LGBTQ+ Rights and America

Does the military have any sort of sex segregation?

In sleeping quarters and bathrooms yes but that's about it these days.

While we're talking about trans people, how do they feel about their... bits, so to speak? Not all of them undergo surgery to remove those bits. Do such trans people (largely) avoid sex, limiting their sexual experiences to anything not involving their bits e.g. fellatio? What if they don't go for hormones either? Does it make them asexual, even if they're very much romantic?

edited 1st Jul '16 12:43:51 AM by hellomoto

Depends entirely on the individual. I know trans ladies who still have active and full sex lives despite never getting bottom surgery.

edited 1st Jul '16 12:46:05 AM by LeGarcon

Asexual means something different than abstinence.

Anyway, whether or not a person opts for surgical or hormonal transition will depend on a variety of factors, such as how bad their dysphoria is, how much they hate taking pills daily, and how poor they are (unfortunately).

Also, it may depend on how much they care about making their physical body match their self concept, which may not be identical with the amount of dysphoria they experience. And also, about how effective or complete they believe the procedures they are considering to be.

edited 1st Jul '16 1:00:55 AM by war877

Trans person here, so I can give an answer that generally applies (though obviously not everyone is the same).

Yes dysphoria affects how you view your genitals. But my chest has a part in my dysphoria, and I don't constantly wear a shirt and never talk about my chest, etc.

Plus, not all trans people even want to get SRS. Others would like it, but will continue using what they've got. There are times I hate my penis, and there are times I'll happily make love with it.

Basically, no, trans people aren't abstinent. We have sex just as often as cis people, and enjoy it just as much.

I read somewhere that a drop in sex drive is a common side effect of HRT.

At the very beginning, yes. After a few months it comes back. Not sure why exactly, but it's only a temporary drop.

and

Interesting! I've always wondered how (pre-op) trans people feel about using their body, when said body is not aligned with their gender identity.

Without getting into too much detail, sex as in intercourse, as in Rod A into Hole B?

edited 1st Jul '16 2:41:34 AM by hellomoto

Vanilla sex? Almost definitely.

I am like 90% sure that transgender is not about sex (the act) for most people. It is about sex (the identity). So, yes, avoiding sex in order to avoid certain reminders of sex may be a thing for some. But overall, sex has nothing to do with sex, so people will remain sexually active like normal.

For a while I equated being trans with having gender dysphoria. I've just been proven wrong, but I'm trying to imagine being trans without being dysphoric about how your body doesn't match your gender. Could someone describe?

Doesn't help when the few media depictions of trans people almost always include dysphoria, because drama.

edited 1st Jul '16 6:18:27 AM by hellomoto

I don't think I have a gender, so this may or may not apply, but my feelings about my body are just kind of... neutral. I don't think of it as a part of me, but I don't really dislike it either. It's just flesh, and as long at it's functional and relatively good-looking, I don't mind.

edited 1st Jul '16 6:40:14 AM by Corvidae

Could be more gender indifference or gender passivity. I mean, I rarely think of myself in gendered terms, and I'm fine being identified by any pronouns so long as they're not being applied out of malice.

But I consider myself (passively) cis rather than agender, because while I don't feel a particular attachment to the female-assigned body and genitalia I was born with, I also don't feel any active desire to reject it or exchange it for anything else either. And it does upset me quite a lot when people try to claim I'm not or somehow less female because of how I act or present myself, whether it's bullies trying to mock me or well-meaning progressives trying to convince me I'm really trans but suffering from some sort of false consciousness, as if the Nagelian problem of the bat didn't exist.

I am agender in part because I don't understand gender. I have never experienced gender, and it does not exist for me. The problem of the bat applies to sex, but in my case, it does not apply to gender.

Add to that that I do not particularly like my body and would rather not have one. I would probably not be cis if I did experience gender.

So I've been following some discussions on Tumblr regarding trans terminology, and I'm seeing it that some trans people consider terms like MTF, A/DFAB, A/DMAB, and FTM to be transphobic (per the idea that the "F" part of "FTM" is offensive because it implies the trans man was ever female in the first place), and other trans people who use them are truscum. And I have reason to believe they're sincere in their beliefs. What do the trans people in this thread think?

edited 7th Jul '16 7:09:31 PM by AlleyOop

I don't want to touch that debate. I study words. I don't claim, reject, seek to claim or seek to reject any terminology. Wake me up when the debate is over. At that point, I will go with whatever the dictionary says.

Trans lady here. I don't get too pissed at those phrases, but I'd prefer if people just used the phrases "trans woman" and "trans man", since they already exist, and describe us better.

The general consensus I've seen holds MTF/FTM to be acceptable still but not preferred (not counting self-identification, of course) due to implications of "was a guy who became a girl" and vice versa. [A/D][M/F]AB I think I've only seen criticized from trans-medicalist viewpoint (as much as I disagree with them and think their views are harmful to all trans people, I don't support the use of the slur "truscum").

I would generally recommend staying away from the trash fire of semantic arguments in The Discourse™ on Tumblr. It tends to be a lot of oppression olympics and identity policing.

Yeah, while Tumblr is one of the easier places to get unfiltered trans commentary, it can be really hard to suss the genuinely informative conversation on that site out from The Discourse. And yeah, I've become wary of the term "truscum" more and more often being used as a Category Traitor snarl word against other trans people for having different opinions in general, even when it's not specifically relating to what does and doesn't count as trans (such as shipping and headcanon arguments).

For example I've seen the term used by some nonbinary folks (who possibly might've been TERFs in disguise, considering) to criticize a trans woman for seeking SRS, because according to them choosing to have SRS is itself transmedicalist and validates the transphobic idea that gender equals sex, which... I've heard varying opinions on but I'm leaning towards thinking it isn't the case as long as said person treats SRS as strictly a personal thing. I 100% believe she had the right to have the surgery and that they were wrong to criticize what people do in private, but as for the political implications of such an act I don't really want to put my foot down without more input from other trans voices.

edited 7th Jul '16 9:52:35 PM by AlleyOop

Nearly every trans woman who gets SRS does so because of dysphoria. It's the reason I want it, and many others I know. It is personal, and it's to make you more comfortable with your body.

Yeah, um, getting surgery does what to the definitions of words? Even if a person were to get surgery for political reasons, which almost never happens, it doesn't validate or invalidate anything. Worldview or language choice.

I'm fairly sure every trans person (men and women alike)who gets SRS does so because they have gender dysphoria. There are trans people who are comfortable enough with their body and don't want to go for SRS (just scroll up on this page), but this set of trans people do not invalidate the dysphoria of those who do go for SRS.

edited 7th Jul '16 11:51:37 PM by hellomoto

I consider all of the acronyms that AlleyOop mentioned to be technical terms referring purely to biological sex. (I.e. "male to female" means exactly that, and vice versa.) Gender identity is a separate thing altogether.

And then there's people like me who want to get it but accept they're unlikely to be able to.

I feel much the same way, but I wouldn't want to say I have no gender because, well, how can you tell the difference? If you're cisgendered, your body's sexual characteristics will feel normal and natural to you, and if you're agendered, they're going to feel the same, since you've had them all your life and are used to them.