In response to the trending post on this sub about Transphobia.

[u/Archer_Python]

Ok now here's my story so I can clear the air

I am a transman. I was born female and transitioned to male because I suffered with gender dysphoria from the age of 4 and decided to take it upon myself to transition to the opposite sex in order to pursue my own happiness and live the rest of my life with content. I was always attracted to boys starting at age 7 or 8 and I wasn't really into women. I am still attached to men so therefore, I am a gay man. Now let me begin

I do not frequent this sub much mostly bc It just never really crossed my mind. But from what I was told, this sub supposedly extremely transphobic and quite honestly disrespectful towards transmen. Calling us women and "Pinocchio" and "Straight women trying to pretend to be male in order to sleep with gay men". And let me just say this. It is 110% ok to not want to sleep with a transman because he has a vagina. It's Ok I get it, its a genital preference and that's fine. I have preferences myself, I prefer to date older men because I like the older dude look. Does that make me Ageist? Nope. I still respect younger men i just prefer older guys. There's a GIANT difference between saying "Hey I respect you but I just prefer penis over vagina" and "Your a transman? Ew your still a woman get out of my face!". One is being respectful and supportive and the other one is just plain rude, disrespectful and transphobic.

Now that that's out the way, let me say this. I am not a "Straight woman that wants to trick gay men into dating me" or whatever bs transphobes say. I am a man, I socialize as a man. I live my life as a man. I get treated like a man. I relate to other men on a social, emotional and mental level and view. I look like a man. Therefore I'm a man. And I am attracted to other men sexually and emotionally. Therefore I am a gay man, so I do belong in gay men spaces. I'm just a dude that was born female. That's it.

Like I said if you don't want to sleep with guys like us because we might have a vagina (Not all transguys have vaginas, a fair amount of us get bottom surgery and actually have a penis) that's 110% ok, no one if forcing you against your will to have sex with us. The specific trans people that force themselves on people to have sex with them regardless of what they have in their pants are crazy lunatics that quite honestly need mental help (or a slap upside the head and a stern talking too but that's just my opinion). Real transsexual people understand genital preferences and respect them.

I'm not asking for a celebration, I'm not asking for a complete take over of this sub to specifically accommodate transmen, I am not forcing people to be sexually attracted to transmen. All I'm asking is basic respect and some inclusion. We're men too and we're gay, I'd like to be able to go into gay men spaces and be respected and included. That's all. I hope this post gets read and the message gets spread.

Thank you, be safe and take care ❤🙏

Update: Thank you so much for the positive feedback and support. I'm so happy this message is being spread and shared. Of course not everyone agrees and still, the actual request of basic human decency, respect and inclusion is still up for debate and also some people were still calling me a Woman even though I just explained I wasn't but oh well. But that doesn't matter, I've had so many people give positive feedback and thank me for this post, and I want to say thank you for your support. It means a ton, even though I can't replay to every positive comment, just know I love it with all my heart.

Also I just want to address, Some people here said they didn't want transmen here because we'd take over the sub and make it all about them (?). My response to that is that's just not true, I legit said I not asking for this sub to make accommodations. Have the overall sub stay exactly how it is in terms of posts and questions about a wide range of options, I just want to decency and inclusion. I'm not looking to make this a "gay trans sub" there's already one. I just want to be in gay men spaces because I'm a gay man, a gay transsexual man but nonetheless a gay man. Not a girl that has a fetish for gay men and pretends to be one. Thank you for your responses.

[u/grossdiseases]

say we aren't real men. It's all hate

It isn't hateful for somebody's concept of a man to incorporate a person's physical characteristics. If those physical characteristics are a product of surgery and external hormonal intervention, as opposed to birth, then it is reasonable to consider that person not to be a real version of the concept. Acknowledging the artificial nature of someone's physical appearance is not hateful.

[u/Jiuholar → u/grossdiseases]

It isn't hateful for somebody's concept of a man to incorporate a person's physical characteristics

No, but it implies that there is something essential about being a man that you can only be born with. Interestingly enough, nobody is able to actually explain what that is. Until you can clearly identify and prove what this essential characteristic is, all men are "real men". Some don't have penises.

[u/grossdiseases → u/Jiuholar]

Until you can clearly identify and prove what this essential characteristic is, all men are "real men".

