I am Picasso the art of gender

CONTENT WARNING : this post is grim and mentions extreme violences towards minorities including forced sterilization, as well as questionning how some labels have evolved through time

I'm personally not very fond of the brain scan oriented research on queer people, for the same reasons I'm not fond of genetics oriented research about autism: on the long run it can be used as an essentialist way of either invalidating the subjective and personal experiences of people, regulate access to healthcare, push towards conversion ""therapies"" and even eugenics plain and simple.

It's a bit like the neurological research around DID. It's all fun and games to marvel at how the biomechanical stuff works but lurking in the shadows there are people who want to cut and divide the world between "fake" and "real", between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" and who want to police the live of others.

Because when we are focusing the research on the biomechanical things, we forget about the people. When we are analysing autistic people's genes we are not doing shirt to help them on a daily basis. When we are scanning queer people's brains we are not helping them transition (if needed) nor are we helping the general public to stop hating on the queers. And we are note offering the space for questionning and change and fluidity. I might read too much dystopian fiction but feels like with the brain scans we are heading towads "assigned gender and orientation at MRI".

Also I thought the "transsexual" label was droped off because it was pathologizing and because it was putting a line between the individuals who have access to medical transition and the ones who have not, like the ones who cannot transition for reasons (money, fearing for their lives...) are "less trans" than the ones who have access to a medical transition. Also because "transsexuality" is defined in a very hetero-centric way as "somebody with the sexual behavior of the other sex" which was used to only allow heterosexuals to transition and also was used to deny gender label change on papers (during the 1980 in France at least) to people who did not have enough of a cis-passing. And also in France too, before 2018 this "transsexual" thing was legally used as a lever to force transgender people into sterilization else their gender change on papers would be refused.

ArbreMonde wrote:Also I thought the "transsexual" label was droped off because it was pathologizing and because it was putting a line between the individuals who have access to medical transition and the ones who have not, like the ones who cannot transition for reasons (money, fearing for their lives...) are "less trans" than the ones who have access to a medical transition. Also because "transsexuality" is defined in a very hetero-centric way as "somebody with the sexual behavior of the other sex" which was used to only allow heterosexuals to transition and also was used to deny gender label change on papers (during the 1980 in France at least) to people who did not have enough of a cis-passing. And also in France too, before 2018 this "transsexual" thing was legally used as a lever to force transgender people into sterilization else their gender change on papers would be refused.

We were never aware of anyone using 'transsexual' to hurt people. We've only ever known the definitions as laid down over the years. The thing is, people will use any label they can to hurt others. All we ever knew was that someone, somewhere, decided that transsexual was now folded into the term transgender.

As for the genetics, brain scan data, etc...there's good uses for those too. Just because bad people misuse them doesn't mean that they aren't useful for helping others and even for the arguments being made to normalize.

On a personal note...we hate the fact that we woke up one day and were suddenly supposed to identify as transgender. We have stated multiple times that we are not transgender. We don't even understand what that is supposed to entail and it has never fit right. We have tried. But since we obviously aren't cis gender and we aren't transgender...then what are we? The only thing that ever fit was transsexual...and that got yanked away.

Violette

Oh gosh I'm sorry this happened to you! I did not mean to take a label away from you. My most sincere apologies.

It isn't you that did this. It's the community over the last two decades. It's the fact that until we were 24 that the majority of the system didn't even understand that we weren't female. It's amazing what dissociation does. It's the fact that no matter how much we've tried, we never fit into the Trans Community. We even tried to join the trans forum here and just felt out of place.

We don't deny anyone their identity. We don't care that people identify non-binary, transfemme, transmasc, etc. We just respect what they identify as.

Transsexual worked for us because it gets so tiring getting asked a lot of questions to 'verify' that we're intersex. We just wish people respected that.

Now that we're radically off topic...maybe it's time to just put an end to this.

Violette