/b/ - Random

IMHO the biggest issue holding us back from reaching a better consensus is the never-ending slapfights between Tumblr SJWs and edgelords. None of the trans people I've met irl are entitled, aggressive autists, that's almost entirely online or people who got deluded by too much internet. The trans people I know just want to be accepted or tolerated with the least possible hassle.

Neopronouns are damaging to the cause, I'll call you whatever pronoun you like as long as it's she, he, or they.

I'm glad the cause has gotten more attention over the past few years, but it's too bad it had to be in the whole SJW context, ruining people's perception of gender issues.

if 'fuck gender stereotypes because it's a social construct forced upon us by the ~~patriarchy~~', then how are there more than 2 genders? gender was supposed to be synonymous with sexual organs, then there are those who are diagnosed with mental illness - gender dysphoria-, but there's not a 3rd type of sexual organ, let alone over 9000 of them, so there are still 2 genders, always will be. Thanks Bill Nye the science guy!

gender is supposed to just be how we refer to people of different sexes. it's part of language, not some magic special feeling inside your mind or something. it's perfectly reasonable to use qualifiers to describe someone, and people make like a nickname and it's really ridiculous.

gender is also not really a personalized thing, people get so worked up over being misgendered it drives me up a wall. no one really gives a fuck what gender someone is most of the time, it's nice to know but not important.

>that girl over there
vs
>that person with obvious female sex traits

how stupid is that.

the worst thing to me is that the idea of gender is formed ONLY by gender roles it seems. it's disgusting. they claim to be trying to fight gender roles but then they base their entire identity around them.

There are two genders. And two kinds of people. The ones that are normal, at least regarding that and the ones that have a mental issue and think being another gender will solve their problems. That's why so many trannies after operation realise that doesn't solve the problem at all, so they commit suicide.

I feel you anon.
I am pretty much at the same place, on one hand I want to accept people and I know it sucks to struggle with your identity.

On the other, some of those are just ridiculous and taking it too far (especially on Tumblr).
I think some people need to realize that not every small feeling/mood/interest = has something to do with who you are/your 'identity'.
You can wear pants as a woman and still be a woman, and you can have no strong feelings about this whole gender thing without being agender/genderfluid whatever.
You don't need to have a label at all.

Also where I live some trans people have issues to be accepted by therapists due to an influx of those "I am totally trans, you guys" people who flip-flop between things every week and mostly do it for brownie points on Tumblr.
Don't want to be a gatekeeper, and some people go through those issues differently, but if you fuck it up for people with heavy dysphoria it's not cool anymore :(

I legit thought OP's pic was a bunch of fucked up pokémon, the ones that look like letters.

I don't have an opinion on transgenderism, I know it's an actual thing and that dysphoria drives its sufferers insane because of how bad it is. It's cool that modern medicine allows transgender people to get better too.

I absolutely hate how these serious issues are handled online though. I bet it's a vocal minority who complains about lesbians not wanting to fuck transwomen, not being able to pee or take a shit in some piblic bathrooms and women talking about feminism and their body parts (usually for health reasons or because of some laws somewhere that restrict or forbid abortion). But they're so obnoxious that they're making it hard to take them seriously. Whenever I see trans people (mostly fakebois and autogynophiles actually, not even actual ones most of the time) on twitter I become wary of them.

Trans issues also shouldn't always be associated with sexism and homophobia, they're completely different from what I understand. It might sound dumb but it's like in Iran, how trans people are helped asap but homosexuals are forced to take hormones and get surgery or they go to prison. It's completely different, I don't get why it's associated under the LGBT umbrella.

SEX and GENDER are different things.

>SEX is determined by biology
and has a specific definition. Life on Earth was able to evolve so quickly because sexual reproduction became the most common method of mashing up and reshuffling genes. Humans have two sexes, male and female, depending on which sex cells you produce. Some animals can be hermaphroditic or intersex, but in humans this is a congenital defect.

>GENDER is determined culturally
and can mean completely different things between groups of people. That's what people mean when they say that gender is a social construct. Like all cultural traits, you learn what gender is in your culture, and what gender you are, through trial and error as a child. Your parents, friends, media all help reinforce what is means to be girly or boyish. These rules and guidelines can be enforced quite overtly (boy being called a faggot for not liking cars) or more subtly (constantly being asked when you're going to have children, because you're a woman, and women like children). Gender is how you're viewed and categorised by other people, and you can't 'feel' a gender any more than you can insist that you're beautiful if a culture doesn't view you that way.