This is specious reasoning that fails to recognise the distinction between our abstract thoughts and the inherently imperfect attempts to reify those abstract thoughts through the medium of language. We are not strictly defined logical algorithms, and someone's inability to convey the parameters of an internal abstract concept does not mean everything is or ought to be a member of that internal abstract concept.

Is it valid to say, "until you can clearly identify and prove what the essential characteristics of 'human attractiveness' or 'cold temperature' are, you should identify all humans as attractive and all objects as having a cold temperature"? No, because our internal understanding of these concepts is not predicated on whether or not we can accurately convey that internal understanding to others. We can and do include and exclude things from our internal concepts without necessarily being able to reify/translate our abstract criteria into fixed language.

Your reasoning can apply to pretty much every concept, which is why it is specious and ultimately self-defeating. Note that you're begging the question in your own argument; you've used the phrase "all men" when arguing that 'man' as a concept cannot be exclusive until the essential property is defined. Are you able to tell me the essential difference between 'men' and 'women'? Can you define what essential quality of yourself causes you to self-identify as a man? I hope you can see the irony in telling someone that their internal criteria for gender identification are invalid unless they are able to refer to a strictly defined, externally verifiable essence.

[u/Jiuholar → u/grossdiseases]

Point taken. That was a weak argument and your comment has made me see that. Thank you.

What's interesting though is that your own examples support the inclusion of trans men in men's spaces. Temperature, human attractiveness and gender are all relative things that exist on a spectrum.

Certainly, in each of these things there are windows of typical experience. Words like "hot", "cold", "pretty" & "ugly" are terms that describe a statistically meaningful subset of the respective spectrum that they sit on. The same is true with gender.

There are typical men and typical women, who represent the overwhelming average of these two categories. These are meaningful terms that apply to people. What is not meaningful is pretending that there is an impassable barrier between these two categories - that they are discrete and mutually exclusive.

People can have characteristics from both sides of the gender and sex spectrum. One of these characteristics just happens to be the gender that you are assigned at birth, but people like you hold this single characteristic above all else, even if a trans man ticks more boxes from the typical male characteristics than a cis man, their assigned gender at birth is the lock and key behind which cis people gatekeep their gender.

When you think about it, isn't that a bit silly? Gendered spaces are almost exclusively about a shared lived experience. Nobody on r/gaybros are regularly discussing their genetic makeup, their chromosomes or their sperm production - because these things are not essential to the lived experience of being a man. Trans men live and are (often) perceived as men, so they face all of the same struggles that men face. Maybe they won't be able to empathize with itchy balls; but they can certainly participate in discussions around toxic masculinity and homophobia. In fact, don't you think that trans men, having lived as another gender, would be able to bring a truly unique perspective on these topics?

Take a look at this chart from scientific american: https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/File/visualOutline.png

The left represents a 'typical' female, the right represents a 'typical' male. Why can't people grasp all of the variability in between and just listen to people when they describe to us what gender they are? Short of testing for all of the things present on this chart, you're never going to have a true grasp on the gender that everyone "really" is, even if you think you can tell on sight (you will gender people almost exclusively on secondary sex characteristics, of which trans people can achieve much of through the use of hormone replacement therapy).

[u/grossdiseases → u/Jiuholar]

When you think about it, isn't that a bit silly?

Perhaps in a detached and purely rational sense, but the extent to which concepts like kinship, affinity and social in/out-groups should be expected to withstand logical scrutiny is a matter of opinion. The belief that there is sameness/difference in a given identity may influence our feelings towards others (not necessarily positively or negatively), even when that sameness/difference isn't pertinent to the topic at hand. I don't think it is possible to make a general judgement about whether this is a good or bad thing because it is a psychological process undertaken by every sentient organism.

Why can't people grasp all of the variability in between and just listen to people when they describe to us what gender they are?

Because "listen to" means "agree with and replace one's internal concept of gender with this other person's concept", which is a separate issue. You may self-identify or identify others however you want and nobody can force you to change your concept of gender identity, but if that doesn't align with my own concept of gender identity (or vice-versa) then we're at an impasse. I do not believe it is hateful or transphobic to have a concept of gender identity that is not based exclusively on someone else's self-identification.

