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Lets Have Another Gender Discussion!

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Posted

The nebulous term "gender dysphoria" is really confusing and annoying. Just because a group of people give it a name and a description, people think it has become more real. Where does "gender dysphoria" end and where does low self esteem begin? What's the difference between a crippling anxiety and something that you should just get over? I think that giving power to words like these takes the responsibility from the individual, so that they don't have to grow up. They can pull the "dysphoria" card whenever they want, and in situations in which people have to just deal with things. I think we as a culture kind of celebrate diagnoses more than the cure. We want an excuse to feel a certain way, an excuse to which we can attribute our shortcomings, and an excuse to not deal with things.

I feel this way about many topical psychological ailments, not just this topic.

 

I feel this way about most psychobabble produced by certain parts of society; the phrases seem to gain their reputation by growing the way a meme does rather than proving their credibility. (On a somewhat related note I can't remember how much I talked about how obnoxious signal boost/THIS/PREACH/always reblog are as memes but I'll just summarize by saying they're ineffably terrible. I throw most psychobabble in with that lot.)

 

Gender dysphoria gets an exception in my thinking because it's one that kind of makes sense. Being a guy/girl comes with a lot of exclusive feelings, expectations and the like that people of either gender might not want to be a part of. Being stuck in a body that forces you to deal with certain things you might not like would understandably really suck sometimes, and yeah it's gonna be abused by people who don't want to adapt to a mildly difficult situation regarding gender, but I can see how a portion of those situations are legitimate because it's feasible to me that some people feel trapped in a situation they hate 24/7.

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Posted

Time for another drowzy self-indulgent self-analysis in the dead of night that's somewhat related to the topic, by Sahaqiel. [i always regret these in the morning]

 

I always questioned why it is that boys and girls were expected to like different things. Most of my friends throughout life have been girls, and we've had more things in common than things we've differed on. My first couple childhood friends were girls, and both of them liked video games, and had dolls they never played with. I tried asking them how they play with them and they pretty much said they don't really find them all that fun. Alternatively, I would play Barbie's Horse Adventure or whatever on Windows 98 with one of those very same friends (I always asked her if we could play again because we were so close to finishing it) and we ended up preferring things like exploring the neighborhood, Toonami, Gameboys, and riding bikes. I loved watching Sailor Moon. Expecting girls to be separate from boys didn't make sense to me, because we all found letting loose and having fun much more enriching than having some controlled environment our parents bought us without consulting with us.

 

Especially as a child, the differences between us were practically nothing. I didn't even know what a vagina was, or what it was called until I was like 12. Noticeable differences didn't spring up until I was about that age, and they really seemed imposed. We grew farther apart because we realized that that's how society categorizes us, and it's so ingrained that it's part of our laws. When hormones started to influence us, fashion became a concern because we wanted to look attractive to the opposite sex, and we based that on the fashion of those in our sex category. Behaviors were interpreted differently based on your sex. I always wondered why it had to be like that; why we throw away our sense of unity for such a convoluted system of inequality. Not quite in those words when I was 12, but the thought always struck me as strange.

 

I had more respect for my mom than for my dad; she was a beautiful woman who radiated youth despite her age, and she always told me I was smart, and to respect other people for their personalities rather than how they appear, and I looked up to her. I wanted to be radiant and kind as well, not cynical and awkward like my dad. There was a time in high school that every day, I asked myself what kinds of fears I had that were irrational, and one of those was the fear of looking feminine. When I started to wear my hair long my mom praised me and said I looked like my grandfather. I started to shave my legs and my mom said she can't stand having her legs hairy or prickly either. I felt solace in that my mother accepted me for who I was. Now, the standards of beauty I set for myself are very often stereotypically woman-like, and yet I don't quite associate myself with women. But I don't associate with men either. I can't comfortably pick a side with this. I react the same to being called he or she, and I often think that the distinction between the two is arbitrary to our language. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Filipino language is structured so that many times you'll hear someone call a guy "she" in English out of habit. If someone mistakes me as female, I will try to speak in a more female-sounding tone, but then there are times when my voice is very ambiguous as well. There used to be times where people would instantly realize their mistake when I turned and talked to them, but now it happens only rarely.

 

I was never looking for a label, but rather I tried to shape myself in a way that I didn't have to question. Something I felt was canonically myself, from my own opinions and beliefs and standards. Of course, no one can truly get away with this, but I wanted to get closer to it. So I become more comfortable the more ambiguous I am, because that's just where I feel the most comfortable. Looking one way or the other makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can't imagine living life in a costume someone's forced on you. I think gender dysphoria sounds somewhat accurate. A sense that you are disconnected and uncomfortable with your gender expectations. It doesn't have to be a scientific term, it can be a general descriptor, but after awhile it can be used like a buzzword.

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Posted (edited)

I think that the problem of not being comfortable trying to live up to the ideal image of a man or a woman, and lots of other problems can be solved by disregarding the "ideal image" of any given thing. That way you can appreciate what you are, what you have, or what you do on a case by case basis, instead of measuring it against an imaginary, mythological image that isn't even your own. I think that the myths about people and things are valuable when growing up, but maybe at some point it's better to stop trying to be ideal. But also finding your own beliefs isn't "brave" or "progressive" or whatever. If you don't have the mental capacity to notice that your myths about people aren't your own, if you are too cowardly to disregard them, then you kind of deserve to be at the mercy of society and its judgments.

But also I think it's human nature to compare yourself to others. That's probably accounts for a large amount of things happening.

Edited by Iargely Iegendry (see edit history)

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Posted

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the latter portion; I think that trying to find your own beliefs is something we all do. I'm not sure what you mean by disregarding the myths that aren't your own, while also not noticing that those myths aren't your own. I think you have to notice something before you can disregard it consciously. Or are you saying something else?

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Posted

Maybe I worded it badly. I meant that we need myths so know where we stand in regard to them. But they stop being useful and start being harmful at some point.

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