News

I'll just post them here so others can chime in. This will be kinda long, but most of it is setting up the questions, and I'll put the questions in a bulleted list at the end.

Here are some statements I'll refer to later:

1. Feminists claim there's no difference between men and women outside physiology.
2. Trans/non-binary has nothing to do with sexual orientation, it's purely about gender identity.
3. There's a huge fight between feminists and the trans community about whether trans women are women.

So just by looking at these groups, gender identity simultaneously matters and it doesn't. Feminists argue that gender norms shouldn't really exist and that there are just roles people can play. A man can raise children, a woman can be the main bread winner, etc. But just as gender roles are mattering less and less, there's this huge push from the trans/non-binary community for recognition, and now I'm being asked to use certain pronouns after years of being trained that pronouns don't mean anything (at least in terms of social roles).

Obviously something is motivation trans people to transition. However, at least in terms of physical performance, testosterone suppression doesn't eliminate physiological advantages when transitioning to female (I'm not getting into the "should trans women play competitive sports" rabbit hole, just highlighting physiological remnants), so transitioning isn't going to turn you into a biological woman, even if you get all of the surgeries and live on T pills. Yet there are still plenty that find a lot of value in it.

And then there's non-binary folks, who don't feel strongly enough about either gender to identify with it. So to me that means they don't necessarily see an issue with their physiology, they just see some other value in picking something other than their originally assigned gender.

And that brings me to a few questions:

• What is it about gender that they're identifying with?
• Would continuing down the feminist path of tearing down gender roles increase or decrease the number of openly trans/non-binary people? Would people bother changing pronouns if there's no change in social expectations either way?
• For those who believe in spirits/ghosts/afterlife, do trans people think their spirit/ghost/soul would match the gender they identify with?

I would like to understand trans and non-binary people more, but I don't think that's really possible without experiencing it for myself, in much the same way that I won't fully understand my spouse or kids without experiencing things from their perspective. But I also don't think it's particularly relevant, I can be nice to people I don't fully understand, especially when it costs my pretty much nothing to do so. I'm still interested, just not sure how to get the perspective I lack.