but we're back to the thing i don't get. I understand wanting to change your body. I understand wanting people to treat you differently. I understand having nonstandard expression preferences. I'm down with all that. But what does this have to do with gender?
Conversation
It's not just about wanting people to treat you differently.
It's about wanting to be who *you* are.
A trans woman is a woman whose body is wrong (I apologize to anyone I offend for using inaccurate terminology here, I don't quite know the right words to use). She was always-
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a woman - her gender was always female - but her body didn't match that. For many (but not all) this causes a lot of distress (dysphoria).
Yes, being recognized properly as who you are is huge. But being able to see *yourself* outwardly reflected as you are on the inside is-
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more important, to my admittedly limited understanding.
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Thanks for engaging with me on this so far.
My confusion here is now something like... what 'is' a woman? If you feel like a woman... how do you know? What's that like? What constitutes the 'woman' that you feel like?
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I'm *extremely* confused when I get to this question when trying to understand the enby/trans/pronoun framework. This is close to the core of why none of this makes sense and why I'm using my own system.
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I suppose it is difficult to convey that to someone who has no sense of their own gender identity. It's... difficult to explain. I can't really say why I feel like a man, for example. I just do.
Regarding engaging with you, I'm going to be honest: your thread angered me. -
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Particularly the 6th part. It came off extremely insulting. But your replies to people who were actually talking to you were respectful and seemed willing to try to learn, and teaching is always preferable to just yelling.
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Thanks! I don't mean to be insulting. I'm probably on the autism spectrum and things that are very straightforward to me sometimes make people really angry. I just try to be consistently straightforward in as many interactions as I can be and hope they understand.
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It can be difficult sometimes to put yourself in someone else's shoes, even for neurotypicals. If I may make a suggestion, I'd recommend this - consider your gender framework for yourself, but let others' gender frameworks be for them. Everyone is different, after all.
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It doesn't really work like that - I can't force myself to use their framework on them when I'm still so deeply confused about certain questions around that framework (e.g., what does it mean to 'feel like a woman'). Like I said tho, I'm willing to do what they want!
Fair enough. Just thought I'd throw it out there.
The most important thing is treating people with respect, which means using the names and pronouns they want to be called by. It is admittedly difficult to change your thinking - it's a long process for anyone, and something to-
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