that since it’s not even possible to know someone’s birth sex 99% of the time, but that’s different than saying “trans men are actually men.”

Why do you care whether they are or not? What difference does it make to you?

Very little, as long as no one actually expects me to consider them men (calling them preferred pronouns/using preferred name is not too much to expect, however).

Why wouldn’t you consider them men? It costs you nothing.

Because I personally believe that gender (to the extent that it exists) is directly connected to sex.

[TheReckoning]

That's not my point. Naturally there are doctors, intimate partners, parents etc, but that's not your position. How do you know what someones birth sex is?

How in your day to day interactions with people do you determine someone's birth sex? Is that something you do with everyone? When is it relevant to you? How do you determine someone is man/woman, male/female other than by how they present to you and what they tell you?

The honest answer is you do accept what they tell you in order to help validate, or correct what you perceive by how they present to you. Birth sex isn't something you can individually determine with each person you meet therefore sociologically it's irrelevant to interactions with people.

If birth sex is important to you, you should doubt everyone who tells you what they are, until they prove what they have between their legs. But that's bordering on sociopathy, so you won't do that either.

So birth sex, on a practical level, doesn't actually matter to you, or me or anyone.

You can argue that “it doesn’t matter if trans men are actually men or not, just don’t be a jerk to people” which is what you’re doing here by saying that since it’s not even possible to know someone’s birth sex 99% of the time, but that’s different than saying “trans men are actually men.”

Why do you care whether they are or not? What difference does it make to you?

Very little, as long as no one actually expects me to consider them men (calling them preferred pronouns/using preferred name is not too much to expect, however).

Why wouldn’t you consider them men? It costs you nothing.

Because I personally believe that gender (to the extent that it exists) is directly connected to sex.

This point of view hurts trans people and helps no one. Why would you decide to define things in such a way?

I’m not going to be bullied into abandoning my beliefs because they happen to “hurt someone feelings.”

[TheReckoning]

Dule makes an extremely good point. If people can’t even agree on what causes gender, then who is to say that gender isn’t even real, and that biological sex is all that matters?