Men wearing dresses

[Emily Lake]

First of all, yes there is evidence for both transgender ( not that I ever denied that ) and non binary gender. In the case of trans, a trans female has the same brain patterns as a female, while having the body parts of a male, and vice versa for a trans male.

How distinct are these "brain patterns" between male and female? How much variation is there within a given sex versus the amount of differential between sexes?

There is considerably greater variation in the individuals within a sex than there are between the sexes. Envision a bimodal distribution where the means of the categories differ by 0.01... but the standard deviation of each distribution is 10. I don't know the actual numbers, just getting across the concept.

 

[Shadowy Man]

First of all, yes there is evidence for both transgender ( not that I ever denied that ) and non binary gender. In the case of trans, a trans female has the same brain patterns as a female, while having the body parts of a male, and vice versa for a trans male.

How distinct are these "brain patterns" between male and female? How much variation is there within a given sex versus the amount of differential between sexes?

There is considerably greater variation in the individuals within a sex than there are between the sexes. Envision a bimodal distribution where the means of the categories differ by 0.01... but the standard deviation of each distribution is 10. I don't know the actual numbers, just getting across the concept.

I am a scientist so I get the concept and it is why I asked. So, there is no "correct" way to feel being male or feel being female, right?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't think their problem is misogyny. It's money. As far as I've read there's a very close connection between how high tech a culture is and women's rights. Basically, the more well educated you need to be to get the most basic middle class job the more progressive it is.

Or to put it even more simply. The less time you need to worry about your basic survival the better shape women's causes will be. Or even more simply. The more engineers. The more female freedom.

The only reason white women are more progressive than black or Hispanic women is because industrialisation started in England.

The risk with ignoring the causal relation between industrial wealth and power AND women's rights is that it very quickly becomes very mystical and convoluted.

I don't know why so many leftwing feminists are resistant to seeimg the (to me blindingly obvious) connection between access to washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, supermarkets and cars and their political freedoms.

The word "patriarchy" and "patriarchal oppression" has become so overused (and abused) in feminist texts that it's stopped being meaningful IMHO. I increasingly get the impression it's used in place of having to make any actual argument. Like some mystical force of prime evil emanating from footballs.

In the 80'ies there was a sharp split between third world feminism and feminism in the devoloped world. The women from the poor part of the world couldn't get a word in edgewise and couldn't relate one iota to the western women's, from their perspective, luxury problems. They were more concerned with not getting beaten to death. So they ignored western feminism and started their own networks and conferences.

Anyway... that's what I managed to glean from what I have read on it

Mmm... My experience and impression from talking to lots and lots of real life black women - several of whom are related to me - is that there's a lot more misogyny than you seem to think. I've got several very accomplished professional black women in my family, but I also see a persistent expectation that they do all of the cooking and cleaning and child care, and that they need to be constantly dressed up for their spouses. I have witnessed the sexist things said to them by their spouses.

I'm not talking about the lack of progress in developing nations - that's a completely different issue. I'm talking about the level of sexism and sex-based mistreatment faced by hispanic and black women in the US right now.

It doesn't matter that these black and hispanic women live in USA. Racism is a thing and if your social group is poor you won't have access to all the middle-class benefits somebody white living right across the street from you. It could very well be that your black and hispanic friends have the same problems of women in the developed world even though they live in USA. I'd say that's highly likely.

 

[Toni]

I don't think their problem is misogyny. It's money. As far as I've read there's a very close connection between how high tech a culture is and women's rights. Basically, the more well educated you need to be to get the most basic middle class job the more progressive it is.

Or to put it even more simply. The less time you need to worry about your basic survival the better shape women's causes will be. Or even more simply. The more engineers. The more female freedom.

The only reason white women are more progressive than black or Hispanic women is because industrialisation started in England.

The risk with ignoring the causal relation between industrial wealth and power AND women's rights is that it very quickly becomes very mystical and convoluted.

I don't know why so many leftwing feminists are resistant to seeimg the (to me blindingly obvious) connection between access to washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, supermarkets and cars and their political freedoms.

The word "patriarchy" and "patriarchal oppression" has become so overused (and abused) in feminist texts that it's stopped being meaningful IMHO. I increasingly get the impression it's used in place of having to make any actual argument. Like some mystical force of prime evil emanating from footballs.

In the 80'ies there was a sharp split between third world feminism and feminism in the devoloped world. The women from the poor part of the world couldn't get a word in edgewise and couldn't relate one iota to the western women's, from their perspective, luxury problems. They were more concerned with not getting beaten to death. So they ignored western feminism and started their own networks and conferences.

Anyway... that's what I managed to glean from what I have read on it

Mmm... My experience and impression from talking to lots and lots of real life black women - several of whom are related to me - is that there's a lot more misogyny than you seem to think. I've got several very accomplished professional black women in my family, but I also see a persistent expectation that they do all of the cooking and cleaning and child care, and that they need to be constantly dressed up for their spouses. I have witnessed the sexist things said to them by their spouses.

I'm not talking about the lack of progress in developing nations - that's a completely different issue. I'm talking about the level of sexism and sex-based mistreatment faced by hispanic and black women in the US right now.

It doesn't matter that these black and hispanic women live in USA. Racism is a thing and if your social group is poor you won't have access to all the middle-class benefits somebody white living right across the street from you. It could very well be that your black and hispanic friends have the same problems of women in the developed world even though they live in USA. I'd say that's highly likely.

There are lots of middle class black and hispanic people in the United States. In most of the US, poor people and middle class people do not live across the street from one another. In the US, racism dramatically affects middle and upper class black and Hispanic people just as it dies poor or working class black and Hispanic people.

Regardless of their educational and professional and socioeconomic levels, parents of black and brown children face serious, well founded worries about how their children will be treated by whites people, especially those in positions of authority, such as police officers. As a white mother of white sons, I did worry about them being safe when they were old enough to drive cars and hang with friends. But I NEVER worried that they’re lives would be at risk if their car broke down or they were pulled over by the police.

As far as expectations that women are responsible for housekeeping and childcare—yeah, that was my generation and persists into current generations of shite folks including women with advanced degrees. It’s better than my generation - d mine was better than my mother’s, but there is a persistent lag. Some of this seems to be dependent on how recently be a family moved into middle/upper middle or professional class.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is considerably greater variation in the individuals within a sex than there are between the sexes. Envision a bimodal distribution where the means of the categories differ by 0.01... but the standard deviation of each distribution is 10. I don't know the actual numbers, just getting across the concept.