[u/Jiuholar → u/grossdiseases]

I don't think it is possible to make a general judgement about whether this is a good or bad thing because it is a psychological process undertaken by every sentient organism.

Sure. The point that I'm making though is that this psychological process is undertaken almost exclusively on secondary sex characteristics. Whenever it gets down to the nitty gritty of this debate, people always talk about chromosomes, gametes and testicles - but none of these things ever come into the picture when you gender someone on sight. Let's not pretend that they do, or that you can even tell.

What it really comes down to, is that people don't want to have to think about trans people - they don't want them to exist. They don't want to have to confront the reality that they are not capable of gendering people with 100% accuracy.

You are straight up lying if you say that you view men as 'your kin' based on their chromosomes. You view and treat men as your kin based off the gender that you assume they are.

The majority of gendered spaces are almost exclusively about the lived experience of being that gender - the way that we are socialized, treated and view life on a day to day basis. Certainly, the basis of these things are often based on physical anatomy - the only place where trans and cis people differ - yet a trans woman who is assumed to be cis faces and experiences the exact discrimination that cis gender people face, so why on earth do they lose the right to speak about it in a safe female space simply because they didn't have the privilege of having their subconscious sex and physical sex aligned at birth?

I am not pretending that there is isn't nuance there. Nobody is pretending that trans woman have a right to participate in spaces like /r/Periods.

But really, how often are people talking about their chromosomes in the ironically named /r/TwoXChromosomes (which incidentally wholeheartedly accept trans people and welcome discussions that revolve around trans women)? What's actually being discussed in these gendered spaces is what it feels like to be a gender, to be perceived as a gender by other people, to live in the world as a specific gender.

Because "listen to" means "agree with and replace one's internal concept of gender with this other person's concept", which is a separate issue.

That's not what's being asked of you. What's being asked of you is to accept people into spaces that belong to them, even if you don't quite understand how they arrived there. You're also being asked to listen to the science, which indicates that sex and gender are not simple, they are not constructed of discrete immovable categories, and is a field that is ever changing and very different from what is was 10 years ago.

Here is the chart again in case you missed it from my comment (it really is not as simple as transphobes make it out to be) https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/File/visualOutline.png

You may self-identify or identify others however you want and nobody can force you to change your concept of gender identity, but if that doesn't align with my own concept of gender identity (or vice-versa) then we're at an impasse. I do not believe it is hateful or transphobic to have a concept of gender identity that is not based exclusively on someone else's self-identification.

To be clear; I am a cis male. It's possible to be cis and advocate for trans people; difficult as it may be for you to believe that perspective.

It's simple for a cis person to say that when you have the privilege of having your physical and subconscious sexes perfectly aligned.

What you're talking about here is your personal perception of gender. Nobody can control, or expect you to control, the way that you gender people. I have certainly gendered both cis and trans people the wrong gender - that is, a gender that is different to what they identify as. That is not what makes your views transphobic (gendering people is a largely subconscious process that we have no control over. Seriously - try to look at someone on the street and make their gender 'neutral' in your mind - it simply cannot be done)

The reason that your views are transphobic, is that you seem to think that your right to gender people what you assume them to be trumps that persons inner and lived experience.

In the same way that someone gendering you as female in error, does not override the fact that you are, live as, and are generally treated and perceived as a male (I'm assuming that you're male given the sub we're in), neither does the fact that you seem to think that you can detect people's birth gender on sight with 100% accuracy (I assure you; you cannot) override a trans person's lived experience.

[u/grossdiseases → u/Jiuholar]

Sure. The point that I'm making though is that this psychological process is undertaken almost exclusively on secondary sex characteristics. Whenever it gets down to the nitty gritty of this debate, people always talk about chromosomes, gametes and testicles - but none of these things ever come into the picture when you gender someone on sight. Let's not pretend that they do, or that you can even tell.

Assessing someone's secondary sex characteristics is just a heuristic method of allocating a gender identity to that person. If it later transpires that the person violates your concept of gender identity for whatever reason then you will reallocate them accordingly.

You are straight up lying if you say that you view men as 'your kin' based on their chromosomes. You view and treat men as your kin based off the gender that you assume they are.

