You're viewing a single thread.
Trans men are men.
So why even use the word 'trans'? Surely it's meaningless. No conceivable difference, right?
Black men are men too. It's an identifier for a member of a marginalized community. Feigning ignorance like this isn't funny or entertaining.
It is a useful identifier only in the context of how black men a different (from "normal men"?). Most of the time black men are just men, but there are a few ways they are different. If you are not specificity trying to bring out one of that cases where black men a different you are continuing the idea that black men are different which doesn't help most of the cases where they are different. There are a couple medical instances where black men are different that should remain, but for the most part differences between black men and [normal?] men are just about discrimination and so if that doesn't apply to what you are talking about then black men is a harmful lable.
But Black men are still men. They are discriminated against for being Black (or "black men"), but the root does not stem from them being men, as in they are not targeted for just being men but "black men" as a class. The lines are blurred when people treat trans men (or black men) as a different category of men, but such bigoted rhetoric doesnt first stem from them being men but "other men", excluded from masculinity by patriarchy and bigotry.
They are different in how they are treated and their life outcomes due to their treatment. The same can be made about why leftists talk about trans men. We don't care about the trans part, we care about the treatment they are put through by society.
Contrasting that with how racists talk about black men because they view that there are irrevocable differences between black men and white men, or how transphobes say trans men because they view them as women 'faking' manhood, and you can see how the same language changes meaning in differing contexts.
I'm not feigning ignorance. I'm trying to make the point that if it's true it doesn't need said with any kind of modifier. The distinction itself is the difference, and the people who are bothered about it aren't any more crazy than I am with the phobias I have.
It needs to be said as long as people don't understand it. Plus, it can be a useful descriptor to refer to someone's history as FTM-transitioned, and the experiences that come with that.
The big group men include both cis men and trans men. Both are men.
It's pretty simple if you're not a asshole about it.
What makes us men any more than being beings with arbitrary shapes? I'm using arbitrary in the literal sense of "decided by individuals without regards to external factors".
I'm not a man. I'm me, and I happen to be in this body. All these words are just ways other people are labeling me so they can decide how I'm to be treated. Putting a label on a person is no different than putting a handle on your coffee pot.
Hey it's one of those agender people who only wants to abolish gender when trans people are mentioned.
Hi, this is a bit of a tangent but it's topical so I hope you don't mind me asking. Since you use the pronoun "drag", would you also consider your gender to be a third gender, or is it only your pronouns that are nonbinary?
Drag's gender is dragon rider
That's a pretty good word for it.
I'm just tired of things not making sense.
Putting a label on a person is no different than putting a handle on your coffee pot.
So rather useful?
Yes, useful for people trying to control it/them.
Or like you know to communicate.
Communicating to others how to treat who you're labeling.
Dude what are you talking about? I can spend a lot of time describing what I do for work, or I can use a label that describes my occupation. It won't 100% do the job, but will be sufficient most of the time, and if not I can elaborate. How do you even talk to people without using labels, are you happen to be Treebeard or something?
What makes us men any more than being beings with arbitrary shapes?
Mango, why do you always have to be the one saying absolutely ridiculous shit?
In the way "man" is being used here, it's not your body that would make you a man, but your gender identity. For most people, those are intuitively the same thing, but that only makes it more important to be clear about the terms being used here.
Ooohh, the word you guys are looking for is "style".
Listen, if you want to question the terms or concepts being used here then go for it, but please don't barrel into the discussion and obstinately refuse to use the same definitions as everyone else while intentionally not making that clear just so that you can try to own people. We all see through it and it's obnoxious and only serves to erode the quality of discussion.
don't barrel into the discussion and obstinately refuse to use the same definitions as everyone else while intentionally not making that clear just so that you can try to own people.
Well if that's the proper way to do things, I'm gonna need you all to stop obstinately refusing to use the words "man" and "woman" the same way as everyone else while intentionally not making that clear for whatever reason you have. It really IS rude to hijack already existing language to change the conventions everyone else is already using. I would also like people to stop acting like feminism is egalitarianism when the label is clearly gendered.
If you wanna question what it is to be a man or a woman, then go for it, but have some definition ready before asserting what's what in the face of thousands of years of precedent.
I would also like people to stop acting like feminism is egalitarianism when the label is clearly gendered.
Agreed.