I am a scientist so I get the concept and it is why I asked. So, there is no "correct" way to feel being male or feel being female, right?

It's the internet - I never know how much mathematical background any given person has, so I tend to include explanations as a default

To my understanding, reading through multiple works of research, the opinion from neurologists and neuroscientists is that there's no way to "feel" being male or female as a feeling in one's mind.

Anatomically, I'm guessing there are some pretty apparent ways to "feel" oneself to be male or female. If nothing else, I can factually observe that my vulva feels different to my hands than my spouse's penis does.

 

[Toni]

There is considerably greater variation in the individuals within a sex than there are between the sexes. Envision a bimodal distribution where the means of the categories differ by 0.01... but the standard deviation of each distribution is 10. I don't know the actual numbers, just getting across the concept.

I am a scientist so I get the concept and it is why I asked. So, there is no "correct" way to feel being male or feel being female, right?

It's the internet - I never know how much mathematical background any given person has, so I tend to include explanations as a default

To my understanding, reading through multiple works of research, the opinion from neurologists and neuroscientists is that there's no way to "feel" being male or female as a feeling in one's mind.

Anatomically, I'm guessing there are some pretty apparent ways to "feel" oneself to be male or female. If nothing else, I can factually observe that my vulva feels different to my hands than my spouse's penis does.

Really?

So your mind doesn't allow you to feel happy? Sad? Hungry? Fatigued? Pretty? Ugly? Smart? Funny? Strong? Weak? Assertive? and so on....

My mind, in conjunction with my body and my circumstances, told me I wanted to have a baby in conjunction with and actually counter to all of the various practicalities involved---and also told me I was done having babies long before my ovaries did.

Of course all of those things originate in your mind and in your brain. So does feeling feminine or masculine. Or old or young. Confident, insecure. and so on. With amply data supplied by all of your entire nervous system.

I've said that when I was young, I was frequently told that what I was doing or what I liked wasn't appropriate for girls and that I must be a boy. I thought hard about it but nope, there was nothing that my brain told me that made me think that I was a boy or that I wanted to be a boy although I certainly did appreciate the convenience of being able to easily pee on a tree and I sure did wish that I got some of the preferential treatment that I saw boys get. That's a lot different than feeling like I was a boy or wishing I was a boy. Which some individuals who externally appear to be girls do feel.

 

[Emily Lake]

Really?

So your mind doesn't allow you to feel happy? Sad? Hungry? Fatigued? Pretty? Ugly? Smart? Funny? Strong? Weak? Assertive? and so on....

I don't really know where to start here. It seems like we're speaking separate languages altogether. There are multiple meanings to the word "feel". You're conflating several of them above. Some of the things you've listed are emotions (sad), some are actually physical and chemical signals being accepted by the brain (hungry, fatigued).

Some are more esoteric, and it gets complicated depending on whether the self-perception bears any connection to reality. Is a person who "feels" funny actually funny? What do they mean when they say that they "feel" pretty? Does that mean that they are interpreting an actual image of themselves (mirror, photo, etc.) as being unattractive? Or is it a mental state that is completely disconnected from observation? Or is it a mental construct based on the opinions and expressions of other people?

I've said that when I was young, I was frequently told that what I was doing or what I liked wasn't appropriate for girls and that I must be a boy. I thought hard about it but nope, there was nothing that my brain told me that made me think that I was a boy or that I wanted to be a boy although I certainly did appreciate the convenience of being able to easily pee on a tree and I sure did wish that I got some of the preferential treatment that I saw boys get. That's a lot different than feeling like I was a boy or wishing I was a boy.

Sure, the same was fairly true for me, although my parents were very unconcerned about gender roles, so I got to climb trees and play with cars. At least until puberty hit, and then I couldn't sit cross-legged because someone (read: an adult male) might stare at my crotch. But that's a whole different aspect of the cultural indoctrination of girls.

Did you "feel like a girl"? Or did you observe that you were a girl?

Which some individuals who externally appear to be girls do feel.

What does that actually mean though? What do those girls feel that leads them to conclude that they "feel like a boy"? How do they even have a baseline for what a boy feels like?

I want to step back and draw a distinction here. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, certainly. but a lot of people over the last decade who have declared that they "feel" like a woman or a man or something in between or outside of the sex-binary do not have gender dysphoria. I've been provide with descriptions of how a person with gender dysphoria feels, what their perceptions are, how they relate to their own bodies... provided to me by people with gender dysphoria. I'm certain I don't have a complete expert understanding, but I have just enough to grasp the concept of something that is very much outside of my own experience. Although it's a small sample, none of them have expressed that they "feel" like the opposite sex. They've explained it as feeling uncomfortable in their own skin, feeling like there's something missing, being surprised to see their own genitalia, being repulsed by their genitals, being traumatized by their reflection in the mirror, because their mental construct of their bodies, and how those bodies relate to the world around them doesn't match their reality.

A whole lot of people self identifying as transgender recently do not express any gender dysphoria, they don't express any discomfort with or disconnect from their sexed bodies. Rather, they express themselves as being "socially" dysphoric. The want other people to treat them as if they're the opposite sex (or both or neither). Those tend to be the people who are most vocal about "feeling" like a girl or a boy. And I genuinely have no idea what they mean when they say that. None of them have been able to explain what "feeling like a boy" means in any way that is NOT exactly what you described above - a rejection of confining gender roles.

If you have a different experience or a different take on it, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Toni]

I don't really know where to start here. It seems like we're speaking separate languages altogether. There are multiple meanings to the word "feel". You're conflating several of them above. Some of the things you've listed are emotions (sad), some are actually physical and chemical signals being accepted by the brain (hungry, fatigued).

Some are more esoteric, and it gets complicated depending on whether the self-perception bears any connection to reality. Is a person who "feels" funny actually funny? What do they mean when they say that they "feel" pretty? Does that mean that they are interpreting an actual image of themselves (mirror, photo, etc.) as being unattractive? Or is it a mental state that is completely disconnected from observation? Or is it a mental construct based on the opinions and expressions of other people?

Indeed. You, yourself utilized more than one meaning of 'to feel' in the post I responded to. I did as well. And that is actually the point.

The ability to experience emotions is dependent on the functional integrity of a set of neural systems, predominately the limbic system and the amygdala. It's not magic.

