raccoona_nongrata

this is not an issue if you have a postmodernist understanding of gender, which most trans people (myself included) subscribe to.

No, that's an impression people in your position create by silencing those who disagree. Which is exactly the issue.

The reason xenogenders and transgender genders are not the same is because one is based on our dimorphic sexual physicality, and the other is based on metaphysical invention. It's the whole reason that the attack helicopter meme has no actual power -- because humans are not and have never been "part helicopter" but we are part male and female.

I'm literally in the process of losing my right to life saving medical care in my country because of that philosophy. Because people think being trans is just a made up social thing. What is your skin in the game that entitles you to not only to represent me but to force me into silence? To tell people that it's just made up after trans people have fought for decades and decades to get the most basic recognition and medical care? How is that nice?

And this is the core of the problem, I can't be silent on this because allowing people to perpetuate the belief that being trans is a made up social construct is actually effecting trans people in a real material way.

Do whatever you want with that. I won't be back either way.

There are people who through some combination of nature and nurture find themselves wanting to be treated in a way which aligns much closer to how one gender gets treated in a particular society.

How people of different gender treat one another is completely cultural though. It's arbitrary. You could have a culture where genders treat one another completely the same yet trans people would still exist because of dysphoria. It's not about culture, it's about their relationship to their bodies. It's why a trans person would still be trans even if they were socially isolated and alone, they might not have a way to understand why they feel dysphoria and it may manifest differently, but they would still feel it because it's a biological reality of who they are.

No one is erasing anyone -- I'm saying that wanting to behave a certain way, or dress a certain way, sleep with a particular kind of person, or be treated socially a certain way is all perfectly fine but it's not ultimately related to being trans. Otherwise you could claim a crossdresser were trans or people who claimed they were "attack helicopters" would have to be accepted as trans because there would literally be no argument you could make against it. You are defining trans people out of their own experience to avoid simply acknowledging that some things are a result of being trans and some things are not.

It is okay if we accept that not everyone is trans. It doesn't make people's experience or desires less valid, whether they end up being trans or not, if anything it helps them live with a more clear sense of themselves. Same way people shouldn't feel "excluded" because they're straight instead of gay. But it would be harmful for a straight person to squish and stretch the definition of being gay so that it included them because "I like dressing flamboyantly, so that makes me gay even though I don't like people of the same sex. And if you disagree with me you're erasing me". We would all recognize it as nonsense and it would be offensive for that person to speak on behalf of gay people's lived experience, even undermining the basis of their established rights.

Even if your belief that dysphoria has biological/medical routes were true, that still doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to be trans.

It does though. In the same way that being attracted to the same sex is not a social construct, you can't simultaneously claim that being trans or being gay is intrinsic to a person but also that it's a result of socialization. The whole discussion becomes incoherent if you try to claim both are true.

some trans folk can “stop being trans” as a result of their social environment or whatever

This is what evangelicals and terfs claim. But it's not true. It's why you cannot convert a trans person, or a gay person from what they are. It's why the medical community has acknowledged that the best treatment is affirming care. If you believe being trans is a social issue you're putting trans people into a position to lose their access to medical care.

It's not gatekeeping, it's acknowledging the very basic concept of what it means to even be trans and using that to clarify if a feeling or belief or whatever else is or isn't a part of that concept. It doesn't delegitimize any of those feelings or beliefs, but it does separate out unrelated ideas that create confusion and misinformation about the trans experience.

But yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about, people refuse to accept that they are making a contradiction that's harmful to trans people, and instead try to turn it back on the very people who are arguing for trans people's legitimacy and rights. Rather than try to follow their own logic to its conclusion they shut down the conversation and try to make sure no one can talk about it.

Gender dysphoria is central to all trans experience though, even if it is experienced differently by different people, even if they don't get an official diagnosis.

If a person hasn't experienced dysphoria in any form, feels no discomfort with their bodily sex characteristics, that's simply being cis. It doesn't matter how they like to dress, what terms they use or invent, what their interests are or how they speak. All of that has nothing to do with gender identity, because gender identity is about how you relate to the sex characteristics of your body, nothing else.

The idea that a person can be socialized into being trans is directly contradictory to the idea that a trans person is born trans and that their gender identity is an unchangeable biological reality of who they are (which causes dysphoria when mismatched with their body).

The two ideas can't both be true, for the same reason you can't say being gay or straight is a social creation but also an unchangeable reality of that individual. If being trans was a social condition it could be undone through socialization (aka conversion therapy), which is a really damaging belief. If we still believed being trans was a socialization issue like the 1950s no one would be able to get medical care.

This is about the time that people (typically) stop the conversation and try to get you banned by calling you truscum and transphobic.

Sure, there's room for nuance regarding diagnosis and people shouldn't be gatekept or diagnosed online by others when they're exploring and trying to figure things out, but often the term "truscum" is used to punish and silence trans people who don't agree that anything and everything fits within gender identity simply because someone might want it to in order to feel validated.

It should be ok to tell people, for example, that dysphoria is central to the trans condition, and to point out that all of trans people's modern medical rights are based on that notion. But saying that will get you banned from those spaces without much discussion, despite it being a critically important truth that makes medical transition possible. That is kind of crazy to me.

If you pushback too hard on certain ideas that are questionable or downright damaging to trans people and their rights but are "widely accepted" in the space, it results in being "truscum".

It should be ok to discuss and clarify these topics without being labeled as some kind of a heretic. Truscum should not be the "I get to call you a bigot to shut you up" card.

Truscum rhetoric is also bigotry.

This is always a red flag, the label "truscum" has just become a means to shut down uncomfortable conversations about what actually falls under the trans umbrella, it's used to demonize any trans person who defends the medical legitimacy of their condition and insists that it's not a social condition.

It's TERF propaganda to ostracize trans people from their own communities by weaponizing people looking to legitimize their own special interest that's not actually related to being trans.