Anyways, I'm aware that the usage of "man" and "woman" in leftist culture solidified rather quickly and unexpectedly into something that seems counterintuitive from an outside perspective, because I had an outside perspective when it happened. But I assure you, the difference in meaning to its older usage is both necessary and not actually hard to understand if someone takes the time to explain it.
Basically, the idea of sex (physical traits) and gender (mental traits) being distinct things became necessary as the need to refer to nontraditional combinations of them became a thing. Intersex people may have physical traits of both sexes, but have a clear gender. Transgender people are an obvious catalyst, having a gender that differs from their sex (post-operation, you could in theory use the word transsexual, but this has bad connotations from its history so it's not used). Some historical cultures have been argued to have more than two distinct genders, while obviously still only having two primary sexes. You can see how this gets a bit complicated and necessitates the differentiation of the physical and mental traits into different words. So, sex became the physical traits, and gender became the mental ones. Or maybe that was always the technical definitions, and they became more common in their usage. Either way, I hope you get what I'm saying. There are definitions for both terms, and more importantly, there's a need for the terms to be different and more technical than they are in common usage, when discussing sex/gender issues. This naturally bled into common usage as those issues became more culturally relevant, at which point they came into contact with "normal" people who were like "What? Why?" I'm asking you to keep an open mind about learning why, because it wasn't done for no reason. Apologies for the wall of text, it's 2:30am for me.
There is nothing distinct about a gender, and literally nobody is deciding what traits belong, so why does gender get to have anything to do with the word that says I've got a penis? Why imply that anyone should have to be, feel, or act some kind of way in relation to the words man or woman? You're all literally doing worse than the astrology people at categorizing personalities and acting like it grants you the right to suck people in around you to play this stupid fucking game!
Nobody needs to use your pronouns anymore or any more meaningfully than they gotta use your constellation to describe you. In fact, anyone and everyone is perfectly at liberty to call you an asshat instead of anything else for trying to write the script for everyone else!
Gender isn't real, but I sure do love wrecking my ass with dildos. Wanna call me something?
Let me be very clear here. I'm not Republican. I've got no issues with intersex people, or any particular orientation. I don't care what anyone's style is. I couldn't make up any reasons to care. The absolutely only thing that should bother me about someone else's whole damn shape or presentation is if I have to touch them or maintain their life, and I don't gotta consent to any of that. What I'm against here is stupid lack of clarity from the people who wanna reject gender roles by using gender roles as their framework for describing how. It's asinine.
"Gender isn't real" is a valid perspective, and actually, I agree that it's not based on any concrete traits. This is what people mean when they say that "gender is a social construct". There's nothing that makes my gender objectively male, other than that I believe myself to be one based on my social understanding of gender roles. You can't measure someone's gender, it's not something that you can determine from someone's personality or biology, and it's not something that's even objectively definable over time based on specific traits. It's not real, in that sense. If you're someone who believes those to be important traits for something to be real-- fair! It's not real, then. We made it up.
Nobody needs to use your pronouns anymore or any more meaningfully than they gotta use your constellation to describe you. In fact, anyone and everyone is perfectly at liberty to call you an asshat instead of anything else for trying to write the script for everyone else!
It's about respect, asshat. Gender is something that people value very highly, on par with religion and politics, except unlike those it's entirely harmless. Why would I go out of my way to disrespect someone? Sure, I can do anything. I'm free to be a total dick and fuck everyone over. But I also must accept the consequences of doing so. If you want to misgender everyone, good luck with that, but it's not going to end well for your social life.
Can't tell if you are trying to be forcefully post-gender or trans-exclusionary.
Gender is arbitrary, being conceived in passing by ancient society noticing the difference in hardware without nuance, which was later used as a rhetorical tool for subjugating women and 'deviants' (those who didn't fit neatly within the binary). Because of this subjugative function, it began being strictly enforced, and we still see that strictness in society today.
Modern attempts at sorting gender have been a failure, consistently failing to actually cleanly sort men from women in a clean binary.
Eventually there will come a time where trans can be omitted from conversation, but that is not now, due to the danger omitting it poses for trans individuals from unadjusted individuals. The strict gender binary must be dismantled first.
So why even use the word ‘trans’?
Why use words at all? Just make grunting noises and hope other people get the gist.
At this level of conversation, yeah.
Funny you of all people complaining about the level of conversation.
Nobody even mentioned trans people. Do you just go around spouting transphobia at random people?
Read the post.
Never thought I'd meet an illiterate person in a text based medium