Your ability to 'feel' yourself as female (I'm making the assumption here) is not in the least dependent upon your ability to touch and feel your genitals or to compare/contrast with what it 'feels' like to touch your partner's penis. Indeed, I would imagine that there is the sensory sensation of touching a penis and then there are the emotions that may (or may not) arouse within you, with lots of different feedbacks, etc.

Sure, the same was fairly true for me, although my parents were very unconcerned about gender roles, so I got to climb trees and play with cars. At least until puberty hit, and then I couldn't sit cross-legged because someone (read: an adult male) might stare at my crotch. But that's a whole different aspect of the cultural indoctrination of girls.

For a time when I was a girl, I was sometimes told, often by a sibling or cousin or sometimes just a neighborhood child or someone unpleasant at school that I wasn't 'really' a girl. Not that I didn't 'act like a girl.' I knew that I didn't necessarily act like I was told girls were supposed to act--and frankly, I vehemently disagreed with the notion that what I did or didn't do/like/behave was not something a girl would do or would like: I was girl, I was doing it, I liked it. QED. It was easy to simply shrug off.

Being TOLD I wasn't a girl: that was different. To me, that was an insult--not because being male was better/worse but because someone was fundamentally refusing to recognize me as who I was/am. That was the insult. Refusing to know me because they thought they knew something better or rather, it was actually an attempt to insult me and to get me to conform to some silly, insipid view of what a girl likes/does/is.

Did you "feel like a girl"? Or did you observe that you were a girl?

I felt like myself. I felt like the person I was, who had a female body. For the most part, as a child, I did not assign behaviors or thoughts or preferences, etc. to boy or girl. I knew my father left the house to go to work. I knew my mother did work around the house. I did not assume that all fathers left the house to go to work or that all mothers cooked and cleaned. And I did not assume that I would do ...anything at all the way either of my parents did.

I did not feel like a boy. I did not feel as though I did not belong in my body, even during early adolescence, when my body began to change. Even when I did not always welcome those changes, some of which seemed to bring restrictions on my actions (imposed by my mother).

I wasn't confused by any of this. I was irritated that I was being expected to stop doing things I liked because someone else said that girls couldn't or shouldn't do them. I thought that was a silly notion. I was a girl. I wanted to do those things. I liked doing those things. Clearly the statement that girls didn't do this or that was factually incorrect. I did not feel incorrect. I felt the box people wanted to force me into was too constricting and who needed to sit in a box anyway?

As for body differences, I never really noted them until I observed two boys peeing on a fire hydrant and wanted to be able to do the same instead of having to stop playing to go inside to use the bathroom. Penises looked to me like, except for urination, they would get in the way when you ran or climbed trees. I also didn't like boys' haircuts much. For the most part, aside from school and when my mother thought I should be dressed up, I was allowed to run around in pants and a tshirt. And to play with trucks and rocks and sticks and insects and to roller skate and ride a bicycle, and to get dirty. I thought and still think this is normal. I did enjoy dolls as they were more likely to go along with whatever my plans for an adventure were than my siblings. I think my parents, or my mother, was reassured by the doll playing. My father seemed to enjoy whatever my siblings and I liked to do.

As I grew older and imagined my life and my career, I imagined all sorts of things, some reality based, some not. I wanted to be a pirate. I wanted to be Tarzan --not Jane because Jane had to stay home and Tarzan got to swing on grape vines and have adventures. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go on digs and learn about rocks and dinosaurs and ancient civilizations. I wanted to write stories and books and draw. I wanted to design houses. I wanted to have children, and to be their mother. I wanted to be a magical creature with wings to fly, a pouch like a kangaroo, able to run like a horse and to have a unicorn horn in the middle of my forehead. I wanted to be invisible so that I could observe without being noticed or bothered. Only one of those was in my mind associated with any gender.

Which some individuals who externally appear to be girls do feel.

What does that actually mean though? What do those girls feel that leads them to conclude that they "feel like a boy"? How do they even have a baseline for what a boy feels like?

I actually have no idea. I don't associate being a girl/woman/female with feeling any particular thing. It's just who I am.

The closest I can come--and I think of it differently, is knowing whether your are right handed or left handed.

A young man who grew up with my kids is dyslexic. He's really smart and creative but because he went to the local parochial school, his dyslexia wasn't identified and he just thought he was 'slow.' He's definitely not. Anyway, at some point, I was visiting my daughter who lived in the same city along with some of her friends, one of my sons, and we included this young man who was friends with all of them. He knew the neighborhood best, so he was riding in the front seat with me. I asked whether I should turn left or right at the next corner. He said he didn't know-- he had never learned to tell left from right. So I asked him to show me which hand he wrote with. He showed me his right hand. I told him that was his right hand. Anything on that side was 'right.' Somehow, no one had ever explained that to him--which I still find shocking. HIs parents are lovely people. intelligent and devoted, caring parents. But that led to a discussion: how do I know which hand is my right hand and which is my left? My right hand feels different to me. Not better or worse, just different. My right leg/foot as well, although I am ambidextrous with my feet.

And so it is with my sex and my gender: I feel female. I just do. I have often wished I had some of the conveniences and some of the opportunities that boys had when I was growing up that girls/I did not. I still wish I had had some of those opportunities. But I didn't actually want to be a boy.

I want to step back and draw a distinction here. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, certainly. but a lot of people over the last decade who have declared that they "feel" like a woman or a man or something in between or outside of the sex-binary do not have gender dysphoria. I've been provide with descriptions of how a person with gender dysphoria feels, what their perceptions are, how they relate to their own bodies... provided to me by people with gender dysphoria. I'm certain I don't have a complete expert understanding, but I have just enough to grasp the concept of something that is very much outside of my own experience. Although it's a small sample, none of them have expressed that they "feel" like the opposite sex. They've explained it as feeling uncomfortable in their own skin, feeling like there's something missing, being surprised to see their own genitalia, being repulsed by their genitals, being traumatized by their reflection in the mirror, because their mental construct of their bodies, and how those bodies relate to the world around them doesn't match their reality.

This is how I understand being transgender.

A whole lot of people self identifying as transgender recently do not express any gender dysphoria, they don't express any discomfort with or disconnect from their sexed bodies. Rather, they express themselves as being "socially" dysphoric. The want other people to treat them as if they're the opposite sex (or both or neither). Those tend to be the people who are most vocal about "feeling" like a girl or a boy. And I genuinely have no idea what they mean when they say that. None of them have been able to explain what "feeling like a boy" means in any way that is NOT exactly what you described above - a rejection of confining gender roles.

