Anonymous OP 23h

If you look like a man you are a man and if you look like a woman you are a woman And when I say “look like” I mean general perception, if you look like a woman but sound like a man THAT is when people will get confused so it depends on the degree that you are being perceived as well

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Anonymous OP 16h

I don’t think I agree with this tbh. Not being perceived by others as your gender doesn’t mean you aren’t that gender. In my opinion, you DO decide what your gender is, regardless of what other people think it is. Putting so much weight on other people’s perception of you is one philosophical way of viewing the world, but it’s not the only way. If someone is a woman, but every person in her life sees her as a man, to me that doesn’t mean she’s a man. She is who she is, regardless.

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Anonymous OP 16h

Yes the inner identity is valid, and I don’t think someone needs to express their identity outward for it to actually matter. Even if they don’t express that identity outwardly, it is still their identity. Every person on earth could believe someone is a man, but if that person knows inside that they are a woman, that’s what really matters to me

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Anonymous #1 16h

What is inside your head does not have meaning unless you express it, thoughts are not enough to grant meaning imo

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Anonymous #1 16h

The idea of gender itself is a social construct so I don't think it's necessarily right to deviate from the social aspect, I also believe that someone can decide what their gender is but unless they express that it will have no impact on their life and is what matters. Deciding something for yourself does nothing if you don't take action to make that a reality Don't let your dreams be dreams!

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Anonymous OP 16h

And when I say action I mean everything including pronouns or telling your close circle about your truth bc that is putting thoughts to action!

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Anonymous OP 16h

I fundamentally disagree. Again, what you’re describing is one philosophical way of viewing the world, and is not necessarily correct.

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Anonymous #1 15h

Yes I'm just giving my opinion! There's rlly no right answer to these things

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Anonymous OP 15h

That’s fair! An example of how I see it is this: There’s a large number of people out there who look at me and decide that, because I’m trans, I’m a predator who grooms children. I know internally in my head that this is not correct. Just because they believe that I’m a predator for being trans, does not make that interpretation of my identity more important or true than what I internally know my identity is. Even if the whole world thought that stuff about me, it still doesn’t make it reality

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Anonymous #1 15h

I guess | just put a lot more weight on the individual person’s knowledge of their own experience and identity than others’ perceptions and assumptions of that person’s experience and identity

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Anonymous OP 15h

I do think it’s important to acknowledge that there are many people who can’t act on their internal identity. To me, those people are still their identity, even if nobody else knows. They know, and even if they aren’t safe to express it outwardly, they are still that identity

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Anonymous #1 15h

Part of being in a social group is those stereotypes and misconceptions unfortunately, you could do something that makes your transness known and people will assume more than what they are shown bc of their own bigotry But people will treat you differently because of the lies they're told about trans people! One more example of how much perception matters!

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Anonymous #1 15h

To me it's kind of a Schrödinger's cat situation, you cannot see inside another persona head so you cannot know their internal identify unless they express it in some way! They could live and die without telling someone and so it would have no effect on the world

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Anonymous OP 15h

It’s interesting that you take that same idea as an example of why perception does matter. I think to me, that’s exactly why it doesn’t matter. The way they feel about me isn’t the truth, and I know that, so their opinions don’t really matter in my eyes. It’s just lies they were fed. I know who I am regardless of what they think, feel, or how they treat me, and to me that’s what truly matters

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Anonymous OP 15h

I don’t necessarily agree. Me not knowing their identity doesn’t take away from its realness. It doesn’t need to have an effect on the world, as long as that person knows that it’s their identity.