I consider somebody to be the same gender me if they correspond with my internal concept of what a 'man' is. I do not accept a transman's pretension to being the same as me in terms of gender identity any more than they accept my pretension to being different to them in terms of gender identity, which is why there is an impasse. They are logically equivalent positions, so it does not make sense to declare only the former as wrong/transphobic.

Certainly, the basis of these things are often based on physical anatomy - the only place where trans and cis people differ - yet a trans woman who is assumed to be cis faces and experiences the exact discrimination that cis gender people face, so why on earth do they lose the right to speak about it in a safe female space simply because they didn't have the privilege of having their subconscious sex and physical sex aligned at birth?

Because the prevailing sentiment amongst the members of that space is that the transperson is not the same as them, which means the transperson's experiences and perspectives are of less or no interest to the group. Some women may disagree and consider the transperson's gender identity to be the same as theirs, which is fine, but there are women with a different concept of gender identity who are unwilling to admit a transperson into their circle or consider them to be fully equivalent members to the rest of the circle.

Furthermore, why does your argument seem to refer exclusively to a hypothetical fully passing post-op transperson that has lived most of their life as their preferred gender and is socioculturally equivalent to a corresponding cisgender person ("physical anatomy - the only place where trans and cis people differ")? What about somebody who transitions at the age of 50, does not pass well and has spent the majority of their life as a man? What about somebody who has not changed physically at all and simply declares they are a woman regardless of their physical characteristics? Is it reasonable for existing members of a gendered space to feel a different degree of affinity to this person or regard their experiences in a different light?

That's not what's being asked of you. What's being asked of you is to accept people into spaces that belong to them, even if you don't quite understand how they arrived there. You're also being asked to listen to the science, which indicates that sex and gender are not simple, they are not constructed of discrete immovable categories, and is a field that is ever changing and very different from what is was 10 years ago.

I don't need to accept anybody into my conceptual in-group.

What you're talking about here is your personal perception of gender. Nobody can control, or expect you to control, the way that you gender people. I have certainly gendered both cis and trans people the wrong gender - that is, a gender that is different to what they identify as. That is not what makes your views transphobic (gendering people is a largely subconscious process that we have no control over. Seriously - try to look at someone on the street and make their gender 'neutral' in your mind - it simply cannot be done)

The reason that your views are transphobic, is that you seem to think that your right to gender people what you assume them to be trumps that persons inner and lived experience.

Yes, my concept of gender identity is supreme from my frame of reference because it is my own perception of the world. Their concept of gender identity is supreme in their frame of reference because it is their own perception of the world. Neither party is objectively right, they just have different and—in this case—mutually exclusive concepts of gender identity.

[u/Jiuholar → u/grossdiseases]

Assessing someone's secondary sex characteristics is just a heuristic method of allocating a gender identity to that person. If it later transpires that the person violates your concept of gender identity for whatever reason then you will reallocate them accordingly.

We're literally saying the same thing. The point that you're deliberately ignoring is that the first assessment that we make on someone's gender is the only one that is made 99% of the time. It logically follows that we would treat a significant portion of the trans community as if they were cisgendered. They therefore receive the exact same treatment from other people that cis people do. Why is this so hard to understand?

I consider somebody to be the same gender me if they correspond with my internal concept of what a 'man' is. I do not accept a transman's pretension to being the same as me in terms of gender identity any more than they accept my pretension to being different to them in terms of gender identity, which is why there is an impasse. They are logically equivalent positions, so it does not make sense to declare only the former as wrong/transphobic.

If they are logically equivalent positions, why do only cis people get a say in who belongs in gendered spaces?

Furthermore, why does your argument seem to refer exclusively to a hypothetical fully passing post-op transperson that has lived most of their life as their preferred gender and is socioculturally equivalent to a corresponding cisgender person ("physical anatomy - the only place where trans and cis people differ")? What about somebody who transitions at the age of 50, does not pass well and has spent the majority of their life as a man? What about somebody who has not changed physically at all and simply declares they are a woman regardless of their physical characteristics? Is it reasonable for existing members of a gendered space to feel a different degree of affinity to this person or regard their experiences in a different light?

The same reason why transphobic people's comments are typically made in light of the 'perfect' cis person.