If you have a different experience or a different take on it, I'd love to hear it.

Well this is something I had to google. I very broadly agree that there is little or no reason to assign feelings or behaviors to a sex or gender. I don't quite understand people identifying as transgender when what they really object to is acting in some stereotypically gendered fashion. To me, that seems like something not transgender but as simply being unconventional. But this is not something I have even read much about, much less know anyone who feels transgender because they like to do things that stereotypes associate with the other gender? I'm not sure I get it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are lots of middle class black and hispanic people in the United States. In most of the US, poor people and middle class people do not live across the street from one another. In the US, racism dramatically affects middle and upper class black and Hispanic people just as it dies poor or working class black and Hispanic people.

While I do agree the poor and the middle class generally do not live across the street from each other (for good reason, actually--you are less likely to be a victim of property crime if those around you are at least at your economic level.) However, that doesn't translate into racism against middle and upper class nonwhites. Our block is majority non-white. Nobody's trying to keep them out. (Ironically, the next block along, a different development and at a lower price point, appears to be entirely white although I am by no means certain of that.)

 

[steve_bank]

First of all, yes there is evidence for both transgender ( not that I ever denied that ) and non binary gender. In the case of trans, a trans female has the same brain patterns as a female, while having the body parts of a male, and vice versa for a trans male.

How distinct are these "brain patterns" between male and female? How much variation is there within a given sex versus the amount of differential between sexes?

There is considerably greater variation in the individuals within a sex than there are between the sexes. Envision a bimodal distribution where the means of the categories differ by 0.01... but the standard deviation of each distribution is 10. I don't know the actual numbers, just getting across the concept.

There is a saying there are no straight lines in nature.

Everything in humans appear to have distributions and variations. Noses, eyes, mouths, heights, vocal quality.

There are hetero men with high pitched voices and hetero women with masculine voices. It stands to reason that sexuality will also have a distribution and variation.

Not a well known fact, General George Patton had a high pitched voice he tried to change.

 

[steve_bank]

Sarcasm.

AF is resorting to the worse of bigotry, race bating, and stereotypes. The left and right are equally guilty.

Yeah, Moore-Coulter there.

We see it every dauy in the nedia.

We do?

People like AF resort to stereotypes without any real experience with the world around him.

On the question of blacks finding work another black friend said 'in Seattle there was always work..for anyone that wanted it'.

ave you heard American blacks complain about immigrants, including blacks, who do not speak English? I certainly have.

AF represents the narrow shallow minded liberal who only see one side.. Arm chair moralizing. Trafficking in cheap steeotypes.

But you seem to be the one carrying the broad brush.

Every god damn day if you know what you are hearing and seeing. FOX is more blatant. MSNBC and CNN are more subtle in how they frame it.

I listen to NPR during the day. They have some good reporting and analysis, but they also engage in forms of race baiting and stereotyping of whites. Infalamtory rhetoric and leading conclusions.

Given this is a modtly liberal form I expect AF thought he was being PC or cool expecting a positive response.

COrnel West is a controversial black academic who thinks any black who goes mainstem in the economy is a 'plantaion negro', anything he deems 'white' is antithetical.

Or te rejction by blacks of anything 'white'.

Kn the 90s there were reports of black kids being harrased in school by oter minoriyes for doing well acadimicaly because that was white.

The BBC had a report of a black African immigrant girl who was harassed for speaking clear standard English.


We can bebate the cause of that behavior, but it exists. Rejection of anything white as a reaction to Jim Crow, understandable but still a bias that reduces whites to a stereotype. That is what is fueling a strong white response to the teaching of Critcal Race Theory in public schools.

 

[Toni]

Yeah, Moore-Coulter there.

We do?

People like AF resort to stereotypes without any real experience with the world around him.

On the question of blacks finding work another black friend said 'in Seattle there was always work..for anyone that wanted it'.

ave you heard American blacks complain about immigrants, including blacks, who do not speak English? I certainly have.

AF represents the narrow shallow minded liberal who only see one side.. Arm chair moralizing. Trafficking in cheap steeotypes.

But you seem to be the one carrying the broad brush.

Every god damn day if you know what you are hearing and seeing. FOX is more blatant. MSNBC and CNN are more subtle in how they frame it.

I listen to NPR during the day. They have some good reporting and analysis, but they also engage in forms of race baiting and stereotyping of whites. Infalamtory rhetoric and leading conclusions.

Given this is a modtly liberal form I expect AF thought he was being PC or cool expecting a positive response.

COrnel West is a controversial black academic who thinks any black who goes mainstem in the economy is a 'plantaion negro', anything he deems 'white' is antithetical.

Or te rejction by blacks of anything 'white'.

Kn the 90s there were reports of black kids being harrased in school by oter minoriyes for doing well acadimicaly because that was white.

The BBC had a report of a black African immigrant girl who was harassed for speaking clear standard English.


We can bebate the cause of that behavior, but it exists. Rejection of anything white as a reaction to Jim Crow, understandable but still a bias that reduces whites to a stereotype. That is what is fueling a strong white response to the teaching of Critcal Race Theory in public schools.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you wrote so apologies if I am mistaken in what I think I understand but : AF (Angry Floof) is not a he. Nor does AF engage in stereotypes, seems to have significant world experience and to participate in life and seems anything but shallow or narrow minded. Unlike some posters. I think you mean that you don't agree with AF and so you must cast the fault as hers. It's not.

I also listen to NPR and I don't hear race baiting. There are pieces by black people, talking about racial issues and no, they don't always couch everything in easy for white people to digest terms. That's not 'race baiting.' White people need to hear points of view that might differ and even be critical of their own. How else will we grow and do better?

As far as the often cited negative blowback that blacks (or other minorities) get for 'acting white' and achieving academically or professionally:

That probably happens but then, that happens in white communities, too. Country folk often express their own regret/fear/insecurity when they see kids/peers aspire to big fancy big city jobs or life. Working class similarly express some of the same when their kids/peers take a more upper-mobile career/education path. My father practically spit out his coffee when he heard what I wanted to do. My grandmother called me up special just to tell me that I should never forget that she had scrubbed floors for a living so I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself. My sister thought I was putting on airs by using good grammar--and pointedly adopted a more 'country' twang than our parents used. Even today in our old age, you can hear the difference when we speak and would hardly think we were raised by the same people. Oh, she's a pharmacist, so it's not like she just sat home having babies and ran a register at the gas station. But--and I speak as someone who grew up in a mostly farming community, with my parents being the first off the farm, surrounded by mostly other kids who grew up in farming families or working class, with the occasional teacher or office worker thrown in: The same people who told me not to get to far ahead of myself also bragged about all of their kids' and grandkids' achievements. And guess what? So do the people I went to school with brag about their kids who are doing research with some big names, etc. It can be hard for people who felt limited or constrained to even dare to imagine their peers and their kids taking a different path. And it's not as though doctors don't blow a gasket at the idea of their kid becoming a plumber. Or an actor. Or a musician (non-classical). Or farming.