There are real, obvious as well as not so obvious, differences between males and females, that should be respected and discussed more freely. The same with sexualities (although i truly believe without a homosexuality stigma, more people would be bisexual).
I've started calling myself post-gender because I want to be rid of the whole stupid mess. We need no genders, not a whole zoo.

I grew up around messages of gender abolition. My family and especially my parents did not fuss over my appearance or my habits. I knew I was a biological female/girl/woman, whether other people could see it or not, so I didn't pay any mind to people's comments. I accepted that people would find me unnatractive or strange and decided I wasn't interested in those people.

In highschool my friends were saying gender was "purely a social construct". It agreed with what I'd been taught. I understood gender but didn't like it. Then they found Tumblr, and over the years they gradually went to the side of believing gender is actually biological. That we know deep down what our gender is and can feel it. Maybe it was because of my upbringing, but I never "felt" a gender. Really made me question myself for a while, but I've still come to the conclusion that idgaf.

I don't care what other people think about themselves or want to call themselves, I just get frustrated with how the popular opinion changes. I'm bad at keeping up with what words/phrases/beliefs are or are not currently transphobic. Like, someone just told me that gender abolition is transphobic and identifying yourself by your genitals is a disgusting idea. I think my way of defying gender has been mostly beneficial to my sense of identity. My social life isn't booming but I also don't CARE. There are plenty of other people like me and I seem to find them. Anyway, I know I'm the bad guy these days so I keep my mouth shut and don't share my opinions irl.

>>4149
>>(although i truly believe without a homosexuality stigma, more people would be bisexual)

Doesn't help that most people don't believe in bisexuality (even among the LGT people, and especially towards male Bi); or that you need to be 50:50 with your relationships. Or that to them you stop being bisexual as soon as you are in a long lasting relationship with one person. Fuck that.

For me it personally helped to realize that romantic feelings are not needed to be tied to sexual ones.
I laughed at first at this whole x-sexual, blabla-romantic stuff on Tumblr; but it really helped to wrap my head around my own feelings.

I personally am bisexual, but to an outstander I probably look homosexual because I've been with other women for years and never had a relationship to a guy.
Truth is, I am sexually attracted to both, but I feel like zero emotional, romantic attraction to men. There's just nothing. No interest in having a relationship to one. Living with one.
I just feel like they couldn't understand me the same way like another woman.

>>4150
>>I never "felt" a gender.

Same anon, I'm just…me?

>>4152
kek, you don't "feel a gender", no one feels a gender. No one wakes up like "yes I feel so woman today", gender is not a feeling to be felt. You just are a gender. The only time you feel a gender is if you have gender dysphoria and feel a disgust for the body parts you have. So congratulations on being completely normal lol

most trans women (aka men) have autogynaephilia anyway.

the issue i have with trans women is they always seem to be like IM A REAL WOMAN while acting stereotypically as a woman.

they dont understand what a woman is. they dont understand what women go through.

I am not here for it at all. I'm sure there are some small percentage of genuinely dysphoric people, but the majority are just misogynistic, fetishizing men, or trend hopping women who just want to fit in on tumblr. The former is much worse, obviously, since they can't stop trying to force themselves into our spaces, dialogue, and lesbian women's pants with their typically male entitlement.

But either way it makes zero sense to think that someone can know what another gender 'feels' like. Tt's literally impossible for someone to know what the opposite sex is on the inside- they don't even know what the same sex feels inside, except for themselves personally, so all they have to go on is superficial stereotypes and an entire life of being socialized an entirely different way. The entire concept is absurd unless you're a sexist asshole, in the end only biology matters.

I find gender to be largely retarded tbh. Gender is basically just social expectations, and it changes from culture to culture anyways.

But at the same time, I do agree that tumblr/edgelords have taken it too far with the whole "GENDER IS DUMB BUT ALSO I AM A MALE ON MONDAYS AND FEMALE ON EVERY OTHER DAY??", I find it hilarious that they claim the spectrum is bullshit while labeling themselves in the spectrum.

If someone claims they are NB or whatever, call them 'they' and be done with it. There isn't a need for special labels it's idiotic.

>>4149
>Gender is how you're viewed and categorised by other people

yes anon, it's how you're viewed and categorized by other people BY YOUR SEX ORGANS. The gender roles and what defines gender culturally, are totally separate from the fact that gender itself is defined by your sexual organs. People confuse the two all the time, including you.

>>4156
we need gender in the context of language only, and not even. gender roles, multiple different genders, the idea of nonbinary etc. all of it needs to go. we can just use they/them or use names when referring to people like in other languages. japanese doesn't have she/he him/her/ his/hers. that's part of our language, we can keep that but cut off all the other stuff.