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Anonymous #1 15h

A trans man living in a place where being trans would get him killed may never come out to anyone. If he lives through his life knowing that he's a man, to me, that's what counts. Even if nobody in the world knows besides him, his knowledge of his own identity still matters. He is still a man, even if the world sees him as a woman

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Anonymous #1 15h

I measure things through their impact on the real world I suppose, in your mind, it may matter but if you look at the bigger picture how did it actually affect you is what I think is most important It's just a disagreement on fundamentals I suppose

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Anonymous OP 14h

It seems so. I do think you could argue that your internal thoughts and knowledge of your identity do have an effect on you, and your actions in the world, even if you don't look like your gender to others. If someone knows in her head that she's a woman, but can't openly present as one, that often does actually affect her and how she lives her life. I just think that disregarding the value of thoughts completely, just because they don't directly alter how other people see you is strange

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Anonymous OP 11h

nah, this simply isn’t true. your gender is not determined by what other people project onto you based on appearance & vibe, perception does not overwrite who you actually are while I don’t think gender and race are a perfect 1:1 comparison here, consider the fact that someone can be white-passing without being exclusively ethnically European—if a majority of strangers project whiteness onto that person, that still doesn’t change the reality of their lived experience

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Anonymous OP 11h

if a white-passing person of mixed Asian descent encounters a racist stereotype about Asian people, the fact that they know themself to be Asian means that they’re still going to be harmed on some level by anti-Asian racism in a way that someone who’s *actually* white would not be similarly, trans women who are stuck in the closet are still harmed by misogyny in ways that they wouldn’t be if they were actually men. the way someone categorizes themselves inwardly Does influence their reality

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Anonymous #1 11h

I get the impression that OP has some kind of grievance against trans people whom they believe “aren’t doing enough” to transition, and has found that it’s generally seen as acceptable to dismiss those trans people publicly (even within LGBTQIA+ spaces, as in) as long as their dismissal hinges on a misrepresentation of how social constructs function

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Anonymous #2 10h

You haven't read what I said dear… trans people are valid through ANY action meaning all you have to do is say that you're trans

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Anonymous #2 10h

But how does it affect others reality and how does it affect how others treat you because you can't know the reality of another person because you can't see into their head! That's why I think perception takes precedence over personal truth

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Anonymous #2 10h

Def not a perfect analogy but it's pretty close I guess, but white-passing people do benefit from white privilege So is their lived experience closer to an asian person because of their culture or closer to a white person because of their privilege and appearance I guess is what the real disagreement is between u and me

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Anonymous #2 10h

I do agree with the part about being indirectly harmed by insulting information that is personal to you tho That's something that can happen even if the insulted identity is not expressed

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Anonymous OP 10h

it’s well-established that an important component of privilege is which messaging you internalize—for instance, messaging about white people vs messaging about Asian people vs all of the above—based on who you know yourself to be. you know, like what I already articulated in my other reply

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Anonymous OP 10h

gee, it’s almost as if “how others treat you” isn’t the thing that determines your actual identity. even the words you’re using actually reinforce what I’m saying—notice that you’re talking about “the reality of another person” vs “perception”? notice that the former includes the word “reality”, while the latter does not, instead referring to a subjective impression

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Anonymous OP 9h

don’t call me “dear”, I don’t know you. what you said is “you don’t get to decide what your gender is, you get it prescribed to you”. too late to backtrack and pretend you meant something more progressive than that

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Anonymous #2 9h

Except the prescription is not a rigid thing like you're making it seem, opening your mouth and telling a person is enough but the people who haven't interacted with you will treat you as the gender they perceive you to be U mincing my words DEAR

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Anonymous OP 9h

"the people who haven't interacted with you will treat you as the gender they perceive you to be" is true. the part you seem to be struggling with is that "how people treat you" does not in turn determine "what your gender is"

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Anonymous OP 9h

also, just to be clear—I’m speaking with an adult, right? because pointedly addressing me as “dear” after I asked you not to is a weirdly immature thing to do. incidentally though, me perceiving you as a high school kid based on your behavior isn’t going to change your real age, right? perception vs reality. funny how that works

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Anonymous OP 9h

“If you look like a man you are a man and if you look like a woman you are a woman” is what you said, and that flatly contradicts what you are now trying to pretend you actually meant

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