 

[Emily Lake]

Indeed. You, yourself utilized more than one meaning of 'to feel' in the post I responded to. I did as well. And that is actually the point.

The ability to experience emotions is dependent on the functional integrity of a set of neural systems, predominately the limbic system and the amygdala. It's not magic.

Your ability to 'feel' yourself as female (I'm making the assumption here) is not in the least dependent upon your ability to touch and feel your genitals or to compare/contrast with what it 'feels' like to touch your partner's penis. Indeed, I would imagine that there is the sensory sensation of touching a penis and then there are the emotions that may (or may not) arouse within you, with lots of different feedbacks, etc.


For a time when I was a girl, I was sometimes told, often by a sibling or cousin or sometimes just a neighborhood child or someone unpleasant at school that I wasn't 'really' a girl. Not that I didn't 'act like a girl.' I knew that I didn't necessarily act like I was told girls were supposed to act--and frankly, I vehemently disagreed with the notion that what I did or didn't do/like/behave was not something a girl would do or would like: I was girl, I was doing it, I liked it. QED. It was easy to simply shrug off.

Being TOLD I wasn't a girl: that was different. To me, that was an insult--not because being male was better/worse but because someone was fundamentally refusing to recognize me as who I was/am. That was the insult. Refusing to know me because they thought they knew something better or rather, it was actually an attempt to insult me and to get me to conform to some silly, insipid view of what a girl likes/does/is.


I felt like myself. I felt like the person I was, who had a female body. For the most part, as a child, I did not assign behaviors or thoughts or preferences, etc. to boy or girl. I knew my father left the house to go to work. I knew my mother did work around the house. I did not assume that all fathers left the house to go to work or that all mothers cooked and cleaned. And I did not assume that I would do ...anything at all the way either of my parents did.

I did not feel like a boy. I did not feel as though I did not belong in my body, even during early adolescence, when my body began to change. Even when I did not always welcome those changes, some of which seemed to bring restrictions on my actions (imposed by my mother).

I wasn't confused by any of this. I was irritated that I was being expected to stop doing things I liked because someone else said that girls couldn't or shouldn't do them. I thought that was a silly notion. I was a girl. I wanted to do those things. I liked doing those things. Clearly the statement that girls didn't do this or that was factually incorrect. I did not feel incorrect. I felt the box people wanted to force me into was too constricting and who needed to sit in a box anyway?

As for body differences, I never really noted them until I observed two boys peeing on a fire hydrant and wanted to be able to do the same instead of having to stop playing to go inside to use the bathroom. Penises looked to me like, except for urination, they would get in the way when you ran or climbed trees. I also didn't like boys' haircuts much. For the most part, aside from school and when my mother thought I should be dressed up, I was allowed to run around in pants and a tshirt. And to play with trucks and rocks and sticks and insects and to roller skate and ride a bicycle, and to get dirty. I thought and still think this is normal. I did enjoy dolls as they were more likely to go along with whatever my plans for an adventure were than my siblings. I think my parents, or my mother, was reassured by the doll playing. My father seemed to enjoy whatever my siblings and I liked to do.

As I grew older and imagined my life and my career, I imagined all sorts of things, some reality based, some not. I wanted to be a pirate. I wanted to be Tarzan --not Jane because Jane had to stay home and Tarzan got to swing on grape vines and have adventures. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go on digs and learn about rocks and dinosaurs and ancient civilizations. I wanted to write stories and books and draw. I wanted to design houses. I wanted to have children, and to be their mother. I wanted to be a magical creature with wings to fly, a pouch like a kangaroo, able to run like a horse and to have a unicorn horn in the middle of my forehead. I wanted to be invisible so that I could observe without being noticed or bothered. Only one of those was in my mind associated with any gender.

I'm pretty sure that if we'd grown up near each other, we'd have been best friends. That sounds incredibly like my childhood. Although I never really wanted to have kids or get married. I didn't have any objection to it, it was just never something that I gave any though to. Very briefly in middle school I took up designing wedding dresses. Not because I had any in mind that I particularly wanted to have for my imagined wedding, but because they seemed fun to design, especially with a solid sci-fi twist to them.

If I'd been a child within the last decade, I am quite certain that I would have become convinced by peers and social media that I was transgender.

I'm not, I never was, but my complete rejection of gender stereotypes as just downright stupid would have made me gender "nonconforming", and there is an extremely high likelihood that I would have been set on a path to transitioning. Especially if you pair that with the more recent resurgence in sex-based stereotyping, and the sexualization of girls that starts at younger and younger ages. Somewhere between wanting to flee those stereotypes and hide from that sexualization and the confining nature of how society treats girls, I am fairly sure that I would have found "being a boy" to be a much more freeing path.

This is how I understand being transgender.

Well this is something I had to google. I very broadly agree that there is little or no reason to assign feelings or behaviors to a sex or gender. I don't quite understand people identifying as transgender when what they really object to is acting in some stereotypically gendered fashion. To me, that seems like something not transgender but as simply being unconventional. But this is not something I have even read much about, much less know anyone who feels transgender because they like to do things that stereotypes associate with the other gender? I'm not sure I get it.

That's where I get stuck too. The people that I've known who have explained dysphoria to me from their own experiences (including on here) have all been great people, and they've all shared a type of experience, that wile foreign to me, is at least accessible. It's not the same, but I can relate. My mental construct of my self, my inner understanding of my relationship to the world, is about four inches taller than I am in reality. It doesn't cause me anxiety or distress, but it's totally persistent, and has been since somewhere around ten years old. I am constantly surprised that I can't reach high shelves. When I see pictures of myself next to family and friends, I'm always taken aback at how much shorter I am than they are, because I truly, genuinely, deeply see myself as being taller. So I know that's not exact, but I can understand that disconnect between what my brain constructs as my proprioceptive anchor and actual reality. And I can extrapolate that disconnect to other parts of the body, or even the entire body itself. So I can grok that, even if incompletely.

