Silentiea

Probably against the TOS, though, meaning the money paid was never owed, could get it into fraud

And I'd just like to add: you're right, this is the way the literature talks about it. You'd think the term being used clinically - with a clear, concise, and well-defined meaning - would mean it couldn't be targeted and attacked the way it is by the religious right. You'd think, you'd hope, and you'd be wrong. And that sucks.

I don't know about that. I think the reasons they give would sound external like that, but they can sound that way from a trans person too. And ask about something more significant, like

what if you didn't have a penis anymore? Say you could still have sex and babies, but didn't have a penis. How would you feel about that?

A cis man would be pretty affected by that, and he wouldn't attribute that to societal pressure. I contend that at the very least there is some misattribution when most cis people put the entirety of their gender identity on external factors.

Either way, I fully agree that it's something that research can answer in a way discussion never will. Whether and to what degree that research has happened, is happening, or ever will happen I can't say.

On the one hand, hilarious.

On the other hand, I can totally see someone making the claim that this provides evidence of an unfair advantage for trans girls.

But, but, but! Muh freedom! I have a God-given right to accuse children of being dangerous monsters!

If you're referring to the "empty set" and asking the question "why is it empty" you should probably step away from set theory for now.

Naked and Afraid and Women Who Hunt

Sounds like a very ...interesting show.

Change the question slightly and they think about it differently. Ask them how they'd feel if they lost some of those features. A cis man with hairy arms and chest probably doesn't say he feels a great joy when he thinks about them, but would probably feel some real discomfort if he couldn't grow body hair any more. They assign a neutral value to them because they consider it "default". And of course not everyone feels the same way about these things, cis or trans, but I think most cis people really do value their genders and sexed bodies because those things match, even if they wouldn't say so.

Either way, I think we're both speaking anecdotally and I don't plan to go look for the research on gender identity right now.

I'll give you the first two, even if neither one was at all constructive or even radical about it. (Neither of them were really trying to change the system, just to abuse it for themselves after being told they couldn't succeed inside of it).

The third one is practically the antithesis of this comic.

I don't know who (Abigail Thorn? Contrapoints? ...Vihart?) but someone was talking about how sometimes that's the case, that they really don't have a sense of their own gender. That they're "really" something like agender, but that it's just too much of a bother to worry about correcting people. But there are also plenty of cis people deeply invested in their own gender, who really do have toes to it and identify as that gender, but when you ask them how they know, they put it all on external things rather than internal.

I don't think it's that they don't have an internal gender identity, I think it's just hard for them to tell. Ask a cis woman how she knows she's a woman and she'll probably say something like "because I have a woman's body", but I don't think that means she has no internal sense of her gender, it just means it takes a lot more introspection and nuance than she's spent to get to that than it takes to go "boobs, check, vulva, check, I'm good". She doesn't have a disconnect, so she's never had to really consider it, doesn't mean she doesn't have it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think research indicates we aren't special because we have a gender identity, but because of what it is.

Also heavily under fire, though the arguments are usually paper thin. They dismiss self-identification under the pretense that it's not about identity, that your identity can't be that you're trans or whatever. Just a fiat argument.