I think a lot of people ITT are confused.

Gendered pronouns as part of language are used to refer to a person based on their sexual organs. That is completely separate from how gender is culturally/socially. The terminology is there so people can refer to others easily, because we use physical traits to relay information about someone to other people.

Say, if you're looking for someone, you can ask someone else by describing them. You need gendered terms for this purpose. The terms in this case are referring to the sex organs of the person based on a visual assessment. Doing that is perfectly fine.

What isn't fine is when gender is used outside of a defining characteristic and used to apply or enforce societal ideals on people.

We definitely need gendered terms to describe people, and can keep them while still changing the impact.

Gender to me is just a defining word. Like short or tall, fat or thin. We can take away the stereotypes of gender as a cultural concept but still keep the terminology and take back the term.

I don't know where to start with this point but gender stereotypes and stereotypes in general usually come from something factual and are not just formed to do ~~the oppeshun~~ lol. Usually stereotypes hold true to a large majority, but there are anomalys in anything, nothing is forced against your will, and if it was forced that's just shitty parenting tbf. Just because you're an anomaly in a stereotype doesn't mean your genitals have now mutates in to giant crab claws of a 3rd gender/sex/sameword hahaha

I can understand that "gender" as a social construct is something that occurs in people on a spectrum. I think that much is pretty understandable and where this whole "gender debate" started from.

What I don't get, and don't think I'll ever get, is where this whole "gender = sex so penises are biologically female now" thing came from. I can rationalize it as the idea of transitioning as a, for example, MTF finding their "true self" as more female gendered (i.e., by social expectations of female traits), but rejecting the idea of transitioning purely to meet a social expectation that socially-female acting people should also look and present as female-bodied. I mean I can rationalize it in that way, but idk if that's even how other people think of this, and is there nowhere in this rationalization that stipulates male biological organs are biologically female because you want them to be.

I can clarify if this doesn't make sense, pls no bully

Dumb question, but since only women are allowed to post on crystal.cafe, are transwomen allowed too? Not because I am one but because I think some anons on lolcow mentioned they were transwomen so I'm curious about it.

>>4162
You can post if you're a girl and don't talk about that shit like it makes you special

>>4159
Yeah, this. Except pronouns are linguistically a lot harder to change than, say, "fat" or "thin". They're grammatical words, not lexical ones, they're a closed class (idk the proper english term, but I think it's closed class).

Grammatical words can change form, but they rarely, if ever, change their meaning. You can't just add new ones and expect people to adopt them either. "In" will always mean "in", and you won't live to see a new word to mean "in". Same for he, she, it, they, etc.

Tumblrinas asking to be referred to by any pronouns other than he/she/they are fucking ignorant and it rustles my linguistic jimmies.

>>4162
What >>4163 said, pretty much. Just use some common sense, don't bring it up unless it's relevant.

>>4163
>>4164
Ok, that's reassuring.

>>4163

please god let there be no trans women talking about their lady dicks

>>4164
And creating new pronouns with new genders is just not doable in many languages, like in German or French, because of how adjectives are influenced by gendered words for example.

>>4166
I asked because I felt it could happen if transwomen were allowed, and thanks but no thanks.

>>4162
The question here is why do you wanna be around women who talk about topics that don't affect you (menstruation, childbirth, having an actual functioning vagina in general and the way the world around you treats these topics and such) instead of going literally somewhere else with fellow "transwomen" like you. I've seen several trans communities across imageboards exist without being censored or attacked, while the few female oriented communities I've seen always get raided by men who openly shit on women wherever the fuck they go or by men who impersonate women. Basically every community where I actually can talk to women online anonymously and ask for their actual opinions (not underage idiots half of them being effeminate entitled dudes and other trolls) is very very short lived.

Do I sound rude to you? I don't give a shit because this is an imageboard and if I wanted to be nice I'd go literally somewhere else of the vast internet. What people like you do is like if I went for example to the trans threads on halfchan and I asked "hey, I'm a biological woman but I still wanna take part on your conversations that aren't even relevant to me because I wanna feel included, can I stay here?" I'd either be told to fuck off or that they don't give a shit. The thing is, I almost never see females doing this kind of retarded questions except for the attention hungry fembot tier ones, so why do you trannies need to ask these stupid questions wherever you go and you find women?

So in my personal opinion, no, you can't sit with us, you have other places. I don't know if the other "girls" in here don't openly tell you this stuff because they bring the tumblr mindset with them or because "this is a grill imageboard uwu we gotta be nice!!1"

>Inb4 ewww why are you so triggered hehe

This site has like 4 days of life and we already have dudes around asking retarded crap no one would even bring up otherwise. I give it a week or two before we start getting raided or trolled, I'm leaving it there.