Historically, people with gender dysphoria were referred to as transsexuals, and many of the older ones still consider themselves to be transsexuals. There's actually a fairly significant rift within the "trans" community on this topic. Some transgender people believe that gender dysphoria is a requirement to be transgender. Others feel that gender dysphoria is irrelevant to being transgender. And of course, because humans are so damned tribal, they've proceeded to label each other. The former (transsexuals) get referred to as "truscum", the latter as "tucute". I honestly have no idea where the terms come from though.

My observation has been that people who consider themselves nonbinary fall almost exclusively into the category that think dysphoria is irrelevant. I've had only very limited interaction with people who view themselves as nonbinary, but their descriptions see to almost completely fall into the category of rejecting stereotyped notions of gender within society. From all of the descriptions and information I can find, I would completely qualify as being non-binary.

The only hurdle is this really unfortunate respect that I have for objective reality, science, and the real social effects of having a female sexed body.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is a saying there are no straight lines in nature.

Everything in humans appear to have distributions and variations. Noses, eyes, mouths, heights, vocal quality.

There are hetero men with high pitched voices and hetero women with masculine voices. It stands to reason that sexuality will also have a distribution and variation.

Not a well known fact, General George Patton had a high pitched voice he tried to change.

There may not be straight lines, but there are definitely clear distinctions in nature. Parrots and Gila Monsters both have mouths and eyes and noses... but birds aren't reptiles, and there isn't a half-bird-half-reptile critter roaming around. Eggs aren't sperm, and there's no in-between gamete in humans, nor in any other mammal.

 

[southernhybrid]

While I am not really interested in continuing to discuss these topics at this time, I read an interesting, very personal piece written by a trans male and published in the NYTImes. I'm supposed to be permitted as a Times subscriber to share 10 articles per month and I'm pretty sure I have some left, so I hope some of you will read my linked article. I know we are way off topic from the OP, but that's what tends to happen here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/transgender-transition-testosterone.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Ten years ago this month, on an otherwise ordinary lunch break from my job as an editor at a local newspaper, I received my first testosterone injection from a no-nonsense doctor at a hospital in Boston. I was 30 years old and desperate to be known.

I also wanted it known that despite the media fixation on a trite narrative about what it meant to be trans, I was not “a man trapped in a woman’s body or any cliché like that,” as I emailed my friends and family. I was a man and I was born trans, and I could hold both of those realities without an explanation that could be written on the back of a napkin.

“I will not become a different person,” I wrote in that email, defiantly and, as it turns out, correctly. “I am myself. I just want to feel more like me.”

That's a sample. There are some things in the piece that some may disagree with, but this is just one person's expressions of what it's like to be trans gendered.

 

[Elixir]

I was 30 years old and desperate to be known.

Yeah?
It's that "desperate to be known" thing that bugs me I guess. Maybe I just have a hard time sympathizing with or understanding it. Maybe some loud flaming gays put me off it back in the day.
I'm a "cis" male, have been one all my life and was never "desperate to be known". I have gay and lesbian friends and friends with trans offspring. None of them comes off as "desperate to be known".
I think the first hurdle for people who are "desperate to be known", is to be known to themselves. (It seems from the excerpt that the writer of that article came to grips wit that fact.) Once that happens, what reason is there for desperation? Relieving that desperation is certainly not anyone else's job.
I've been desperate to be noticed by females to whom I was attracted and to whom I thought I must be invisible. But after a few times when such females confided to me that they had in fact noticed me, I stopped worrying, even about that.

 

[Rhea]

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of compelled speech. I'm especially not a fan of compelled speech when it is in direct opposition to observed reality.

This is an interesting comment.


When I was young, I was repeatedly and persistently misgendered.
Apparently, people felt they had an observed reality that was absolutely, completely, wrong.

Why are you in favor of them calling me a boy when I am 100% het cis female?

Why do you think their observation of me entitles them to comments like, “Isn’t it weird for a boy to wear nail polish?” Or “you know, if you wear earrings, people are going to think you are gay,” or “Dispatch, I’ve picked up a boy from the ball field…. Oh, what?… oh, he says he’s a girl.”


I found your comment surprising. That you think your observation is more accurate than my assertion.

(I do think the judge was wrong to punish the assault victim for misgendering.)

Side note: my son was repeatedly misgendered as a girl - ironic because he looked exactly like I did at that age.

 

[Angry Floof]

I was 30 years old and desperate to be known.

Yeah?
It's that "desperate to be known" thing that bugs me I guess. Maybe I just have a hard time sympathizing with or understanding it. Maybe some loud flaming gays put me off it back in the day.
I'm a "cis" male, have been one all my life and was never "desperate to be known". I have gay and lesbian friends and friends with trans offspring. None of them comes off as "desperate to be known".

Why would any cis male feel the need to be known when they are known already? You're seen by all of society and not as a freak of nature or deviant or a perversion.

Cis heteros are mainstream. There are very few places cis men can go where they would feel their cis maleness would be unacceptable or "an abomination," and even if you ever found yourself in such a situation, it's not bloody likely to be permanent.

Cis het men don't live in a society that has no humane or positive language or views to describe cis het men. You don't have to seek out an enclave or hidden place to speak openly about being a cis het male. You don't have to endure a world of narratives that paint you as evil and unnatural with few if any positive, humane attitudes toward you in the world around you.

As for your friends who are not cis hetero, how do you know they are not "desperate to be known"? Or in less contemptuous terms, wishing to just live freely without condemnation or fear that they might say or do the wrong thing if they let their conformity behavior patterns to relax for a moment. Have you asked them point blank if they feel safe to say and do anything in your presence? I'm not saying they don't, just that it's likely that if they don't, you would have no idea.

If they do feel fully comfortable and safe with you, ask them if you can ask them a few questions, such as, "Please be honest, have you ever felt the need to engage in certain behaviors or avoid certain behaviors in my presence so as to be more 'acceptable'?" Stuff like that. They might say no and they might mean it, but it's definitely worth the exercise to both open up to people not like you and to make them feel safe in opening up to you.

I think the first hurdle for people who are "desperate to be known", is to be known to themselves. (It seems from the excerpt that the writer of that article came to grips wit that fact.)

Totally agree. That's hard to do, though, when the only society you know conditions you to suppress "abnormal" thoughts and feelings.

And again, even when they find themselves in an environment where they are not alone and they are safe to be themselves, they are only just learning positive or neutral language to describe their experiences and sense of self. Much of this language did not exist in the mainstream if at all until relatively recently.

