sissymaidlola
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Joined: 3/27/2004
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quote:
A person's gender is in their mind, not in their body. (nor in their clothing)
That's not strictly true, chris. If you argue that gender is only in the mind then if you wake up tomorrow morning and decide you are now uncomfortable in your male body and that you wish you had been born a female, then according to your definition, you have just changed your gender. You CANNOT change your gender by changing your mind any more than you can change your gender by changing the physical construction of your genitalia or chest. There are FIVE dimensions to gender and any view of gender that one adopts that is simplistically one-dimensional is ultimately unsustainable. As you correctly pointed out, a person's gender is NOT in their body NOR their clothing as those are just particular facets of two of the aspects that constitute gender, and either of those aspects by itself will not determine anything. But to say that a person's gender is in their mind is as equally ludicrous. That, too, is just a single aspect of gender and by itself will also NOT determine anything.
If you were to spend the rest of your life in a room and never interacted with another person again, then you might be able to successfully argue that gender is only in your mind. Since you would be the only person in your own universe you could be whatever gender you wanted to be ... your gender could be vampire (to use knees2you's stupid suggestion) if that's what you wanted it to be! There would be no one else in your universe to dispute your claim to being that gender, so who would care? However, humans are social creatures, and gender is a social construct. As soon as we introduce another person to your single room world your gender is now determined by two factors ... what gender you believe you are, and therefore wish to project it as to others, and what any other person interacting with you perceives your gender to be.
The five aspects that constitute human gender are as follows:
(1) Biological Gender - determined by one's chromosomes (XY for males, XX for females, and other relatively rare combinations, such as XXY or XYY, for intersexed individuals, or both XY and XX for hermaphrodite individuals).
(2) Mental Gender - how one truly thinks of oneself (TV/TG/TS think of themselves as being the opposite gender to their birth assigned gender some or all of the time ... that's why they are transgendered).
(3) Physical Gender - bodily attributes such as genitalia and breasts, but also secondary indicators such as body hair, Adams apples, etc. all contribute to the identification of the male versus female.
(4) Social Gender - how one presents to the public or close friends and associates in a social context (transgendered males that wear female clothing and makeup 24/7 and take female hormones, etc. are to all intents and purposes female by this criterion).
(5) Legal Gender - what they put on your birth certificate at birth (and later on your driving license as your main legal identification).
Once you are in a social context, chris, your gender is no longer solely up to you to determine. You only have sole control of aspects (2) and (4) of your gender. You cannot alter aspect (1). You need medical help in order to alter most facets of aspect (3) of your gender. And you need legal help to change aspect (5) of your gender, but don't even consider attempting to do that unless you have already addressed and successfully modified aspects (3) and (4) first. One can only change one's legal gender if one can successfully demonstrate that one is significantly gender dysphoric (i.e., your mental gender is seriously different than your birth assigned gender) and that one can successfully transition between genders in both your private and work life. This means mastering presenting as the opposite gender (i.e., crossdressing) in all social contexts - aspect (4) - and also sufficiently modifying your physical appearance - aspect (3) - such that you can pull that presentation off (i.e., successfully pass as the opposite gender in most social contexts and not just appear as, in your own case, "a man in a dress").
This used to require that you went through the complex process of Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) - now more politically correctly called Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) - but thanks to people such as Virginia Prince, who advocated non-GRS transgenderism over GRS-based transsexualism, completion of GRS procedures is no longer a necessary prerequisite for changing one's legal gender status. However, all the old prerequisites of having to live and work full time as the opposite gender that were necessary before the doctors would even consider performing GRS still apply. Even though one doesn't necessarily have to go through the complex, painful and expensive process of modifying one's genitalia via GRS, most transgendered M2F women will still prefer to develop real breasts rather than only use prostheses, and permanent body and facial hair removal and hormone therapy are also considered mandatory in order to feminize the most obvious masculine physical traits affecting aspect (3) of gender that would prevent one from comfortably passing in a public context.
So just wanting to be the opposite gender (i.e., in your own case, being female in your own mind) is hardly a sufficient criterion for determining that you actually are of the female gender. Severe gender dysphoria only serves as an initial impetus to start on the complex journey of changing one's social and legal gender so that they align with one's private (mental) gender, which is a non-trivial process that requires permanently modifying four of those five aspects of one's gender to be the opposite of one's birth (biological) gender. The vast majority of transgendered people (TS/TG/TV) go through their entire life without permanently modifying more than one, or at most two, aspects of their gender. For instance, as a pretty serious transvestite, sissy has only ever temporarily modified aspect (4) of his gender, and temporarily modified some minor facets of aspect (3) of his gender - viz., fairly extensive body depilation on an as-needed basis (i.e., sissy let his hair grow back in whenever he wasn't dressing because regular maintenance of full body depilation by shaving is just too much work if you don't really need to do it!  ).
One could also argue that sissy also modifies his mental gender when he crossdresses and gets in touch with his feminine side to become lola, so that might represent a third aspect of his gender temporarily played around with. However, sissy is NOT gender dysphoric at all as the term is normally understood in a medical context. As a TV sissy has his "girly" moments and his "blokey" moments but they don't necessarily always align with how smooth his body is or what he is wearing. sissy Can be in his most "girlish" headspace while being lola online, despite sitting at his PC with a two week beard in his bathrobe (oooh, sissy apologizes for creating that awful image of himself ... OMG, now no one will read sissy's posts because his feminine mystique just evaporated!  LMAO). Similarly, all the time that sissy might be completely depilated, coiffured and dressed as lola he is fully aware that he is really a man, no matter how far he might slip into "girly" headspace.
You know sissy respects your opinion and intelligence, chris, but in trying to simplify the concept of human gender to just the mental aspect of it you are being just as silly as knees2you is in referring us all to the Bible for guidance on this subject. Debating the topic of human gender along the lines of: "it's determined by chromosomes" ... "no, no, it's all in the mind" ... "no, no, it's determined by chest hair" ... "I know you are, but what am I" is a complete waste of time and bandwidth. Even sissy's post is far too trite on this subject - one can hardly define and explain human gender in a single CollarMe post - but at least sissy has tried to address the real complexity of the subject rather than define it in whatever one-dimensional terms suits his own agenda (which, BTW, he doesn't have) as others are doing on this thread.
Finally, gender definition and diversity is not the topic of this thread and sissy does not intend to hijack it onto that topic. But sissy could not just sit by and watch you respond to the absolute nonsense posted by both knees2you and Youtalkingtome by stooping to arguing in kind with them. We need to educate people BETTER about the true complex nature of human gender if we are to move society's understanding forward on this topic, but trying to discuss this complex issue by only approaching it from one or two aspects of gender while ignoring all of the others, or by completely ignoring the fact that gender is a social construct not a private construct, will simply keep the debate in the dark ages - where some people posting here would clearly like it to remain. As you know, this topic got raised here on sissy's "chastity/castration poll" thread as a result of similar half-baked comments made there, so if anyone, including yourself, wants to discuss human gender intelligently, please feel free to continue the discussion over on sissy's thread, or even start a new one. But please, please, no more of this inane debate with the likes of knees2you who couldn't tell a transgendered person from a vampire even if one bit him! 
Best regards,
sissy maid lola
 Attachment (1)
< Message edited by sissymaidlola -- 5/28/2005 8:00:37 AM >
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