>>4168
>you
I said I wasn't a transwomen but an actual woman, and that I asked the question because of other people on lolcow who might start using crystal cafe as well. Did I phrase it that badly in my post? I personally don't want transwomen here at all but I wanted to know about other anons' opinions.

>I give it a week or two before we start getting raided or trolled, I'm leaving it there.
I've noticed a few posts by guys here but that aside, so far it doesn't look so bad.

>>4167
I don't personally think we need new pronouns. I know that for transpeople they prefer to be called the sex they are comfortable with. Transpeople usually tell others who are sexually interested in them that they are trans, and that's fine. It's only the tumblr-trans that don't want to accept that and give themselves a bunch of special snowflake terms, because they're so uninteresting they need to be different.

>>4157
I don't think we disagree. I made the post to clarify that sex and gender are different things because people use the words interchangeably.
You get assigned a gender role based on your sex organs, but there's nothing inherent in my having a uterus that means I like pink for example. Are gender roles not just a set of stereotypes and behaviors related to a biological reality? Like racist stereotypes that having dark skin makes you dirty and poor.
So I personally believe that gender roles are nonsense and I think we would be better off as a species without them.

>>4171
right, but my point was more what other anons are saying that gender is an important thing linguistically. gender as a concept doesn't need to be done away with, just the stereotypes that go along with it. many people already ignore gender stereotypes. acting like gender is separate from sex just because society has stereotypes tied to it makes no sense. and making multiple genders because you don't fall into a stereotypical category is even more nonsensical. we need to make gender MORE associated with sex if anything. it should be nothing more than how someone refers to you by your genitals.

>>4172
Oh.. we're totally on the same page lol.

>>4162

I pretty much agree with everything >>4168 said. However who's going to check if you have a neo "vagina" or a penis? No one will know you're trans unless you bring it up, soooo… Just don't bring it up or out yourself and that's it.

There's no point in trying to fit in sometimes if you just can't relate to topics like menstruation, childbirth and other stuff that only "bio" women can experience, but you could definitely post in makeup/hair/music threads, etc.

If you're offended by the idea of not being able to say "hey transgurl here, this is what I think about periods and vags", then it's to look for a place dedicated to trans people, where I'm sure you will be able to relate to more people and their experiences.

Basically just don't try to be speshual and out yourself to start fights and/or derail with others.

>>inb4 I already said I'm not a transwoman
…okay. but if any other translady reads this, that's it.

>>4174
Then you should* try to

>>4174
I agree here, but it's important for prospective sexual partners. The big issue with both gender and trans people in general is that it doesn't matter what you are unless someone is trying to have sex with you. I could care less if you're a dude or a girl or whatever, linguistically it's useful but it's not important in the least to me otherwise.

Its a mental disorder, you are either born male or female

>>4177
Honestly I'm not entirely sure that's an appropriate categorisation given that homosexuality could then be applied as a mental disorder, given that it's a sexuality that flies in the face of the biological imperative. Unless you're one of 'those' types I guess.

It's also recently been discovered that beyond the accompanying DNA, there is in fact NO way to differentiate between a male and female brain, i.e. brains are effectively genderless. This leads to a lot of questions, such as the biggest one being, what precisely is 'gender'? Is it strictly chemical? Slightly hormonal? Electrical? Could it not be argued then that transexuals do in fact have a bodily disorder? If it's indeed possible for a woman to be born with both genetalia, and a man with two penises, is it not possible for the right brain to develop alongside the wrong body? Classing it simply as a mental disorder is far too narrow-minded an approach, if you can even call it that.

>>4162
Are you here in the capacity of a male, or a female? If it's the latter post away. But then again, I don't make the rules. None of us do but the admin, but I'd be pretty surprised if she said no.

>>4168
cis woman here; I have about as much interest in talking about childbirth and vaginas on here as I do in talking about penises, as you guys are so worried about.

I'm pretty sure the trans women on this site won't be butting in on any of these conversations, and would mainly stick to all of the other many topics on this site, most of which I hope will have nothing to do with vaginas or children.

>>4168
lol wtf, i'm cis but why would transwomen need to stick to trans-only spaces? That's literal discrimination based on arbitrary semantics lmao. They've wanted to be girls their entire lives (or have always considered themselves girls), they can use an anonymous girl imageboard, and it'll happen whether you like it or not, let them live.

>>4178
>what precisely is 'gender'
Academia pretty much agrees that gender is socially imposed. There is nothing wrong with a man being and living as an effeminate man. Actually wanting to cut off your dick and have a vagina is an extreme form of body dysmorphia which is a mental disorder.