If you spent your life experiencing things that others like you didn't seem to experience and you're treated with contempt and bullying when expressed, you will internalize much of that hatred and contempt. You'd be a pretty strong, self aware person to be able to honestly explore your own experiences without self loathing if you didn't have the support of at least one other person you felt totally safe with.

Speaking of, the world is full of stories of LGBTQ+ people trusting someone only to be betrayed and destroyed by them. It's not just run of the mill, mainstream betrayal (because I know a lot of cis het people like to claim that they themselves have experienced betrayal, etc., like it's the same). It's a kind of betrayal that can get you brutalized or killed, or at the very least, ostracized and vilified.

Once that happens, what reason is there for desperation? Relieving that desperation is certainly not anyone else's job.

Easy to say for someone who has never been on the wrong side of mainstream social acceptability. If you're a cis het male, especially a white one, that experience of being known and accepted for who you are is built in.

So, yeah, it's no one else's "job" to relieve the pain of living a life of faking who you are or risking marginalization or abuse. But I do think it's anyone's job to be human and willing to break our easy, ingrained assumptions.

I've been desperate to be noticed by females to whom I was attracted and to whom I thought I must be invisible. But after a few times when such females confided to me that they had in fact noticed me, I stopped worrying, even about that.

Serious question: you really think that's the same thing as what LGBTQ+ people experience?

You have more social power than any other demographic, and part of that power means never having to notice anyone who doesn't. You could easily choose to set aside your own assumptions and opinions and instead use your power to amplify the voices of the marginalized and oppressed. It doesn't take anything away from you.

The dismissive, "Oh, I've had that experience, too. Why are they making such a big deal out of their sexuality or gender?" is the attitude that allows for abuse and dehumanization of people not like you.

Cis het white men don't need anyone to listen to their perspective. Western society is made of cis het white men's perspective and voices and history. You have all the listening and attention and acceptance you need, feel so entitled to it that you believe you've had similar experiences to people who are not like you, and that belief leads you to assume others need to work harder or stop being desperate or whatever.

Try this exercise. Any time you have an opinion about LGBTQ+ people, replace "non gender" or "LGBTQ" or whatever with "Black people" and see how that feels. Even though racism is rampant and systemic racism is a thing, we've been long conditioned to not use slurs and to be cognizant of the perspectives of BIPOC. We just haven't made it to that point with other marginalized people, regardless of why they are marginalized.

Someone who believes they are a different gender from their birth assignment, or both, or something else, regardless of why they feel that way, deserve to live in a world where no one punishes or dismisses them for it, and you feeling annoyed by people described as "desperate to be known" actually perpetuates that punishment and marginalization.

Why not just say, "Ok, I believe you. You're safe with me," and not be bugged by anything they say about their own experiences? Because not doing so contributes to the attitudes and forces in society that harm them.

"Desperate to be known"

 

[Elixir]

Yeah?
It's that "desperate to be known" thing that bugs me I guess. Maybe I just have a hard time sympathizing with or understanding it. Maybe some loud flaming gays put me off it back in the day.
I'm a "cis" male, have been one all my life and was never "desperate to be known". I have gay and lesbian friends and friends with trans offspring. None of them comes off as "desperate to be known".

Why would any cis male feel the need to be known when they are known already? You're seen by all of society and not as a freak of nature or deviant or a perversion.

Cis heteros are mainstream. There are very few places cis men can go where they would feel their cis maleness would be unacceptable or "an abomination," and even if you ever found yourself in such a situation, it's not bloody likely to be permanent.

Cis het men don't live in a society that has no humane or positive language or views to describe cis het men. You don't have to seek out an enclave or hidden place to speak openly about being a cis het male. You don't have to endure a world of narratives that paint you as evil and unnatural with few if any positive, humane attitudes toward you in the world around you.

As for your friends who are not cis hetero, how do you know they are not "desperate to be known"? Or in less contemptuous terms, wishing to just live freely without condemnation or fear that they might say or do the wrong thing if they let their conformity behavior patterns to relax for a moment. Have you asked them point blank if they feel safe to say and do anything in your presence? I'm not saying they don't, just that it's likely that if they don't, you would have no idea.

I think the first hurdle for people who are "desperate to be known", is to be known to themselves. (It seems from the excerpt that the writer of that article came to grips wit that fact.)

Totally agree. That's hard to do, though, when the only society you know conditions you to suppress "abnormal" thoughts and feelings.

And again, even when they find themselves in an environment where they are not alone and they are safe to be themselves, they are only just learning positive or neutral language to describe their experiences and sense of self. Much of this language did not exist in the mainstream if at all until relatively recently.

If you spent your life experiencing things that others like you didn't seem to experience and you're treated with contempt and bullying when expressed, you will internalize much of that hatred and contempt. You'd be a pretty strong, self aware person to be able to honestly explore your own experiences without self loathing if you didn't have the support of at least one other person you felt totally safe with.

Speaking of, the world is full of stories of LGBTQ+ people trusting someone only to be betrayed and destroyed by them. It's not just run of the mill, mainstream betrayal (because I know a lot of cis het people like to claim that they themselves have experienced betrayal, etc., like it's the same). It's a kind of betrayal that can get you brutalized or killed, or at the very least, ostracized and vilified.

Once that happens, what reason is there for desperation? Relieving that desperation is certainly not anyone else's job.

Easy to say for someone who has never been on the wrong side of mainstream social acceptability. If you're a cis het male, especially a white one, that experience of being known and accepted for who you are is built in.

So, yeah, it's no one else's "job" to relieve the pain of living a life of faking who you are or risking marginalization or abuse. But I do think it's anyone's job to be human and willing to break our easy, ingrained assumptions.

I've been desperate to be noticed by females to whom I was attracted and to whom I thought I must be invisible. But after a few times when such females confided to me that they had in fact noticed me, I stopped worrying, even about that.

Serious question: you really think that's the same thing as what LGBTQ+ people experience?

You have more social power than any other demographic, and part of that power means never having to notice anyone who doesn't. You could easily choose to set aside your own assumptions and opinions and instead use your power to amplify the voices of the marginalized and oppressed. It doesn't take anything away from you.

The dismissive, "Oh, I've had that experience, too. Why are they making such a big deal out of their sexuality or gender?" is the attitude that allows for abuse and dehumanization of people not like you.