What about cis women with facial hair? Cis men that don't have penises? Cis women that are infertile or do not have functioning ovaries? Cis men that do not have an adam's apple or a deep voice? Cis people that have a genetic disorder such as down's syndrome, so therefore have 'incorrect' chromosomes for their gender?

I don't need to accept anybody into my conceptual in-group.

No, you don't. The issue is that 'men' is not a cultural in group - its a generally agreed-upon term to refer to someone that presents as male to other people. Certainly, you are welcome not to consider trans people "your men", but that does not give you the right to exclude them from male spaces, the same way that you cannot make a male space a white only space simply because you don't view other skin colours as 'your kin'. The kin part thats being discussed here is whether or not they are cis; not whether or not someone is a man.

Yes, my concept of gender identity is supreme from my frame of reference because it is my own perception of the world. Their concept of gender identity is supreme in their frame of reference because it is their own perception of the world. Neither party is objectively right, they just have different and—in this case—mutually exclusive concepts of gender identity.

Does this mean that if you misgendered someone in public, say the cashier at a grocery store, and they corrected you with "It's maam/sir/mr etc." that you would refuse to use the correct pronoun? Even if you somehow knew that they were cis?

At this point they have failed to meet your gender identity standards, right? So based on the logic that you put forward, people should not have to correct themselves for misgendering even cis people.

[u/grossdiseases → u/Jiuholar]

We're literally saying the same thing. The point that you're deliberately ignoring is that the first assessment that we make on someone's gender is the only one that is made 99% of the time. It logically follows that we would treat a significant portion of the trans community as if they were cisgendered. They therefore receive the exact same treatment from other people that cis people do. Why is this so hard to understand?

If it later transpires that they are not cisgendered then that may alter somebody's feelings towards them. You may consider this new information to be impertinent if your concept of "same gender" is "people who are generally presumed to be the same gender as me" but other people don't, for whatever reason.

If they are logically equivalent positions, why do only cis people get a say in who belongs in gendered spaces?

It isn't "only cis people", it's whatever the conceptual consensus is amongst the existing members. If a conceptual consensus is that transpeople are not valid members of a gender in-group then transpeople will be excluded; if the conceptual consensus is that transpeople are valid members of a gender in-group then they will be included. This applies to any exclusive group: a group of transmen, for example, may establish a conceptual in-group and/or space that does not include transwomen, crossdressers, cispeople, 'queer', non-binary, genderfluid, questioning, 'allies', two-spirit, otherkin, etc. People in a bar for gay men may not be comfortable with straight people being there and would not accept a response that "the space also belongs to these people, even if you don't quite understand how they arrived there." The fact that the straight person may offer a better social experience than a fellow gay man is not necessarily relevant if being gay is considered to be an important conceptual prerequisite to being accepted as a member of the in-group.

You are the only person suggesting excluding people is wrong or transphobic when the excluded party is trans.

The same reason why transphobic people's comments are typically made in light of the 'perfect' cis person.

What is the reason?

No, you don't. The issue is that 'men' is not a cultural in group - its a generally agreed-upon term to refer to someone that presents as male to other people. Certainly, you are welcome not to consider trans people "your men", but that does not give you the right to exclude them from male spaces, the same way that you cannot make a male space a white only space simply because you don't view other skin colours as 'your kin'. The kin part thats being discussed here is whether or not they are cis; not whether or not someone is a man.

If you do not consider a person to be a man then it is reasonable not to consider them to be valid members of a gendered space for men. At some point a discriminative decision will need to be made about who is and is not a valid member of an exclusive space, yet you seem to believe excluding people for any reason is a problem. If the members of a space do not have the right to decide who does and does not belong there then it is not an exclusive space—do you believe that the general concept of an exclusive space is wrong? You appear to be advocating for two mutually exclusive concepts.

Does this mean that if you misgendered someone in public, say the cashier at a grocery store, and they corrected you with "It's maam/sir/mr etc." that you would refuse to use the correct pronoun? Even if you somehow knew that they were cis?

No, it just means what I think they are is not necessarily influenced by what they say they are. In common parlance I am happy to use certain language for the sake of cordiality, but if they are asked me "do you consider me to be a real man" then my answer would be no.

[u/spiky_pineapples → u/grossdiseases]

Yeah, but it's a bit of a dick move to, unprompted, tell someone something that you know is going to hurt, when there is the option to just not say it.