>>4158
>japanese doesn't have she/he him/her/ his/hers.
That language might not have gendered pronouns but it's not a gender neutral language. In Japanese there are different ways to say I/me for women and men(and also neutral ways), and a lot of other aspects where women use different ways of speaking from men.

What I find distasteful about nonbinary theory is that it conflates personality traits and gender, and effectively erases the existence of masculine women and feminine men. Now if you're a girl that dresses like a lumberjack or shaves her head you're a androsomething or a neutralwhatsit and not just a woman who ignores traditional fashion standards. The whole thing seems to operate on an perception of gender driven by traditional stereotypes, and an almost childlike understanding of those stereotypes which comes out in terms like demiboy/girl. Why boy/girl instead of demiwoman/man? It comes off as something invented by a teenager looking for a cool label or an adult with a childlike mindset.

>>4178
>recently been discovered… ;brains are effectively genderless
I'd like to know where you got that, because the exact opposite seems to be true.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-significant-differences-brains-men-and-women
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/06/brain-activity-during-cooperation-differs-by-sex.html
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/more-evidence-that-male-and-female-brains-are-wired-differently

>>4158
>japanese doesn't have she/he him/her/ his/hers. that's part of our language

Guess I must have been imagining it then when I was studying the language then and we were taught 彼 (he), 彼は (he is), 彼の (his), 彼たち (they, male), 彼女 (she), 彼女は (she is), 彼女の (hers), 彼女たち (they, female). Just because people predominantly use 私 and あなた as gender neutral referential pronouns it doesn't mean that gendered ones don't exist.

idk where you're coming from at all saying that Japanese doesn't possess gendered language when the language is unarguably more gendered than English. For example in the way people refer to themselves and others around them, 私 (watashi) is the standard, but is generally considered to be more female, whilst あたし (atashi) is a more cute, effeminate form used exclusively by females or gay men. Then you have ぼく (boku), informal masculine used by men, young boys, and occasionally tomboys, 俺/おれ (ore), hard-masculine which is abused by tough guys and yakuza in all those anime and cheesy movies, then you got うち, 我,わし et cetera. Honestly the list is endless, from あたい which was used by female prostitutes to 吾輩, which at one point was used by men belonging to high Japanese society, and don't even get me started on honorifics.

Anyway I don't care about the rest of the argument, but saying that the Japanese language isn't gendered is patently false and got me all trigg-trigg..

>>4183
>Now if you're a girl that dresses like a lumberjack or shaves her head you're a androsomething or a neutralwhatsit and not just a woman who ignores traditional fashion standards

I've never seen a trans person trying to gender anyone else, considering that the community has a big problem with others gendering them.

I'm pretty sure if you identify as female most trans people are going to respect that even if you're masculine, right? It's all about self-identity.

>>4158
They do in different ways though.
It's super easy to define if a speaker or writer is female or male from the words they use. Most common is atashi - for me - female, and boku - for me - male. That's why it's so much easier to determine if a person in a first person story is a woman or a man even if their actions don't define it, than say, in English where I is always gender netural.

This also includes speech patterns and the way they choose to use words.
Just because words don't have gender like in German (where a chair has a gander and a book has a gender) doesn't mean it's not easy to figure out someones gender by studying the way they speak.

It's actually more important in Japanese than in a lot of other languages.

>>4185
Probably not exactly what you meant, but at least among transmen (not the neo-Tumblr type) I often saw a lot of nasty behaviour/comments towards transmen who didn't try to "pass" well.

If you were a transman but kept on holding onto traditionally female things, acted effeminate, styled yourself in anything that wasn't basically as manly as possible (picture gay twink)…lots of the transguys who put in 100% into being seen as male by society were pretty icky towards you.
They would claim that X isn't really trans/a guy, and there was a lot of clinging at traditional roles.
They definitely gendered the other transmen as female, even though they both probably went through the same shit but one didn't have the goal to be as stereotypically male as possible and thus was "no real (trans)man".

Some of the guys just did what they did because they wanted to pass as well as possible (which just works easier the more stereotypical for your preferred gender you are), but lots of them definitely had very narrow views on what is supposed to be male and what female.
Weird, considering from where they come from.

>>4188
to add: Just because you are from a minority does not automatically make you a better/more open minded person.
You see it on Tumblr pretty well.
And often like-minded people can be the worst to each other in their small communities.

>>4142
I'm a non-confrontational pussy irl so I'll just smile and politely nod at whatever anyone says as long as they aren't being obnoxious.