Cis het white men don't need anyone to listen to their perspective. Western society is made of cis het white men's perspective and voices and history. You have all the listening and attention and acceptance you need, feel so entitled to it that you believe you've had similar experiences to people who are not like you, and that belief leads you to assume others need to work harder or stop being desperate or whatever.

Try this exercise. Any time you have an opinion about LGBTQ+ people, replace "non gender" or "LGBTQ" or whatever with "Black people" and see how that feels. Even though racism is rampant and systemic racism is a thing, we've been long conditioned to not use slurs and to be cognizant of the perspectives of BIPOC. We just haven't made it to that point with other marginalized people, regardless of why they are marginalized.

Someone who believes they are a different gender from their birth assignment, or both, or something else, regardless of why they feel that way, deserve to live in a world where no one punishes or dismisses them for it, and you feeling annoyed by people described as "desperate to be known" actually perpetuates that punishment and marginalization.

Why not just say, "Ok, I believe you. You're safe with me," and not be bugged by anything they say about their own experiences? Because not doing so contributes to the attitudes and forces in society that harm them.

"Desperate to be known"

All fair points, AF. To clarify where I am coming from... I dropped out of school and was forced therefore to leave home with what I could carry and about $100 to my name when I was 17. In 1967 being a male with "hair down to there" made one an object of point and stare and shouted insults, so not being accepted was something I accepted. Certainly it was by choice, whereas (as I soon came to understand) gender presentation, if an honest representation of oneself, is not a choice.

Anyhow, my first "home" after leaving home was in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, which in 1967 was an absolutely hotbed of the "formerly unacceptable". I had friends who were referred to - and referred to themselves - as "Mexican Charlie", "Spade Willy", "Gay Sharon", "Heroin Tom", "Flamer Gary" and many more colorful characters. Within my circle there were at least as many social outliers as "normals", so after a while, everyone was ... normal. And until the party broke up in around 1971, that's just how it was. Trans wasn't a thing back then - or at least if it was I wasn't aware of it. After a while, the gay people gravitated to the Mission District, black people to the Fillmore District, most Hispanics to the South Bay, and I became enamored with the intellectual counter culture in Berkeley for a while. I knew about race discrimination in both an objective way (reading about it, seeing it in Florida as a younger child etc.) and subjectively from asking and talking about it with my black friends. That's what brought home the tragedy and pain of it. I think having a huge bushy hairdo that would be called an afro today probably gave me an "in" with some of the black community that wasn't available to blonde, blue-eyed people. Gay people were kinda different, since I wasn't sure about the extent to which ti was a choice, if any. But none of them were bothering me so ...

Anyhow, as we are all products of our conditioning, I am conditioned to feel that who people are is who they need to be, and if they don't do that they're going to suffer. I never took it upon myself to try to mitigate the pain of someone else for being trans-sexual, any more than I'd try to take on someone's pain for being black or Mexican. It is what it is, and I don't like people being treated different for any reason as long as they aren't hurting anyone - regardless of the nature of their difference or whether it is product of choice. I just know that those who accept themselves for who they are suffer a LOT less than those who don't.

It may (or may not) be true about having more social "power" than others, and that I go through a lot of life unaware that I am experiencing such advantages, but I have eschewed them at every turn when I am aware of them, ever since I was a teen. Even at that, the potential power is still there I suppose, but I try to avoid wielding it in any way because I feel terrible in any circumstance wherein I see that I have been unfair to people. I really feel that marginalized people ARE "my people". Everyone has their crosses to bear, and shows the strain. The group to whom I feel the most callous disregard is white, right wing wealthy people who seem to have no empathy for anyone outside their group, yet whine incessantly about their "plight" of being under assault from all sides for being so superior. On my best day, though, I know they are often just as stressed as black people in ghettos, Hispanics stranded at the border and everyone else - straight, gay bi, trans - whatever.

If they do feel fully comfortable and safe with you, ask them if you can ask them a few questions, such as, "Please be honest, have you ever felt the need to engage in certain behaviors or avoid certain behaviors in my presence so as to be more 'acceptable'?" Stuff like that. They might say no and they might mean it, but it's definitely worth the exercise to both open up to people not like you and to make them feel safe in opening up to you.

I haven't had that kind of conversation in decades. Almost as long as it has been since I called out a rich white person as a murderer and asked them if they knew their actions were hurting and killing people.
Wait, no... that's not exactly true. I have asked a black person (good friend) how they felt living in rural white Colorado, if the cops hassle them (they do) and if they felt disadvantaged in business because of their color (they don't). In general he and his family are more comfortable here in redneck country than in even the most liberal urban landscape. Maybe it's just easier to carve out a niche within a smaller population.

Anyhow - sorry for the rambling. I am genuinely hurt by the pain of the trans people in my community, but totally despair of ever playing a part in mitigating it.

 

[Emily Lake]

Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of compelled speech. I'm especially not a fan of compelled speech when it is in direct opposition to observed reality.

This is an interesting comment.


When I was young, I was repeatedly and persistently misgendered.
Apparently, people felt they had an observed reality that was absolutely, completely, wrong.

Why are you in favor of them calling me a boy when I am 100% het cis female?

Why do you think their observation of me entitles them to comments like, “Isn’t it weird for a boy to wear nail polish?” Or “you know, if you wear earrings, people are going to think you are gay,” or “Dispatch, I’ve picked up a boy from the ball field…. Oh, what?… oh, he says he’s a girl.”


I found your comment surprising. That you think your observation is more accurate than my assertion.

(I do think the judge was wrong to punish the assault victim for misgendering.)

Side note: my son was repeatedly misgendered as a girl - ironic because he looked exactly like I did at that age.

Well, it's not a case of my observation being more accurate than your assertion necessarily. I kind of thought it was summed up with the last line:

As a courtesy and as expected good manners - 100%. Required and subject to penalty if you don't conform? No, not so much.

Being inadvertently mistaken for the opposite sex, especially as a child, isn't uncommon. I had short hair for a while, wore jeans, and climbed trees. I also didn't particularly care if people thought I was a boy or a girl, I knew my own sex and I wasn't peeing outside so it was irrelevant.

I still generally try to be courteous to people when possible.

But I also have a bit of an objection to being expected to refer to Alex Drummond, or Eddie Izzard, or J. Yaniv as "she". None of them are female, none of them are even remotely close to passing, and it's cognitively painful to pretend that any of those three are female in any way.

A person can identify however they want to themselves, but expecting that anyone else should be obligated to perceive them the same way they internally envision themselves seems an overstep.